Leaving Facebook has worked out well personally. Now it’s time to remove our company pages. Here’s the reasons why we are leaving it behind.
Facebook has been a huge part of everyone’s lives for so long now that it seems impossible to leave it. 11 months ago I decided to stop using the app and have been a lot happier as a result. You can read more about that here.
One thing that kept me from deleting my account entirely was our company pages. I had a few reasons I felt we still needed them.
It’s important to be visible everywhere your customers are
After much thought and looking through analytics, I decided that most of our customers come through other channels. In fact, I don’t think even one customer has contacted us through Facebook. So this made it easier to delete it.
Fake Accounts
One thing that I got stuck on for a while is that it’s possible for malicious users to register your company pages for themselves and use them to promote false services. This is, of course, a risk, however, it’s not just a risk on Facebook. It’s a risk with domain names as well. Almost anyone could register a similar account anyway especially with/without hyphens etc. Scammers are going to scam, it’s what they do.
Decision-time
I’ve been pondering these things for the last 11 months and finally, last week made the decision to remove my account and company pages. I have never been thrilled at how Facebook and Instagram manage user data, but when it was leaked that they have researched the ill-effects on their users and ignored it to continue making a profit… I can’t say I was surprised.
I’ve been willing to forgive a lot of their faults, such as the Cambridge Analytica scandal (third-party integrations are always a risk), their terrible Business Manager tool, lack of support for developers and their general crumminess towards small businesses especially, but I no longer want to support them or allow them to profit from my data or company data.
I doubt one company leaving will give Facebook/Meta any pause for thought, but personally, things have been much better without them in my life. I recommend to everyone to just try it for a week. You’d be surprised at how much more head-space you have!
If you’d like to keep up with company and service updates. I recommend you head over to our Linkedin or Twitter page. I don’t post often, social media doesn’t have the glamour it once had and it can be a massive time-sink at the best of times. Luckily customers have found me and I haven’t had to find them yet, but that time is coming, and I’ll be looking into authentic and positive ways to do that.
Photo by Jason Dent on Unsplash.
