Still Think facebook is Not For YOUR Business? (Think Again)
publication date: Mar 30, 2011
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author/source: Neil Gillespie, Shamrock Growth Associates
CAUTION!!! You may hear the words facebook or read them and dismiss them as valid media for your business. I urge you to listen up to what I am saying here. Applying these powerful tools to my avocation: a music group, I discovered what you could do with businesses as well. What you WON'T want to happen is for your competitors to beat you to the punch.
Businesses haven't used facebook because they think it's a frivolous social networking tool, for the most part.
But wait a minute, lots of people go home and use it. So they know how to use it, and you can leverage that. They just don't use it on the job. But would they? What if you put some interesting content on facebook? What if you gave things away for free on it? What if you offered the freebies in an email, snail mail or flyer for navigating to your facebook page? What if you developed a bunch of "friends" on facebook that were business contacts and invited them to your offer? And what if gaining "social proof" from all those "likes" from customers helped to get you more customers? Want to do these things? What if your competitor did them first?
Here's some startling facts about facebook I discovered while setting it up to promote my band NorthShore - a musical group avocation of mine. The biggest revelation is that you can customize facebook to work the way you want it. Check out what I've done with that page to entice people...
http://www.facebook.com/thenorthshoreband
we are about to launch our snail mail campaign and establishment marketing package and demo CD to get more people to come to the facebook site and our website. (Media works together, folks to create the total "buzz"). OK, so band marketing is different from distributor marketing. Granted. So we'll talk about that too.
Customization: you're not limited to facebook's standards any more.
The favorite trick is this: upon landing on your facebook page for the first time, you want to display premium content or rewards to "fans" (those that "liked" you and hide certain content from non "fans" on your "fan page" (you have to set fan pages up separately - attached to your individual account) Fan pages have advantages for businesses or for individual entities that want to promote themselves. People become fans by clicking "like" on your page. You can add startup pages that make people do this to get premium content, a free giveaway... access to videos, invitation to an event, premium seating at an event... limited only by your imagination.
Customized Landing Page
Instead of landing on the "wall", a chronology of posts, or your profile (your posts only), you can set up a customized page. facebook has eliminated support for their proprietary FBML this month, but there are replacement plug-in apps that allow even easier customization with HTML. I cheat by using a wysiwyg editor we use for growthwizards.com. It's like Microsoft Word. You lay it out just like you would in a word processor, images and all. Then you click a button, the source code comes up and voila, you copy and paste it into the iframes html app window.... which you can get from
http://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=190322544333196.
So now facebook is more customizable than ever.
Try going to our site at http://www.facebook.com/pages/Growth-Wizards/375209727211
(you will need a facebook account to see this... it's easy to open one up if you don't))
Navigate to our facebook page and see what we mean....
...if you click like, you'll be able to see all the growth wizards Fitness Club videos!
but of course... we link you back to growth wizards and get your contact information before we let those jewels out for free..... (you could do the same type of thing... hint, hint)
Now... what could you do to entice customers to "like" you..... remember... the up and coming contractor customers are different... more and more of them use social media and interact differently. You could offer free tools, hats, whatever to those that click "like". Make sure to have them fill out a form and give you their contact information so you can market to them later....!!!
Customized Pages
Check this next one out... (below this paragraph) if you click like, it lets you ask a question - then if refers you to growthwizards.com. You could do the same type of thing... give them something for free for doing something and refer them to any other page upon doing what you want.
For this one I used a third party forms generator that collects all the posts from the form and emails me when a new post comes in. The forms generator costs a mere $47 per year and has an incredible library of standard forms for different businesses that you just copy the code and lug into your site page, facebook iframes html page.
Here is an example of how one works on our growth wizards facebook site.... be sure to click "like" to see how the form works....
YouTube Channel Plug-ins
Take a look at our growth wizards facebook page menu in the upper left and click on the Growth Wizards YouTube channel plug-in. You get it from your YouTube account - it's a plug-in that you tell facebook to use as a page. You can specify a playlist or all the videos you post in your YouTube "channel" or playlist. Producing video about products and services is a snap these days. Crafting the scripts is a snap. I've developed a template for doing that and a knack for the right sequence of a a short five minute or less video. You can be in production for less than $3,000 investment. If you have a mac it's a lot easier than a pc.
