Digital Marketing software company Marketo has been publishing some useful reports, e-books and infographics lately. They’ve captured our interest as a marketing communications agency for their currency and concise and well-presented insights into social influence marketing trends, content development and marketing automation tools for small business.
A recent article and associated Facebook-Infographic discusses what we instinctively know, that Facebook users prefer personal recommendation from friends than promotional posts from brands they might have liked. As the tools of publishing, content creation and sharing become ever simpler and more democratised, its no surprise that consumers are becoming choosier about what they engage with, even as they start to know that very valuable data is being captured each time they do engage to give companies ‘insight’ into their behaviour.
Its kind of an epic tug of war to maintain a semblance of control over what consumers choose to engage with and the ability for businesses to obtain exponentially more granular information about what we like (yes, we are all in this together), when we like it, with whom we like it and where we like to like it. So as the organic reach of content published from brand pages declines, Facebook says its algorithimic changes are in the interest of keeping users happy.
So FB are on our side right?
They don’t want companies intruding on our lives to the point where they make us uncomfortable, right? Well, yes and no. It is true that we can calibrate our settings to block, limit and filter stuff we don’t like, but FB is still the real winner. The company that has done most to make our online lives likes and loves as transparent as possible claiming to be protecting our privacy is a bit rich. But then again, so are FB’s shareholders. so what’s not to erm, like?
