First up, I’m hopeful for these books:

Social Media Marketing for Dummies

I know it’s a “Dummies” book – but they aren’t all bad. In fact, sometimes these are the best tools to introduce novices to new techniques and ideas. They’re simply written and easy to follow, and the format makes it easy to find exactly what you want or ingest bite-size chunks when you have time.

If the Table of Contents of Social Media Marketing for Dummies is any indication, I’m particularly interested in Chapter 4: Launching SIM campaigns. I’m hoping it actually contains some practical advice, and not just a bunch of platitudes and 10,000-mile view. This hope might be overly optimistic… but I’m going to buy it and see.

Social Media Marketing: An Hour a Day

The other book I’m optimistic about seems to be a much more likely option. Social Media Marketing: An Hour a Day appears to have some nice, focused, practical advice on developing, implementing and measuring a social media campaign. This is the updated second edition, but the first addition has a lot of positive reviews, and the Table of Contents is very promising.

I’m buying this in addition to the Dummies book, and while I intend to look at the Dummies book first, I’m more excited about what this one might contain. If I’m lucky, this will have the information and strategies I want to convey to my clients, so I can just recommend the book instead of reinventing the wheel every time I work with a new startup.

Promising General Social Media Books

What I’m currently looking for is books that will help my clients develop and execute an integrated social media strategy. But I’ve inadvertently discovered a couple of books that appear as though they might offer some good tips on developing a brand, creating good content and engaging followers and customers. I’m looking forward to checking these books out as well, although the priority isn’t as high for me. But if you’re in the market for this type of book, check out:

• Likeable Social Media: How to Delight Your Customers, Create an Irresistible Brand, and Be Generally Amazing on Facebook (& Other Social Networks)
• Content Rules: How to Create Killer Blogs, Podcasts, Videos, Ebooks, Webinars (and More) That Engage Customers and Ignite Your Business (New Rules Social Media Series)

I’ll be working my way through these other books in the meantime, and hope to have a solid recommendation (or begin drafting my own social media marketing book) by the end of the week!

How to Leverage Social Networking for Your Business: Part 2 – Facebook

How to Leverage Social Networking for Your Business: Part 1

Since posting Part 1 of this series, where I mentioned that Twitter hasn’t released information about its user base, I’ve found references to indicate that Twitter has grown from 6 million users in February 2009 to over 28 million users in February 2010. This is an unprecedented growth rate, and Twitter is now a prime social networking tool you can use to reach millions of users with a relatively simple, inexpensive marketing campaign.

Why to Pursue Social Networking for Your Business Through Twitter

Twitter provides you an ready-made platform through which to interact with your readers and customers. Twitter is useful from a social networking standpoint in that you can do many of the same things as you can with Facebook, but due to the 140-character limit imposed by Twitter, it’s more appropriate for discussion and interaction. Maintaining a Twitter account gives people a direct way to contact you immediately, instead of having to go to your website and type a lengthy email or go through other contact channels. Twitter also provides a great way for you to update followers and generate traffic to your website.

Grow Customers Virally Through Twitter

One of the biggest benefits of using Twitter is the opportunity to grow customers virally through Twitter. When you post updates to Twitter, your followers can click a simple button to ‘Re-Tweet’ your content. This means they can easily and quickly share your updates with all of their friends, and their friends – on and on. You can easily grow your customer base by dozens, hundreds or thousands of people with a few well-placed Tweets. In fact, if your Tweets get picked up by one of the many celebrities using Twitter, your content could reach over a million people.

Link Your Profile to Your Website

Twitter provides very basic ways of interacting with your readers. On your profile itself, you have your Twitter name, a picture, a link to your website and a 140-character biography. Use your profile to link to your website, because readers won’t be able to find out much about your business from your Twitter profile itself.

Choose a name consistent with your business. For example, in my Facebook article, I did a case study on a local business called Formaggio Kitchen; their Twitter username is Formaggio. Keep your Twitter username relatively short and easy to find. Every time users Re-Tweet your content, your name counts as part of your 140-character limit, so part of your content may get cut off if you have a long username or post at your 140-character limit.

Initiate Discussion

One of the best ways in which Twitter can serve your business is to use Twitter to initiate discussion. You can elicit feedback from your clients via Twitter, or even just chat and trade messages with your clients via Twitter. If you want to widen your metaphorical net, offer a really good promotion or introduce a controversial topic for discussion. This makes people more likely to re-Tweet your content and spread your Twitter ID – and therefore your business – to more friends. At the very least, you can use Twitter to get feedback about your business and services; and at best, you can use Twitter to discuss new potential offerings or item features so you can improve your product or services.

