Friends
When it comes to friends and fans, Facebook is a lot like real life. Facebook friends are people with whom you have a more personal connection, while Facebook fan relationships are more remote, one-way relationships.
Here are some facts about friends:
• Every Facebook user has friends.
• Your actions show up in friends’ News Feeds and vice versa.
• Friends can comment on your actions and vice versa.
If you establish your business through a personal Facebook page, you are creating a more casual relationship with your customers.
There are a few situations where a friend-based business could thrive:
• A local small bakery with the same weekly clients
• A town barbershop
• An elementary school
These would work because they all involve relatively intimate relationships and have fewer users. For instance, a small elementary school may have 150 students and 40 employees. Compare their size to an international bank that has 5 million employees and 20 million customers. The bigger the audience, the harder it is to manage the relationships. However, keep in mind that your small business today may become huge tomorrow, so it is often better to create an official business page from the beginning.
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It’s actually much riskier to have friends instead of fans. The intimacy is greater, but so is the vulnerability. For instance, consider if oil giant BP had a friend-based Facebook presence during its catastrophic oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010. BP’s “Friends” would have posted criticism that would have hurt the company more than helped it. The freedom BP’s Facebook friends would have to respond, post on its Wall, and other friends-only benefits would have devastated the company—and it already had PR problems with just a Fan page!
Of course, if you’re trying to create the next Microsoft or AT&T, the friend route is far too informal. Besides, the larger you get, the harder it is to interact with every customer. And Facebook users expect that kind of intimacy from their friends!
Playing the Numbers Game with Friends
We live in a numbers-driven society. When the stock market is up, everyone’s happy. When it goes down, people get a little glum. So it only makes sense that many businesses use the number of fans as a measure of their social marketing success.
The problem is that numbers don’t tell the whole story. For instance, your favorite singer could be making a million dollars every time he releases an album, but his credit score could be in the toilet. He could be a millionaire in worse financial shape than the average middle-class American.
Similarly, when it comes to Facebook, there is no “good” number of friends. What matters is the influence you have over them. A high number of friends looks and sounds impressive, but that number won’t put money in your business’s coffers. The only thing that will sell your service is influence.
Understanding the Power of Friends
Imagine that you’re Facebook friends with Bill Gates. Ego aside, there is only one way this will actually matter to your business: if Gates repeats what you say.
Let’s run through the process of utilizing Bill Gates’ power as a friend:
1. You have to get him to accept your friend request (or you have to accept his).
2. He has to actually pay attention to what your company is posting.
3. He has to find your post compelling enough to share with his friends.
Without the final step, your friendship with Gates means nothing to your business. Instead of focusing on the number of friends, you should focus on drawing in powerful, influential friends. Both authors of this book, John and Damon, have many, many Facebook friends, but some of their most valuable Facebook moments were when a major tastemaker mentioned them in a Facebook post or gave them praise on their Facebook Wall.
Damon remembers one heavy hitter giving one of his books a glowing review on his Facebook Wall—and it caused enough of a stir to create a buzz and drum up sales.
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Remember that Facebook friendships are about intimacy, not the sale. If you keep your interactions personal, you’ll get the sale as well as the relationship.
Longtime Facebookers go through a regular process we like to call pruning: dropping inactive friends, removing themselves from boring or annoying groups, and so on. Think of it as a form of spring cleaning.
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Pruning on Facebook is the process of deleting any friends, groups, and memberships you don’t want anymore.
As a business, you should also do regular pruning. Why lose a potential customer? There are actually several reasons, including these:
• They post inappropriate messages on your company Wall.
• They post an excessive number of messages on your company Wall.
• They haven’t taken any actions in a long time.
• For whatever reason, they are of no value to your business.
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Pruning should be a slow and methodical process, especially if you are removing someone because you don’t think he or she will be useful in the future. Nearly everyone knows someone who can use your service, so be careful dismissing someone too early. She may have a second cousin who could really use your product!
A friend who isn’t engaged isn’t a friend at all. He or she is just another digit in your friend total. It sounds counterintuitive to dump friends, but your main goal should be to replace that bum friend with an active friend. Back to the Bill Gates example, the Microsoft founder is just one friend, but he carries the power of thousands.
Here are some tips for approaching new potential friends for your business:
• Craft a finely worded introduction. Facebook doesn’t require you to write an intro, but it’s a key component to your marketing approach.
• Have a clear Profile picture. Like we talked about earlier in the book, your Profile picture is likely the only thing a potential customer sees before he or she decides to join or not join your page.
• Be patient. Some people take months to respond to Facebook friend requests, but a late response doesn’t mean that they’re ignoring you.
• Don’t spam your customers. Make sure you know the people you invite on some kind of personal level. If you continuously invite people you don’t know, you can end up in Facebook jail where they prevent you from any more friend invites.
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When choosing between friends and fans, remember that your friends actually have to accept your Facebook request. Some people rarely check their friend requests, while others let them pile up and add them only a few times a year—kind of like the reverse of pruning. Either way, you could spend much more time finding friends and waiting for acceptance than building your business.