Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:49 — 534.5KB)

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher | Email | TuneIn | RSS | More

How not to make friends or influence them!

I opened a Facebook account shortly after it launched, and after a couple of name changes, I settled for OwenJonesWriter. Pretty succinct, but it described me and my activities very well.

Social Media

I had various spurts of activity, and inactivity, on my Facebook account, but I gradually built up a following of about 3,000 friends, acquaintances and complete unknowns, as one does.

As you probably already know, I am a writer, and writers want to sell books, so I incorporated Facebook into my sales strategy along with Twitter, many social media accounts and my blog.

By using devices such as smarturl.it I was able to see where most of the click-throughs to my books came from. It is impossible to track actual sales in this way, but most of the clicks on my sales links on Amazon came from my blog and Twitter

There was absolutely no doubt about that. Facebook was delivering at most about 5% of those two combined.

Facebook Idiocy

Then, one morning, I turned on my computer to discover that my Facebook account had been blocked or banned or shut down, whatever you want to call it, for ‘spamming’. I have never ever spammed anyone, so I sought clarification, but they would reveal nothing other than (paraphrased) ‘…they had to keep the Facebook community safe, because I had been accused of spamming by several of their members’.

So, it seems to me, that if you want to shut your opposition down, you just have to get a few friends to complain to Facebook about spam.

This is obviously open to abuse, and is madness… it is Facebook Idiocy in the extreme!