Facebook: Targeted Marketing at Its Best

If you're not on Facebook yet, there has to be an actual reason. And it ought to be a good one, because you're swimming upstream at this point. Facebook is the boy genius of the social marketing world. Wise beyond its years, the website has reached staggering heights of popularity in its mere five years of existence. A website that began as a side project by a couple of Harvard guys is now one of the most frequently visited social networking sites in the world. According to the Facebook Press Room, (http://www.facebook.com/press/info.php?statistics), there are more than 200 million active users, and more than 3.5 billion minutes are spent on Facebook each day. Small businesses and large corporations alike are harnessing the viral power of Facebook to increase traffic to their site and gain new customers.

Making Friends Facebook has revamped the word “friend.” The word refers to anyone in one’s Facebook network. In Facebook parlance, it is a verb as well as a noun. “To friend” someone is to request access to the person’s page; when they “accept your friend request” you have access to each other’s pages, walls, pictures, videos, and any other posted content. This is an important word to remember in your quest to build up your customer base through Facebook. These people are your friends. They are not called “clients” or “customers.” The emphasis is on social networking. Your friends don’t want to be constantly preached to about your product. They don’t want overt advertising flashed in their faces. And they certainly don’t want to feel taken advantage of – if they feel that the only reason you “friended” them was to peddle your wares, you will find yourself very friendless, very fast.

As is so often the case in business, the way to gain and keep customers is to build relationships. And that is where Facebook comes in. Use the site to gain friends, build up a network. Your network may be made up of very disparate parts of your life – your sister, your co-workers, old high school friends and college buddies, neighbors, current clients. In other words, it reflects real life – full of the people who inhabit your world. When you base your bond with them on friendship, you are building trust, the essential ingredient to any relationship. Then, when you announce a new product, a new blog post, or you invite your friends to join your Facebook Fan Page for your business, your friends will be interested. They’ll want to join, and they will be motivated to share the info with their friends and networks. Why? Because they know you. They trust you. You’re their friend!

Fans and Groups

Facebook offers two ways to promote your business: Fan Pages and Groups. While we could debate until the (virtual) cows come home which is the better tool for driving business (and http://www.searchenginejournal.com/facebook-group-vs-facebook-fan-page-whats-better/7761/ breaks down the issue nicely), the point is: If you don’t have one, get one! Create a group, for example, and invite your friends to join. When they do so, it will be posted on their News Feed. (“John just joined the group ‘Personalized T-Shirts by Anne’”) with an option for all of their friends to join the group as well. This way, it becomes viral very quickly. Every time someone joins your group, or becomes a fan of your page, the action appears on the News Feed, thus enabling hundreds, or even thousands, of others to join as well.

What’s On Your Mind?

There are lots of fancy things you can do on Facebook with your Group or Fan Page. But don’t overlook the simplest, and often most potent form of getting the word out to your friends: the Status Message. Answering the simple “What’s on your mind?” question is a quick, easy, and entertaining way to let your friends know what is going on with you. (No, you are not imagining the similarity of this feature to Twitter. Much virtual ink has been spilled on comparing the two.) Keep them short and funny, and people will look forward to reading your latest pithy statement. In addition, your status can become a place of conversation, so if you write something humorous or provocative, or ask a question, it will encourage responses from your friends. Every time someone comments on your status, Facebook sends an email to all previous commenters, so everyone can stay in the loop of the conversation. It’s a simple, fun way to build up your Facebook friendships, as well as to announce a new blog entry, post a new link, or broadcast an update on your site. Friends breezing through Status Updates can easily click on the link and arrive directly at your blog or website.

Facebook and Conduit: Better Together

Facebook and Conduit are natural partners for driving business to your site. You can add a link to Facebook on your Conduit Community Toolbar. Your toolbar is already a ubiquitous part of your customers’ lives, with the quick links to your site, news ticker displaying your product and service updates, and of course, the nifty gadgets. Give your customers yet another reason to reach for their Toolbar – a quick link to their Facebook page! You can also include a link to your toolbar on your Facebook group page for people to download. It’s an easy way to reach a large audience. And of course, it can go viral, viral, viral. People in the group download the toolbar, and start sharing it with their friends and networks. Soon, you’ve reached entire audiences that you never would have reached on your own.

Word spreads very quickly in the viral world of Facebook. Make sure your content – whether it’s a Status Update, a link to your blog post, or a video – is clear and engaging.  (And that it's something you want everyone – from your boss to potential employers to your mother-in-law – to know about you.) Check that the links work, keep the videos short and sweet, and check for good old grammar and spelling. You want to be spreading quality content, and be known as the friend who’s always got something new and exciting going on. Use Facebook to spread the word about your site, and watch it go viral…with a little help from your friends