Category Archives: Design

11 Million reach/week.

Facebook have killed the reach on commercial pages, and are now forcing page owners to pay to get their posts out in front of their fans.

About a month ago the Zen Garage Facebook Page saw massive spikes in reach. We were reaching 10 million people a week (!), and our likes were going up 1000 a day. A lot of others were experiencing something similar. I even witnessed people who had no interest in Facebook at all, all of a sudden become Facebook addicts (who else doesn’t find getting a billion likes and shares on a post you make a lot of fun?).

Then, even quicker than the reach came, it died and we literally went from millions of reach a week back to 100,000 reach a week. This happened over a week. Our likes though, for reason started to ramp up and went from 1k a day to 2k a day then just a few days ago that too died in dramatic fashion. Someone at Facebook turned something off as we went from 2k likes in one day to no likes at all on one day, then 3 likes the next day and only around 80 likes a day right now.

To put things into perspective: Zen’s Facebook Page was getting 2k likes a day organically, and now it’s getting none, and if I pay Facebook for more likes it costs $50 a day for an estimated 200 likes a day. Get fucked.

I’ve been somewhat proud of the social media marketing skills I’ve developed over the past few years. Building communities is what I’m best at and Facebook has been one of the largest “new” tools I’ve invested a lot of time and work into, but I just can’t help but feel absolutely ripped off. This is phishing at it’s worst. I understand that Facebook has to make money, but it’s how they’ve gone about it that’s wrong.

Honest truth is I’ve been dreading the thought of looking back over the past few years of my life and realising that I spent all of it on Facebook. That’s been a very real fear of mine for the past couple of years, perhaps I should feel lucky I’ve only really lost 2 years to Facebook, and not a whole lot more.

I know what I have to do moving forward. It involves a whole lot of work fucking harder, just like I did in the old days. Am I bitter? A bit, but I’ve got no one to blame but myself really.

Zen has a core group of mates, we look out for each other, share laughs and great times. We love each other. We call ourselves ‘the broners’, what better a way than ripping off the ‘brother’ logo (Alain’s idea and I just had to do it lol).

I have a BA in Design from the University of New South Wales College of Fine Arts, recently the college emailed me with some Q&A and they’ve just launched a site which showcases some individuals who studied there once upon a time.

My profile is here: http://cofagradsareeverywhere.com.au/Justin-Fox
To check out what other people are doing now visit the main page: http://cofagradsareeverywhere.com.au

I would describe my job as an amalgamation of passion related projects. It’s taken me many years to pull it off, but I’ve finally managed to combine all my passions; bikes, cars, design, fashion, music, photography and art into the one project which is Zen Garage. Being the brand manager allows me to curate and promote whatever it is I’m into at the moment, without feeling unnecessary internal or external pressures to promote things that I’m not into right now. This puts me in a constant state of Zen!

I’m inspired by family and my past. I figured that I was the only me in the world, so as long as I took inspiration from myself, my past, then whatever I create would be original and true. I’ve eased up a lot of the years though and I now very happily take inspiration from popular culture, especially many grass roots sub cultures where you find individuals doing what they’re doing because they totally love what they do.

The best part of my job is I’m my own boss and I’m free to push whatever it is my heart is into, seeing others get into the stuff I’m into makes me happy. I’ve got great business partners who motivate, support and inspire me and I’m always meeting new like-minded people through running our Leichhardt store and events.

An interview with yours truly on Raised By Wolves. Read up here: http://www.raisedbywolves.io/justinfox/