Social Media for Business
A new report by Inside Facebook discusses some best practices for retailers hoping to set up shop on the popular social networking site.
Some of the recommendations include letting users shop from within Facebook, including even the ability to share product information with friends. Another suggestion is to have contests, giveaways and sweepstakes.
But what’s most interesting is the last suggestion: keep it simple with status updates.
Life is Good does. With simple status updates (much like the name of the brand itself), Life is Good elicits more pondering from its fan community. Their most recent update: “Whatever you are, be a good one.”
Expanding that to “conversation in general,” it seems that specific approach is the key between a social networking presence and a successful social networking presence.
One example from outside the industry is NASA, whose Twitter feed for the Mars Phoenix lander was a huge success.
Part of what helped NASA’s Twitter experiment rocket to such success was how personal it felt to the viewers. Throughout the mission, NASA actually took the time to respond to people’s questions and share in discoveries.
These ideas do translate to retail, of course. JetBlue is very conversational on its Twitter feed, offering travel tips and discounts. Dell became e-famous for offering exclusive discounts both through Twitter and Facebook. And Whole Foods suggests recipes, all through social networking.
What’s challenging, however, is that there is not one simple answer for any of these companies. Each seems to have taken some of these basic principles and applied them to their own brand to create interestingly different outcomes.
But each of the successful ones has the same strategy in the end: conversation. Most of the top brands on Facebook all create original content, post comments, or respond to customers through social networking to increase the conversation about their company and products.
