Right now I am sitting in the Cincinnati airport, feet up, next to a window looking at my plane, which is delayed. So what am I doing? Facebook. I've just spent two hours in the airport (and an $8 wifi fee) on Facebook networking and talking cake. Well, and some chili too;) And before this I was in the Toronto airport (free wifi thank you very much Canada) doing the same thing.
My point being, you've got to put the "work" in social networking. It's not a magic bullet or a free marketing ride where you just sign up and awesome happens. The internet is a crowded, loud environment that is becoming increasingly difficult to filter through and receive the information you want. Even harder is trying to send that information to your target audience.
All Hail Facebook
As I write this, the Merci Beaucoup fan page has roughly 2300 Facebook fans (today we stand at 2536). What this means is our fans are amazing, we love you! What it does not mean is that everything I post to my wall will reach all 2300 plus every time. Facebook calls them "impressions," roughly the number of times that post has appeared on someone's feed. An impression is how many opportunities someone had to see it, not necessarily that they did see it! How many posts do we overlook in our own feeds everyday, right? For every nugget of information you post, only a select few will see it. Post it again, some of those same and maybe a few new ones. It is a system of diminishing returns, but in order to spread the word as much as possible you have to keep posting. It's frustrating for the poster and if you're not careful, you can lose fans because you're telling them about your shirts all the time. And I do worry about that! I want to sell our shirts, I know the FBers have expressed interest, so I keep posting because I have to, but I try not to bury them in an avalanche of marketing either. It's a delicate scale.
First of all, you need a "fan page" for your business. Underlined, bold, fan page. If you are using a personal page as your business page... how do I put this nicely.... you're not, ummm... "using your full brain capacity." Personal pages are for you, a person. In fact, FB heavily frowns on people not using their real names on their personal pages and you even risk their monitors deleting your account because it is "Cakes by Carl" rather than Carl Hawk. Yes, they do that, and yes, I just used my dad's name as an example, but no, he does not make cakes;) There's absolutely zero reason for you not to create a fan page, so do it. Do it right now, then come back and read why.
Now, that you have a fan page, while on that page look to the right of the screen. You will see a link that says "use Facebook as _____." Click that and now, wherever you go on FB, you go as your business. When you leave comments, you leave them as your business. When you like other pages, you like them as your business. This makes it infinitely easier for other people to find and like your business.
I've asked a number of times for people to leave their business pages in our comments so we can like them back and less than three people have commented as their business. I had to do a lot of searching to find pages and in some cases, they had a name that was also being used by up to 10 other cakers! If they were "using as," it would've taken me seconds, two clicks worth, to find and like them.
"Using as" also allows you to like other pages and then easily tag them in your status updates etc. If you don't understand tagging, you need to go to the Facebook Help Centre and learn all you can about tagging and fan pages. Tagging turns your name or your business name into a quick text link so that people can go to your page. It is a must as you interact with other pages and people on Facebook, because you should be interacting! That's the "social" part of social networking!!
"But why can't I just use my personal page?" What?! I told you to go make a fan page already! Alright, listen up my hesitant friend: your personal page requires people to request your friendship, and if I'm using Facebook as Merci Beaucoup, I cannot, being a fan page, request your friendship. Even if you accept everyone's personal requests (which, depending on how active you are online could take hours, days or weeks), it is still a closed system. The fan page is open, and all someone has to do is click "like" and they are connected to your business. You don't have to do anything to allow them access, so why make it harder for people to interact with you by only having a personal page?
The cake community is fun and diverse! There's a lot of great cake people and we've made some really cool friends. That happened from interacting. Write on their walls, respond every time they write on yours, go to popular cake pages like Wilton or Cake Camp etc. and leave comments and like other people's posts. You need to be active and you should be doing a lot of it "using as" your business. And hey, if you really really like someone, you can like them as your business and as yourself!! Win win!
WARNING: Do not be "Cake Shop X". I haven't called this shop out on FB, and I'm not gonna name them here, but If you spend a lot of time on FB you know who I'm speaking of, you've seen them post on dozens of pages, multiple times a day, but they only post a link to their fan page, nothing else. Do you see where they're going wrong? They don't comment, they don't say "hi," they don't share stories or answer questions or do anything to make themselves a valuable member of the group. They just want you to look at their page and like them, which I understand, but they don't even bother to say that in their posts! What they don't seem to understand is we're all cakers. We're not trying to sell our business to one another, we're trying to connect and learn and grow and have fun!! You can't be that page that is essentially nothing more than spam, sitting there lifeless on other people's cake pages.
Take the time to Facebook a little each day. In just the last few weeks I've made a number of online friends and we share tips and photos and stories and I'm trading shirts with 4 Goodness Cakes and it's awesome. It's fun and exciting and it creates community and that is important to help our industry grow strong. Work outside our industry as well with fellow local businesses, wedding vendors etc. Just remember: tag, use as, and interact!!
