Social Selling with Facebook, not Just a College Social Network Anymore

Facebook, born in a college dorm room to connect faceless college kids on big campuses, has come a long way. This is not your kids social network anymore. Boasting more than 100 million users, social marketing couldn't have a better platform.

Small business marketing, short on capital and long on passion, will find Facebook the perfect place for social selling. Having a Facebook marketing strategy lets you target, attract, and sell with your daily social activities and life-flow.

Social Networking

Social networking is a complex blend of Internet marketing and social media. Yielding positive small business marketing and sales results with any efficiency can be complex. However, if you can blend value and transparency with a powerful social site your results and scale can be amazing.

Friending, wall posting, finding lost classmates, even starting the occasional food fight is the magic of Facebook social networking. Nothing puts you into the flow of your connections, audience, and market like Facebook.

Each of these social activities are indexed for search and flow into those friends that follow you. This streaming flow of activities and messages can be leveraged as micro-marketing messages. Each message brings customers closer to you and your products or service, closer to a trusted sale.

Setting up your Facebook selling platform should follow these simple steps:

• Build a profile that clearly highlights your value and where to get it
• Import contacts from your electronic address book or contact manager
• Connect with people that you want internet marketing targets or connectors
• Actively broadcast keywords, concepts, and value through your feed
• Flow out pictures, videos, and content that kicks your customers into action

Social selling starts with a well targeted audience and a solid social marketing plan.

Social Selling and Lead Nurturing

Joining the conversation is the secret to marketing with Facebook. It is not a difficult thing to do, but it does take thought, planning, and well prepared social marketing strategies. Your message needs to be clear and consistent. However, don't forget to intersperse the real you for authenticity.

Too many attempts at social marketing are structured like traditional marketing campaigns feed into a social site. A well designed social marketing campaign sells to buyers and nurtures prospects with trust and transparency.

Your social marketing strategies should be a blend of the real you and your passion for your product or service--the authentic passion:

• Use Facebook as hub of your social activity--connect your other social streams
• Leverage Facebook Groups to organize around industry, customers, and experts
• Put your business in motion--photos and videos of office, employees, and clients
• Market directly to your friends using groups messages and wall postings

Facebook is a serious social marketing tool. It can be a big market of your small business marketing and Internet marketing strategies. Filled with 100 million smart, affluent, and increasingly influential people. Make these people part of your social marketing plan, your "tribe," will set in motion only buying, but evangelize your social networking into the stratosphere.