image courtesy of mashable.com

Over the past week, Facebook exceeded 500 million members. 

If Facebook were a country, it would easily be the 3^rd most populous, behind only China and India.

In the United States, almost one out of every two people have a Facebook profile (125,881,220 in the States out of a total estimated population in 2010 of 309,884,000, or 41%).

Sure, there have been legitimate squabbles and concerns about privacy, use of content, etc., but how would you not consider having a presence where at perhaps 40% of your target market is active and engaged?  Besides, social media marketing is about connection, transparency, and building relationships with your clients, not selling product.  Eventually, if a relationship is built, trust follows.  Call me old school, but I’ve seen again and again that people buy from people they like and trust.  Remember:  we may be dealing in a whole different realm of marketing, but some of the rules stay the same.

How can Facebook be an effective tool for your company?  Creating a page for your business (see the Mingledorff’s page HERE), allows a landing spot for friends, clients, and prospects to gather and absorb information from you.  The content you post can come in myriad forms:  simple text updates, pictures, videos, event invitations, links to other sites (including your own), links to other Facebook pages, Twitter updates, music, etc., etc., etc.

Furthermore, the people who join (or “like”) your page can recommend it to their network of friends.  So, let’s say you have a company that offers a valuable service to potential buyers (hmm…maybe HVAC maintenance contracts?).  If you have some existing clients or friends who are part of your Facebook company page, then all their friends will see that.  Rather than you placing an expensive ad in the Yellow Pages, you have a company profile attached to people who trust you, and who can give a credible, virtual “word-of-mouth” endorsement to new leads.  All for the cost of…nothing (well, except a good bit of time; I’ll get into that down the road).

This is a very simplistic way of looking at Facebook.  Much like Twitter, I’ll dig into the meat n’ potatoes in later posts.  In the meantime, I’d like you to at least consider having a presence online, especially on Facebook.  If you have any questions or thoughts, please drop them in the comment field.  Thanks!

We’ve been through a lot of stuff on Twitter.  Like a tidal wave of information.  Ironic, because that’s really what Twitter is.  If you’re following thousands of people, they’re updates are coming streaming down one window on the web version, and you are inevitably going to miss quite a bit of information; perhaps vital information as it pertains to generating leads.

This is where specialization comes in.  First off, you can create “lists” in Twitter.  Simply by creating a list name, then assigning the people you follow to those lists, you can seperate out more specific information.

Secondly, there are tools such as Tweetdeck, Twitterfall, and Seesmic Desktop that can help sort through the clutter.  By allowing the user to create as many custom columns as needed, a “tweeter” can seek out relevant and interesting people and searches.

For example, let’s say you are a mechanical contractor who follows homeowners, churches, facility management companies, architects, engineers, and builders.  However, things are getting pretty crazy in your feed, and new updates are coming every second.  You want to only see what is going on with builders.  The simplest solution is to build a list for “builders”. Simply go to “lists”, create a name, and save. Then, go through your contacts and click the list icon to select them.  Now, you can access that list and only see updates of those you’ve designated.

If you have a bit more of an organizational brain (unlike me), you can employ a “tweetdeck” to manage different lists and searches. The free, downloadable software (Tweetdeck, Seesmic, etc.) allows you to create unlimited columns specific to particular parameters. So, you could have a column for your whole feed, one for mentions of you, one for your list, “builders”, and one for the search “air conditioning”. It’s a great way to see more of what’s going on in your sphere of interest.

Finally, if you want to very simply see what’s out there (whether you follow tweeters or not), go to http://search.twitter.com. Here, you can type in search criteria and see all the updates including that criteria. It’s a great way to find people to follow, mentions of your industry, or even mentions of your company.

How do you think these tools could benefit your company? Feel free to drop any questions in the comment field.

In some past posts, I’d covered the basics of using Twitter:  a brief overview, and how to converse with others.

Why am I hung up on all this Twitter mess?  It was frankly the stupidest thing I’d ever seen when I first happened upon the site about 2 1/2 years ago.  As if Hollywood didn’t have a big-enough collective ego…now the “look at me!” complex extended into essentially texts of everything going on in that person’s life…

…however, as the layers are peeled away from Twitter’s simplistic exterior, one realizes the power of connection that it can generate.  Connection creates relationships, relationships foster referrals, referrals turn to leads, and leads are potential sales.

So, let’s say you know how to follow people, you know how to get a tweet out there as well.  How can you build on the conversation?

When you follow someone and they follow you back, you have the option to DM (direct message) them.  From here, you still only have 140 characters to get your message across, but you’ve worked your way into a 1-to-1 conversation, allowing a more-tailored message.

For example (and I’m stealing an example for Gary Vaynerchuk’s book, Crush It! ).  Let’s say you work for an Aspirin company.  You notice in a Twitter Search for #headache (more on searching and hashtags in ”Twitter 104″) that someone says “man, I have a terrible headache today.”  So, you follow.  If you profile is interesting and honest enough, that person might follow back.  Once that happens, you can send a DM.  You send a message that says, “hey, can I send a sample of my product to you?  Might help the headaches.”  If they agree, you’ve generated a lead; you’ve put your product in front of a consumer; you’ve perhaps created a customer for life.

How could you use this strategy in the HVAC service industry?  Who knows the next time this tweet will come across your feed: