Thibodeau from Facebook discussed ways that Facebook is helping brands market and have a positive presence on Facebook. She knows that people want a dislike button, but the fact is that if there was a dislike button it would make Facebook a negative experience for many users and many companies. The people who post negative comments are making a commitment to it, and feel more strongly about it than just hitting a “dislike” button.
Facebook tries to make it a positive experience for its users, which means people should post thoughtful content (don’t say anything unless you wouldn’t mind it said to you). Not everybody does this, but the majority of the community cares about keeping it positive. A positive strategy for a company includes:
- A plan (Content Strategy). It should not keep you away from creativity, but create an outline for future success.
- Be creative. While a plan is great, it’s important to keep up with what’s happening in the moment.
- Optimize & Maintain content: Don’t be afraid to launch imperfection. A lot of technology comes out that isn’t perfect, but it keeps up with competitors. Once launched, it needs to be maintained to be optimized.
- Check your strategy. Make sure it’s working, and be adaptable if it isn’t.
At Facebook it’s important to “move fast and break things”. It might not be perfect, but at least it’s new, adaptive, and up to date.
Sounds like this must have been an interesting discussion.
“Move and break things” – is a great philosophy to have, but only works if you have laid out a really clear vision that you are trying to achieve as a team.
I think “don’t be afraid to launch imperfection” is an important philosophy to keep in mind. It’s really hard to find the line between “perfecting” a product and getting it out for people to use, but it’s generally unrealistic to think that you will achieve perfection if you keep waiting and tinkering in-house. Introducing something that is at 95%, then remaining vigilant and updating as needed will almost always yield better results than failing to produce anything at all.
Sometimes the “don’t be afraid to launch imperfection” is frustrating, but I think that applies much moreso in hardware than in social media. Social media is an easy fix that I’m not stuck with for 2 years (not mentioning names!), whereas with hardware it can be years before you replace it. And it definitely was interesting, one of my favorites of the day. Facebook speakers did a very good job overall, as with many others.