I have a question regarding social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, and other popular platforms.
We all know that companies like Meta sell and constantly track our lives, but are there other solutions if one runs associations or businesses through these platforms? Meta’s platforms have the most users for the most part, and it is easier to advertise through their platforms.
Our gaming association has recently switched from X to Mastodon, but not everyone has registered on Mastodon yet.
What are your tips for running associations and businesses more securely?
I have some small amount of experience with this, but based on the little I know, here’s what I can say. First question is what is your goal? To get customers, or to create a community? Below is general advice but it’s hard to say just talking about it in the abstract.
If you want a community, I would probably advise to just treat it as one more channel, have separate pages in Meta / X / Fediverse / Pinterest or whatever as separate communities, since in a lot of cases there won’t be overlap between them. I wouldn’t recommend abandoning your existing Meta or X pages to set up a Fediverse page instead, although making a contingency plan for the slow motion demise of Meta as a platform for the long term seems like a good idea.
If you want to drive sales, then for me Google Ads always worked better than buying advertising on Meta or X or etc anyway. Have you measured conversion numbers from Meta? They make it easy to spend money definitely, but I always found the ROI in terms of pure paid sales to be pretty bad from them.
Thank you for your reply. My goal is actually a combination, as our association organizes gaming conventions and we need customers, but at the same time, the main focus before the event is to have a community.
Hm, yeah, I would just start up a Mastodon page in parallel with the Meta page. Pick the right “home” server to join; that’s critically important for Mastodon in a way that it’s not for Meta. Put in charge of the page someone who’s genuinely excited about participating in Mastodon, and would be engaged with the gaming community there whether or not they were in charge of the page. I don’t think I would recommend spending anything on ad promotion of the Mastodon page, but like I say I’m not convinced of the utility of spending money on Meta promotion either. YMMV
Anyway like I say my level of knowledge about it is pretty minimal but I’m happy to talk more in depth on details of my experience also if you like.
