In a recent poll I asked you to vote on the primary social network you use for your business, where you spend most of your time for business (not personal). I limited it to the top five: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, and YouTube. As you can see in the results below, Facebook beat the others by two to one.
Interesting to me was that Twitter and LinkedIn were tied. Google+ got only 2 votes which isn't too surprising since it's a very young network and no one voted for YouTube. That tells me most people use YouTube either 1) not at all or 2) as a secondary site for boosting visibiltiy and traffic. When I asked a similar question in 2010, Twitter came in second with LinkedIn well behind. So it appears LinkedIn is gaining ground as an important site for businesses to be using for their networking.
Of course there is nothing scientific about this poll. Asking one question doesn't provide a full picture of who and how businesses in my network are using these sites. The next questioni is: does your business cater primarily to other businesses (B to B) or to consumers (B to C)?
Another question might be: Are you getting results (traffic, leads, customers/clients, opportunities) from the time you spend on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn? How do you know?
Each network requires its own special form of attention to create visibility, attract new fans/followers/connections, and actually have meaningful engagement.
In my experience, Facebook is the most challenging. With their crazy algorithyms, you have to work consistently and thoughtfully to build your fan base and get your content seen in their newsfeeds so you get the engagement that attract more fans and more engagment (I realize that's a long, run on sentence; it's how I sometimes feel about Facebook!). It's an endless cycle of experimentation.
Last week I watched Amy Porterfield's excellent webinar on 7 Simple Strategies to Profit from Facebook Marketing. Even though I've been using Facebook since January 1, 2008, I learned quite a few cool tactics from Amy which I've been implementing for the last week. One tip – to ask simpler, short questions that require only one word answers – has increased "likes" and comments. Amy provided several examples which sparked some ideas so I'm going to post questions on a weekly basis. I'm also using more pictures with my status updates even though it takes a little more time to find an appropriate image. The result is a lot more visibility and therefore interaction, in the newsfeed.
If you haven't watched Amy's webinar, I highly recommend it (Pre-recorded and available daily through December 18). You'll get a lot of immediately actionable ideas. I also purchased her FBInfluence product and am impressed with the depth, detail and delivery and resources. It's way underpriced at $97.
Another recommendation for increasing interaction on your Facebook page, is to check out this article by Andrea Vahl on Social Media Examiner: Top 10 Facebook Apps for Fan Engagement and Building Community. Andrea outlines a couple great apps for acknowledging your fans (Booshaka and Fan of the Week).
By the way, Amy Porterfield and Andrea Vahl, along with Phylls Khare, are co-authors of the definitive book on Facebook for business: Facebook Marketing All-in-One for Dummies. You've got plenty of ways to learn about how to master Facebook for your business!
Back to my question above, if Facebook is your primary social network for business, are you getting the results you want and how do you measure/track that?
Hi Denise
I agree with you that Facebook is more complicated to use for business than it first appears. So many small businesses think that marketing on Facebook is easy because they have a personal profile, but there is a lot more to it. I bought Amy’s Facebook Influence when it first went live and highly recommend it for the value of the content.
Nicky, thanks for sharing your recommendation for @AmyPorterfield:twitter Facebook product. It is excellent.
Great information, Denise. I can confirm that Amy’s webinar is outstanding, and I’m going to read the Social Media Examiner piece right now.
I have created an editorial calendar for my Facebook Page for 2012, and I’m using Hootsuite to schedule short content every day that stimulates simple-response engagement. I expect this to generate some blog content ideas too. I’m looking forward to seeing what happens.
Elizabeth, thanks for sharing your experience of @AmyPorterfield:twitter webinar. I’ve actually listened to it twice, plus bought her product. No matter how much you think you know, there’s always something else to learn!