38. The Big Facebook Con - Published 18.05.2014
This was the start of where I fell out of love with social media. This is where I started my crusade to try and encourage people to spend less time on social media and more time on analogue media (talking face-to-face). I haven’t changed my view on this, although we do still communicate with people through The Campbell Academy on Facebook because that’s how they seem to prefer to do it; the sooner society moves away from that the better.
"They sold me a fairy story 'till I believed in the Israelite" Greg Lake - I believe in Father Christmas
Start with this video.
It's clearly very clever Facebook, although if it hadn't been Facebook it would have been something else.
It latches on to our deep seated need for connection and convinces us in a digital world where we have so little time to properly connect with anybody that we are fulfilling that need. It took 10 years to realise it was empty.
It's no surprise to anyone now that in the last 6 months of last year, 2 million people in the UK left Facebook. The younger generation have now latched onto Instagram because they don't want to be seen to be on a medium that their parents are on (obviously Facebook own Instagram)
My main point though is, how we all (myself included more than most) fell for the Facebook myth especially related to our businesses. Everyone needed a website that was linked to Facebook, it was critical and would be the next big bang platform and the biggest the world had ever seen. It certainly gets a lot of attention, it's estimated that every 3 days we 'waste' 1 billion hours on Facebook. Just imagine what the human race could achieve if it could put that time to better use.
I am interested to hear of anybody who has had significant input to their business in dentistry through Facebook. In this I exclude things like coaching or social media management which are clearly defined by Facebook themselves. I mean actually attracting patients to your practice who are interested in having treatment solely and because of what they have seen on Facebook. I don't deny that Facebook can be used as a reputation management tool but I am convinced it is not a deal breaker for patients attending my practice and I am actually considering linking the website buttons on my practice website to my personal Facebook page because if people don't like me personally on Facebook they probably won't like my practice or me when they meet me.
The biggest con of all was suggesting it was essential to be there from a revenue point of view, the amount of time and money that practices have spent across the UK linking Facebook and posting on Facebook and assigning members of staff to Facebook will, I am convinced, never ever be returned in terms of business achieved.
I just don't know of any patients that I meet on a day-to-day basis who would be convinced of the authenticity of Facebook enough to use it as their sole means of information to make a judgement on healthcare. I am actually not convinced I would want to see those people because I think the majority of people who have a dental Facebook page linked to their Facebook feed are probably socio-media-paths.
I enjoy my connections on Facebook but I am limiting my time spent as much as possible because I find it just sucks away from doing things that are real fun and real important.
Blog post number: 1539
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