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In the second, first edition of the Overflow Podcast for 2009 we have to cop to a “do over” for the first edition of Overflow recorded last week.
In an attempt to demonstrate our thinking regarding the use of social media tools, we thought that it would be clever to take a look at a specific organization and bring to light our recommendations. The idea seemed to fall into the category of killing two birds with one stone … record a weekly podcast for our listeners and then re-purposing that podcast as a new business pitch. We would send a link for Overflow to that potential client that we targeted, outlining our rationale.
Upon second thought, we decided that it wasn’t fair to the subscribers and listeners of Overflow to subject you to that type of blatant pitch. Your time is too valuable and we are humbled that you choose to spend some time each week with us, and we would have felt extremely guilty if we had proceeded with our idea.
So here is our first Overflow of 2009:
We have come to appreciate Facebook as a potential network for brands to gain exposure to a potential of 150 million users and counting. Facebook seemed to be a hangout for college socialites planning the next keg party in the early days so we were not heavy supporters, however we have come around to believe that it can be a destination to build a secondary brand community complimenting the original web site/ blog.
There are still elements in Facebook that aren’t all to clear from a real business standpoint – throwing sheep, sending flair, sending drinks .. although Cameron postulates that the branding of such “features” could help promote a product.
The older demographic is starting to adopt Facebook as a great way to regain contact with long lost high school and college friends, while the growth of the younger adopters has flattened out, simply because they have saturated the space. It really is starting to hit the mainstream.
Our experience with clients advertising on Facebook has not yielded any results in terms of click throughs or conversions on the banner ads throughout the site, so there is still an entire business model to be executed for the company. However, brands who are able to interject their message directly into the news feed of users we believe will witness significant results.
That’s why Facebook Connect as an application should be immediately deployed by brands. Having consumer interactions with a brand’s blog appear directly in the news feed of Facebook users is a sure fire way to expose a message (important!!) in an actual consumer’s voice to their social group. From there it becomes exponential message reinforcement and growth as others within that friends list interact with the brand.
Also keep in mind the opportunity to post video and photography as a way to create brand awareness.
A secondary conversation to the Facebook social network is the use of LinkedIn as a complimentary way to expand your social graph. A great feature to use if you are looking to demonstrate knowledge or expertise in a category is to participate in LinkedIn Answer to gain credibility.
Have you found Facebook to be beneficial for your brand marketing efforts? Let us know in the comments.
To friend us on Facebook you can connect with Joe and Cameron
To connect on LinkedIn you can find Joe’s profile or Cameron’s profile.
