How are you using Facebook (or My Space) for business?
With the rise in Demographic age and income on these two services - how are you using them to buuild your brand and revenue for your business?
Good Answers (11)
Spencer,
That's a great question that very few companies have yet started looking into. Both Facebook and MySpace provide vast marketing resources if utilized correctly. They should be considered a part of a comprehensive Social Networking Marketing Strategy, and if used as such, you'll find they drive a lot of quality traffic back to your organization's website. In addition to the obvious, a number of other outlets that have proven to be substantial traffic-drivers include Social Bookmarking sites such as StumbleUpon, Digg.com, del.icio.us, and reddit.
Many of our clients have seen a great increase in the overall viewership of their sites by employing a well rounded strategy incorporating all of these new media outlets.
I will warn you though that the additional traffic is not an end in and of itself. It is absolutely vital that once you've lured the masses from various social networking sites, that your site's content caters to what they want.
After all, traffic doesn't mean much if your site has a high 'Bounce Rate' - The bounce rate is a measurable figure that tells you what percentage of your web audience departed your site from the same page they landed on initially. If you have a high bounce rate, it indicates that your target audience isn't connecting with your content and looking elsewhere for whatever initially piqued their curiosity.
To both build your brand and increase your revenue, it'll take a well blended strategy that balances both traffic and relevant content. Also, specifically in regard to building your brand, consistency will be the key.
As any Marketing professional will tell you, building your brand will take a steadfast, consistent and concise campaign. This includes E-Newsletters, a frequently updated site, a corporate blog and even your print marketing collateral, that are all tied together strategically to enhance your brand.
Hope this helps!
Thanks,
J. Gohil
CEO
Dijital Media, Inc.
http://www.dijitalmedia.com
Links:
Spencer.......I am using Facebook to reconnect with old friends and fraternity brothes all across the country. I am finding out what they do and who they work for to see if there is a chance for referrals. I am having success in getting contact information from them so I can ccontact the right person in their company. I work for an Advertising and Marketing Firm and this has helped me so far.
We use FB as a hiring tool due to the demographic of users with a college education. We do incorporate some of our other marketing tools, such as our blog to highlight our culture and work.
Links:
Tammy G
Director of Web Marketing (Tammy@WebMarketingCommunications.com)
Best Answers in: Public Relations (2), Internet Marketing (1), Search Marketing (1), Social Enterpreneurship (1), Branding (1)
Facebook is a great recruitment platform. You can customize your search to include keywords about education, interests and hobbies. You can create a profile of the characteristics you think the ideal team member would have and then search to find people based on the kywords you outlined. Then you can cross research and see if they have a more detailed linkedin profile and make contact on a more professional platform.
You can also create brand visibility by searching for people who have incorpoated keywords into there profile and invite them to be a friend. It is about building custom targeted networks for clients and then remaining visible and active in that network.
Myspace can be optimized and content can be displayed as you would on a website, pages even recieve page rankings. There are many other great things about using Mypace to launch a new product or host a buzz marketing campaign, though I save those little secrets for my clients.
Links:
Hi Spencer,
FB allows you to create FanPages for businesses. It is a useful tool for getting people to opt-in and build community for a brand. FanPages can be administered by the creator and seem to be very useful.
Hope that helps,
Sam
We're using Facebook to drive traffic to our online media properties. In fact, a large portion of our traffic comes from our Facebook "group" page.
Links:
Anthony L
eMarketing Manager at Aries Forth
Best Answers in: Internet Marketing (6), Direct Marketing (1), Viral Marketing (1), Lead Generation (1)
Spencer
I'm looking at more involving ways for our clients to engage using Facebook, groups and social media per se. Agreeing with Jit Gohil it's all about creating experience and as well it involves a culture change which is the biggest uphill struggle about the whole c2c phenomenon.
I think it's good research for head hunting companies but is Facebook the place to contact these people? I go there like many others to share stuff not to be sold to or ghosted. Now FB has had it's share of horror stories more people are no longer sharing personal information. These are from very experienced co workers who are not using it as they don't want their employer knowing what they're doing. As well, it's a bit lurky for me for people to look for people who didn't ask for the profile view because they like Telly Tubbies. Ignorance of the privacy options is mainly to blame for this. I'd say if you're open about your job you're here on on XING etc..
So you need to look at experience and your PRO-fans like Sonia Perry mentioned and is doing! Share stuff, let out some secrets and your group will grow and grow. I think using it for other purposes than engage looses its edge if its only to hard sell.
