Facebook Jail

Direct Sales and Facebook Jail

How many of your direct sales friends have landed themselves in time-out or Facebook jail? Want to know how to avoid Facebook jail when you’re in Direct Sales? According to my timeline – hundreds and hundreds! Being in direct sales, the percentage of my friends who are also involved in social selling is high. But, you don’t have to be in direct sales to find yourself in Facebook jail. Let’s chat about how to avoid it.

Why Does Facebook Have Jail?

Good Question!  Let’s look back.  What began as a way to rank how college girls looked has been cultivated into the social behemoth you know it today. Facebook is free to register and use.  Don’t let that lead you to believe there isn’t money being made. There are over 17,000 Facebook employees to manage the volume that produced over $10,000,000 in revenue in 2016.  Yes.  Read that again.  The social media giant has 1.86 billion { with a B} monthly users worldwide.  Facebook on Wikipedia With an audience of that size, advertisers and businesses are all to eager to pay to get their products and services in front of us.

Ah, that makes sense.

Because of that, Facebook has several rules they want you to play by, safeguards in place with constant monitoring!  There are multiple different kinds of restrictions enforced by Facebook.  You will know you are in Facebook jail by notification.  Not being able to join, comment or post in any groups {even if you are admin}, not being able to send or accept friend request, total black-out, not being able to post videos or go live.  The algorithms change from time to time.  Some of it is common sense but here are some tips related to direct sellers.

How to Avoid Facebook Jail

1. Don’t use your personal account for business.  Obviously from time to time personal profiles are used to help promote whatever business you’re involved in. We are social creatures.  Facebook doesn’t want or sanction your personal profile being used solely or primarily for business.  You can’t have a business name listed with a personal profile.  Also, Facebook only allows ONLY ONE personal profile of every person on the planet.  If you risk using an alternate email and are successful in creating additional profiles, and they figure it out, they will flag you and delete it.  Creating business pages, fan pages and sharing from them is what the intent is.
2. Do not post in rapid succession in multiple places.  We all love fb groups! People who are involved in direct sales have a love-hate relationship with groups. We have groups for our customers, our hostesses, our teams, our network or pacing partners. When there is exciting news or time sensitive information people have a tendency to copy and paste that text in several places one right after the other. In other words, even if you are trying to help your team… that can be seen as potentially spammy behavior.
3. Do not over-post the same URL link, photos and verbiage. We want our customers, friends and family to know how to order or join with us.  That kind of specific link is typically shared by just you. When your company’s entire field share one link multiple times, the link itself can be flagged as spam. So then, anyone who posts it, even just once, can be in jeopardy of being put in Facebook jail.
4. Create and use your own content. Facebook doesn’t just track text verbiage they also track photos by the pixel.  So, while you should be thankful your company provides social media assets, if your entire field posts them within a small time frame, the photo can be flagged as spam. Even if you change the file name.  Also, DO NOT copy then paste recommended verbiage word for word.  Not only will your audience know it’s not authentic, but when they see several of their own fb friends post the same photos and verbiage it will be seen, felt and flagged as spammy.
5. Lastly: Show me your friends, I will show you your future.  Our grandmothers weren’t wrong.  When you are friends or in groups with people who use yucky practices and end up in Facebook jail, you could be seen as a risk.

What to do While in Facebook Jail

1. Let your family, friends and fans know your situation with a funny meme.
2. Review the Facebook terms and policies for both personal profiles and business pages guidelines
3. Know that your sentence could even be extended while you are on lock down.
4. Diversify your audience by building on other social media channels.
5. Appeal your sentence. Try to get your sentenced shortened, although it might add a day if not awarded.
6. Learn that when you tag people in photos they are not pictured, when your friend request acceptance to friend requests ratio is low, when you use other people’s photos instead of creating your own on canva, word swag or write behind apps are all risky behaviors.
7. Stay on top of what is new in fb policies, rules and algorithms.
8. Add a trusted spouse or friend to admin in your groups.
9. Take the time as a FB break, goodness knows some of us could use one.  😉
10. Recognize that you might not have done anything wrong other than be in wrong place at wrong time with wrong people. Facebook is not personal. Facebook is a business.

Need Additional Help?

My good friend, Brenda Ster, is a former direct sales leader and current social media coach and training genius who specializes in helping those in direct sales and small business owners worldwide make the most of their social media presence.  She is sought after by social selling companies and travels the country training teams.  She has a HUGE and growing community of social sellers who enjoy helping each other. Want to join her fb Group? Socialite Suite

Her thoughts on this?

“Facebook has one big goal: make money.
– They do this by keeping people on Facebook as long as possible, to serve advertising content to us.  How do they do this: – Serve you content you want to see, based on what you actively engage on. (Like, comment, share, pause the scroll) – Focus heavily on eradicating spam and fake accounts.  Direct sales brands that provide gorgeous social media assets for consultants to use, actually harm the masses when everyone shares at the same time. Original content, focusing on 3P’s mix, with strategic timing, is one way to try to stay ahead of it. Also make sure your personal profile is linked to your own business page, NOT your brand’s corporate Facebook page. It’s trying to look as original as you can on every level, so Facebook doesn’t lump you in with all the other consultants who are spamming the news feed.

Jill McCarthy is a friend, a Scentsy SuperStar Director company and social media coach and strategist.  Jillysue specializes in helping women use social media to further their businesses Jillysue GirlBoss Motivator

Lynsey Jones is the Party Plan Diva! She specializes in Direct Sales training with her community!  Lynsey is a long time blogger and is easy to work with while she teaches! She has weekly trainings on all social media channels.  You can find her here: Party Plan Divas

I hope you found this incredibly long blog post helpful.  If you did, feel free to share it with your teams or friends in other direct sales!  Fingers crossed that we all stay out of FB jail and that those incarcerated will see their sentences reduced for good behavior!

~Lorri