Social media is all the rave these days. Each social networking site has it’s strengths and weaknesses, and each network can be leveraged by it’s strengths to help you continue growing your business. After a brief overview of the benefits and purpose of social media networking, we will learn how these methods can be used to leverage the strengths of Facebook.
The Purpose of Social Networking
The main purpose of social networking—online or off—is to continue to build your reputation. Before I continue, I will briefly review The Mystery of Branding Unveiled. A “brand” is an individual’s gut feeling about a product, service, or company. In other words, a “brand” is equivalent to a reputation. The purpose of “branding” is to get more people to buy more stuff for more years at a higher price.
Now, what does that have to do with social media? By using social media networks, you can extend your reach to more people in less time with less effort. With social media networks, you can create a tribe of followers that will help you to build your reputation.
Four Benefits of Social Networking
There are many benefits of using social media sites to extend the reach of your networking efforts. Four key benefits are follow-up, creating tribes, research & development, and networking.
Follow-Up
To get the most out of networking, you actually have to put some work into it. One of the ways to make networking actually work for you is to follow up with the people that you meet. Instead of just sending a quick email or hand-written note, invite those you have met to connect with you on various social networks. This will be mutually beneficial, as it will keep you at the top of their mind and vice versa every time that they see your name or organization show up in their feeds.
Creating Tribes
As I said, if you create a tribe of followers, they will inadvertently become advocates to your cause. The primary motivation for any consumer purchase is a recommendation given by someone they personally know. Closely following is online recommendations, comments, or opinions. If someone follows you on Twitter (and especially if they retweet one of your tweets), is a fan of yours on Facebook, or is a connection of yours on LinkedIn, other people will notice. This will create value of your brand in their eyes, because someone they know and trust also trusts you.
Free Research & Development Department
The best example of a company creating their own free R&D department via social networking is Starbuck’s My Starbucks Idea website. By listening to their customers’ opinions, Starbucks has saved money in field testing and inaccurate measures of the marketplace. More importantly, they have proven to their customers that they are listening by implementing changes based on their suggestions, thus reinforcing and continuing to build their brand.
Networking
It should come as no surprise that social media “networks” are a perfect place to meet new people and interact with those that you already know. LinkedIn groups, Facebook Groups, Twitter conversations and more allow you to interact with potential clients and customers, demonstrate your expertise, and get to know your current connections better than you would in seeing them even once a week at networking events.
Integrating These Methods With Facebook
Now that we’ve reviewed the basic purpose and benefits of online social networking, let’s see how we can leverage the strengths of Facebook to utilize these methods to our advantage. There are three main components to building a presence on Facebook: Personal Profiles, Fan Pages, and Groups. Each have their advantages and disadvantages, and each can be used to reap the four main benefits of social networking in different ways.
Personal Profiles on Facebook
I was rather hesitant at first to add any professional connections as friends on Facebook. I haven’t cleaned out my Photo Albums since college, and who knows what my crazy friends are going to say next! Then I discovered Friend Lists, and that I could monitor what content is seen by my professional connections with a few small steps. This process is covered in the How To: Use Facebook for Professional Networking article.
Even while I was reluctant to add professional connections as friends, I knew that there was great value in doing so. My main goal in any networking endeavor is to build relationships. Not with businesses, but with people. Part of that is allowing people to get to know me, my personality, and letting them be a part of my life. A Facebook profile, even with monitored access, allows you to build relationships on a more personal level than other social networks allow.
If you care about the people you know, personally or professionally, having professional connections as Facebook Friends will solidify your character in their minds and demonstrate your values and personality in a way that no other aspect of social media currently allows.
Add Ann as a friend on Facebook.
Fan Pages on Facebook
Facebook Fan Pages combine all four main benefits of social networking sites and will help you achieve the purpose of social networking. The most obvious way that they do this is by allowing you to create tribes. If three people are your fan and they all have Common Friends, your page will show up in the common friends’ Suggestions for pages they might be interested in. This generates awareness and solidifies trust in your brand. These Suggestions act as recommendations. Even though their friends didn’t directly recommend your page to them, it results in much the same effect.
Fans can also upload photos, which is a great way to provide interaction and allow fans to feel like they are part of your community.
Along the same lines, previous customers of yours can post reviews of your product, service or company. These individuals’ opinions of you will help to create and solidify your brand in the minds of others.
The Discussions tab provides you with the space to create a forum. This allows fans to network with each other and you. With discussions, and also with your status messages and Updates (the messaging system for Fan Pages), you can ask your fans questions about what they would like to see happen in your market or even your business. This serves multiple purposes. First, it shows your fans that you care about what they think (solidifying your brand in their minds). Secondly, it provides you with clear insight into your target market, allowing you to have your own (free) R&D department right at your fingertips.
Updates and status messages appearing in your fans’ feeds will keep you at the top of their minds and make them think of you more often while offline.
Connect with Point Brake on our Facebook Fan Page.
Groups on Facebook
Until recently, I still was wondering what the difference in value between Fan Pages and Groups was. I knew the technical differences, but I had yet to understand why all three elements were necessary. To me, it felt like overkill. The difference in value is actually the difference in technicalities, the main difference being the methods of contact.
For Groups with 5,000 or less members, you can send messages directly via email. This allows direct communication with all members, creating a more personal community. Also, a Facebook Group is analogous to an off-line “club”. A group is less directly focused on your business and revolves more around personal interaction among members. Members can share information in different ways than with a Fan Page, and in a group setting they often feel more comfortable to do so.
Join the Point Brake group and discover how we can help each others’ businesses grow.
The Basics of Facebook
Because there are so many other resources out there that cover “What is Facebook”, “How Do I Create a Facebook Page”, etc. I have saved this section for last. To avoid reinventing the wheel, I have compiled some great learning resources for the basics of using Facebook.
The following links will give you more information on how to leverage each aspect of Facebook:
How To: Get More Brand Exposure, Traffic, and Sales Using Facebook
How To: Use Facebook For Professional Networking
Facebook Pages Vs. Facebook Groups
9 Rules of Facebook Promotion Every Small Business Should Know
Here are some direct links to creating a Facebook account, fan page, and group profiles:
Facebook Home Page: Log In or Create an Account
Facebook: Create a Fan Page
Facebook: Create a Group
How are you using Facebook to extend the reach of your business and build your brand?
Great information. I can’t belive how many of my age friends joined facebook in the last 6 months. I havebeen terrible to kkeeping up to date on face book. Does the new smart phones make it easer to add and follow the new media? Would like to hire your services to help me get going on the media links and find out what is best for me. Plus I just to see you again and have a catch up time. Just let me know.
David Worrell