Why Share On Facebook?

Only this week have I shared my blog on facebook with my friends. There has been many reasons that I have chosen not to share my blog. They include:

- Self confidence - I am not sure if it is good enough to show my friends. What if they don't like it? What if when I am not 'on' and I write, they read it? What if they think my opinions suck?
- Friends are friends - not people to be sold to. Sometimes I write about my clients and sometimes I write about Marketing Eye explaining a promotion we might be having. When I write about Marketing Eye, it is 'selling' in many respects, so my friends may think that it is crossing a boundary.
- I see others do it and cringe. When I see some others do it, I cringe. Some people are so blatantly selling their wares over and over again, it becomes annoying.
- There are so many other forums to post my blog, so why post it on facebook?

Why did I change that this week? Well, I wrote a blog that would have been of interest to most of my friends and I found it interesting, so I assumed that they would too. What resulted from that was an extra 3231 people read my blog that day, many derived from facebook. People rang me up, wrote me emails, sent it onto friends of friends. You name it, they did it. I never want to be a self-promoter and I only want people to read my blog if they are interested, but sometimes you have to put it out there.

Your friends on facebook are hopefully that. If they are your friends and you are not blatantly posting updates 'selling your wares' but have something interesting to say through a blog, or your tweets or linkedin, why not share it? Friends will appreciate it and if they don't want to read it they won't. There is a way of going about things and if you go about it in the right way, then people will respect you. Etiquette is not putting 'sales messages' on your updates, but if you have something that may be of interest to some or all of your facebook friends, then share it in a non-invasive way.

Marketing Eye's website visitors has doubled in the last week and it is all because of facebook and writing a blog that is relevant to a wider audience. Sometimes we just have to have the confidence to share.