To be honest, the social network you select actually depends on the nature of your beast and the purpose of your business. We'll give you the example of our product, eBargainBuddies, to show you the thought process we used that lead to our decision of which social network to integrate our business into.
Why Did We Choose Both Facebook and Twitter for eBargainBuddies?
You see, with eBargainBuddies, we see two problems with bargain shopping. The first is that very few people actually know about sales from businesses, and secondly, that the word-of-mouth for deal sharing is significantly lacking; very few people talk about sales anymore. You see, several businesses like Future Shop, Best Buy or Air Canada address these problems themselves by making content more accessible online and have money to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on designing/printing/mailing paper flyers every two weeks, or buying ad space in newspapers, among other things. Other businesses like clothing stores such as Banana Republic ask consumers to join their emailing lists and send out sales information for upcoming sales electronically. Bargain shopping websites like flyerland.ca and RedFlagDeals.com in Canada keep a good repository of deals but lack the word-of-mouth to spread knowledge of their deals; consumers have to visit these sites at the right time to get the sale that they need, something we call a lack of logical deal sharing that we'll define more later. Obviously, smaller stores and retailers don't have the advertising budgets to match the big dogs, but they actually sometimes have greater sales so that they can compete with the big players. However, a lot of the time these sales go unnoticed because of what we mentioned earlier - a lack of word-of-mouth.The problem here is that all consumers need sales on electronic necessities, sales on air fares, sales on clothes, etc. at one time or another, yet these current approaches of getting the word out for these businesses reach only a small percentage of consumers at any time. Likewise, sales promotions are meant to generate buzz about a business's products and services which relies on word-of-mouth advertising between consumers but how much are small businesses that don't have great advertising budgets really being helped? Consumers are more on-the-go now, checking emails via their phone, text messaging, or talking to friends in a time-insensitive fashion on social networks. With this evolution in communication, deal sharing has taken a back seat.
For our purpose then, eBargainBuddies has a clearly defined niche inside social circles of friends because people normally don't have the time to check all of these advertising streams before they hit the shops. We recognize that friends are now more reliant than ever on deals their friends tell them about because they share the same interests. This is what we call logical deal sharing because it relies on the trust between friends to keep friends in-the-know of the sales they shouldn't miss, and this is what we do with eBargainBuddies.
By integrating our bargain shopping database into the social circles of friends on Facebook, we make it easier for friends to share deals while they're already online; recall last week that we stated that 90% of people on Twitter are business professionals - the trust between friends that we want to use for deal sharing exists more on Facebook. So we've taken bargain shopping and deal sharing that have typically existed as two completely separate concepts and merged them into one sales distribution engine. We've developed a tag function that lets friends tag each other in sales that they feel those friends shouldn't miss out on, and that friend is sent a Facebook notification telling them about it. Not only does it keep people in-the-know, great sales can get viral. If 10 people each tell 10 people who each tell 10 people, that's already 1000 people who know about a sale. For a small business, attracting those type of numbers are huge. And it's logical because, like we said, friends trust sales their friends tell them about and are much more likely to respond to a sale if a friend now, as opposed to a business, informs them about it. Consumers are bombarded with so much advertising these days that they begin to get desensitized.
So How Do You Know If Your Business Needs Facebook and/or Twitter Integration?
Based on what we discussed last week, regardless of your business's purpose, your business should be on Twitter to network with other entrepreneurs, find leads to interested parties who would use your service, as well as mentors and/or bloggers in your industry. A lot of information is posted that you will find useful. If you maintain your own blog, Twitter is also a great way to get word out of new blog postings.
Facebook, on the other hand, is a more passive social environment so you may not receive the response you're looking for (read more about this on PerkettPRsuasion - The PerkettPR Blog). So how do you know if you should use Facebook to market your business?
We've developed this simple process to help you:
1) Clearly define your mission statement. What is the single goal of your product? The goal of eBargainBuddies is to organize sales information from retailers on the web. It is very to-the-point and clearly defined.
2) Does that goal have a social benefit for friends sharing information? Notice I said "friends", not "users". If yes, you need Facebook integration.
That's it!
What Else Does Your Business Need To Do?
Once you've determined which social network(s) to use to market your business, if you've decided to use Facebook, you need to find the best way to integrate your business into the Facebook platform. Facebook has Fan Pages that you can create for your business and Facebook Groups so you can assemble interested consumers in one place. Facebook also has Facebook Applications if you have a product which is leveraged with a greater number of people sharing content.
The other thing your business needs to do is develop some cool widgets and/or features that generate intrigue and/or mystery surrounding your product to create some consumer attraction. Focus on ways to get your product viral. Something unexpected. We recommend reading Made To Stick by Chip and Dan Heath to improve the stickiness of your product.
In the Long-Term, Which Social Network will Survive, Twitter or Facebook?
That's the million dollar question. The million dollar answer is both.
Join us on Twitter @eBargainBuddies for real-time eBB updates.