By the way... if you think videos are frivolous too... I have a substantial client that I taught to produce them an is using them to huge advantage to go along with a killer collateral package of services. The early bird (innovator) gets the worm. You just need to figure out exactly how to use certain media in your business and how to entice customers to visit your pages. Video is powerful. email them with links to view yours. Then give them a great experience and invite them to do something next when they "land" on the landing page.
Third Party App Plug-ins
Want to plug in an events calendar? You can do it. facebook has events but it doesn't publish as a monthly calendar - it's a list. Want to plug in an appointment application? The forms generator I mentioned before has one. You can also plug in code from other appointment management applications now that you can use static html iframes apps to do anything you want on additional pages in facebook.
Linkage with YouTube and twitter postings
It can be a pain to post content you put in YouTube to your facebook account. That's double work. Get around this by linking your facebook and YouTube accounts. There's a problem with pages, however. You currently cannot link a fan page to a YouTube posting on your "wall". You need to use an application called ffwdplayer... which can post a catalog of your videos as a tab on your fan page, as well as in your "wall" postings. Twitter is easier... you can link twitter to a fan page... and the posts show up on your wall. Twitter links to YouTube nicely as well, completing the social media trio.
I'm not sure Twitter is all that useful yet for distributor business, though. But I believe facebook has some potential, particularly among small to medium contractor customers. And if you put enough good stuff on it, maybe even the larger customers. Remember, you can post movies of up to 20 minutes on facebook directly, and pull in movies from YouTube as well. (10 minute limit on these). There are other movie hosting services like FLIQZ that will house anything you want for $100 per month and up.
So... if you'd like a tour of what I've done to generate some ideas on what you can do on facebook to lure customers and prospects... see what I've done in just the last week to two of my facebook fan page sites.... (linked back to our business websites, by the way).
Maybe you'll get a few ideas. email me at neil.gillespie@growthwizards.com if you have questions... love to hear from you.
Growth Wizards.com (click)
NorthShore (my band) (click)
Neil Gillespie (@growthwizards)
Neil.Gillespie@growthwizards.com
Businesses haven't used facebook because they think it's a frivolous social networking tool, for the most part.
But wait a minute, lots of people go home and use it. So they know how to use it, and you can leverage that. They just don't use it on the job. But would they? What if you put some interesting content on facebook? What if you gave things away for free on it? What if you offered the freebies in an email, snail mail or flyer for navigating to your facebook page? What if you developed a bunch of "friends" on facebook that were business contacts and invited them to your offer? And what if gaining "social proof" from all those "likes" from customers helped to get you more customers? Want to do these things? What if your competitor did them first?
Here's some startling facts about facebook I discovered while setting it up to promote my band NorthShore - a musical group avocation of mine. The biggest revelation is that you can customize facebook to work the way you want it. Check out what I've done with that page to entice people...
http://www.facebook.com/thenorthshoreband
we are about to launch our snail mail campaign and establishment marketing package and demo CD to get more people to come to the facebook site and our website. (Media works together, folks to create the total "buzz"). OK, so band marketing is different from distributor marketing. Granted. So we'll talk about that too.
Customization: you're not limited to facebook's standards any more.
The favorite trick is this: upon landing on your facebook page for the first time, you want to display premium content or rewards to "fans" (those that "liked" you and hide certain content from non "fans" on your "fan page" (you have to set fan pages up separately - attached to your individual account) Fan pages have advantages for businesses or for individual entities that want to promote themselves. People become fans by clicking "like" on your page. You can add startup pages that make people do this to get premium content, a free giveaway... access to videos, invitation to an event, premium seating at an event... limited only by your imagination.
Customized Landing Page
Instead of landing on the "wall", a chronology of posts, or your profile (your posts only), you can set up a customized page. facebook has eliminated support for their proprietary FBML this month, but there are replacement plug-in apps that allow even easier customization with HTML. I cheat by using a wysiwyg editor we use for growthwizards.com. It's like Microsoft Word. You lay it out just like you would in a word processor, images and all. Then you click a button, the source code comes up and voila, you copy and paste it into the iframes html app window.... which you can get from
http://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=190322544333196.
