“Facebook – isn’t that just for kids?”

I often encounter this question – and/or the attitude behind it – when suggesting the use of social media (primarily Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn) for marketing, customer relationship management, or some other business-related area. Despite social media’s rapid and widespread growth in recent years, there is still an air of uncertainty – even resistance – amongst many adults towards using social media for business purposes.

I for one can understand that at face value; many adults may only hear of Facebook or Twitter when it’s mentioned in the news, usually about the often detrimental impact these – and by association all social media – are having on children. Without any other experience of social media to compare with, these tools could easily be written off as time-wasting – even dangerous – and the sole domain of people not even old enough to drive, let alone do business with.

“there are more users aged 55+ than there are high school students”

There certainly are a lot of children, even pre-teenagers, that use social media – primarily Facebook and MySpace before it – on a daily basis. But according to recent studies, guess which demographic is most represented on Facebook: adults 35 years or older. Not only that, according to Facebook’s own data, there are more users aged 55+ than there are high school students.

Why in the world would grown adults – let alone seniors – be wasting their time on such a “toy”, you may ask. There’s the thing – there is a lot more to Facebook, and social media as a whole, then what is portrayed by the media and certain sectors of society.

Just looking through my own Facebook friends list, I have observed one or more examples of the following:

• contacted family overseas,
• located previously unknown family,
• shared the first pictures of their newborn child,
• coordinated events and parties,
• sold items that even eBay couldn’t move.
• met business investors and collaborators,
• held a fundraising drive,
• shared interesting news articles, music and video,
• and the list goes on.

“the Internet is making the globe smaller and social media is leading the push”

Facebook and other social media is providing a level of interaction previously only available through face to face, email and the telephone, and doing it better. Like the radio, the telephone, and television before it, the Internet is making the globe smaller and social media is leading the push. More and more people are going online, and using it to do things that cannot be practically done any other way.

So what does this mean for business? Marketing 101: be where the people are.  With the total number of Facebook users, for example, being equivalent to a large country (and rising), it is only good business practice to have a presence on Facebook and other relevant Social Media.

Several world-leading brands, and a multitude of small to medium enterprises have grown their online presence beyond the corporate website and started utilising social media. How does a business go about doing this?

“the traditional mass-media approach to business marketing  will not succeed in the online world”

Before we go further, let’s make this point very clear: the traditional mass-media approach to business marketing  will not succeed in the online world, in fact it could do your business incredible harm. Being present in social media is not about broadcasting aimlessly, hoping to pick up whoever falls into the figurative “net”. Rather it’s about aiming for the specific individuals most likely to do business with you, and engaging with them one-on-one.

In Part Two, we’ll discuss how to do this with the specific example of Facebook.

• personal friends
• colleagues in the web industry
• colleagues in the music industry
• colleagues who play trombone specifically
• random connections

My posts and comments on Facebook will sometimes be relevant to all of these groups, and at other times be very specific. Throw into the works the fact that my Facebook profile has relatively low privacy settings – I use it mainly for professional purposes and need people to be able to find it. (I am not arrogant enough to make a Page about myself to handle the professional traffic). This causes a few  problems:

1. Occasionally I may decide to post something that is not confidentially private, but I also don’t necessarily want it broadcast to the entire world.
2. Many of my connections, especially my personal friends, are very conscious of their own privacy. I don’t want that to be compromised by my own Profile’s settings.

Now, the privacy settings that Facebook provide are pretty blunt. But I don’t personally think Facebook has done anything untoward here: we all have to take personal responsibility for what we allow to be shown online. If something we have posted is so private/incendiary that we panic about how Facebook is going to treat it, then we really need to consider whether it should be online in the first place.

Facebook is an extremely useful tool for keeping in touch with family and friends, and connecting with new people. And it is, after all, a FREE service that nobody gets forced to sign up to. We all need to take personal action to keep control of our personal data. If we don’t want to worry about that, then don’t post it online!

Now, getting back to my point.

I know some people in similar situations to me (mixing personal/business stuff) have tried to work around the problem by having two (or more) profiles: one for business and one for just family/friends. But as it turns out, this is against Facebook’s Terms and Conditions and anyone found doing so risks having all of their accounts suspended. Argh.

So a few weeks ago a feature that has been on Facebook for ages finally popped into my consciousness: Friend Lists!

• Account > Edit Friends > Create New List >Choose a Name > select your friends that you want to be in that list

In my case, all of my friends are still in the Everyone setting, but are all in at least 1 other list. This allows me to have posts and comments only appear to a particular group if necessary. You just select who you want the post to appear to in the Share settings, and away you go! (You can also select who you want it NOT to appear to for extra protection).

It takes a bit more thought on my part, but I see it having a number of benefits:

• Personal stuff has an element of protection
• My entire lists doesn’t get bombarded with irrelevant stuff.
• I’m following Facebook’s rules

Check out this page on Facebook for more info on how to use this feature.

Until next time,

Adam

Joel is one of the world’s more prominent commentators on the online interaction already going strong in today’s world, and the focus of this book is on how businesses can utilise this phenomenon to increase their presence and engagement (and therefore, market position) within the growing online community. At least, that’s my nutshell take on it so far.

Having used social networks for my own “life” since Bebo was the newest thing out, but only recently included social media integration in my work at The Meyer Studio, I had already gone into Borders hoping to find a book on this subject. Borders being Borders, I found a wall of books on the topic. I am really grateful that I picked out this book from all the others I saw there.

I will post some more thoughts on the book once I finish. My apologies to Michael Gerber for putting his book down temporarily, but I do promise to pick up where I left off once I finish reading this one!

And for anyone out there who had never thought of using Facebook and Twitter, amongst other things, for business – get a copy of this book!

Check out Mitch Joel’s blog at http://www.twistimage.com/blog/