Facebook falls 3.8bil over data breach. Should your business stop using FB?

Well, it's been an interesting time for Facebook recently.

While trust in Facebook’s platform has been deeply hurt, as long as Zuckerberg and his team reassure users and regulators about its security/data collection standards, Facebook is more than likely to still recover from this security issue. Facebook has confirmed they have hired a digital forensics firm to undertake an audit of Cambridge Analytica and have stated: "we remain committed to vigorously enforcing our policies to protect people’s information".


What can your business learn from this?

1. Be aware of your privacy settings

If you're unsure on how to manage your privacy settings, find the answers you are looking via Facebook's help centre here >>

This applies to any social media platform. Also be aware if you allow/accept access to your data via an app, there are inherent risks that you can't avoid.

2. Don’t ever rely on just one marketing channel

Always have a complete digital strategy that has multiple channels working, rather than the one. As mentioned, we think Facebook will still be around for the foreseeable future but there are never any guarantees and always remember, Facebook is a free platform and you don’t own your space there. The ideal marketing strategy is to own your marketing space as much as possible and always drive business back to the online channels you do own via a complete digital marketing strategy.

The good news...

We see the Facebook debacle as a good thing, as it means rather than being hit with advertising when we don’t want it, our experience online may eventually get more user-focused and secure…one can hope :)

It’s definitely going to help push the internet in the right direction, along with such things as the all-encrypted internet movement (see our article on why every website needs a security certificate installed).

Should your business stop using FB?

While this incident may impact Facebook’s advertising business, the platform is still a great tool for businesses, it just means that businesses may need to think about creating more authentic and relevant content.

You might ask, what does authentic and relevant content have to do with this data leak? Facebook is not perfect, it’s a huge company with complex things to deal with and Mark Zuckerberg openly talks about this in his post earlier this year - This security breach may just give Mark and his team a bit more drive to focus on his 2018 goals. Mark said, “one of our big focus areas for 2018 is making sure the time we all spend on Facebook is time well spent”. If people can not trust the platform then people won’t spend any time on the platform but we don’t think Mark is about to let that happen.

Friends and family at the core of FB experience

Facebook’s main focus is to put friends and family at the core of the experience of their platform but with the explosion of video and public content online, this experience has shifted over the years. Mark goes on to say "we're making a major change to how we build Facebook. I'm changing the goal I give our product teams from focusing on helping you find relevant content to help you have more meaningful social interactions”. With this change, you may have noticed less and less content like posts from business, brands, and media showing up in your newsfeed.

Overall Mark talks about encouraging meaningful interactions between people, so if your business is getting great engagement and creating good conversations then you will only benefit from these changes. If your not getting great engagement on your Facebook business page then it will likely drop even more. No matter you situation, a more authentic or human approach to your content is always going to get you better ROI from your marketing efforts.

“With a whopping 15 million active users on Facebook and 9 million monthly active users on Instagram in Australia, these platforms definitely can still help all business types but more than ever before, you will need to post relevant, thumb-stopping content”David Ligtenberg
CEO / Inbound Marketing & Digital Growth Strategist, Itag Media.

Further reading:

If you hadn't heard about this data breach the below articles will shed further light on this recent situation.

Bloomberg - Facebook Plunges as Pressure Mounts on Zuckerberg Over Data

The Guardian - Mark Zuckerberg apologises for Facebook's 'mistakes' over Cambridge Analytica

CNBC - Facebook suspends another data analytics firm after CNBC discovers it was using tactics like Cambridge Analytica