We experience a HUGE amount of referrals using groups on FB with those groups that are experience sharers of the brand. With the FB feeds posting on all the fans pages with happy, concerned or doubtful customers who clients can engage, this is a great way forward for any business who walks the walk and does the the talk
Daniel T
Digital Marketing Manager at Absolute Radio
Best Answers in: Blogging (4), Internet Marketing (1), Viral Marketing (1), Telecommunications (1), Using LinkedIn (1)
Personally I use it to build and maintain connections, along with LinkedIn and Twitter.
Brand wise, we've established Fan Pages and Groups for several brands with an emphasis on using them for interaction rather than just broadcasting out messages.
There are plans to go further, but getting the interaction stage right is essential.
Martin S
Director of eBusiness Development at John Wiley and Sons
Best Answers in: Travel Tools (1), Internet Marketing (1), Web Development (1)
We're helping companies successfully use Facebook as a marketing platform. The best tools are to a) take advantage of the Facebook page for promoting your promoting your business and building a networked fan base and b) building viral applications that users can share and that drive traffic to your site. Coming up with creative, popular ideas is the trick.
I'm using Facebook to promote a couple of sites that concentrate on specific areas of the country. I search for folks that live in the area that I am targetting and invite them to be friends. You'd be surprised that most will accept the invitation even if they don't know you. I then create a group with the site information and how it will benefit them to use the service. I send invitations to everyone in my friends list to join the group. Once they are members of the group, I can then start promoting the site by sending updates and/or information. It is an excellent tool and has been very handy for me.
Scott W
Project Manager, The Nielsen Media Company; Proprietor, That Software Guy
Best Answers in: E-Commerce (2)
Building a Facebook page which is available even to non-Facebook users is quite easy. Here is a list of step by step instructions:
http://thecartblog.com/?s=creating+facebook+page
Good luck,
That Software Guy
Links:
More Answers (6)
I've been using a "Comedy in a Box" facebook application to promote my comedy act online.
Brian B
Developer at HighBeam Research
Best Answers in: Web Development (4), Small Business (2), Computers and Software (2), Direct Marketing (1), Professional Networking (1), Franchising (1), Starting Up (1), E-Commerce (1)
We manage advertisements for our clients on facebook, but we are really disappointed with the adwords.
I rant about this on the company blog: http://www.chicagodatasolutions.com/blogs/do_something_clever_here/entryid/23/why-can-t-facebook-target-advertising/
Short version: FB ads are disappointing because while you can do keywords, you cannot target based on relationships. No "show my ad to friends of people who are..." Which is insane, since FB is all about the relationships.
Links:
Marie A
Creative Consultant - Media & Public Relations at Juice Media Group - New Jersey
Many businesses are utilizing MySpace and Facebook to continually give their businesses and services additional online exposure. When done professionally - these can be good e-tools for marketing and outreach. They can serve as promotional exposure, reference tools for your business, recruitment tools and even another platform on which to promote your clients, as appropriate and applicable. Online blogs, similarly, provide opportunities to outreach online for exposure, brand building and services awareness. Internet marketing has many faces - finding the best ones to leverage your businesses can only aid in overall exposure.
Hi Spencer. I primarily use Facebook to connect with friends and family. However, I do have Avon banners on my Facebook Wall and Box pages that link directly to my online Avon store. The banners are starting to generate additional traffic and sales for me. I am getting more online customers who live in geographic areas other than my own - which is great. I also joined the Avon Fans page on Facebook. I have found that it is a great way to connect with other Independent Sales Representatives and consumers who like Avon products. Like LinkedIn members, Avon Fan page members are generous with their time and expertise. It is a great source for help, encouragement, and ideas.
Sonia Perry
Avon Independent Sales Representative
www.YourAvon.com/SoniaPerry
I use facebook to connect with people in my area - many Caribbean people have not caught on to LinkedIn yet, but there are a number on Facebook - I may find a name online and then search to see if they are on FB - then connect.
There are also several business oriented groups for Caribbean Professionals - not sure how effective or useful they will be, so far the best contact in that area has been linked to a free C'bean Online Directory
Andrew R
Interactive Project Manager at Silverscape, LLC
Best Answers in: Internet Marketing (1), Public Relations (1)
Andrew R suggests this expert on this topic:
Hi Spencer,
You should reach out to Mike Volpe or one of the other members of the HubSpot team (search "HubSpot" under Companies). They recently hosted a webinar specifically on using Facebook for business. You can find several blog posts, as well as links to the webinar recap on their website, http://www.hubspot.com/
