Why you should market on Facebook.
First of all, what is Facebook? Facebook is the most prolific social network out there. Essentially, it's a place to keep in touch with your family and friends, sharing messages, photos, videos, links with them, and joining them in games. You can also find old friends - and lovers - like I have, and catch up. It's pretty easy to use too.
It originally started out on the campus of Harvard by a few undergrads looking to make an online "facebook" - a term used for the printed listing of alumnus, where they live, email, and so on. Well, it went viral quickly, as more and more people used it. Just using it makes it viral. You invite your friends, who in turn invite their friends, and so on.
Here's some recent stats, from Facebook:
• More than 400 million active users
• 50% of active users log on to Facebook in any given day
• More than 35 million users update their status each day
• More than 60 million status updates posted each day
• More than 3 billion photos uploaded to the site each month
• More than 5 billion pieces of content (web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, photo albums, etc.) shared each week
• More than 1.5 million local businesses have active Pages on Facebook
• Average user has 130 friends on the site
• Average user sends 8 friend requests per month
Crazy, isn't it?
So, what's the marketing angle on this?
Obviously, exposure for your business.
You start with a personal page, and find all the friends you can. After that, you can make a page for your business, and invite those friends you made on Facebook. Facebook also will let you import your email addresses from some popular email clients, like Yahoo, and send them an invitation to join your biz page. Jumping off of that, you can take out an ad on Facebook, to be display to a specific demographic, such as male, 25-50, living in the US, speaks English, and has woodworking in their profile. You can pay a certain fee per 1,000 impressions, or pay per click, and set a daily limit on spending. That will help bring anonymous people to you. It gets a bit expensive - I paid about 50 cents per person signing up in my last campaign.
So that gets you started; then it's up to you to post interesting, relevant information on your business page. And, you have to do it often - at least every other day. People don't want to see a dead site when they do find you.
You can also post on your friend's "wall" - that is essentially just a page of items that friend has posted, and things that person's friends has also shared with him/her directly. Do this with care - you don't want to come across too strong here. Something like, "Hey Dave, I just make another one of those jewelry boxes you like" - and post a link to your business page's album with it. A little picture from the album should pop up with the message. So why do this, when Dave is already your friend? Because HIS friends will also see this post, and hopefully become a "fan" - a follower - of your page. It's reasonable to believe that at least some of his friends will share his interest in woodworking, and come follow you too.
And of course it all comes back to more people exposed to your product, more people likely to buy.
First of all, what is Facebook? Facebook is the most prolific social network out there. Essentially, it's a place to keep in touch with your family and friends, sharing messages, photos, videos, links with them, and joining them in games. You can also find old friends - and lovers - like I have, and catch up. It's pretty easy to use too.
It originally started out on the campus of Harvard by a few undergrads looking to make an online "facebook" - a term used for the printed listing of alumnus, where they live, email, and so on. Well, it went viral quickly, as more and more people used it. Just using it makes it viral. You invite your friends, who in turn invite their friends, and so on.
Here's some recent stats, from Facebook:
• More than 400 million active users
• 50% of active users log on to Facebook in any given day
• More than 35 million users update their status each day
• More than 60 million status updates posted each day
• More than 3 billion photos uploaded to the site each month
• More than 5 billion pieces of content (web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, photo albums, etc.) shared each week
• More than 1.5 million local businesses have active Pages on Facebook
• Average user has 130 friends on the site
• Average user sends 8 friend requests per month
Crazy, isn't it?
So, what's the marketing angle on this?
Obviously, exposure for your business.
You start with a personal page, and find all the friends you can. After that, you can make a page for your business, and invite those friends you made on Facebook. Facebook also will let you import your email addresses from some popular email clients, like Yahoo, and send them an invitation to join your biz page. Jumping off of that, you can take out an ad on Facebook, to be display to a specific demographic, such as male, 25-50, living in the US, speaks English, and has woodworking in their profile. You can pay a certain fee per 1,000 impressions, or pay per click, and set a daily limit on spending. That will help bring anonymous people to you. It gets a bit expensive - I paid about 50 cents per person signing up in my last campaign.
So that gets you started; then it's up to you to post interesting, relevant information on your business page. And, you have to do it often - at least every other day. People don't want to see a dead site when they do find you.
You can also post on your friend's "wall" - that is essentially just a page of items that friend has posted, and things that person's friends has also shared with him/her directly. Do this with care - you don't want to come across too strong here. Something like, "Hey Dave, I just make another one of those jewelry boxes you like" - and post a link to your business page's album with it. A little picture from the album should pop up with the message. So why do this, when Dave is already your friend? Because HIS friends will also see this post, and hopefully become a "fan" - a follower - of your page. It's reasonable to believe that at least some of his friends will share his interest in woodworking, and come follow you too.
And of course it all comes back to more people exposed to your product, more people likely to buy.