Facebook Marketing

This is old news to those who, like myself, have worked in Inter­net mar­ket­ing, but tools like Face­book and Twit­ter can be valu­able. Here are some of the tips I’ve learned in var­i­ous positions.

1. Be Your­self. Many busi­nesses believe that they should cre­ate a Face­book or Twit­ter pro­file with the name of your com­pany: “Acme Boxes.” This is the com­plete oppo­site of what they should do.

First, hav­ing your pres­ence con­sist only of a face­less cor­po­ra­tion is bor­ing. The Inter­net has a short atten­tion span, so every­thing needs to be catchy. Your iden­tity should not be “Acme Boxes” — it should be “Bob Smith (who hap­pens to be CEO of Acme Boxes).” Use your real name and pic­ture. The per­son Face­book­ing or Twit­ter­ing should post about all sorts of things includ­ing funny anec­dotes and per­sonal inter­ests, not only the newest sale his com­pany is offer­ing. Face­book and Twit­ter users want to befriend inter­est­ing peo­ple, not cor­po­ra­tions. (Bil­lion­aire and Vir­gin founder Richard Bran­son has many Twit­ter fol­low­ers, but I bet that very few of them care what his com­pany does on a daily basis. Bran­son is just a cool guy.)

The brand aware­ness that your com­pany gains — after all, it is listed in your pro­file and occa­sion­ally dis­cussed in your posts — comes indi­rectly. Be infor­mal and fun. Leave the for­mal, bor­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tions jar­gon to the mar­ket­ing depart­ment that deals with tra­di­tional media out­lets. Peo­ple who use social media fre­quently are young, tech-savvy, and cyn­i­cal when it comes to adver­tis­ing. Be a real per­son online — every­one can tell when some­one is just there to sell something.

2. Do Not Spam. The quick­est way to lose poten­tial cus­tomers and be ignored in the social-media sphere is to put a sales pitch in your sta­tus every hour. Fewer than half of your Face­book sta­tus updates and Tweets should be related to busi­ness. Again, peo­ple want to befriend you, not your com­pany. The Inter­net is viral — for bet­ter and for worse. If one per­son does not like you, every­one will find out soon enough. (Although, if one per­son does like you, every­one will know as well.) Post on a wide vari­ety of inter­est­ing sub­jects. If you post some­thing with the word “base­ball,” a Twit­ter search for that word will bring up your post. And you might get a few base­ball fans to fol­low you and learn about your company.

3. Be Care­ful. There was a line in an episode of the 1990s, Amer­i­can sit­com “News­ra­dio” that went some­thing like: “Tak­ing some­thing off the Inter­net is like try­ing to take the pee out of a swim­ming pool.” Even if you delete an e-mail, a Face­book post, or a Twit­ter entry, chances are that it still exists on some hard drive or server some­where. Espe­cially if some­one saw it, did not like it, and saved it. Just because mar­ket­ing is less con­trolled by exec­u­tive suits in the rapid-fire Infor­ma­tion Age does not mean that any­thing and every­thing is per­mis­si­ble. Don’t be like the teenage girl who posted scan­dalous pic­tures of her­self on Face­book only to have every­one at school see them instead of just her boyfriend. Think before you post. Even if you are not the CEO or Vice Pres­i­dent of Com­mu­ni­ca­tions, you still rep­re­sent your com­pany in the sub­con­scious minds of your Inter­net community.

More thoughts to follow.