Marketing Wedding and Event Services on Facebook

The reports for Facebook's numbers are in for June: while the social media platform had an increase of about 320,000 users, over 254,000 existing users closed their accounts. More than 100,000 of the members who left were women ages 26-34.

As it relates to the wedding industry, here are some other stats to keep in mind: the average age of a bride in the United States is 28. The average age of a bride getting married for the second time is 34. Whether you are targeting first time or encore brides, the majority of both groups fall into the age range of the fastest growing segment of users leaving Facebook.

If your company also offers corporate event services in addition to weddings, it's interesting to note that the second largest group of users who left Facebook (around 89,000) were men between the ages of 18-34. According to the U.S. Department of Labor, by the end of this year, more than 50% of the United States workforce is expected to be comprised of people under the age of 30. This generation has been using computers since at least third grade and 90% of this group uses technology first when looking for information on a product or service. A company's executives may be older, but how old are the people doing the research, executing their company's special events and ultimately having a say in whether or not you get hired? Many are under 35 and nearly 200,000 of those men and women decided just this last month alone that they would no longer use Facebook to find what they need.

Why are so many jumping ship? That information is speculative at best, but here are a few of my thoughts, which are the same things I've been sharing for the past 18 months:

Facebook moved away from its original premise of connecting others on an authentic level. When it started in 2005, Facebook was the anti-MySpace. MySpace was big, public and increasingly annoying with its flashy, glittery add-ons. Facebook was exclusive - only people with a college or college alumni email address could sign up - and all the pages were the same. Its original purpose was to be a place where people could connect with each other in a way that, although online, was real. If you wanted information on what your friends were doing, you had to go looking for it; it didn't feed into your homepage. I joined in Spring of 2006 and loved it because it allowed me to better stay in touch with friends living overseas (ironically, the same reason I started writing a blog in 1999).

Later, Facebook opened to the public but limited it to networks. This semi-exclusivity worked because it allowed old friends to reconnect post-college. Then they opened it up to an even larger audience and along came grandma, your crazy aunt and Facebook recommending that you add your ex-spouse as a friend, and oh look, their photo was there to greet you every time you logged on. Somewhere in that mix came Mafiaville farmers spinning dreidels around their Christmas trees and if that weren't enough, you could now spend hours deciding whether you were more of a Manolo or Louboutin.

Here's a tip: if you want to predict the longevity of a social media platform, take an honest look at their core structure. Are they designed to connect or designed to distract? The ones that truly connect will outlast the others. The ones that distract will succeed for a little while but ultimately cause people to lose interest when they remember that there are better uses of their time (such as their jobs, family and friends) and better places to authentically connect. Facebook started as a connector and became a distraction, much like MySpace did. (This distraction model is also why Foursquare may be hot right now, but isn't the best use of your time as a primary online marketing tool for weddings. Sidenote: bridal show and tradeshow producers, Foursquare is gold for you as it allows attendees to check in at each booth they visit. Capitalize on it now while it's big and still has no apparent business model.)

So what does this all mean for you? If you have limited resources, Facebook is not the highest and best use of your online marketing time. Can it still benefit some event professionals? Yes, but we are now on the other side of the Facebook bell curve and the companies who succeed now will continually be the exception rather than the rule.