Social Networking in today’s world isn’t much different than it always has been. It’s about connecting to others. The trend over the past few years has exploded online to finding old classmates, a new mate, old friends, new business connections, like minded sport and social groups; the list of reasons and number of sites goes on and on. Currently heading the list are Facebook and Twitter, if you haven’t heard of them, feel free to search for them and educate yourself.
Many of my clients over the past few years have been asking about what they should do to advertise on these social networking sites and while I don’t want to discourage people from going where their potential customers are, I think that we could be using these sites for an entirely different purpose.
I liken these sites to a mixer party. A very, very LARGE mixer. Facebook is a mixer with over 500, 000, 000 (yes, 5 hundred MILLION) guests. That’s a goldmine of opportunity! Most folks’ mouths salivate at the number of dollars they could gain from all of those customers, but I ask you to ask a different question; what could you LEARN from all those people?
That’s 5 hundred million people offering free information to you about what they do, what they like, how they spend their days etc. etc. What could you learn from this information? Could it help you serve your customers better? If you served them better, would they become more loyal, frequent purchasers of your product/service?
For instance, I typed “Skiing” into Facebook search and stopped counting after 140 different pages about Skiing. People who like skiing, people who don’t, people who ski at night, helicopter skiing, cross country, alpine, extreme; again the list continues. But, if you were to join one or 2 of the bigger pages in your area that pertain to your business and began listening in to the conversations there, what might you learn? Could you offer advice or answer anyone’s questions? How would that later affect your business?
One thing I’ve learned in my business is that everyone loves something for free, and if you can offer some solid advice to someone in need, for free; they’ll be more likely to turn to you the next time they need expertise such as yours.
So, how would your company act at the worlds largest mixer?