By Mark Dahmke
Information Analytics
August 26, 2009

If you haven't taken the time to explore Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, please stop what you're doing and do so now. You might not think of Facebook as a marketing opportunity, but it is, for virtually every type of business, and you could be missing out if you don't have a presence there. The same goes for Twitter and LinkedIn. The number of users on each of these services is growing at an incredible rate, and it reminds me a lot of the early "gold rush" days of the web.

Just as the web changed the way we communicate with our customers, social networking has made it much more personal. People now expect to have a one-on-one conversation with companies of all sizes. A case in point is airline JetBlue. JetBlue has put a human face on a large corporation, and now communicates directly with customers to resolve complaints and "tweet" (broadcast on Twitter) reduced fares and specials. Other airlines are now playing catch-up as they realize that JetBlue has redefined the landscape.

There is another very practical reason for using these services – they'll improve the search engine ranking for your company's website.

Social Networking 101 for Business Applications

I highly recommend buying a copy of Joel Comm's book Twitter Power. Twitter started out with a very simple concept – broadcasting text messages that are no more than 140 characters long. Joel has expanded on this simple idea and created a marketing formula with such complexity that it will make your head spin. A whole set of unwritten rules and etiquette have grown up around "tweeting" (which means sending out short messages or "tweets" through Twitter). Even if you don't fully implement all of his recommendations, I recommend reading the book just to get a flavor for what is possible, and how other businesses are exploiting, and profiting from their social networking experience.

Typical business applications include promoting specials or sales, new products and making other announcements that might be of interest to your customers. Often a company will establish a blog or "web log" on their website where they post short messages to communicate with customers, and the blog can be configured to repost your messages automatically to Twitter.

In addition to just posting marketing messages, as Joel points out in his book, you will need to mix in personal messages and engage customers in a dialogue. The broadcast-only model will work, but will not be as effective.

You should also setup a Facebook account, and then create a Facebook page for your business. The same messages can be posted to Facebook, and you'll also want to personalize the site with some photos, invite customers to join your page and become group members or fans, depending on the type of page you setup.

There are ways to post simultaneously to Twitter and Facebook, but they can impose their own limitations, so for now we recommend updating them separately. We've written applications that can update a blog, RSS (news syndication) feed and Twitter, all in one step, which simplifies management of your posts. However when conducting a dialogue you'll still need to answer questions on the site where they were posted.

Our client Tosca Lee has made good use of social networking to promote her books. She posts a mix of messages, including information about her book tours and speaking engagements, but mixes in personal messages about the research she's doing for her next book. She also answers back-story and behind the scenes questions about plot lines and characters. All of her messages add depth to her story telling and connects with readers in a way that is almost impossible to do through any other medium.

Another client, George Blake of Hanalei Vacations, uses Facebook to advertise special rates on his Hawaiian vacation rental properties. By inviting former tenants to join his page, he keeps them posted on various travel specials, which results in more repeat customers.

LinkedIn is a social networking site that is aimed at businesses and is particularly well suited to job hunting and recruiting. LinkedIn allows you to connect to trusted business associates, clients and friends. Following on theory of "six degrees of separation" – that you are no more than six steps away from anyone on the planet, LinkedIn lets you build and access a network that extends out to three steps. In my case, with almost 200 people in my network, I have access to over 9,700 people who are no more than two steps away, and almost 800,000 people who are no more than three steps away. I can ask anyone in my network for an introduction to anyone they are linked to, and I can broadcast my marketing messages to all 800,000, or I can advertise on LinkedIn to potentially reach all 40 million users.

Getting Started

We now recommend that all of our clients at least take a look at what these services have to offer. They're all free, there are no monthly subscriptions for the entry-level services, so you're only investing some of your time to explore this new marketplace.

Your first step should be to search all three services to see what your direct competitors and industry peers are doing.

Next, create your Facebook page, your Twitter account and a LinkedIn account and start building your network. Do this first, before you start sending out messages. Learn the rules and etiquette so you won't offend anyone with the social networking equivalent of "spam." Watch what others do until you feel comfortable with the medium, and then try some very low-key tweets, to see what response you get. You'll also quickly learn what people don't like – there are a lot of completely pointless, useless and annoying tweets on Twitter. I don't really care what someone had for breakfast, unless of course they're recommending a good restaurant. In spite of all the noise on Twitter, it still offers fertile ground for effective marketing campaigns.

Don't let your pages go stale! Once you start down this path, you, or someone in your company, will need to be directly involved in the dialogue on a daily or at least weekly basis.

Consider adding a blog to your website, and also add the buttons to every page of your site that allow people to share your content on Facebook, Digg, LinkedIn, Slashdot and other networking sites. For examples, see our site at www.4w.com, or take a look at almost any newspaper or online magazine, or blog site to see how this is done. If you post a message on your blog about a new product or service, and a customer decides to share that with their Facebook friends, they've just given you the best form of free advertising there is – a recommendation from a satisfied customer.

If anyone tries to tell you that Twitter and social networking services are a passing fad, or aren't business-friendly, don't believe it. They are here to stay, and Twitter is in the process of being monetized, although what form it will take is still unknown. Now is the time to jump on the bandwagon and stake your claim. If you don't, your competitors certainly will.

Mark Dahmke is Vice President and co-owner of Information Analytics, a full-service web design and hosting company that also provides custom software development and IT support services. Information Analytics can help you design an effective marketing strategy that integrates your website, traditional marketing and social networking venues.