Social networking has taken over the world on-line.
When you look at some of the numbers, it’s simply staggering; Facebook has 800 million users; Groupon’s growth rate in June of this year was 2,241%. These huge companies didn’t exist 10 years ago. How did they do it? Can Irish businesses capitalize on the techniques they used?
Back in 2004, Mark Zuckerberg realized that people love to see what their friends were doing. Initially, Facebook (or theFacebook as it was originally known) had a very basic profile and was intended to just share with your friends the classes you were taking. From those humble beginnings, Facebook is now worth, according to the latest private share auction on SharesPost, $82.25 billion. Facebook has since become the main player in the social networking space. As Seth Godin outlined in ‘The Dip’ becoming number one means that you are first by a long way.
What is social networking anyway? One way of describing social networking is sharing content and recommendations with your friends. It’s the simplicity of the idea that has made social networking so successful. I am friends with people because we enjoy the same things. So when someone shares something with their friends, it is only natural that they would enjoy it. Of course, not all your friends will enjoy everything you share, but for the most part they will.
All this about sharing, what does it have to do with business? Well it’s all about engagement. When people see that you share good quality content, they will want to engage with you, become your friend, if you like, which they will in turn share with their friends. This is great news for your product or business.
Imagine you have the coolest, most useful product ever and everyone that you show it to agrees with you. How do you get it to market? Traditionally, you would buy some space in a magazine or newspaper, and hope your ad agency could convey your products coolness factor. You may even send it to world renowned reviewers and hope they have time to review it.
However, in todays socially connected world you can simply post a video on youtube and tell a few key people and before you know it you are a multi-millionaire. Easy right? Unfortunately, it’s not quite that easy. The first thing you need to do is build your audience.
Building an audience is possible to do on a shoe string, it does take some patience and work though. The best way of doing it is a 3 pronged attack: a blog; a twitter account and a facebook page.
Writing a blog can be time consuming and hard to keep going (I know all about that). To have a blog that attracts an audience, you need to create content that is relevant to that audience. This content also needs to be discoverable by search engines (SEO). The blog should also be regularly updated, it might be a good idea to set up a calendar alerting you as to when you should post a new article. Articles can be short, they don’t all have to be war and peace. Finally, it’s important to interact with your audience, if someone takes the time to leave you a comment, they deserve a reply. Don’t make your blog about your products. The content has to be interesting; it’s not a sales pitch. That doesn’t mean you can’t mention your products, just don’t make them the focus.
For good examples of blogs have a look at hubspot’s blog of 37 signals’ blog.
Creating a twitter account with a large following starts, again, with good content. You should add ‘tweet this’ links to all articles in your blog. Following people in your industry is another way of growing your audience.
Finally there is Facebook. Your company should have a Facebook page. This year social network use has surpassed portal use, and Facebook is the biggest of them all. Having a presence on Facebook gives you access to 800 million users. The key to a successful Facebook page is once again, good content, regularly updated and engagement with your audience.
Using social networking to promote your business is a must, even if your business is not online. If you don’t do it, your competitors will. Just listen to Burberry’s CEO Angela Ahrendts.