How Can Facebook Damage Your Business?

Government figures show that the amount of time we’re spending on social media has increased by 19% since 2015, with 3.2 billion users logging on every day for an average of nearly two and a half hours.

Across the UK Facebook is the market leader with 42 million users, but with house competitions, WinMyDreamHome.com believes that their attempts to regulate such a huge online community could actually be detrimental to the businesses paying to use the platform as an advertising channel.

Targeted advertising via Facebook can drive website traffic, increase brand awareness and generate business leads, while the platform allows you to use both data and individual customer feedback to monitor and improve your proposition.

However, while Facebook has ramped up the cost of this advertising they are yet to develop an adequate system for UK businesses to submit complaints or reviews, but at the same time allow algorithms to incorrectly ban adverts based on poorly informed information or for very little reason at all.

Facebook recently decided to remove WinMyDreamHome’s sponsored, paid for advertising, stating that the competition required a gambling license and that the skill test involved was “too easy”. This was upheld despite WMDH’s focus on transparency, ensuring that the competition follows the strict rules and regulations set by the UK Gambling Commission despite not needing a gambling license and even after supplying data showing that the skill test involved was more than adequate in terms of the chances of answering correctly.

Marc Gershon of WinMyDreamHome.com, commented: “Not content with controlling your personal feeds, the posts you see from friends and almost every aspect of your personal life online, Facebook is now choosing to restrict business activity from UK companies with no merit or reason.

Facebook is now choosing to restrict business activity from UK companies with no merit or reason.

“This is hugely unfair to those that opt to use the platform to advertise, paying in until their advert is unjustly removed, and their digital marketing campaign is left in disarray.

“Of course, this is an over the top knee-jerk reaction to their own sloppy internet operations and a PR drive to reverse this with over the top actions, but in doing so, they are further imposing their will at the detriment of the businesses they have no problem with fleecing for cash initially.”

But it isn’t just the financial issues that cause online issues for a business when using social media.

There are plenty of other reasons to be cautious including: –

• Your own human error, or that of a colleague, when interacting and posting directly to a client base.
• You must also define and approve the right permissions, approvals, access, data classifications and collaboration processes when operating on social media.
• There are potential tripwires when adhering to privacy laws, content ownership intellectual property infringement, and human resources issues such as unauthorised activities of harassment, discrimination, or defamation.
• Stricter GDPR rules mean companies must now meet higher requirements when collecting, processing, handling and storing data.
• While social media may seem detached from your day to day business, any industry compliance regulations surrounding your sector still apply online.
• The huge sums demanded by social media for paid for advertising can soon snowball and failure to adhere to the above data regulations can also result in fines from regulatory bodies.
• It can even have a detrimental impact on employee output with the temptation to slack just a click away.
• Mistakes or even being hacked by an external source who posts to your page can have a detrimental impact.
• The metrics provided by social media companies aren’t always an indicator of success for your individual business. Likes, comments and shares rarely translate to transactions and so if this is your only focus, social media isn’t the right tool.

Marc Gershon continued: “There’s no doubting social media is a huge business and it can be a great platform providing a ready-made client database at your fingertips. However, these companies are well aware of this, and they continue to squeeze those attempting to use it for every penny without the support system you would expect and receive from a more traditional advertising route.

“Any social media related issue for your company can spread like wildfire and if you don’t have the relevant expertise, resource and budget to utilise it properly, it can do way more harm than good.”