How To Work Facebook: Part 1

Statistics show that Facebook is the most widely used social networking site on the Web. But, unlike Twitter, Facebook is not so cut and dry. As I explained in previous posts, Twitter is a microblog that limits a user’s message to 120 characters. There are various ways to leverage that message and network to others, but the idea of Twitter is very simple: You have something to say and you say it to the people who have chosen to listen.

Facebook is an entirely different animal.

Since over 500 million people use Facebook worldwide. I am going to start Part 1 of this Facebook series by making one assumption: if you are reading this, odds are that you have a Facebook profile. Fair enough? I’m not going to tell you how set up a profile or download your profile picture. Even if you haven’t done that yet, just log onto Facebook and let them walk you through it. The interface is quite intuitive and easy to navigate. I will show you all of the nuances and functions, but I’ll leave the getting started up to you.

So, why are people using Facebook? The most commonly reported uses for Facebook are for personal entertainment and self/business marketing. Facebook is an easy and inexpensive way for the average person to catch up with old friends, classmates, neighbors, or co-workers. And with 500 million users, it is an incredibly powerful platform for selling a product or service, soliciting donations to your nonprofit, recruiting talent to your firm, or spreading awareness about an issue that means a lot to you.

Think of Facebook’s power like this: Say you have a small, web-based consulting business and you want to send out some direct mail to promote your service. You can purchase a mailing list that consists of your target audience’s demographic, you can purchase the printed piece, and you can pay the postage. Let’s say you send out 10,000 pieces of mail and that costs you $7,000. With a typical direct mail campaign, you are supposed to be ecstatic if you get a 3-4% response. Congratulations. You spent $7,000 to engage 300 people. It probably took you several weeks and cost you a lot more than the $7,000 in monetary expenses. In half the time, you could have sent out the same message to millions of people on Facebook…For a fraction of the cost. 3% of a million people make quite a large group. 3% of 500 million is slightly bigger.

Now, I don’t mean to say that you can just set up a profile on Facebook and instantly reach even 100,000 people. But, with the right tools and a lot of effort, you can build a big enough network to seriously boost your business, product, or nonprofit organization. Like Twitter, it’s all about making connections and interacting. The next several parts of this series will show you just exactly how to do it. Stay tuned.

Why Moving Too Fast On Social Media Can Lose An Audience

I learned a very valuable lesson as a result of my last blog post, and it might just be one that I won’t read too much about in the ‘how-to’ articles and e-books on social media. This is a lesson you have to learn by making the mistake.  But, maybe my blunder can help you avoid this social media pitfall.

I was very proud of my last blog post, entitled “Finding Success On Twitter”. If you haven’t read it, I ran down the functionality of Twitter and the strategy I employed to quickly gain some followers and make some great connections. I was so proud because I had mastered the tool. My very triumphant-sounding blog post was full of the terms and jargon that I had learned, and I cut right to the core of what you have to do to find success on Twitter.  I sounded like an expert (at least in my mind!)

So, what mistake did I make?  Two days ago I was having a conversation with my father-in-law about my blog.  He is a very accomplished entrepreneur who is also in the process of learning and embracing all that Marketing 2.0 and social media has to offer for business.

He said to me, and I paraphrase, “John, your blog is great.  I enjoy reading it and I am learning a lot.  But, your last entry about Twitter was so full of jargon that I couldn’t follow it and I learned very little.  If I wasn’t your father-in-law, I probably would have stopped following you.”

Talk about a wake up call!  Upon re-reading the ‘Twitter’ blog post, it was painfully clear that my approach did not take into account the audience who I had originally set out to attract.  Someone who knew very little about Twitter would not have received any benefit from that post.  Two weeks ago, I wouldn’t have learned everything from that post because I had no idea what things like a “hashtag” or a “mention” were.  I wasn’t mapping my route to learning social media like I had set out to do.  I was just telling everyone what I learned and expected them to just understand how I got from point A to point B.

Ultimately, what I learned from this exchange is this: as easily as you can find an audience, you can lose them if you don’t bring the type of content you promised.  It is apparently very simple to get off track and confuse your audience.  I was thrilled to have so many new followers to my Twitter feed and my blog.  So thrilled was I that I forgot to give them what they were looking for in the first place!  If they were customers, I would have seen them walking out my door as quickly as I saw them walk in.  If I was to employ this kind of strategy with my non-profit, the plan would probably fail.

So, now it is time to get this blog back on track.  My next post will interpret my previous post about Twitter.  And, future posts will focus less on being an expert and more on becoming an expert!

Many thanks go to Tom Wolf at identityanddestiny.com for the valuable feedback.