If Facebook has a flaw it’s that organisations can use personal accounts for their online marketing. The problem as I see it is this; if a business, charity or political group asks you to be their friend and you have no relationship with that organisation you are incentivised to click ‘Accept’. The incentive is that you gain a friend and they gain a pair of eyeballs.

So what’s the problem with a business getting your short span of attention and you feeling temporarily loved? Although it appears to be a win-win outcome it’s actually not. The business has bribed you into becoming their friend with a friendship token but you haven’t necessarily bought into the terms of the relationship that came with the token.

As a result the organisation loses. They are marketing to people that don’t necessarily want to know. They are fundamentally disobeying the theory of Permission Marketing. They are shouting and interrupting their ‘friend’ with irrelevant messages that often have zero value and thus no impact. If the marketer put a monetary value on their time they would probably find there are lower cost ways of interrupting strangers than using this tactic.

The rules of creating a prized, high value social media network haven’t changed from the early days of email marketing. The organisation must first connect with their customer in a meaningful way, not just by swapping a friendship token.

The organisation must continue to do something interesting; add value to the lives of its friends and followers. It must inspire, humour and create stories that spread. An organisation talking about itself to those that don’t really care is a massive waste of time.

As the wise Rich Dale once tweeted “Why would I want to be friends with a shopping centre I have never even visited?”

In our next blog post we will highlight 15 reasons why a Facebook page is better than a personal account for business.