Flacking on Facebook

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By: Mike Bush

Some of us can’t get enough Facebook. It’s a place to catch up with friends and family, check in on people you maybe haven’t thought about in a while (maybe in a creepy manner, maybe not), and of course, flacks ought to be helping our clients with their Facebook presence.

Which is why an article on ReadWrite caught my attention.

Selena Larson apparently tried to quit Facebook. After a time away, she realized that it’s just easier to be there, since so many other people are there. Ultimately (SpoilerAlert: her article is worth reading) she decides that keeping a Facebook presence is worthwhile, as long as she scales down the number of “friends” she carries on the service.*

If you’re a flack...there’s one thing missing in Larson’s article.

At no point does she discuss the “brands she can’t live without.” This means one of two things for us PR people:
1. We can’t deemphasize Facebook because, hey, people on the bleeding edge are scaling back, or;
2. More likely, if we’re going to create content for the service, we need to make it REALLY great content.

I suspect for a majority of our clients, the latter is the only answer that will do.

*I agree with her conclusion and tried to do the same. Ultimately, I'm happier on the service with a combination of a small friends list and an even smaller list of people I do follow. However, there’s a caveat: I suspect that, somewhere along the way, Selena will run into a situation where she wants to send a note to someone she isn’t close to, and will regret unfriending them. You don’t have to be a person’s close friend to send a note to say “congrats on getting engaged” or “sorry for your loss.” The old saying of “Weddings and Funerals” ends up holding true, and somehow, Rupert Murdoch’s statement of Facebook being like a phone book, when taken out of context, becomes oddly prophetic.

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About the Author

Mike Bush is a PR and Marketing freelancer with more than a dozen years of experience in the field. Find him on and connect Twitter @mikebush or at www.mikebush.nyc.

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