Attention: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google+, You’re Driving Us Crazy!
I’m seeing a lot of chatter by social media power users in my timeline about how the top social media sites seem to be playing the chase-each-other-to-the-top game. It’s driving us crazy!
As the owner of a PR firm, a few items I help clients with are better SEO results, improvement with their social media presence, and their overall digital presence contained within their online stories. It is hard enough to keep up with the abundance of tools now available to accomplish this, much less the constant state of change that seems to be so common.
So for all the geek squads and developers out there, here’s what we want you to know:
1. We love you, we really do. You gave us new channels to peruse and our voices big stages to use for pleasure and business. However, you are driving your consumers nuts with all the changes you keep making.
2. Twitter, don’t go changing. Stop trying to be like Facebook! Twitter, we love your simplicity. It is your uniqueness that makes you the best for delivering news and sharing information. Keep on being YOU, Twitter!
3. Facebook, we can’t argue with your 1.3 billion users, but can we go back to some authenticity please? Let the popular posts stand on their own, and stop messing with our timelines!
4. LinkedIn, to you I say you must be very confused! We’ve accepted that you have two faces, mobile and desktop. But, when I updated my bio recently, you posted that I had a new job. It was actually a job I had 20 years ago. You and your confusion, LinkedIn, threw me into a time warp that was confusing to my contacts AND my clients! I had to answer lots of emails. One of my clients actually thought I was going out of business, because I had taken a new job! I even had my settings adjusted not to publish. Stop the birthday email prompts. Don’t try to be Facebook; we don’t want birthday wishes all over a business-networking site.
5. Google+, please decide what you are. You are big. We all get that. Thanks for stepping up your game big time. Please just settle on what you want to be, and stay there for a while. By the way readers, if you haven’t asked for reviews on Google+ for you business, you might want to do that. It’s new too!
6. Just stop trying to copy one another! We like you the way you were. I shouldn’t have to take extra time to study you and your ever-changing algorithms to enjoy you. Don’t make it difficult!
I realize many of the changes are driven by bottom line, and changes in one site drive the competition to think they have to change, too. I also know I’m not the only one feeling frustrated and dizzy by all of this.
So, we’re staying on the front lines to help clients with all of this, but hoping the next change will be a decision to forgo changing. A decision to not change into a totally different site than what we all fell in love with using. Happy sorting to all of you!
