Time to Face Up
I hear people wondering aloud all the time whether Facebook is truly a business tool. Sure it’s great for keeping track of nieces and nephews and long-lost buddies from Europe, but who wants clients and co-workers digging into their personal life …or even worse potential clients and co-workers.
To me, it’s a no brainer. The idea is to be out there on the Web in as many capacities as you can. FB is an important piece of that.
To me, it’s kind of like living in a small town. Sure, FB allows people to see things you might not want to advertise to your business associates for one reason or another. Like all social networking though, it’s a question of management. You move to the small town that is Web 2.0; you set up shop, i.e. your website. You put together a business image for yourself and you gain exposure by networking…so instead of joining the Elks and going to church on Sunday, you get on LinkedIn and Twitter say…and maybe you start a blog and read and comment on others. Then there’s the personal stuff. Remember, it’s a small…or a small world as the case may be. If you hide everything but the business front, what do people about you? How do differentiate from the hundreds or even thousands of other small businesses or people who are in larger businesses. I think you let people get to know you.
Once again though, you manage your personal business in a way that limits exposure. Customers like knowing a little bit about you as a person. They respect your privacy perhaps, or find that most of your FB life is not particularly interesting to them and that what is interesting is probably something they have in common. Occassionally you find a competitor or nosy neighbor who wants to dig a little too much into who you are and what you do and that can be a little disconcerting. Still, you never publish things that would cast a bad light, and if people take things the wrong way, well that’s their perception and it’s important to manage perceptions.
I believe FB is a good piece of a solid inbound marketing strategy…a way of giving yourself dimension, letting people know what you like and why they might like you. After all, salespeople have to sell themselves first. So now, with social networking and inbound marketing, you’re sending out the sales force every time a customer finds you on the Web. Wouldn’t that mean you’d want to give them things to like about you? A glimpse behind the kimono so to speak? I don’t think it could hurt. In fact, I find FB helpful and I believe it will become more helpful as time goes on and we all learn more about when and whether and how to invite people in as friends.