Share Information with Your Followers

Another way to get your name out via Twitter and get people following your posts is to share information with your potential clients via Twitter. Share early updates with your followers, with links to press releases or new product information. Or discuss special offerings, company downtime or anything that is relevant for your readers to know. By sharing valuable information, you’re more likely to induce people to follow you via Twitter, and are more likely to have those people visit your Website when they’re ready to use your services or buy your product. You can also use Twitter to share information about upcoming events and drive traffic to your site.

Manage the Perception of Your Company

Another valuable aspect of using Twitter for your social networking campaign is that it provides you with a ready-made tool to manage the perception of your company. For example, you could use Twitter to respond to customer concerns or feedback. Or you can simply portray a personable, friendly person via your Twitter account – adding an element of humanity to your business.

For example, Southwest Airlines reached out to actor Kevin Smith via Twitter a few weeks ago when he had an unfortunate incident on their flight. Southwest used Twitter to quickly respond to Smith’s concerns, and it gave them the ability to show clients “Look – we responded to this man’s concerns right away.” In that particular case, the Twitter contact didn’t resolve the issue, but it was one outreach tool that the company could utilize to manage perceptions of the company.

Use Special Offers to Gain Followers and Mentions

If you want to build followers on Twitter, you have to give them a reason to mention or re-Tweet your content. One effective way to quickly get the word out about your business is to use special offers to build followers and mentions. Some companies offer giveaways to people who re-Tweet or mention the company name in Twitter posts on a certain day, or during a certain time frame.

For example, one company held a drawing to give away a free Mac laptop to users who mentioned their business name anytime during a specific week. Users could mention the company once per day for a chance to enter the drawing that day. Hundreds of users mentioned the company every single day, which drove more people to research the company and enter the contest; and this company gained thousands of mentions during the course of that week.

Celebrity Twitter Users

Twitter is somewhat unusual in that it has introduced a way for ordinary people to interact with celebrities. Some celebrity Twitter users have over a million followers on Twitter. When a celebrity on Twitter mentions something, potentially over a million people could see that mention. Some celebrity Twitter users have been known to ‘break’ websites by sending too much traffic when they Tweet content. Wil Wheaton, for example, has over 1.5 million followers, and has repeatedly ‘broken’ websites when he has posted links to T-shirts or interesting items he’s found on the Web. Imagine getting 1.5 million people to your website. This is the power that celebrity Twitter users wield.

Conversely, that power can also turn to power to hurt your reputation. Kevin Smith, for example, had around 1.5 million followers when he Tweeted about a negative experience he had with Southwest Airlines. This turned into an ongoing saga that led to news articles and even TV show offers for Smith to talk about his negative experience. And all of this started because Kevin Smith sent out a barrage of negative Tweets about Southwest Airlines when he was in the middle of having a negative experience with them.

Twitter is a Powerful, Free Social Networking Tool

Bottom line: Twitter is a powerful social networking tool that you can use to generate traffic, build followers and manage perceptions of your company. And Twitter is a free tool. You don’t have to pay thousands of dollars for a television ad, or even hundreds of dollars for a print media campaign; all you need is a few minutes each day to create and maintain a company presence on Twitter. Take advantage of this powerful, free social networking tool to market to today’s Twitter audience of roughly 28 million people.

Why pursue social networking for your business through Facebook?

At first glance, Facebook may not seem well-suited for business promotion. The premise of Facebook is to provide a means for friends and acquaintances to connect, stay in touch and interact with one another. However, at last count, Facebook had more than 350 million active users. This is a huge potential audience for your company’s products or services, and some companies have been very successful at managing a Facebook presence to increase and maintain customers.

Grow customers virally through Facebook.

Once you’ve established your presence on Facebook, you can grow customers virally through this social networking tool. When you create a Page for your business, Facebook users can become ‘Fans.’ When a user becomes a ‘fan’ of your page, his friends can see on his profile that he has become a fan of your page, and can follow a link to check out your Page. Your ‘fans’ can also share links and other information that you publish to their friends, thus growing your audience – and potential customers – virally through Facebook.

Create a Page.

While you can interact with people on Facebook as yourself, the best way to promote your business on Facebook is to create a Page for it. You can only create a Page if you’re an authorized member of an organization or company, but a Page gives you a professional face for your organization on Facebook. Once you’ve created a Page, you can add other people as administrators to help you manage Page content. When you create a Page, it doesn’t link back to you as the creator, and people aren’t able to use a Page to find your personal information.

