Small Business Monday: The Problem with Facebook
You know what I could have never predicted would be the most challenging aspect of full time farming?
Especially considering I left a 10 year career in health care marketing to become said farmer.
Marketing my own farm.
Seriously.
You guys.
It is so dang hard.
On this blog I’ve talked about the challenges involved with raising the goats, milking the goats, making the cheese, packaging the cheese, selling the cheese, making the kids, selling the kids…
Just kidding we’d never sell our kids.
Our human ones that is.
The point is I’ve never been shy about the challenges of running a small, first-generation family farm.
But surprisingly I’ve never really talked about how hard it is to market your own business.
It is routinely the number one cause of stress for small farmers, and, I bet if I took a short survey, all small business owners.
There is SO MUCH technology we have to manage on top of the actual business, a business we are often learning the ropes on as we go. Plus, the rules of said technology change almost as much as Banzai’s favorite color.
And, at the risk of sounding ridiculous…I do not learn technology as fast as “kids these days.” Once I learn a platform (Facebook for example) I don’t want it to change. I want it to stay the same “thing” that it was on the day it began. I want to easily be able to reach the over 15,000 people who at one point or another said, “yeah, this farm’s page is cool, I want to see more of them.”
But that’s not exactly how it works anymore. When I share on my Facebook page a typical post is served to about 4,500 people. That’s not terrible I guess, especially accounting for the fact that people are fleeing Facebook in record numbers.
But if I post a YouTube link…which is something that I’ve been sharing more and more since we started Chasing Meadows, our YouTube Documentary Series, Facebook serves my post to about 1,000 people.
Seems fishy right?
It’s my own fault really. When we first posted the sizzle reel for Chasing Meadows I paid to promote it. In my nine years of managing the farm’s Facebook page I’ve never paid to promote a post. But I was excited about it and I really wanted it to have a big reach.
My mistake.
Now Facebook knows I care about my YouTube links so they’re severely limiting my organic audience. The idea, of course, is that I’ll spend more money to get my content seen, thus providing more revenue for, you guessed it, Facebook.
To be clear, I’m not complaining about using a mostly free service to communicate with my audience, I’m complaining, or rather, lamenting, that the rules of engagement keep changing.
Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, MailChimp, Squarespace, Square, Podcasts…
So many platforms to manage. And that’s not even scratching the surface of “what I should be doing.”
Because after 10 years working in corporate marketing I actually learned a few things and I know…I’m not doing enough to keep up with the changing pace of our increasingly digital world.
Which got me thinking. I bet you most small business owners are struggling with meeting their marketing goals. We’re just not big enough to outsource it (my dream!) but we’re not small enough to get by on grassroots efforts anymore.
So I’m committing, as part of my larger goal to blog more in general, to share openly and honestly my struggles with marketing in the digital landscape of 2020+. And so, here it is, my first life tip for small business owners.
Instead of pushing likes on platforms, promote your own email list. You own it, you control it, you manage it, and, honestly, it’s just more personal. I love that when I send an email I can easily reply back in a way that feels more like a conversation between two humans.
Which is why my first pivot as someone who is finally carving out the time to truly market my business, like the professional I used to be, is to focus on promoting my email list. There’s the sign-up link right there!
And because I want other small business owners to find success, or at least support, here’s how I’m doing it.
A free MailChimp account, and an embedded form. After I do this I’m going to implement the Facebook signup form integration, hopefully with some level of ease. I use MailChimp because it has a Square integration that allows me to easily receive payment from our CSA peeps, but that is a post for another Monday.
Also, I just figured out that Squarespace now has an email list management tool (which is the platform I use to run my website) but, I haven’t really messed around with it, or examined the pricing structure. As of now, because my list is smallish, the free MailChimp option works for me. If I do decide to move my email management to Squarespace it’s just a simple import from MailChimp.
My goal right now is simply, build the list. It’s easy to get crippled on making marketing decisions by yourself, because honestly it all feels wrong, or like you’re not doing enough, but the point is, you just gotta start. Which is what I’m doing with my goal to connect in a more personal way via email, and not a third party platform.
And in the meantime…
Have you watched Chasing Meadows yet? The playlist is below, always showing the most recent episode first! With the weather changing and the pandemic escalating again, there’s never been a better time to hole up and binge watch something that we feel really proud to bring you.
Cheers my friends! I hope you’re staying safe and sane and being kind to yourself and each other!