Why We Only Launched A Facebook Page, 14 Months After Launching Our Brand

25 Apr Why We Only Launched A Facebook Page, 14 Months After Launching Our Brand

We recently launched our FaceBook page. It’s nothing fancy – somewhere to house and share our blog post links, Instagram posts, current news, and soon, our live events.

To be honest, we were hesitant to launch a FaceBook page, and, well, you could say we’ve waited a lifetime (in social terms) to do so, only going live after 14 months of launching the How Far From Home brand.

We also recently received a message from someone saying “Welcome to Facebook 🙂 You call yourselves marketing people and you only joined now. Tisk tisk. Lol.”

Or something like that.

Perhaps all the poop scooping and unplugging got to our heads Mr Lol, but in what marketing text book (do those still exist?) or how-to-create-a-successful-brand-for-dummies handbook or wiki page does it state that every brand needs a Facebook page? And needs to launch one from day one?

Ok, let’s take a step back.

I love the power of social media; I love how marketing has evolved over the last decade into a two-way conversation between brand and customer; and I love how easy (or maybe sometimes not so easy) it is to grow a loyal community around your brand.

Yes, you can enjoy all those things using the largest social media network in the world. But you can, without a doubt, enjoy all those benefits by choosing a different platform too.

Let’s use our brand as a case study for a second.

We, for the most part of the last 14 months, have documented our journey on Instagram. We both love photography, we love the Instagram concept, we love the Iike-minded people you meet through Instagram, and we love how you can tell carefully planned and carefully curated visual stories. It was perfect for us and our mission (to count the kilometers traveled and track the journey through a series of photographs). We decided, from the beginning, to put all our time, energy, effort, and social media know-how into building a community on Instagram because it was perfect for us. We specifically said that we weren’t going to dilute our efforts by launching a million platform pages, especially not a Facebook page.

After growing a community that is now global and 117k strong, one could say we made a good call.

And if we look at fellow Instagrammers Murad Osmann, The Dogist, Maddie and Theron of This Wild Idea, or  Youtubers Casey Neistat and Felix Kjellberg of PewDiePie, and Vine superstar Zach King (I’m sure there’s many more examples – these are just off the top of my head), we are building up a good case for why putting time and effort into one platform that suits your needs and your skills, is worth all the Facebook ads in gold.

We’re all different, so why should we all follow one social strategy that states you simply have to be on X platforms posting X many times a day?

“So if you feel so strongly about only being on one platform Chanel, why have you launched a Facebook page now?” you’re probably thinking.

Well, for a couple reasons.

1. Facebook has undoubtedly the largest social community on the planet, so for us, it means spreading the word of How Far From Home (which is now clear and concise due to our hard work on Instagram) to a wider audience. It’s not that we don’t believe in using the power of Facebook – we simply had to be ready for it.

2. Facebook’s investment and plans to head towards broadcast (using Facebook Live) excites us. We’ll be able to share our explorations in real time, with timely and instant interactions with our viewers, and no limitations on video length (for the most part). If you have no idea what we’re talking about, click here.

3. Now that we are aiming to turn this crazy adventure into a lifestyle (and not simply a year off from reality), our priorities are changing, and Facebook can assist us in reaching our brand’s objectives.

So please don’t take this post as a favoritism towards Instagram and a bashing of Facebook. Every platform has its purpose and its place, and it’s up to each brand to decide what they are trying to achieve, and what is the best platform for those goals and objectives to be met. This may change over time, as the brand evolves or priorities change, or it may be influenced by the time you launch your brand and what platform is “on trend” or where your market is, so it’s important to review your marketing plans and social strategy often. Our only rules are: don’t spread yourself too thin, and be true to you(r brand).

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If you had to critically look at your social media strategy (because everyone with the hope of marketing their brand should have one), which platforms would you cut out, and which would you put all your efforts into?