Facebook Is The Walmart of Social Media
Walmart.
I don’t hate it or love it. It is what it is.
HUGE. It’s HUGE.
Walmart, despite all of its haters, is quite amazing. It’s hard to think of where you could have parked your car for free and bought groceries, a new shirt, a coffee maker, an iPad and a set of winter tires all in one store before Walmart.
I applaud it for that.
Time is precious. With the pace of life today, every second counts. So why waste it driving from shop to shop when you can get all that you need under one roof. Sure, it may not always be the best quality of everything, but it more than makes up for that with convenience.
However, does Walmart satisfy every shopper’s needs and wants?
No. Far from it.
That said, there are few people, in North America, that haven’t been to a Walmart.
What else is that like? Oh, right…
Facebook.
Like Walmart, Facebook is HUGE.
Like Walmart, Facebook kinda offers everything in one stop.
Like Walmart, Facebook doesn’t always offer the best quality.
Like Walmart, Facebook offers you convenience.
Sweet, sweet convenience.
Facebook is the Walmart of social media.
Let me be clear, I’m not anti-Facebook here. Facebook has done a jawdroppingly good job of getting about 2 Billion people to sign up and use their service. It’s by far the most populated platform in social media. If you want to go where the people are, Facebook is currently it.
That comes with an upside and a downside.
Upside? People. Lots and lots of people. Like, crazy amounts of people.
No, seriously. More people than you can imagine.
For content creators and brands, you HAVE to be there.
Ignoring Facebook would be like selling pickles and thinking you don’t need to sell them in Walmart.
That brings us to the downside.
Like Walmart, the customer/user is king to Facebook.
Their whole goal is to provide the best possible experience for their customers/users.
Like Walmart (as far as I can tell), Facebook doesn’t really manufacture anything.
(Yes, I’m aware of the new Facebook Watch series… but let’s see where they go)
That becomes an issue for the people who do.
Vlasic Pickles famously went bankrupt trying to deliver gallons of pickles to Walmart for essentially zero profit, just so they wouldn’t lose their spot in Walmart’s marketplace.
Being a content creator on Facebook feels pretty much the same.
With throttled Reach and the need to boost posts, it starts to not make much sense to lose money just to stay in front of the people who Liked your page already.
Does that mean I’ll stop posting content on Facebook?
Probably not. I need those eyeballs.
Just like Vlasic Pickles needed those mouths.
Plus, like Walmart, Facebook is good at what they do.
Very, very good.
Now… what we need to find is the Target of social media.
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Thanks for reading!
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