I was a victim of an account suspension about a year ago (if not longer) this was because i was importing my TPD contacts to my PERSONAL Facebook, 1 by 1. Luckily I had obtained this contact information legally and was within Facebook’s TOS. They did warn me that I needed to cease adding at such a rapid pace. Since that day (over a year ago) I have probably added under 100ppl, although I do approve nearly every request. This experience alone makes me sympathetic to certain situations. There are people out there with large personal friend bases that have been wrongfully terminated and I’m working to help some of these people restore their accounts. This post is for the people who have had their accounts deleted multiple times and still don’t get it.
It seems that there has been quite an influx of people losing their Facebook accounts lately, and, I hate to say, I told you so. It’s been a number of months since I put a Facebook post up complaining about the number of people using the Facebook platform as the sole marketing tool for their small businesses. This total reliance on Facebook is pushing people to use every facet of the medium for self promotion, resulting in an over abundance of business centric status updates, completely random friend requests and massive amounts of event invites.
The reason people are constantly losing their accounts is simple. What you are doing on Facebook is considered SPAM. Rest assured that Facebook is going to do all they can to PREVENT themselves from going the route of MySpace. If you spend your days going through the “People you may know” section and adding everyone, you will get your account deleted. If you go to someone’s account you know and add all of their friends, you will get your account deleted. If you are posting 10 events a week your account will get deleted. If you are continuously representing a business opportunity or entity through your personal Facebook, your account will get deleted.
It’s really frustrating to still see these practices. There are so many people out there doing it the right way, so many brilliant ideas. Take advantage of Fan Pages, take advantage of the amazing Facebook advertising system, take advantage of the talented developers out there that can really make your Facebook work FOR you. Seeing people attack the marketing challenge in a more subtle way is so much more exciting. Anyone can post 100’s of events, but to go through a post a relevant comment on each of those, closing with a link to your business or cause, that takes a brain. Interjecting yourself into friendly conversations resulting in furthering your network takes some social talent….Randomly adding people all day and night…well…the lack of effort is rewarded with a lack of results….