Archives for February 2009

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Three key ways to enhance your social network through facebook.

If you are new to Facebook, you must be wondering, what is the point of Facebook? What will these virtual friends and groups do to help me in the real world? If you’re purely on Facebook for social reasons, it is a fun way to find old friends, connect with new ones, and keep in touch with anyone that is most likely connected to the world of Facebook. For other people that may be on Facebook for Business related reasons like myself, there are a million ways to advertise, connect, and learn tons of new information.

The #1 Key to Facebook: CONNECTING

• Find people that are interested in YOUR group, fan page, business, etc…
• Facebook offers two majors ways to instantly connect with someone. Keep these in mind when you find someone that you may have a good connection with or think may be of help.
• Facebook messages are just like email. Use this to start a conversation with a new friend directly through Facebook.
• Facebook Instant Messanger functions just like iChat, or Skype Chat. But on Facebook, you can see when your friends are on-line and have a live conversation. This is a helpful tool to hand information back and forth instantly, and connect to things you may not have usually found.
• Your Facebook, and the work you put into it only have value if the viewers are interested. Make sure your content is Interesting,easy to follow, and holds the interest of your viewers.
• Target YOUR Facebook friends. Facebook Fan Pages even have a tool that allows you to see who is viewing your page. Target those people and see the outcome.

The #2 Key to Facebook: VIRAL ADVERTISING

• Interesting content is what attracts people to your facebook. Find engaging youtube videos, links to interesting news articles. Facebook groups and Fan pages allow you to easily connect your friends to the things you want them to see. Pull things from your site, your friend’s Facebook’s, publish what you find interesting and what will grab people’s attention.
• People see your interesting content, grab it and post it. Before you know it, three times as many people are looking at it within hours and sharing it with people you would never have the tools to connect with.

The #3 Key to Facebook: UPDATE

• People do not want to see old links, videos, and pictures.
• Facebook allows a person to immediately post something NEW.
• Keep your Facebook up to date with key things you want your friends to see that will help them and help you connect and learn.

Facebook has a million possibilities for any person. Take it and use it to your advantage today

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As a business owner on Facebook you want to connect with the people that matter the most. You want people seeing your Facebook profile, group, and Fan page that care about the content and will spread it to other people that care. What and where you post your information is the most important part. It is not that difficult. Facebook has many resources for people to find the people they need.

Sony created a very interesting way to connect with the people they were targeting. Sony built a site featuring their latest movie about Vampires. They needed a quick and easy way to connect with the people who like vampires. Sony received over 18 million hits to their Fan page in only three weeks. How in the world did they do that? They fished where the fish were.

Facebook offers a very popular application where people play in a virtual world of Vampires. The exact rules are beyond me, but sony knew that targeting that particular audience would be the perfect way to advertise their Fan page. Before they knew it their site was up and people were more interested then ever in their Vampire movie. This is a perfect way to target your ideal audience. Obviously this takes a bit of money and maybe a multi-million dollar company, but the concept is flawless. Don’t try to create a brand new audience for your product, that audience is most likely already out there on Facebook waiting for you. You just need to find them.

• Find groups with your ideals or major concepts. Groups have walls where you can post things, and hear what other people have to say. Drop a line and maybe someone will see it and start talking to you, or vice versa, find someone and start talking.
• Groups also have discussion boards. Post something on an interesting discussion.People use groups to advertise themselves. Make a wall post and insert a small bio. Someone is sure to see it and pass it along.
• There are tons of great business applications that help you connect to people in the Facebook business world. Promote your business by adding your business card to your profile. Add a professional profile to connect to different companies. Don’t be afraid of Facebook. It’s not just a social site for your teenager, it has a million things to help someone in the Business world.

Facebook is a tool that takes time, patience, and effort. Facebook isn’t something that you can set-up and just let sit there. You need to work it a little to get what you want. Wander around Facebook for half and hour and see what other people are doing. That is the best way to get ideas and pursue the world of Facebook.

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(Case study on the power of Barack Obama’s political campaign through the use of Facebook and edge-based organizations.)

As an 18-year-old first-time voter living in a swing state with a Facebook, I was the demographic Obama was looking for on Facebook. Obama used Facebook to target the 18-29 year old demographic, which he did well. Obama had unbelievable success with Facebook during his campaign. I witnessed this first hand. As a politician, Obama used a completely out-of-the-box technique to target his audience.

I will quickly discuss how Obama used edge-based Organization. What does it mean to have an edge-based organization? It means that everyone is aware of the situation, is able to take action, share values, and can make decisions that empower the edge to take action. Obama used the Internet and Facebook as a huge way to help with self-organization and edge-based organization. People could use their own personal power to help Obama’s campaign. I will share with you some hopefully helpful examples.

As we have discussed in previous posts there are very strategic ways to advertise yourself or your business on Facebook. Obama used these same exact strategies with some obvious financial benefits, but used them and used them well.

Obama’s support through Facebook was viral and was used as a hugely successful way of brand development. Everything about his campaign snowballed in a positive direction to give him endless amounts of support. There were many things he did, that you yourself can try, or assemble ideas from:

• Sidebar advertisements, selling t-shirts which immediately gave money to the Obama cause
• Sidebar video blogs, immediate press release
• Obama “gifts”, used to create fun viral advertising. (send one Obama gift, your friend sees who you sent it to on their mini-feed. BOOM, its sent again…and again..and again…
• Obama Supporter groups. Ex) Barack Obama (one million strong for Barack Obama)
• Obama Applications. Add the app – tell your friends about it. Ex) Obama Facebook Application
• Bumper stickers — A Facebook application you can add where you can view thousands of “bumper stickers” that can say pretty much whatever you want. Most of these involve the latest pop-culture of funny YouTube videos, but around the election every other sticker was Obama related or McCain-Dissing stickers. Bumper stickers are strictly targeted at the High school and College age group. Just another way to state your political view and most of the time, your love for Obama. The amazing thing about these is that these are free to make and are usually made by the high-school to college age group. Obama’s campaign had nothing to do with making these. They were made completely by Obama supporters and spread by the thousands on a daily basis.

Obama on Facebook is the new political lawn sign. Your Facebook could easily advertise who you support. You could add the Obama apps, join the groups, become fans of Obama. People’s Facebook political views were even 100% in favor of Obama. Instead of saying Democrat, liberal, etc… It simply says OBAMA. People were Obama crazy on Facebook. Articles say that this is the new future of politics. Obama used Facebook to create an amazing tool for Politicians. From now on, if a politician is smart he will use the tools he has on the web to get the attention and press needed. Young voters were huge this year, and Facebook played a large part in that. Facebook made Obama not only the most elligable candidate, but the “cool” candidate. Obama used Facebook wisely and very much to his advantage.

I found one other specific example of Barack Obama’s success on Facebook. The New York Times Magazine sponsored Obama and created Facebook free “gift” that people could send the day after Obama was elected. It was a small cartoon graphic of a NYTimes paper with Obama’s face on it declaring “Obama Wins!”. An amazing example of how Obama’s campaign found big companies who could use their money and power to help his cause.

Another tactic Obama used was on the day of the Election people could dedicate their status to Obama. For example it would say Aurora is the xxx,xxx,xxx person to dedicate her status to the Barack Obama campaign. This was an amazing viral connection that I witnessed sweep through Facebook the day of the election. And on the day of the Inauguration CNN totaled 1.5 million people who had Obama related status’.

Obviously these are not all realistic options for small businesses, or people just entering the Facebook world, but hopefully you see the amazing things Facebook can do, and this inspires you to venture out and try new things.