Social networking is an important tool for managing business relationships, as well as personal relationships. In a presentation from Harley-Davidson, they explained that they used to pay millions of dollars to public relations and marketing teams in order to get news of their products out to their loyal fans. They had to print up magazines for Harley Owners Group Members. Today, with the use of social networking, they have people who want to sign up to follow their brand on social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter where they have a combined 950,000 members who voluntarily receive notices of new products, limited edition t-shirts, and events. All of this works two-fold, it brings in revenue in terms of sales, but it also makes the follower feel like they’re part of a special group and helps to grow brand-loyalty in a way the world has never seen before.
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The Internet presents a new opportunity for business owners to leverage. The greatest fear in the Internet is no longer the idea of failure, but the idea of ridicule. Odds are, your company is already an established brand offline, but by taking it a step further and working to engage users, you can help to gain insight into their lifestyle, while they gain insight into your business. Social networking is the best free advertising that you can have.
Currently Facebook has over 400 million users with the majority of them based out of the United States. According to Facebook, 50% of their users login on a daily basis and has an average of 130 friends. You need to be taking advantage of this audience.
The CEO of Zappos, Tony Hsieh, currently has a Twitter following over 1.7 million people strong
and growing. He doesn’t use Twitter as an outlet for coupons or promotion, but merely shows the passion of his employees, his insight into the business world, and the occasional personal quip. He leverages Twitter in a way that most other CEOs and even marketing specialists haven’t been able to.
A few guidelines for Facebook and Twitter
- Create a Facebook and Twitter page and allow people to interact back and forth with you
- Update your Facebook page often, but not so often that people will become annoyed
- Use coupons and promotions to keep your users happy and reward them for being a devoted follower
- Invite any friends that you may have and actively promote you Facebook page on your website
- Do not post controversial topics or opinion pieces that you wouldn’t want associated with your business, but do add a personal touch
- Try out applications like HootSuite to post simultaneously to Twitter and Facebook at the same time
The biggest fear we find when we talk to corporate leaders, is the idea that someone is going to contact you
through Facebook or Twitter and give your product a bad name. We like to explain to them that this isn’t a downfall of social networking, but a chance for the business to publically show their dedication to a customer and go above and beyond to help them. Users notice when there are 99 comments of people saying, “I love your product!” and then one dark spot where someone is complaining, but through the miracle of public comments, you can show how swiftly you can handle and diffuse a situation and turn one unhappy customer into many lifelong customers, without even spending a dime.
