Welcome to week 2. Here is the link to the lesson for this week, which focusses on Facebook:
Do you remember the first time you succumbed to signing up for Facebook? For me, it was July 2007. I had already started hearing about this “Facebook thing” which at the time I thought was something just for university students. I received an email invite directly from one of my best friends and thought I’d give it a try, as it came from someone I trusted. It was not long after the birth of our first daughter, in Delft, The Netherlands. As an avid traveller and with friends and family all over the world, I’d already used email for a long time to keep in touch and had regularly used “group emails” to update others on my travels but didn’t like “spamming” friends who may or may not have been interested in my daily life. All of a sudden, I was exposed to this new way of communicating. With a Facebook profile, I could upload photos and share status updates…and just those who were actually keen to keep in touch could come and take a look. So I shared lots of pictures of my new baby daughter, without needing to email big files directly to people, and got some lovely comments on each photo. Then I started receiving messages from people I thought I’d long lost touch with (sometimes for a reason but that’s another story isn’t it!) Regardless of your personal story, do you remember how new and unique – yet also intuitive – this new way of communicating was when you first discovered it?
Facebook has now become a part of my daily life…and millions and millions of others. You can read the Wikipedia Facebook entry here for some general information on the history. I guess how I have become a specialist in this area of social media is that I recognised early on the potential for business and organisations to use this platform to capture the incredibly valuable – but until now rather elusive and difficult to measure – power of WOM (word of mouth). Even before business “pages” were popular, friends and I were using Facebook to share information about products and services to save ourselves time and stress when shopping around or to organise outings…and basically publicly talk about businesses we liked – or didn’t. I have then applied this personal interest in Facebook and combined it with my experience of working in marketing and studying in this area..and since then have helped literally hundreds of businesses and organisations grow their presence on Facebook.
I have really enjoyed the potential to be able to create and manage a number of communities on Facebook to align with the different areas of my life:
- www.facebook.com/zesteeconcepts is the place where I can share social media and marketing matters and is the “home” of this online course
- www.facebook.com/professionalparents is a place where I am bringing together a growing group of parents who balance business and family
- www.facebook.com/dutchaustralian is where I share things of interest to others who, like our family, are dual national Dutch Australians
- www.facebook.com/motherbabyhub is a page which I have built through my job for a social enterprise, and until recently when we have had a marketing budget for more traditional media,
- www.facebook.com/abbeytournament
- www.facebook.com/PineRiversChamberCommerce
- www.facebook.com/MoretonBayCommunityLeaders
- www.facebook.com/almaparkzoo
You’ll notice each of these have claimed their “valuable Facebook real estate” by claiming a unique URL. Make sure you do the same. If you’re not sure how, keep reading for some places to find help when you want to learn to do either this – or anything else – on Facebook. As things move so fast on social media, I’d like to encourage everyone to learn how to find up to date and relevant help when they get stuck.
Here are a few posts I wrote in the last year or so to help with some basic Facebook questions:
- Facebook Profiles, Pages & Groups (the differences and when to use each)
- Did you set up a Facebook Profile for your business instead of a Page?
- How to create a page on Facebook
- Creating a Facebook unique URL for your business
- Socially Sorted: Donna is Sunshine Coast based and shares lots of great tips
- Saucy Social Media: Also on the Sunshine Coast, Annie runs workshops & consults
- Brisbane Kids: Ngaire demonstrates by doing – check out her followers & engagement! She is also available for consulting
- Creative Collective: An agency on the Sunshine Coast offering online & offline training
- Social Media Short Cut: Sunshine Coast based Zoe is also a trainer & consultant
Zestee 
Thanks Renee. I don’t remember my first Facebook experiences. But I’m certainly making up for lost time. I love the WOM of fb, but am completely surprised at how many businesses are un-prepared for a ‘not so positive’ comment on their page. Do you have any statistics on what sectors or business types are doing well with fb and what demographics they’re reaching?
Thanks Lisa, you make a good point – I was also surprised that one of the biggest fears businesses seem to have is negative WOM. As a professional PR person, I’m sure you can share about the importance of handling this well. As a marketing person, it’s actually a wonderful thing to have ANY feedback – and the great thing about social media is that you are capturing – and having a chance to respond and engage with customers who have had a good or bad experience with you. (as opposed to them simply talking to their friends and family when you have no idea what they are saying & no chance to respond!).
No stats to share I’m sorry but good reminder for me to look into this. I am always a bit dubious with stats as they can be presented to suit the interested parties often I feel and with something as huge as FB it would be hard for anyone to capture the data apart from FB themselves – and even then I wonder about how they choose to share stats and if it’s angled towards their favour. However you can check out their newsroom stats here:http://newsroom.fb.com/
Renee