My faithful reader knows how I feel about Facebook, it is Evil. Yes, Evil with a capital E. What surprises me is how many companies are using Evil Facebook as their business presence. As I have said before I understand how Evil Facebook has become the new destination on the Interwebs. However the fact that they add advertisements sometimes means that there are some interesting juxtapositions.
An example is a friend’s Evil Facebook page. When I went to click through his pictures of projects, the advertisements did not provide a great correlation to the type of person that he is. When I think of my friend I do not think of background checks, I think of hair gel, good food, and helping other people. Then again it could be worse, it could be an advertisement for a competitor.
I understand that Evil Facebook is the place to be. It has lots of traffic, but that doesn’t mean I have to like it or use it to host my content. I can use it as a jumping off point to my site. So rather than put content on Evil Facebook, I put links to the content that lives on my sites. This approach is for my personal pages, I can only recommend that businesses do it as well.
Some will say it is just easier to use Facebook. That has no bearing to me; there are other solutions that are just as easy and not as Evil. Yes, it is very easy to upload images and let Evil Facebook create the album from the images. Did you notice that the privacy policy and terms of service also means that Facebook can use these images for something else? Think about for a second, and I will be the first to admit I am going to an extreme; Evil Facebook can now use those images elsewhere. What happens if the images are in an advertisement for a competitor?
I recommend using other solutions. These solutions can range from WordPress PlugIns to HTML Galleries to CMS tools. The way I do it is to create a gallery on my SmugMug account and place a link to it.
I feel that this is better. If one is like John Sciacca and carefully watch my website traffic and metrics, I can place a Google tracking code into my SmugMug site. I do not believe that is possible on Evil Facebook.
If you are like me, paranoid and want to keep content under control, one can use the SmugMug watermark features and the right click protection on your images. One can also limit the image sizes that are available. However unlike Evil Facebook, one can still have high resolution images stored on the SmugMug servers for my use. Yes, something to remember Evil Facebook down samples your image for you. Also the SmugMug gallery has the ability for me to set themes, presentation size, as well as smarts to make the image as large as possible. SmugMug’s goal is to make my pictures look good. I will take all the help I can get with that.
You might say that one can create a watermarked image like Matt Scott did on his company’s album on Evil Facebook. That means he now needs to maintain two copies of the image just to support that.
There are also other things that come along with SmugMug that might not be immediately seen but advantageous for the business owner, such as prints and books. I have previously talked about the Metal Prints available through SmugMug, think about how easy it is to simply order project “brag” pictures for the wall of the showroom or office. For the higher end brochure there are books and albums available. There are thank you and holiday cards. So now instead of having to figure out how to do all these things yourself, you can let someone else worry about it. Interesting and unique swag/branding trinkets are now available, custom calendars, puzzles, aprons … the list goes on and on. The mind boggles and occasionally scrambles.
All these things become an option just by using SmugMug to host your photos instead of Evil Facebook.
Now if you will excuse me, I have to go work on a gift, all I will say is I am using SmugMug and the L&T Jennifer is going to love it, for Free Loot Day… .
Disclaimer type stuff: I am not a SmugMug employee or compensated for endorsement. I am just a very happy customer. If you sign up for a free 14 day trial at SmugMug and use my referral code (D5I4bmVRNHNpU), you get a discount I also get a credit toward my subscription.
See not everyone is evil, I am telling you up front.
+1
Couldn’t agree with you more on your opinion of Facebook. I don’t like them – never have. I’ve been there for years, only to keep track of my kids at first, and now mainly to lurk at what they and other family members have to say, now that it has become where so many of my cousins hang out and converse. But I don’t trust them either with many photos. I have always been fairly careful with what photos I put there, and only occasionally put anything up online at all. I would never use FB to host my galleries, I would go with your approach – but many people just implicitly trust them for some reason.
FB gets on my naughty list whenever they change privacy settings and I find out about it via a third party…
Just a little tip, don’t use white text on black background, all i can see now is lines in front of my eyes!