Working Web Copy

In all the cacophony of tweets and Twitter, we’ve forgotten about Facebook as anything more than a method of communication and a means to play some online games. Why should we still care about Facebook?

People in all age groups still log in to Facebook almost daily to keep up with friends, check messages and play games. Some are even using Facebook messages as the primary communication mode with family and friends over e-mail. This makes the audience large, captive, and easy to target.

If you have a small to medium-sized business, a Facebook group is still a good idea. If you have a larger company, a Facebook fan page in addition to a group is a good idea. If you are trying to reach customers within a specific geographic area and demographic, there is a lot to be said for advertising on Facebook to establish brand image and drive sales.

In the end, we produce more valuable and in-depth content and communication on Facebook than we have yet to realize on Twitter. While ads are probably the best avenue to explore on the popular networking site, a group and fan page are free to start.

Back in March of 2009, I spent approximately one solid week putting together a massive post called “The Ultimate Guide to Everything Twitter”, which you can see a link to on my portfolio page. While some areas of the post are dated now, Twitter has become an integrated part of any online marketing plan, and it is still useful.

Bewilderingly, many business owners still dismiss Twitter as a fad. The application would not have grown so fast or be in use by so many people if it it was simply a fad. I’ve made so many personal and networking connections on Twitter that I can’t even count them. You wouldn’t even really count me as a “power user” either; I only do a few posts a week, usually throughout the course of one day. Those few posts, along with publication of my Twitter user name on my website, have netted me 840 followers to date. (@angelawest if you want to add yourself to that number).

That is really all it takes. Empower a few of your employees to tweet from the company Twitter account a few times a week, and you can start monitoring the results for yourself. Just follow the one golden rule of Twitter: Thou Shalt Not Tweet Crap. If you just had a peanut butter sandwich, nobody wants to know about it. If you had a bagel from a charming little deli that nobody knows about yet, they want to know. It’s pretty easy to qualify what is and isn’t Crap just based on your own common sense.

Customers always appreciate interaction. Twitter also reinforces your brand by reminding your clients that you are there, which is something you only got from ongoing magazine ad campaigns in pre-internet days. Only with Twitter, the same branding doesn’t cost thousands of dollars.

Update: Just a few weeks later, I’m at 1030 followers, and I haven’t even published any super popular articles in the last few weeks. Just saying.