Page offers valuable tools.

When you start a Facebook Page, you give yourself valuable tools to interact with your audience. Other Facebook users can become ‘fans’ of your page, and then they can see status updates that you post in their News Feeds. They can also browse to your Wall and view information that you’ve posted, interact with other users via comments and interact with elements of your Page. Finally, as a Page administrator, you can target your audience – sending updates to a specific demographic based on age, location or sex. This provides an extremely valuable method for you to target your marketing efforts at a core demographic, and to develop targeted messages for various demographics. You can also install Facebook applications on your Page, as well as manage Events through your page.

Share information.

One way in which you can communicate with your audience via Facebook is to share information with your fans. You can let them know about new products, specific events or share news related to your business. Some of the best business Pages are fun blends of news updates and interactive communities. Sharing information enables you to alert people to new products or services, as well as being in the public eye when a potential customer needs the services or products you offer.

Offer promotions.

Another very successful way to interact with your fans is to offer promotions via Facebook. Some companies hold prize drawings for people who become ‘fans’ as a way to get more people to sign up for a Page. In this way, if the buzz is good, you can gain hundreds or thousands of new ‘fans’ for the price of a few $50 gift cards or promotional merchandise. Then you have a captive audience to share updates and promote your services.

You can also host promotions that feature special deals for your Facebook fans to get them to take action with your company. For example, some companies host promotions periodically where Facebook fans get 10 to 20 percent off of an item for a weekend, or 20% off of an order with a special promotional code. This entices fans to visit your business or website and take action – buying products from you. This can be a great way to drastically boost your business, as well as spread viral buzz about your company.

Host events.

Finally, when you have a Page on Facebook, you can host events for your customers. This is a great option if you have a physical location and products to promote. If you create a Page on Facebook, you can host private “fans-only” events – extended hour events where only Facebook fans are admitted, and receive a discount or promotional materials for attending the event. If your business provides services, you can also host Events – free clinics or informational sessions for your services. Don’t underestimate events as a valuable way to promote your business.

Case Studies.

Don’t just take my word for it that Facebook provides valuable social networking tools for businesses. Personally, I have a Facebook profile and am a ‘fan’ of several businesses. These businesses include both services and products, and both physical and online-only businesses. Here are a few businesses that have utilized Facebook as a valuable way to promote their business and grow their customer base:

Zipcar.

Zipcar is a car-sharing company with vehicles available in several major cities around the United States. Zipcar has a Facebook page, which to date has over 28,000 fans. Zipcar uses its Facebook page to share information and reminders about policies, host promotions and create a buzzing community of fans.

Land’s End.

Land’s End is another company that has a Facebook Page and is successfully utilizing Facebook to reach potential customers. To date, Land’s End has over 253,000 fans. They regularly host promotions that involve giveaways to new fans, as well as use the Page to update fans about upcoming sales at the Land’s End website. Land’s End also hosts events which typically include promotions – all of which successfully generate buzz about products and increases sales.

Newegg.

Newegg is a website that sells primarily computers, computer components and computer accessories at reasonable prices, but they also sell other electronics. Newegg is a website only – no physical store locations to promote. However, Newegg has nearly 240,000 Facebook fans, and they employ a similar strategy to Land’s End on their Facebook page. Newegg uses its Facebook page to host promotions and share information about products with fans, but it’s also a fairly active fan community with people discussing computers and electronic products.

Formaggio’s Kitchen.

Finally, there’s Formaggio’s Kitchen: a physical store specializing in cheese and high-end food products. While Formaggio’s Kitchen does have a website storefront, it’s also a physical location, and much of its Facebook Page is dedicated to promoting the physical storefront. Formaggio’s Kitchen uses its Page to share information about products and post Events that it hosts at its storefront to sell and promote products.

You can leverage social networking for your business through Facebook.

These success stories prove that you can successfully leverage social networking to promote your business through Facebook. Thousands of businesses, both online only and with physical storefronts, utilize Facebook to reach a targeted audience and build a potential customer base. Even better – this is a relatively low-cost marketing tool: all you need is some time, or to hire someone to manage your business Facebook Page. Facebook provides an easy way to reach a potential audience of 350 million for the cost of a small time investment.

Part One of this series is going to focus on a general overview, and give you an idea how to get started. Future additions to the series will focus more on specific aspects of utilizing social networking for your business, so keep an eye peeled for the next part in the series.

What is social networking, anyway?

