Thursday, January 7, 2010

Brad Kleinman lists the future of Facebook for business

By Erika M. Pryor

“Facebook is one piece to the puzzle of an intergrated marketing campaign,” said Brad Kleinman, Director of Education at WorkSmart Integrated Marketing. Kleinman addressed the Columbus American Marketing Association Social Media, SIG monthly meeting, at the Dublin Entrepreneurial Center, Wednesday January 6, 2010. According to Kleinman, Facebook is the “most popular site online in the world” and “the average user has around 130 friends.” Kleinman’s presentation, “Emerging Trends in Facebook for Business” (Click here for Slideshare presentation) featured compelling Facebook statistics, alongside benefits of an advertising campaign, privacy settings, and the differences between personal and business profiles. Kleinman identified organizations making use of Facebook in innovative and engaging ways. A key point for Lori Crock, Principal and Founder of Written Impact was “delivering compelling content is critical to the success of the business page.” For this business owner, Kleinman’s confirmed for her that “addressing the needs and interests of your target audience matters more than the number of fans.”
When managing your Facebook content, you should use the 80/20 rule, with 80% of your content as information that your fans may find useful, and 20% business promotion. This creates trust and helps your users see you as an expert. Clients buy from people they know and trust. Facebook can help businesses create that relationshiop. Brad Kleinman, Education Director, WorkSmart Integrated Marketing.
For the novice user, Kleinman identified features to use while developing a Facebook business profile page, including the newly added “List.” For Kleinman, this feature is a simple way to create categories of contacts. This feature--first used by Twitter--provides users with a way to make available certain status updates, profile information, images, and links to specific friend “Lists.” This feature helps business owners to “not bombard your Facebook friends with business stuff,” said Kleinman.

For the advanced user, the Director of Education discussed the range of Facebook “widgets,” adding to its successful incorporation across social media outlets. These add-ons are avenues towards creating an integrated marketing campaign, according to Kleinman. Connect and share widgets provide Facebook users with the ability to become a fan of your website or blog, identify comments left on your blog in their status update, as well as show others an event the user plans to attend. These innovative features said Kleinman, “make Facebook an essential component to any integrated marketing strategy.” Using Facebook purposefully resonated with Faye Oney, of the Columbus Dispatch notes "you first need to determine your strategy, then see if FB should be part of it" For Oney, understanding that "Facebook is a community, and interacting with your community, getting the audience involved, is the best way to get customers to buy from you."
The American Marketing Association, Social Media Special Interest Group meets the first Wednesday of each month at the Dublin Entrepreneurial Center. To view a listing of DEC evets click here.

2 Comments:

Blogger Brad Kleinman said...

Erika,

Great article and wonderful recap of the presentation. It was a pleasure spending the morning with you all in Columbus. Let's make sure to keep in touch.

Regards
-Brad Kleinman

January 8, 2010 at 8:51 AM  
Blogger Erika Pryor said...

Brad,
Thanks so much for coming out to the DEC Brad. Your presentation was informative and high energy. We are looking forward to seeing you again soon.
Erika

January 9, 2010 at 9:46 AM  

Post a Comment

Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]

<< Home