Facebook and Social Media – The Next Marketing Opportunity
Marketing as an activity is all about reaching the right customers with the right products, and the result sought is delighted customers who are more than willing to open their purses wide enough to boost your revenues. For many years, marketers stalked their target customers through various means and by trying to get their message across to spread awareness about their wares.
Traditional Means of Communication
Traditionally, marketing communications were conducted via print, broadcast and such traditional media through disruptive advertising, where advertisements appear in between the content of interest for the customer.
Traditional media does give a large reach to a marketer with its programming of mass appeal. However, the wastage is equally high, since a large portion of the audience would belong to a different segment than the one that is to be targeted by the marketer.
Enter Social Media and the Internet
The revolution stirred by the internet as a medium took place because of the fact that it is highly personalized and provides more content on-demand than any other available medium. Social sites proliferated far and wide in their usage for a few simple reasons:
The power to create and distribute content is equally available to every user, irrespective of him/her being a customer or a marketer. In the earlier forms of media, that power rested with the editorial staff of the channel or the advertiser, but hardly ever with the user.
The medium is completely personalized, and a user can create or join groups and further create content based on what he/she likes.
Opinions are free and fair. This is one reason why social media is of utmost concern to marketers, since buying decisions are no more influenced as much by advertisements. The traditional word-of-mouth marketing approach has grown leaps and bounds on social networks.
Facebook – At the Center of Social Media
With 500 million (and growing) unique users worldwide, Facebook is the number one social networking site in terms of activity and subscriptions. What started as a garage initiative by Mark Zuckerberg has now become the biggest phenomenon on the internet.
A user interface that allows for quick communication and the ability to create fan pages and groups at the click of a mouse button are what make Facebook extremely popular. Another important reason for its immense popularity is the wide variety of social applications that have been developed and made available within the Facebook environment.
These applications can allow users and friends to do joint activities like playing games that run endlessly, sharing photos, videos, and web links, and many more.
How does this help a marketer?
Traditionally, media plans were drawn to include television channels, publications, or any other media that can grab maximum eyeballs and effectively reach a selected target audience. The science of segmentation and targeting has become only more accurate in the case of social media.
Facebook provides a wide variety of avenues to communicate with the audience, which opens up an entirely different world of possibilities to have a fruitful dialogue with customers. Some of these methods used popularly by marketers are:
Advertising: The first opportunity, which is the most obvious one, is advertising on Facebook. The difference, however, is the fact that you can create your own advertisement in a matter of minutes and also specify the details of your target group in terms of demographics and types of discussions where you want your advertisement to appear.
Fan Pages: Facebook allows every brand, as well as individual users, to create fan pages for their favorite celebrities and their own homegrown businesses. Large brands have also created their official pages on Facebook that have a huge, immediate fan following around the world. The fan page has immense utility to convey first hand information about the brand and also to collect immediate and frank feedback from your customers.
Branded applications: One of the most effective ways to engage a user toward your brand is by creating an application; this could be a game or a contest, with your branding coming across subtly through it.
What makes Facebook even more exciting is the way it allows you to target your communication sharply just to the customer segment you want to attract. It also provides analytics and page insights that give good feedback and measurement on the activity done.
The options provided by Facebook can be creatively explored and used judiciously for bringing about maximum benefits to any brand.
However, while doing all this, you need to be aware of the fact that customers have an equal say and have the ability to respond immediately to any of your actions with a thumbs up or a thumbs down. Availing the service of a social media consultant to work out a social media strategy may be required so that your efforts will not be in vain.
Get more information here for the best Facebook training available:
The FaceBook Frenzy: To Join or Not to Join?
No matter what type of application you are talking about in the online world, there will always be those who are all for it, and those who are against it. The same is true with FaceBook. There are those who claim that it is a waste of time, and others who are quickly building up their businesses – and their bottom lines – through this social networking site.
The fact is that if you become an active user of FaceBook, and you use the site in an acceptable, appropriate manner, it is far from a waste of time. It is a great way to connect with your customers on a more personal level, which helps to build greater trust and credibility with them. It is a fantastic way to generate new customers through building relationships with current customers and attracting the business of their friends.
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Facebook For IM: Some No-No’s on FaceBook
While you are building your credibility on FaceBook, there are certain things that you could do – easily – that will completely undo everything you’ve accomplished to date and prevent you from ever building credibility through this social networking site in the future – plus it can happen in a matter of minutes.
Here are some things that you definitely want to avoid doing on FaceBook:
- Do not spam people’s inboxes or walls. This will not only cause you to lose credibility, it can also cause you to get banned from FaceBook. FaceBook is one of the best social networking sites in existence and it is important to keep it in it’s currently clean, spam free state, so that it remains a useful and valuable tool for everyone who uses it.
- Never post messages on other people’s walls with the sole intention of linking to your own website. It’s obvious and just makes you look desperate and greedy. Don’t link anywhere at all. Instead, post interesting comments and people will click your name to learn more about you from your profile, where you should obviously link to your websites.
- While you want to give yourself and your business a human face, you really don’t want to get overly personal – especially with photos and videos. You aren’t searching for a hot date – you are trying to build business credibility. Don’t forget that – ever.
- Don’t add an abundance of silly applications to your profile. It just clutters your profile, makes it load slow and really just takes the viewers attention away from that which you want their attention firmly glued to – information about you and your business.
- Never have ‘cyber wars’ with anyone on FaceBook. If someone is bothering you, simply block them. It isn’t hard to do – and it’s much more reasonable than throwing flames for the whole world to see.
Above all, use good common sense. Always think before you act – or before you hit a submit button. Consider your customers, your potential customers, business contacts, and potential business contacts – how will they view what you are about to do?
If you follow these no-no rules, you will almost always be just fine.
Facebook For IM: How to Start a Group and Do Joint Ventures?
One of the most important Internet Marketing related features on FaceBook is groups. This goes far beyond joining groups to find new contacts. It also includes creating groups of your own for the purpose of joint venturing – even if that joint venturing won’t take place until a future date.
First, let’s examine how to set up a group. The process is extremely easy. Simply log in to your account then click on ‘groups’ in the navigation panel on the left. At the top of the next page, you will see a button that says ‘Create a New Group’. Click that button, and fill out the form. It’s just that simple and can be done in a matter of minutes.
The hard part is determining what type of group that you want to start. What is the groups focus? All groups must have a focus otherwise, they are essentially worthless. Read more…
Facebook For IM: Building Credibility with FaceBook
It takes more than setting up a nice profile page and adding friends to truly build your credibility with FaceBook. There are other things that you need to do on the site that will let your profile visitors know that you do indeed have credibility and you are in fact trustworthy.
Start by adding the testimonial application to your profile page. This application can be found at http://www.facebook.com/applications/Testimonials/2588290420. Your friends will use it to create testimonials about you, which will appear on your profile. You can also import testimonials that are sent to you via email, or used on your website. Just make sure that your testimonials are from real people – and put the testimonials from other FaceBook users first.
Next, encourage your friends to write on your wall. Here, you must use caution. There will always be those friends who want to advertise on your wall, and you must discourage this – preferably without offending your friends who are doing that advertising.
When they attempt this, send them a nice note and tell them that you don’t want any advertising on your wall, but that they are free to write on your wall otherwise. The best way to get people to write on your wall is to write on theirs – and do not advertise when you do so!
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