Facebook, one of the largest social networks on the internet and in America is fickle at best!

#FAIL!

Q. What business entity disables your account after you bring them 6000 new contacts?

A. Facebook: It just happened to our effort and my personal account.  It seems every week at least 3-5 of our members are booted from this #fail entity!

This has me rethinking my whole #Grizzly strategy utilizing social media as the seat of our three legged stool approach here in Theodore Media’s Grizzly Groundswell.

• We just watched elections being influenced and out right stolen in 2008.  Ex. Al Franken, MN With the advent of Mega Monopolies like Facebook, will our voice be allowed to be expressed online or has the censorship started?
• With Mega Monopolies developing online today how are we positioning ourselves strategically to be able to reach the American people and win hearts and minds?
• There has to be a new way of looking at Social Media!

I can not tell you how many hours I spent growing my Facebook presence alone.  Even more time developing the 146,000+ first order followers on Twitter.  Although for some arbitrary reason that I can only assume was sending too many customers to Facebook.com they have erased my online presence and all my effort is gone.  No explanation, and no compensation for the business and contacts lost.

Q. What will it take to get me back on Facebook?

A. Conservative Ownership

Conservatives own very few major “Faucets” on the internet.  “Faucets” of the cybersphere are by my definition entities that control the flow of people and information.  Ex. The Associated Press, Facebook.com, Twitter.com, Digg.com, Technoratti.com, Youtube.com and many others.

We trust these sites with not only our personal information but also we do business with them.  I spent more advertising dollars with Facebook.com then any other entity online today.  My business with them is returned by being banned for bringing them more customers…#Fail!

So how do we establish some hard and fast rules to keep our strategies from relying upon these mega monopolies that are fickle to us Conservatives and unreliable.  Take this point to heart.  Election 2010, most of our candidates are pouring their money, labor and effort into entities such as Facebook.  October, when the final push is needed to communicate with their followers, friends and supporters their accounts go disabled.  Hamstrung, we loose again.  Now what are the steps or hard and fast rules we should remember and guide us to victory utilizing Social media?

This is not an exhaustive list but a start, please feel free to add to it in the comments and trackback posts.

1. Always Own your Communication vehicle, website or blog. Ownership is huge and it is the one aspect any Conservative should be inherently understand but seem not to grasp.  You must own your own entity.
2. Utilize only Social Networks that send new contacts and members back to your owned Entity! Facebook.com is not a good entity because it does a good job of being inclusive making it difficult to get your contacts and members off Facebook back to your entity.  Remember you can build a presence on Facebook.com but like I and our members find out each week, it all can disappear with their fickle finger of #Fail!
3. Invest time, labor and advertising only in Social Media that directs traffic back to your owned entity. If you do not adhere to this simply profound rule you like I will one day be very disappointed.
4. Always lift up ownership of online “Faucets” when ever possible. I think it is a really bad idea to develop a business only for Conservatives and remove ourselves from the American public.  However, there are entities out there owned by Conservatives that should be lifted up and fully utilized.  Other then my own I am having a seriously hard time coming up with any.  My effort may not even qualify as it only serves Conservatives.  With the business climate being so anti-Conservatism you and I will be hard pressed to ferret out Conservative business owners who serve the general American citizen.  That in itself is a sad statement of reality.
5. Diversify, Diversify, Diversify. One third of my social media effort was taken down by Facebook.com when it disabled my account.  That will never happen to me again.  We must find at least ten different approaches to social media so that if one or more are taken away, it is only a small percentage of momentum stolen from us.

I am going to leave this to 5 suggestions and will appreciate your additions and suggestions as well as your insight.