A lot has been said about Facebook as an effective social media marketing tool. Every business, big or small, wants to be on Facebook to reach out to its audience of half a billion users.
Before you jump on the bandwagon, you must first understand how Facebook works.
Facebook is a social medium, not a sales forum
Some Facebook facts you should know:
• Internet users spend 95% of their time browsing websites.
• They are spending 5 hours a week on Facebook on average
• They are spending around 55 minutes per session
Facebook is a place people go to hang out. It is not a search engine or a lead generation site.
Think of Facebook as a sales cycle, not a sales funnel. You won’t go out there pitching your products. You participate in Facebook to build relationships that could translate into sales over time.
By constantly putting new information in front of your audience day after day, people will start to like you, follow you, and eventually trust you. When they are ready to buy, they will come to you because you’ve already built a rapport with them. And even if they don’t buy from you, they interact with other people who will.
Virtual interaction on Facebook and other social media
Virtual interaction not only refers to people interacting with you. The vast majority of virtual interaction on Facebook involves other people interacting about you by commenting, liking, and posting pictures and videos. Over time, when other people see your followers interacting with you and about you, that becomes social proof.
Social proof on Facebook
According to Wikipedia, “social proof, also known as informational social influence, is a psychological phenomenon where people assume the actions of others who are perceived to possess more knowledge about the situation.”
Social proof is the whole essence of fashion. Tight jeans, bandanas, hair coloring and wedge shoes all became popular because someone made it fashionable to wear them. That someone is usually a person with social influence – it could be a celebrity, a high school jock or a lead cheerleader. People tend to follow what the people they admire are doing.
Facebook was designed to emphasize social proof. People can see how many friends you have and how many likes your page has. When they see that their own friends are your friends and that their friends have liked your page, they will do the same.
You should implement social proof in everything you do in Facebook as well as throughout all social media.
