I built my entire crochet business on Facebook, right back from when I started selling my crochet over 10 years ago. But now my crochet business is leaving Facebook – but why? I hear you ask. The reasons are many fold, but they all boil down to the fact that both me and the platform have changed. Here’s how I came to the final decision to leave Facebook and how I used my data to back up my choice.
Facebook Is A Powerful Tool
Despite the fact that I’m leaving Facebook, I still say that Facebook can be a very powerful tool to grow your business.
Facebook is a free platform to use. Your crochet business doesn’t have to pay a penny to create a business page and start getting sales. You can connect to millions of people across the globe, get access to a free messaging platform, can schedule your posts for weeks in advance, add links to your posts and so much more. All completely free of charge.
Of course there is a catch. But that catch comes in the form of your time and how much time you need to spend on Facebook to make it work for you. All in all Facebook is a very powerful and free tool to grow your crochet business.
It’s just not the best tool for me.
The reason for that is my personality type and how Facebook works.
I’m an introvert. I don’t like making small talk, I don’t like reaching out to new people unprompted. This is not a good combination when it comes to networking and growing a business on Facebook.
To be successful on any social media platform these days you have to play the “social media game”.
Playing The Social Media Game
I’m sure you’ve heard of “the Algorithm”. So many people are complaining about it and trying to find ways around it.
But the Algorithm is simply the rules of how Facebook works. And these rules govern how many people see your posts and if you get rewarded for playing by the rules.
The general rules of social media is that you create content and go and interact on other peoples content. The better the quality of content you create, the more you are rewarded by more people seeing your posts in their feed. The more you engage with other people and the more other people engage with you (in the form of watching, commenting and reacting) the more your posts will be shown and recommended in other peoples feed.
In other words, the more social you are the more Facebook will show your content to both your current audience and to new people who may find your content interesting.
This is the “social media game” that you have to play, and for an introvert like me a complete nightmare.
10 Years Of Changes
It wasn’t always this way. 10 years ago you could be a bit less social and could find yourself a few other small businesses that you could join together with to do group networking. This group networking is how I grew my business.
Each day each of the businesses in the group could submit a link to a post that they wanted comments and reactions on. Then everyone involved would go and comment and react to everyone’s posts.
It was a great little system that got around the social rules and ticked all of Facebooks boxes. It worked incredibly well but wasn’t in the spirit of the platform. And over the years the algorithm has got more sophisticated and now can detect when you are taking part in these group networks. It then punishes you for it by showing your posts to fewer people.
This has meant that I find the social activity required to appease the current version of the algorithm impossible to please.
My crochet business has stalled on Facebook.
Making A Data Led Decision
I had the feeling that my Facebook posts were not getting seen for a long time. But just checking the reactions and comments on a few posts are not a good long term indicator. And when you’re making a big decision like abandoning the platform that you’ve been building your business and reputation on for the last 10 years, gut feeling is not what you want to rely on!
Fortunately for me, I have a website (2 actually, 1 for my patterns and 1 for Crochet Business School) so I went and checked out where my traffic for those sites are coming from. Guess what? Virtually none of the traffic was coming from Facebook.
My biggest traffic drivers for both of my sites was Google and Pinterest. Facebook was way, way, way down the list! So why was I spending so much time each week creating content for a platform that just wasn’t serving me any more. It’s no longer introducing my posts to new people, it’s not even showing my posts to existing followers.
So what is the point of me staying on Facebook?
None, no point. At this stage it’s just a time drain with no return on that time for my businesses.
So it’s time to leave,
What’s Next For Crochet Business School?
It’s clear from my data that Pinterest is my biggest source of traffic outside of my websites being found on Google. So I’ll be doubling down on my efforts there.
But you can’t connect directly with new people there and I’m not a complete recluse, I just prefer more genuine connections with people who are genuinely interested in my crochet patterns or in how to start and grow their own crochet business.
So to plug that gap I’ve started a Substack. It works like Facebook without the social obligations. You can follow my Substack account for free here.
Both of my crochet businesses will continue, just with a slightly different strategy. Every business has to keep up with changes to their chosen platforms or change platforms. The time has come for me to change platforms and leave Facebook for good.
I hope to see you over on Substack soon and I’m looking forward to the next phase of my crochet businesses.