For the purposes of this article, social networking is a description for applications or platforms where people can connect with one another and share their thoughts, likes and dislikes or specific, targeted data. Many types of social networking websites exist, some of the most popular of which are:

Facebook - a social networking platform designed for friends and family to connect and share updates, photos, videos, links and other personal interaction. One of the most popular social networking platforms, with more than 350 million active users. Decent business opportunities and good potential for small businesses or persons of note.

MySpace - another social networking platform similar to Facebook, but with fewer users and less functionality. As Facebook gains popularity, MySpace has been losing users; it currently has 271 million registered users, but that number doesn’t reflect active users. This social networking platform doesn’t offer as much potential for business users, but it is popular with music bands and musicians.

Twitter – a social networking service where people share updates in 140-character “Tweets.” Twitter is growing in popularity, and although Twitter does not release data on the exact number of users, a Web activity analysis in February indicated more than 6 million unique visitors. A Nielsen report in March ranked Twitter as the fastest growing “Member Community” on the Web. Many businesses leverage twitter effectively to keep users updated and offer special deals and offers.

Digg - Digg is a social news website where users can ‘rank’ news stories, articles and websites. The website counts the number of ‘Diggs’ and items with more digs get a higher rank in popularity searches. Digg also recommends items based on the items you Digg. Websites that get a lot of digs get a lot of traffic, and that typically translates to revenue. While this isn’t traditional social networking, Digg is a huge boon for traffic and can bring a lot of revenue to businesses.

Yelp - Compared to the other social networking sites that I mention here, Yelp is relatively small potatoes. Current user data is unavailable, but a news article earlier this year suggested Yelp had around 1.5 million users. However, Yelp is a review website, with focus specifically on restaurants and shopping (although you can post reviews about virtually any commercial service). I mention Yelp because user reviews can be powerful positive (or negative) statements about your business, and a savvy business owner leverages this opportunity instead of ignoring or discounting it.

How social networking benefits your business.

The benefits of social networking vary depending on how you use it and how your business is positioned. Typically, social networking opportunities can bring you page views that translate to potential clients. If your business is positioned correctly, you can take advantage of this increased traffic to capture higher conversion rates. If your business isn’t positioned correctly, or you don’t make good use of social networking opportunities, you’ll miss a lot of potential business.

So social networking serves one primary function: to get you traffic.

It’s up to you to position yourself to benefit from that traffic, and make good use of the opportunities presented by increased traffic.

Prepare your website for social networking.

First and foremost, you won’t get much benefit from social networking unless you have something to show people. Even if you have the best product or service in the world, you can’t convince people of that online unless you show them something. You need an informative, dynamic website to capture your readers’ attention. You need more than a one-page website with company contact information and a basic mission statement.

Look for an article in the next few weeks about how to create an engaging website. I have a lot of experience with this topic, and my article will feature helpful tips and common mistakes to avoid, as well as pointers on how to make sure you’re ideally positioned to capture your audience.

Begin using social networking services.

Once your website is ready and you’re confident that you’re ready to interact with your readers, begin utilizing social networking services. The next several articles in this series will talk about specific ways to utilize various social networking platforms for your business. In general, though; provide information, be transparent to your readers and don’t spam your followers.

Provide information. Use your social networking opportunities to tell readers about your products or services, or to advertise special opportunities. Sales are a great jumping-off point for launching a social networking campaign, but you can use social networking in many ways to promote your business.

Be transparent to your readers. Some companies and businesses simply use social networking to communicate with readers. A Web host, for example, might use social networking to communicate down-time, server issues or planned maintenance. While readers don’t want to hear about bad news, most appreciate hearing it from the source instead of being left in the dark to guess at what’s happening. You can also use it to talk about positive features or upcoming plans, but transparency promotes a sense of personal involvement with your readers. This is a very good thing.

Finally, don’t spam your followers. If your readers get endless promotional messages about products, services or sales, they might stop following you. You want to keep readers engaged. Give them good information, but don’t drive them away with excessive posting, or posting that has little value. This is a fine line to balance, and a seasoned social networking consultant can be extremely helpful in taking the right approach.

Next time.

In the next part in this series, I’ll begin looking at the ways you can utilize specific social networking platforms to promote your business. Look for the next part in the series on Thursday, December 17. [EDIT]Obviously, the next part in the series did not appear on Thursday, December 17. My apologies – I picked up a couple of extra projects that required my immediate attention and I got pulled away from my blog for a while. I’m currently working on drafting Part 2, and expect to have it live in January.[/EDIT]

In the meantime, if you have any questions or anything to add, I’d love to hear from you! Feel free to drop me an email or comment the post and I’d be happy to open a discussion.