We all knew this was coming. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced the coming changes in a post, outlining that their aim is to ensure that the time people spend on Facebook is ‘well spent’.
The key focus of Zuckerberg’s announcement is research which has shown that:
“…when we use social media to connect with people we care about, it can be good for our well-being. We can feel more connected and less lonely, and that correlates with long term measures of happiness and health. On the other hand, passively reading articles or watching videos — even if they’re entertaining or informative — may not be as good.”
Facebook is making the most significant update to its platform in years and for businesses, it might be bad news. But, for the Direct Selling industry, this change provides us a really big opportunity to GET IT RIGHT when it comes to Social Selling.
As confirmed in the video:
“Now, we’ll also consider whether a potential interaction is between two people, or between a person and a Page. Person-to-person will be more valuable than person-to-Page. Connections with people in your network will get the biggest boost because interacting with people you’re close to is more meaningful”
Translation: Your Facebook Page reach is going to go down. How much will depend on how well your business is able to adjust to the changes, as they roll out.
That said, we also know it’s against Facebook policy to run your business with a personal profile, so we have to train our representatives to do this the right way with profiles, pages, groups and messenger, so they don’t get blocked, or worse, shut down completely
As I said, I believe this could be a golden opportunity for our industry and for your field. Direct Selling is the original social network, and network marketing is all about people to people, so we are half way there. But believe me, Business pages on Facebook are still very necessary and remain a powerful way to build our business. So it’s more than providing the tools, or content, it’s about training and support.
With Facebook alone, we have the opportunity to utilize our own Facebook profile, Business Pages, Groups, Advertising, and Messenger to build relationships and business. Messenger will become the biggest opportunity of them all in 2018, but with proper training necessary. The Brains at Multibrain have developed a full training platform alongside our Social Selling tools to train and support network marketers on the proper ways to use Facebook and other social networks. Highlights include:
- How to properly use your personal profile to share your business.
- Business pages as your social storefront and how to build community.
- Managing a Group for ultimate customer service and team building
- Transitioning new contacts to Messenger for recruiting and one on one communication
- Being connected to our team and customers via Messenger for immediate response
There is no official timeline for these changes, and they stated this was their goal throughout the year. We’ve been training to this overall concept of a human approach, not selling for the past year, so if you’re working with Multibrain, you’re covered and we’ll be helping you along the way.