BeBee. A Lot To Offer And A Lot To Prove

Over the past three years, I have posted close to 400 original articles on LinkedIn Pulse. But I’m not doing that anymore, In fact, you might say I have left the building.
Although I have not left LinkedIn in terms of closing my account and never visiting, I certainly have evacuated in spirit, along with quite literally thousands of other writers around the world.
Since I was invited to post on their publishing platform close to three years ago now, things have changed dramatically.
Many of you know the story of being basically sold a bill of goods which, most critically, included help in building and notifying any following that you may develop there.
This, for me, was really the only thing I looked for. I have been blogging since long before it was called that and because I am a marketer, I understand the key to developing business is, first and foremost, to build a receptive target audience.
But over the past year, LinkedIn, or as I like to call it The Lumpy Kingdom Of The Mighty Hamsters, has gradually eroded my ability to do that to the point where blogging on LinkedIn Pulse is no longer, in my opinion, worth the effort and time it takes to do it.
So about a month ago, I decided that I would no longer be posting original content on LinkedIn Pulse. But only links from my new blogging tent, which I have pitched at bebee.com.
This migration is not so much an act of rebellion against LinkedIn, because it’s hard to rebel against something you don’t care about. And it’s even harder for LinkedIn to notice the trend that’s happening out there, what with all that Microsoft money to count.

One Door Closes…A New Hive Opens

A few months ago the amazing John White told a bunch of his friends on LInkedIn about a new site that he was very excited about called beBee.com
John, like all the rest of us, was aware of what LinkedIn was doing to the Independent writers on Pulse and told us that beBee was developing a publishing platform of their own.
This couldn’t have come at a better time for a lot of us. I was personally worn out from 6 months of raging against the machine, so to speak, and really needed to get back to what I felt was ‘myself’ again.
So when beBee opened their publishing platform, I was all over it. And so, as it turned out, were a lot of my favourite people on LinkedIn. John had really managed to spread the word effectively.

BeBee Is A Unique Experience

As a marketing person, I look at beBee as a very well thought-out platform.
It’s based on affinity, which, in simpler terms, means likemindedness.

Everybody has a home page that contains their posts and the posts of everyone they are following. (Their Bees). But behind that, there are a rather large number of ‘hives’, which are really the equivalent of special interest groups.
My LI pal and fellow Canuk, Paul Croublian, https://www.bebee.com/@paul-croubalian has done a series of posts explaining how this all works. If you are interested, you should get to know him and read some of his posts. He’s a techie but writes in plain English.

The Future Looks Bright But…

Overall my experience, primarily as a blogger on beBee, has been quite positive. The views from the 40 odd posts I have done here so far are outstripping the views of posts on LinkedIn by an average factor of 10 to 20 times.
So if you are looking for an audience, it’s here.
The engagement stats are, as you would expect, a little lower because this is all so new, and beBee has really just now started a push into North America.
So I cannot help but believe that things will grow exponentially here over the next year or so, as they continue to market in North America the migration from the Lumpy Kingdom continues.
The Cautionary Note
Over the past 18 months, LinkedIn has been going through a radical change in the eyes of its active members.This change has not been for the better, and I suspect it is pretty much the direct result of their going public and now having a shareholder base to keep happy.
I have nothing against free enterprise. In fact I love it. But what really bothers me are stupid management decisions made by egocentric business owners who have, in my opinion, lost sight of what they were all about in the first place.
Managing a social media site is kind of like herding cats. But the cats can be herded. All you have to do is listen to them.
So far beBee has done an amazing job of listening to the cats. As long as they keep doing it, no matter what shareholder obligations may develop, no matter what pressure may be exerted from wherever, they will grow and thrive.

Marketing 101.

The single most important thing to remember, and I know that beBee knows this, is that, at the end of the day this is nothing more that a collection of people sharing ideas.
If you keep the environment open and free, the people will love, trust and support you. This is especially true as beBee grows and pushes forward in North America, where a lot of new Bees will be coming from LinkedIn and have pretty well-developed bullshit radar.

I’m Trusting My Gut Here

My gut tells me that beBee is run by people who have seen enough examples of how not to manage a network of this kind, and have learned a lot from that.
The way they have structured their site – the flexibility, responsiveness of management and the overall interesting-ness of it all says this is run by people who want to prove to the world that social and business media are really two sides of the same coin.
And that having the freedom to choose one, the other or both, is really giving people what they are looking for.
It doesn't get any more positive than that.

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