2nd WARNING: Do not tag famous or popular cake designers in your photos. If you want to post pix to their wall and say "hey, what do you think?" that is fine. We all love looking at cake right? However, tagging someone to a photo implies a connection to that cake or that design and usually results in that person either removing the tag, or removing you. Be friendly, not pushy.
Tweet Tweet!!
Twitter is the kind of social media application that I find more people are aware of than understand. If you haven't played around with Twitter yet, it essentially takes the most basic component of Facebook, the status update, and builds your entire network around it. There's no photo albums nor fan pages, no farms to harvest, it is just you saying what you want in 140 characters. You can add links to websites or photo albums, but it is essentially just words.
Our account is @mercicakes. Remember that you only have 140 spaces, so keeping your name short and easy is ideal. (When other tweeters reply to you, your user name counts against that 140 total.) There's a lot of chatter on Twitter, so it's no simple task to gain followers, but keep at it. Much like FB you have to follow a lot of other people and interact with them so they will follow you back. Don't forget, this is netWORKing! You can tag and reply to other accounts easily, and you should. Get the conversation going, because there's a lot of people just searching Twitter for keywords, maybe "cake," and the more you talk about it, the greater the chance they'll find and follow you.
If you don't want to bother with Twitter, do it anyway. It's super simple and you can link it up to your Facebook account so that when you post on FB, it automatically tweets the same thing on your Twitter account. Remember what I said about the internet being crowded and loud? That doesn't mean you hide in a corner! You have to have as much presence as possible and if you sync with your FB page, then you don't have to spend as much time on Twitter, but by now you're getting the point that you should right?
Take a Tumblr
While in Toronto, a friend of mine who is a content manager for websites, told me I should just go ahead and start a Tumblr page. My own argument on the crowded internet thrown back at me, I realized she was right. I knew people who had Tumblr accounts and Merci Beaucoup should be there as well!
I know, you're still trying to figure out Facebook and Twitter, so what the hell is a Tumblr? The best way I can describe it is it's the love child of traditional blogging and Twitter. You have a stream of information into which you can plug literally anything short of smell-o-vision. They pop up in your feed, not unlike Facebook, but without all the other updates such as what pages you just liked or who's photo you just commented on, making it cleaner. One feature I love so far is that I can add multiple photos to a post and when people see it, it plays like a slideshow. Very cool. It is slick looking and highly customizable, and of course, you can sync it with all your other accounts! That is, if your brain's not exploding yet;)
Once again, we are Merci Cakes on Tumblr. Short and sweet. Click the link to see what it is all about and start your page today. It's a great option to traditional blogging, but if you're so inclined....
A Word on Blogs
Blogging just because you feel like you should is the internet equivelent of drunk dialing. You need to have a purpose, you need to be focused and you need to edit! Combined with spellcheck, editing is the difference between enticing readers to stick around and return or clicking away to watch kittens on YouTube. And let's face it, surprise kitty is a tough opponent! You need to offer value. If all you want to do is show off photos of your cake, use Facebook or see Tumblr. So whether you do it yourself or have help, be careful and considerate of what you write and how you write it. A blog can be very powerful, but it can also be a liability.
Create Your Sphere
I know this is all confusing, but you will get it when you play around with it I swear! One last thing though is to make sure all of your networks are connected together. If someone finds you on Facebook, there should be links there for them to get to your Twitter, your Tumblr, your Wordpress, your website, your Etsy, your Flickr and on and on and on. Everything should reference everything else as much as possible.
What's the Point?
So, now that I've made you read all this, you may be asking "what will I gain from all this social networking?" "Will it boost my sales and expand my business? Chances are.... no. At least not in the way as like traditional advertising. Facebook pages are not billboards or radio ads, they're not half page full color placement in a local magazine. What they can be is an easier way for your existing clients and friends to refer you. It's a referral tool, so don't hang your hat on it as a way to expand your business. You will still need to do all the other advertising and face to face networking you can, just add the internet side to the mix and understand it is part of modern day marketing and public relations.
You are also laying a foundation so that when the day comes that you do need to make a big announcement, or reach a lot of people, you have a network in place to do so.
For us, social networking has been a way to communicate with fans of the show and to help grow our community of cake friends and colleagues. It is a way to share our craft and help one another and it is a powerful and wonderful experience. It is our prime motivation for doing as much as we do and it should be for you as well. A strong cake community is what we want to see online. So again, what will you get out of all this internet craziness? Friendships, and that is the point;)
Next week on Shop Talk we tackle the idea of efficiency in the kitchen!!
P.S. If you have a question about MySpace, hop in a time machine and dial it back to a day when it was relevant! #sarcasm
so good , now that I've made you read all this, you may be asking "what will I gain from all this social networking
Posted by: απώλεια βάρους | 12 December 2012 at 10:27 PM
they're not half page full color placement in a local magazine.
Posted by: mlm network marketing | 13 December 2012 at 04:02 AM