Cue the Gasps: I Quit Facebook

One week ago I walked into our office and notified my fellow colleagues that I had deactivated my Facebook account. Much as I had expected, everyone gasped in shock. Quizzically they asked, “But, why? How will you keep in contact with friends? You will miss so much, how could you do that?!”

The Why: My 2014 New Year’s resolution was to control my own happiness beginning this year. This is a tall order and something I have to remind myself to work on daily. I truly believe that you inherently control your own attitude and happiness.  I made a list of things that make me happy and started making time for those activities and people. This is a very similar concept to the #100HappyDays concept that is currently trending. Facebook was born my freshmen year of college. At that point in time, the new social media platform was viral, whereby someone would look at you at a party one night and was suddenly your Facebook friend the next morning. Over time a big group of my so-called “friends” on Facebook were people I didn’t even know.  My newsfeed became filled with two main types of posts that didn’t necessarily make me happy, inspire me, or make me a better person.

• Post Type #1: People I don’t care about complaining. Somehow I had acquired a slew of  “friends” whose uninspiring messages became prominent on my newsfeed despite my disinterest in hearing about their bad days.

• Post Type #2: My “friends” bragging about their life. How is it that the same four people are in some exotic location every other day and don’t have real jobs?  Or how about those friends who think they need to post every meal to show the world how good it is? Really? Pop tarts aren’t that exciting. That isn’t the type of content I’m interested in or that will elevate me as a person.

I’m not the only one I know leaving Facebook in the search for different content, but should this worry marketers?  My answer is a resounding NO.  Although I don’t enjoy Facebook as of late, I am a self-admitted obsessive user of Pinterest and Instagram.  I love following my close group of friends, along with bloggers and thought leaders whom I like to follow for inspiration and learning.  These platforms provide advertising solutions and ways for companies to distribute content and create buzz.  Content marketing works best when utilized over several different platforms and in a variety of ways allowing marketers to reach their target market.

Moral of my post….

• Consumers — Control the content on which you want to spend time.
• Marketers — Know your target market and where they are spending their time online.