Harnessing the Power of Facebook

[Neil McKenzie]

As a marketing research professional with many years of testing advertising concepts, finished ads, tracking response and designing focus groups I would caution companies using Facebook as a cheap and convenient way to conduct research.

Very early on in my career the necessary question would be "What is your sample"? This question was basically asking who are you surveying, what are their characteristics, are they representitive of your target group and finally is your data projectionable?

With Facebook you really don't know who is responding and if they are who they say they are. Are they really in the self identified groups of age, gender, interests, etc that they have reported?

I think for now the best you could say is that those who identified themselves as fans say x, y, or z. Facebook might provide great anecdotal responses but I don't think it is a substitute for real research.

[Maria Elena Duron]

Good point, Neil! And, we also share the "researcher's heart" - I did newspaper and media research in my past life.

Interested in hearing how people are quantifying community. I know that David Meerman Scott talks about the struggle to put measurement on creating, developing and the quality of a community.

Chris Brogan swears that we all need to read "Groundswell" to really understand what key performance indicators truly measure a community. The book just arrived last week and is sitting at the right hand of my desk - ready for me to delve into it. I'll be sure to give some feedback, tidbits and AHA's.

What are more thoughts, best practices and backfires, too?

[Alecia Huck MAVERICK & CO]

Wow, brilliant discussion points Maria, David and Neil alike.

I had several thoughts when reading thru.

1. Facebook is both a COMMUNITY and a TOOL. A community is a group of people. You can promote within and to that community. A tool is a way of promoting. People get confused with Social Media because it's both.

2. The "rules" for community and the "rules" for a tool are different. Again, this makes social media a tough thing. Coke brilliantly chose in favor of what would be the best way to nurture and promote a community of Coke lovers. If you're on Facebook or Twitter or anywhere else, you'll want to have a strategy for what kind of community you want to develop, how you want to nurture it, whether or not you want it to grow,etc.

You'd also want to have some thoughts in place about how you want to use that tool to communicate. Just because I can get on the telephone and leave 1,000 voicemails about my latest book, DOESN'T MEAN I SHOULD. Just because you can easily blast to people every single day or even hour DOESN'T MEAN YOU SHOULD.

To return to Neil's question about viral marketing and look at the big picture...I think a good strategy would be to think of social marketing like a big cocktail party. Consider who you're inviting and why. Consider which invitations you're accepting and why. THINK through who will be there and what kind of party you want to create.

If your party is designed to promote your business, you're going to set it up differently, invite different people and SAY different things. Because it's a social party with a professional focus (usually to sell your stuff), you can't JUST advertise to people. The entire party can't be you with a megaphone yelling at your guests about your new book. You could reasonably do one big announcement where you stop the party, ask for everyone's attention and give them the quick scoop.

THEN a smart move would be to spend the rest of the time schmoozing and working the room. Help other people make valuable connections for them and YES, tell some good stories that powerfully but subtly, interestingly and efficiently promote your business. Good stories are interesting and engaging. They include surprises, funny moments, interesting characters.

DO YOU HAVE interesting stories from your business? Tales of clients in distress until you saved the day? Surprise endings with people who thought they wanted one thing but really needed a completely different service or product? Did something that happened this week make you laugh or inspire you? DO YOU HAVE GOOD NEWS that relates to your business, a client or personal VICTORY that you could share?

All of these things are viral worthy. Some more than others. I for one LOVE reading good news and hearing about VICTORIES. Start sharing those and you might find yourself the sweetheart of your online community.

[David Sandusky]

Adam Ostrow posted on Mashable Facebook Shares Tips and Case Studies for Brand Marketers as more example of harnessing the power of facebook.

I think this shows facebook driving full speed ahead as the social media for business leader. Along with twitter, and your own community (Where is Your Online Community?), brands can really take off!

[David Sandusky]

The power of facebook continues as they allowed vanity urls to better position the long url in search engines.

I was curious Friday night how well the facebook website would handle the target traffic* as I watched the counter on my facebook page down to 10:01 MTN. I did get http://www.facebook.com/davidsandusky and was actually nervous because there are more David Sanduskys then you might think!

The next fascinating action was how many tweets went out in 10 minutes from those I follow with there vanity facebook url.

So one question remains from the company that is struggling monetizing...why on earth did they not have a sponsor on the countdown page???

[maryannsms]

It's not uncommon to see how many businesses have an official Facebook page in addition their main website. As this social network grows in popularity, so people are likely to first come upon your Facebook presence before they realize you are set elsewhere on the Web. The more you socialize with friends and fans on the network increases the likelihood of traffic, and conversion of visitors to customers/clients.