Facebook has announced that it will no longer let third-party apps like Hootsuite, CoSchedule, Buffer, Meet Edgar etc. publish scheduled posts to personal profiles. Read the actual Facebook blog post here. That means no more pre-scheduled posts to our personal pages.
I’m a little ticked…
Honestly, more than a little ticked. In fact, I went live to talk aout it.
First, Twitter disallowed batch publishing of tweets. I get it – spam. OK, so it takes an extra few minutes to plan my social media in my online scheduler.
Then, the Facebook algorithms changed to make our business pages practically obsolete and forced us to create groups. And now this!
As professional speakers, many of us use our personal pages as a part of our brand identity. Our personal pages are where we let the funny out, or we share the more human side of ourselves. In a world desperate for humanity and connection, our personal profiles are valuable property.
I hear the argument that personal profiles are not for business use, and that is true to a point. I save my business tips for my business page, but the reality is that often, prospective clients (I work with speakers like you) ‘friend me’ first – THEN they follow my business page.
They want to get to know me before they decide if they would like to talk about working together. Sound familiar? It should, it is how relationships work. We all know how successful we are (and how much we love those who do) when we run around playing the ‘he who passes out the most business cards wins” game. It doesn’t work.
I imagine most of you are with me that you use your personal profiles as well as your business persona – but what Facebook has failed to recognize here is how interconnected they are.
I spend time prescheduling my tweets and my status updates. When I am feeling particularly funny I will plan out my status updates so I am ‘present’ even if I am not there at that moment. I also always pop in to comment and interact. That is the only way social works. If you are paying attention and being SOCIAL.
What can we do about it? Probably nothing. It is not like anyone is paying attention to our groaning and whining about change. Facebook is a big business and it is in it to make money, and to serve the majority how it feels necessary. That is why this post is about be being ticked – not about how we can combat the problem. 😉
That said, I won’t stop. I won’t stop being funny and being loving and thought provoking and showing all those side of myself on my personal profile, because I still think who I am matters to my clients. And it matters to your clients too. Share who you are, share it on your personal profile. Take the time to do it manually if you must. Share your quirkiness in your groups. Be you and be wonderful. Just understand it is now going to take more time.
Do you have any tips to share? Let us know!
