Facebook Pages Are Not That Resourceful To Fashion Designers Or Any Upcoming Business

Next to having a website which very few African designers do, facebook pages is the next professional step to inform people where to find you work. They are also easier to set up and far less stressful to update compared to the sending messages and images to your webdesigner.

But in 2016 the essence of a page might prove far less beneficial than one may think. A lot of designers who might be popular on social media platforms like instagram are hardly ever appreciated on their facebook pages. In 2014 I took to facebook to like a lot of fashion pages, mainly designers across Africa in order to receive updates to give to our followers. By many, one could say possible a large number in the 100s.

I can’t pin point at when all the feed eventually stopped showing but today I noticed I can scroll down my timeline and not see one update from any of these designers and fashion creatives pages. Earlier this year I assumed this could possibly be the lack of updates by the creatives, or the lack of my interaction with the pages but this is far from the truth.

The truth is facebook has duped us all into believing that it is setting a leveled platform for pages. And that your fan base is really your fan base. Many of us saw this coming in 2014 when they took away the ability from people to see all posts by their colleagues and pages, instead choosing to show us what they want based on the guise of algorithms, technically stating we show you what we want to show you.

So what does facebook get from hiding your page content from your followers. Facebook hopes After you go through much stress of wondering why your content is not getting acknowledged or appreciated as you would wish for it to, you might just pull out money from your pocket and pay for ads.

Im also sure Multinational corporations, major institutions and worldwide known services have the ability of losing their number 1 position, may have a say of some sort.

So now simply liking a page is not enough for facebook, after liking the page one will have to go to the like button to click ‘Show Post In News feed’. as if that is not the dumbest thing ever? Why would someone not want the page they like to show in their news feed?

This is not to say there is no benefit in having a facebook page, but technically what the social media platform is saying is the benefit from your hard work to attract fans will be determined by us. FashionGHANA is fairly doing well with 800,000 followers, but only 200,000 seeing our content daily. However, we get much feedback from people saying they see our pictures uploaded to facebook but not our articles that links people to our website. Maybe this could be another thing facebook does to prevent it’s followers from leaving the platform.

I guess since it’s a free platform there’s not much that can be done. However, Creatives and business owners must ensure they have an alternative platform that can maintain their fans and followers. And don’t get excited about twitter, they are just about to do the same. Instagram may seem as the only platform for creatives that may be true to it’s news feed, but remember this, instagram is owned by facebook, so what’s to say what will become of it in the future.

I guess we can’t complain, but to either pay or find our own strategies around it. Just as the popular quote goes “if you are not paying for the product, you are the product”.