by Myrna Padilla
I was recently at a party where a retired General came up to me and asked in frustration, “What is this Facebook thing. Everywhere I go I hear Facebook, Facebook, Facebook… is it a book of faces?”
Well, it is like a book of faces and much more. More accurately, it is a website where people and companies are allowed to freely create a set of pages about themselves (no technical skills required). People typically use a picture of themselves (their Face), along with a short biography. Many also upload pictures and videos to share with others. Businesses can do something similar, uploading their company logo or brand, upload photos of their products and, of course, tell a little bit about their company.
What makes Facebook and similar companies unique is the ability to follow things that are of interest to you. In the case of Facebook, it is finding friends, causes and businesses you like and attaching yourself to them. When you attach yourself to another person or to a business, their activity in Facebook is monitored and automatically displays on your Facebook page.
This monitoring of activity of the things your friends do is sometimes called aggregation. It means that you now can go to one place on the internet, your Facebook page, and there at a glance you will see what your friends and the business you follow or doing. You may discover a friend has uploaded some photos of a recent party or a business may have a sale on your favorite item. The important thing to note is you no longer have to visit multiple sites to discover what is going on with the things you care about. The information now comes to you instead of you going to it.
This ability for you to attach yourself to others is at the heart of Facebook. It is sometimes called “friending” and it is one of the components which makes Facebook part of another bigger buzz word showing up everywhere called “Social Media”.
Facebook is all about social media. People feeding each other news about what they are doing. The news in this case being of greater value because of the personal relationship you have with the business or the individual involved.
So how does a business go about taking advantage of Facebook? And why would you want to bother in the first place? And what does all this have to do with the title of the article about fishing where the fish are? Let me explain using a lesson I learned growing up in a little undeveloped fishing village.
Those who know me know when I was young I use to dive in the sea. Sometimes for seaweed, but other times for fish. We would fish using an old umbrella my father rigged to act as a spear gun. It really worked! My father taught to follow the current. The secret to catching fish is to fish where the fish are.
Well the current on the Internet is flowing into social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Social media is not a fad. It is fundamentally transforming the way people use the internet. So as a business you should consider creating a presence on each of those sites and providing a link from your existing website to that presence. That presence should be considered as an extension of your overall marketing effort. But be careful. There are rules about how to interact as a business in these new social media environments that if you break them can cost you. The young people in your company can explain the rules. Nevertheless, follow the current.
Why? The answer is simple. That is where the fish are.
At last count, Facebook had over 300 million users. Over half of them log into their Facebook account every day. Over 65 million of them access Facebook via their mobile phone and that number keeps growing. That’s a lot of fish!
The trend is clear. If you want to market online or even via mobile, then Facebook and other social media platforms should be part of your overall long term strategy.
As always, email your questions to info@myndconsulting.com or call us at 300-6963.
