The Force is strong with social media

February 22, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Good Morning, Social Rabbit here with your guide to the world of social media.

Today this little bunny was very excited to find out that the Police Department in the USA are using Facebook to fight crime!  A post from Inside Facebook shows the way Facebook is being used by the police force to fight crime, a great example of how social media is building a community, integrating on and offline worlds and engaging their audience to the level where they are catching criminals. 

One important item to note is that none of the pages have a huge number of fans, certainly none over 5000, again helping you to realise that bigger is NOT always better, and it is QUALITY not quantity that gets the results.  The integration of video – in the form of CCTV footage to help the police catch criminals is totally inspired and really shows how you can integrate offline and online for a fantastic effect.

My challenge to you would be what are you currently doing in your business that you can put online and get results?  The idea is not to create things just for online, but to use what you have offline online.

Filed Under: Social Media Tagged With: , , , ,

Accepting who you are…

February 15, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Good Evening, Social Rabbit here with your guide to the world of social media.

In the world of social media, it is often hard to find norms to compare yourself to, so that you can see how you are doing (believe me, I’ve been searching for stats on defanning on pages for ages!) This is usually due to the lack of information available at the small end of town, where probably most of the readers of this blog live. The small end of town is not a bad place to be, but it is sometimes a disappointing place to be.

Disappointing because you start your Facebook fan page and get 200 fans, think you are doing well (which you are, as according to Facebook only 65% of pages have over 100 fans), but then you get stuck. You have set your sights on getting 10,000 fans (despite the fact that you are a small business, who has probably never even had 10,000 customers interested), just because you look at other pages which have 100,000s of fans and think well if they have that many, surely I can reach 10,000.  Afterall, there is a page devoted to jelly tots with 530,000 fans, surely your business is more interesting than that?

Without sounding preachy (as this Rabbit doesn’t like preachy), you need to understand that Facebook, or any other social medium is not about interesting all the time, it’s about expressing your individuality and personality.  Otherwise how did the ”I <3 sleep” page get 4.7 million fans or this page “i don’t sleep enough because I stay up for no reason” have 3.5 million fans?

Just think about these questions…

  • What can I do on my page to stand out from the other 1.6million pages out there? (that’s not that many really, 5% have less than 10 fans)
  • Why are people fans of my page? Does it say something about them? Are they there for freebees?  Do they love my articles?  Is it the quirky posts?  You know you can ask your fans this, you don’t need to guess :)
  • Do I actually engage my fans? (as in do they respond to my posts)  If not how can I?

The new(ish) world of social media can be a real leveler between large and small business, but remember comparing your fan page on a one hit wonder singer to Michael Jackson is just not an even comparison.  Nor is comparing your hairdressing salon with Tony and Guy, you wouldn’t in the offline world, so don’t in the online.  You need to be realistic, that doesn’t mean you can’t aim for 10,000 fans, but just don’t get upset if if takes you a while.  However if you do happen to find out that big brand has less fans than you, then dance up and down and rejoice, as obviously they are not down with social media and you SO are!

Filed Under: Small business, Social Media Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , ,