A guy had hundreds of Facebook friends and decided to throw a Facebook party. One person showed up and that was a stranger. Facebook friends don’t equate to real friends. Real friends don’t tell you they might show up to your party even though you’re in Toronto and they are in Vancouver.
Facebook is useful, but, just like your regular friends, not all of them are such good friends they will help you move. Your posts to Facebook are like posts to a message board. Twitter, by contrast, is a conversation. You can have Facebook friends and never visit their home pages. On Twitter, your followers get your 140-character messages pushed on their Tweet deck. Eyes are on you as opposed to Facebook’s Friend ’em and Forget ’em.
But from a purely marketing perspective, quantity isn’t really important. It’s about the quality of your friends and followers. Do your interests dovetail? If you’re marketing a book, your business or service, what’s your ROI? (ROI stands for Return on Investment.)
That’s what many businesses miss: a cost/benefit analysis. Are you spending too much time on your blog and not enough time writing? What time and money efficiencies can you find? Do you need to revamp your approach to social media marketing? Do you need to bring in a guest blogger or refocus your content and search engine optimization to get eyes on your page?
Think of your social media approaches as pipes that lead people back to your website. Your web presence is a package. Twitter is a conversation in which you can sell your services after you sell yourself. Facebook has more personality, but first you sell yourself before your services. Your blog isn’t a diary. It’s a magazine.
On your website, the pitch is still somewhat buried in that your provide value and interesting stuff first. Your call to action has to be there if you’re trying to sell something, but don’t come on too strong because people may find you through your website first. For special promotions or straight ads, consider a mini-website (one page dedicated to your hard pitch or a linking to a separate business website for more of the straight dope on your services and products.)
For instance, my separate (business) website is at the click of the happy pic at www.chazzwrites.vpweb.ca.
Filed under: Publicity & Promotion, Social Media, Twitter, Facebook, promotion, selling, Twitter
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