Why Social Media Is Critical For Branding Your Business

When we refer to “social media” we are primarily referring to one platform – Facebook.

Facebook has completely revolutionized the way businesses can build, reach, and convert new customers – think about it…500 million people have a Facebook account, that’s like an 8th of the WORLD’S population and the numbers are growing…rapidly.

This comes primarily from the fact that companies can brand their business and products on Facebook faster, more effectively, and more efficiently than any other platform that’s previously existed…will it take over the company webpage? We doubt it, but there are some serious attributes to using Facebook to build leads, generate awareness, engage customers and build evangelists for your brand.

Leveraging your Facebook Fan Page

To leverage Facebook effectively for branding your business or product, you should be (in fact, you must) have a Facebook Fan Page – or a Facebook business page.

Some companies leverage Facebook Fan Pages for their specific products – like Rice Krispies for example.

Others use only one Facebook Fan Page for all of the brand marketing and communication – such as Louis Vuitton.

Regardless of your purpose, size of your business, or other marketing strategies that you have in place, your business and brand needs a Facebook Fan Page.

Facebook business pages allow your brand to reach people continuously with consistently updated information, promotions, contests, news, etc…

When someone becomes a fan of your Facebook Page (or “Likes” your page), then that person is now the equivalent of a high quality lead for your business – much like a business would gather a name and email from people who are interested in what they sell.

Except with a Facebook Fan Page, you don’t have to worry about putting together HTML emails, and all the other steps in putting together a broadcast email – simply type your message into your Facebook Page wall and send.

More importantly, your Facebook page updates can go viral. This means, if one of your fans comment on your update, click “Like”, or share your update with their friends on Facebook, then your business or brand Facebook page can be seen by hundreds, even thousands, or people that weren’t even looking for you – this is something that an email broadcast cannot achieve.

So what about you – does your business or brand have a Facebook Fan Page?

How are you leveraging it for your business?

Do you find your Facebook Page as an effective way to build your brand and reach new customers?

Facebook – The Movie…will you watch it?

Of course you will!!!!

Social Media and Chaos: A Love Story

Wikipedia, MySpace blah blah blah: who would have thought these platforms would work? When planning to create a new encyclopaedia, you would probably gather together a group of fine and varied minds, set up a structure (to cover everything) and a strict editorial process, then set out a timeline of, what, six years to complete the job? You certainly wouldn’t set up a website and open it up for entries to be posted by anyone and his wife.

Equally, you wouldn’t think that a social network made up, largely, of badly-designed, error-code-displaying personal home-pages would have been such a massive hit. Yet it was. Facebook was hardly much better – as the subsequent bi-annual revamps have proved – and it’s still almost impossible to find certain features (see this exasperated exchange on how to change a Fan page URL), yet 350 million users can’t be wrong. Can they?

No. In social media, popularity is everything. Users = success. Yet the point remains, the greatest social media successes have emerged from a kind of vaguely structured chaos. Twitter is another case in point. Try to describe Twitter to a complete novice and you realise what a mess it is! So, who sees what? And it’s all public? And how do people find you? Back when I was a Product Manager, I once described Twitter was a “broken Groups feature”. I was right – but it’s still a runaway success.

Now that social media is maturing, we’re seeing the social fabric of our interactions stretched. Foursquare, the location-based game, encourages people to share their exact location throughout the day. Thinking back to when people feared to publish their name on the Internet, this is a dramatic shift (and one that’s not without it’s problems, check out www.pleaserobme.com). Similarly, the new chat-to-a-complete-stranger game, ChatRoulette, defies the standard logic of everyday interaction. Try it out. You get to chat with a complete stranger (who you can also see), no strings attached. When you’re bored you don’t have to make excuses: just click “next” and you have a completely new stranger to chat to. If only real life were like that!

But wait, this IS real life. Although, to some extent, social media is seen as a very specific industry that doesn’t have much to do with “proper” business (I was recently pardoned for speaking my mind in a business meeting because I’m a social media “free spirit” ;), I think all businesses can learn from these examples. Each of these social media services has broken new ground in terms of communication: between friends, relatives, colleagues and even complete strangers. Businesses facing failing returns from advertising and internal communication problems during rapid growth would do well to ask why social media works so well.

There are no straight lines in nature – and humans are natural beasts. Why restrict us within strict corporate communication channels and boundaries? We’re far more effective (and creative) within an unstructured environment. As recent developments in social media show, if you’re looking for an innovative communication channel, chaos isn’t an option – it’s a pre-requisite.