The terms “Social media,” “Web 2.0,” “Twitter” and “Facebook” are saturating the media, and clogging our spam filters. How many emails or ads have you seen that said something like “Millions of people use Facebook every day. Don’t miss out on the advertising opportunity and get left behind?” In fact I regularly get inquiry from clients asking whether or not they should be on Facebook or Twitter.
The basic strategy for marketing using social media, such as Facebook or Twitter, is to build an appropriate network of fellow users. Once you have that network setup you can post messages that will show up on the homepage of all those you are linked to. This can drive traffic to your main website, build your reputation, or just spread the word about your business.
For example a realtor could post something like “I have a 4bdrm house in the mission district for 800K” and then have a link to the listing on their website. You’d assume people following a realtor would be looking for a house, so that’s a convenient way of getting the word out for listings, and driving traffic to the main website.
A realtor is a good example of where Facebook and Twitter can be used effectively in the short term. People actively shopping for a house will tolerate, and even want, a lot of Tweets or postings in a short period of time. People looking for a house want that quick, timely information. Once they have made a purchase, however, they are likely going to “unfriend” the realtor, or at least turn his posts off.
Restaurants, bars, night clubs, and entertainment venues are other examples where social media can inform a large group of networked users, and that information will be welcomed. For these businesses, Twitter and Facebook are very appropriate and effective.
The use for promoting professional services is a little less straightforward. If you just spam your contacts with business promotion, it isn't going to be long before you are unfriended. The use for this type of business is generally going to be creating Tweets on Twitter or posts on Facebook that point to a blog article. That blog article would need to contain useful information and then cross-sell your services. The Twitter stream could be posted automatically to Facebook, or you could create a similar Facebook posting manually, or you could included the blog’s RSS feed in your Facebook account. Which way you use will depend on how much control you want over the individual postings.
If you are selling products, again you would need to write some kind of useful content on a blog, and then cross-sell your product on the article page.
The most common method to get followers on Twitter is to start following a lot of people. A certain percentage will reciprocate. Most of your followers will probably be marketers or other people trying to sell the same product or service as you. You can certainly place a "Follow Me on Twitter" link on your website or blog too.
To get fans of your Facebook page, you can put the link on your website, and people clicking over to that page can become a fan by clicking a link.
To get a lot of fans, we would need to “suggest” the page to as many people on Facebook as possible. That could involve setting up a false persona and sending out a bunch of friend requests. Then once you have a good number of “friends,” you send out the invitation to join your business page as a fan. That is spamming, but unfortunately how it’s often done. Unless you have a throw-away business, that kind of practice is going to turn people off and lose you customers.
Actually buying ads on social networking sites is a not effective (link to article if I have it). I’d recommend search engine pay per click unless you are already maximizing your spend in that venue and have excess budget you want to throw at something.
The utility of using Facebook or Twitter to promote most businesses is overemphasized, primarily by SEOs or marketers who see it as a new angle to get some money from unsuspecting business people. The media hype surrounding Twitter and Facebook makes their proposals seem plausible, but in the end, it can end up being a big waste of time.