Marketing in the brave new social site world.

Social Media, Social Marketing, Blah, Blah, Blah.....

This is a little byte about using FaceBook to market yourself. There's a little difference between FaceBook and other mediums. There's also a different attitude you need to have when you work this route.

Although marketing is always about reaching people who are interested in what you've got, and that will never change. The methods with social marketing are sort of counter intuitive to some. You don't ant to use a medium like FaceBook to blast as many unknown people as possible about your great new widget.

That's just social spam.

The idea here is the "tell two friends" method. And the pinnacle of using that method is to get FaceBook friends to comment on your shared links and posts (more on that later). The unspoken contract here is that you respect your friends, and your friends friends and their friends. So you don't treat them like a flock of sheep.

People come to FaceBook to get away from that.

In this medium (and on other social sites except maybe twitter):



There's some simple truth's you need to decide for yourself before you do the "Social Marketing" thingy:

• Is your new product or service really that interesting?
  
• Does it appeal to people emotionally?
  
• Are you prepared to be open to criticism on your efforts?
  

The wider the appeal the better you will do. I dabble in this for my Web Design, that's almost a waste. I only appeal to people interested in finding a web designer.

I also do this for a local Boston band, their appeal: anyone who likes music. aahh ha!

People won't be put off by status updates about a band they like. They will be about my Web Design Company blog postings. uhh oh.

So, anywho back to this thing about the pinnacle of the Facebook posting. Here's the deal kiddo's. For the "tell two people" thingy to work. You need your friends to comment on your postings.

Try to share your links and other posted items in a way that elicits comment. That is the viral hook to move beyond your "circle of trust" to the greater FaceBook world outside. Better yet, craft your postings so that people will want to share it themselves and tell two friends, and so on, and so on, and so on........

Labels: appeal, facebook, marketing, myspace, social marketing, social media, twitter

posted by Adam Signore @ 9:48 AM