We read a fantastic entry at Brian Solis’ blog this morning, titled The Business Guide to Facebook Part 1: Your Brand Page for the Social Web. Looking at the digital+live marketing mix through the lens of social networking, Solis’ view suggests that Facebook allows us to tap into and further the depth of our social conversations with fans… while Twitter is a window into its relevance, or breadth. He also points out that brands will have to apply a renewed focus to their Facebook marketing efforts in order to transform their “Fan pages” into “Brand pages” that can capitalize on the network’s exploding capabilities. In other words, social media specialists will need to be much more specialized in order to leverage each of these digital channels to their potential.
It’s worth a trip over to his site to have a read. In the meantime, here’s a quick download of some key points he made.
1. Facebook and Twitter demand unique, dedicated approaches
Facebook and Twitter are unique in their design and their culture and each offer distinguishing opportunities for businesses. As such, they demand a dedicated focus, strategy, and approach.
2. Twitter: your window to relevance
Twitter is important and essential to learning, engaging, and cultivating customer communities. Twitter is your window to relevance, both understanding how to identify and earn it.
3. Facebook: a social epicenter for business
Facebook, as both a network and a platform, is unlocking new and important connections between people, brands, content, and data. Once we explore the culture and technical advantages of Facebook Connect, Likes, and the scope and possibilities of the open graph, we get an idea of the deepening emphasis required to transform Facebook from a “Fan Page” to a bona fide brand page, creating nothing less than a social epicenter for business.
4. Integrate Facebook into all your online properties
More than one million developers and entrepreneurs from more than 180 countries support Facebook as a “platform” with greater than one million websites integrating Facebook sharing, liking and visualized social graph features into content discovery and consumption. So, what does that mean? Integrate Facebook functionality into your online properties (in addition to other relevant social presences of course).
That’s why the photo activation microsites we create at Picture Marketing always have seamless Facebook integration. Sure, there was a time when that was cutting-edge. But as you can see, it’s becoming the de-facto state of the web. Don’t let your campaign miss the connection to that living infrastructure.
5. When “Fans” became “Likes,” everything changed
What started as “Fans” has evolved to “Likes” and in that simple shift in phraseology comes something quite profound. “Fans” implies a hierarchical relationships where brands publish at will to a community that feels a bit more like a traditional audience. “Likes” begets a linear form of relationships where we earn the endorsement of a social consumer, but in order to foster a community, we have to continue to do so. This introduces a peer-to-peer (P2P) dynamic where rather than program our Facebook activity from a top-down perspective, we now have to consider an active participatory role in earning Likes, attention, and hopefully advocacy much more frequently than we may have anticipated initially.
6. Social engagement leads to purchases (digital actions catalyze live behaviors)
In February 2010, market research firm Chadwick Martin Bailey along with iModerate Research Technologies, surveyed over 1,500 individuals online as well as conducted one-on-one discussions to contextualize social media behavior. Their research shows us that social commerce and quite specifically, F-commerce (Facebook Commerce) is bursting at the seams.
Since actions speak louder than words, the study sought to answer the question of whether or not engagement actually leads to purchases. The answer is yes. An impressive 51% of Facebook fans and 67% of Twitter followers indicated that they are more likely to buy since connecting online.
7. Facebook is a transformative social marketplace
Facebook is changing the way we think about business, customers and community and as such, there’s much to learn. Everything begins at the beginning and together, we will earn relevance and expand business opportunities in a new social marketplace one Like at a time.