For most of you, Facebook is probably the lifeblood of your business.
Your success lives or dies on how well you perform on Facebook. You rely on Facebook groups, pages, and live videos to bring in a large chunk of your sales.
In many ways, this is just how things are in today’s market for many direct sales businesses. (And you should definitely take full advantage of the free social media platform!) However, reliance on Facebook can raise a few issues, including:
- There is risk in being totally dependent on a single platform
- Facebook is constantly changing how it does things so it can be hard to keep up with the changing algorithms and processes
- You are at the mercy of Mark Zuckerberg and his team which puts your success out of your hands
Now don’t get me wrong – right now Facebook is probably the most powerful tool in your arsenal for making sales. After all, it’s free and has the potential to reach countless people.
That being said, you would be prudent to take some steps to help reduce over-dependence, so that you’re not totally reliant on the ever-changing algorithms.
Here are a couple of simple ways to reduce reliance on Facebook.
Use email and texting to drive people to your sales
You generally don’t want to rely solely on Facebook to notify your customers when you’re having a sale. You want to use email and texting if you can to notify people when you are going live.
This is one major use many consultants have for our services at Mobile Text Alerts – letting people know when you’re running your live sale. Think about it: how often do you check your Facebook notifications (assuming people are actually receiving a notification when you run a live video)? Compare that to how often you check a text when it comes in.
Keep up with the old school from time to time
Although at this moment in history your best efforts are probably spent in maximizing the potential of online live sales, you don’t want to move completely away from in-person sales.
You’ll still want to do booths and other in-person events when and if you can. Keeping up with the “old school” way of doing things can help you keep your foot in a door apart from Facebook so you’re not totally reliant on them.
Look into other social media
Many people, especially younger people, are moving away from Facebook and are instead using other social media platforms such as Instagram and SnapChat.
If you can, you may want to look into utilizing these platforms in addition to Facebook and see what kind of audience and response you can generate.
—
Ultimately the more independent and self-reliant you can be the better. Facebook is an awesome tool for your business but it is not the only tool so try not to put all your eggs in one basket!
