Welcome to Week 12 – Social Media and the Big IDEA!

Let’s talk about Facebook!

You’ll remember that we’re discussing engaging our community – the “E” in the Big IDEA. As Internet Marketers, Engaging our community is vital because this is where we build relationships and, as you know, relationships are key to our community’s buying decisions.

Facebook allows us access to large groups of people who desire to be a part of a community. That’s exactly why people join Facebook – they long to be a part of something greater than themselves, and our online business strives to connect with like-minded people (people interested in our niche).

There are many reasons that trigger a person’s desire to be a part of a social media site like Facebook. A friend asked them to join. They’re looking for a way to meet people. Perhaps they’re trying to connect to an old friend or relative they have not seen for many years. Each of these things is tied to a longing for community.

Facebook is a social media site that allows us to communicate not only as our business, but also as an individual. The benefit of this is tremendous – you’ll remember we discussed earlier that when people can connect a face with our business, it helps greatly to establish the relationship that we are trying to build with them. It makes our business more personal, and people connect better with other people than they do with a faceless business.

Facebook calls our individual identity our Personal Profile. With our Personal Profile we create what is called a Timeline of events – consisting of posts, which are short blurbs about happenings in and comments on our daily lives; photos and videos, which act as illustrations about our lives; milestones, reflecting big events at a particular time in our life; and something called check-in’s, where we can announce where we are or where we’ve been at a particular point in time.

Each of our identities on Facebook contains what is called a news feed. The news feed is where Facebook assembles posts, photos, videos, and check-in’s that are made by our friends. This makes it easy to catch up with the information our Friends post. Friends are the people that we have elected to become connected to on Facebook. The beautiful thing is that you have complete control over who you choose to be friends with! When others request to be your friend, you can elect whether you will or will not be friends with them. For the people you to connect, you have the option to show them all of the information you post on your timeline, a part of it, or absolutely none of that information. You could, for example, have a group of friends called “best friends”, where you share certain things only with your family and none of your other Facebook friends see that information.

Let’s look at this from an Internet Marketing perspective – you can create a group of friends on Facebook for your targeted niche, let’s say “cruise friends” – and you could post certain comments or photos directed only at that group of friends. Do you see how powerful this could be? Isn’t it amazing that Facebook, a free service, puts this kind of power in a marketer’s hands? I get very excited when I think about all of the possibilities that social media open up to us!

Here’s a quick “for instance” to explain this a bit further…

You, or maybe you and your family take a trip to Disneyland in California. While on your trip, you post comments about your arrival, create a milestone about your trip, and share photos periodically with your Facebook Friends. You include an occasional video of your favorite Disney character you’ve seen in the park, and you check-in at your favorite restaurant while you’re out to dinner one evening.

All of these things create a story for your Facebook Friends to follow… they can engage, and begin to enjoy the trip with you! Now, if your niche has to do with either travel or Disney, all the better! If it doesn’t, it’s still a great way to make yourself “real” to your online audience, and engage them.

If you’re beginning to see the potential that Facebook offers as a way to communicate with your community, you should get started on Facebook today. We’ll begin next week’s discussion by talking more about how to create a two-way conversation on Facebook!

I would like you to spend some time examining the personal side of Facebook this week. As always, if I can help answer any questions for you please send me an email or leave a comment below.

Kindest regards,

Greg