So now facebook is more customizable than ever.
Try going to our site at http://www.facebook.com/pages/Growth-Wizards/375209727211
(you will need a facebook account to see this... it's easy to open one up if you don't))
Navigate to our facebook page and see what we mean....
...if you click like, you'll be able to see all the growth wizards Fitness Club videos!
but of course... we link you back to growth wizards and get your contact information before we let those jewels out for free..... (you could do the same type of thing... hint, hint)
Now... what could you do to entice customers to "like" you..... remember... the up and coming contractor customers are different... more and more of them use social media and interact differently. You could offer free tools, hats, whatever to those that click "like". Make sure to have them fill out a form and give you their contact information so you can market to them later....!!!
Customized Pages
Check this next one out... (below this paragraph) if you click like, it lets you ask a question - then if refers you to growthwizards.com. You could do the same type of thing... give them something for free for doing something and refer them to any other page upon doing what you want.
For this one I used a third party forms generator that collects all the posts from the form and emails me when a new post comes in. The forms generator costs a mere $47 per year and has an incredible library of standard forms for different businesses that you just copy the code and lug into your site page, facebook iframes html page.
Here is an example of how one works on our growth wizards facebook site.... be sure to click "like" to see how the form works....
YouTube Channel Plug-ins
Take a look at our growth wizards facebook page menu in the upper left and click on the Growth Wizards YouTube channel plug-in. You get it from your YouTube account - it's a plug-in that you tell facebook to use as a page. You can specify a playlist or all the videos you post in your YouTube "channel" or playlist. Producing video about products and services is a snap these days. Crafting the scripts is a snap. I've developed a template for doing that and a knack for the right sequence of a a short five minute or less video. You can be in production for less than $3,000 investment. If you have a mac it's a lot easier than a pc.
By the way... if you think videos are frivolous too... I have a substantial client that I taught to produce them an is using them to huge advantage to go along with a killer collateral package of services. The early bird (innovator) gets the worm. You just need to figure out exactly how to use certain media in your business and how to entice customers to visit your pages. Video is powerful. email them with links to view yours. Then give them a great experience and invite them to do something next when they "land" on the landing page.
Third Party App Plug-ins
Want to plug in an events calendar? You can do it. facebook has events but it doesn't publish as a monthly calendar - it's a list. Want to plug in an appointment application? The forms generator I mentioned before has one. You can also plug in code from other appointment management applications now that you can use static html iframes apps to do anything you want on additional pages in facebook.
Linkage with YouTube and twitter postings
It can be a pain to post content you put in YouTube to your facebook account. That's double work. Get around this by linking your facebook and YouTube accounts. There's a problem with pages, however. You currently cannot link a fan page to a YouTube posting on your "wall". You need to use an application called ffwdplayer... which can post a catalog of your videos as a tab on your fan page, as well as in your "wall" postings. Twitter is easier... you can link twitter to a fan page... and the posts show up on your wall. Twitter links to YouTube nicely as well, completing the social media trio.
I'm not sure Twitter is all that useful yet for distributor business, though. But I believe facebook has some potential, particularly among small to medium contractor customers. And if you put enough good stuff on it, maybe even the larger customers. Remember, you can post movies of up to 20 minutes on facebook directly, and pull in movies from YouTube as well. (10 minute limit on these). There are other movie hosting services like FLIQZ that will house anything you want for $100 per month and up.
So... if you'd like a tour of what I've done to generate some ideas on what you can do on facebook to lure customers and prospects... see what I've done in just the last week to two of my facebook fan page sites.... (linked back to our business websites, by the way).
Maybe you'll get a few ideas. email me at neil.gillespie@growthwizards.com if you have questions... love to hear from you.
Growth Wizards.com (click)
NorthShore (my band) (click)
Neil Gillespie (@growthwizards)
Neil.Gillespie@growthwizards.com
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