Before we get into today’s post I have a confession to make…

…for the longest time I’ve hated social media.

In fact, I still kinda hate social media.

I mean nothing sounds like more of a time waster that sitting around ‘tweating’ about what you at for breakfast, the movie you saw last night, and what color shirt you’re wearing.

I don’t care to read about it, and I certainly don’t care to take the time to sit around and post about it.

Not only that, but I greatly value privacy in my personal life.

I don’t mind posting to the blog, getting out and speaking with customers and partners at events, getting on calls, etc. That’s part of what I do and I have fun with it.

But I don’t care to mix my family and friends all into my business communication.

For the most part I prefer to keep those as two separate worlds.

So, for the longest time I’ve ‘held off’ engaging with social media.

However, that being said… the world is changing… or better said the world HAS changed.

And not everyone feels the same way I do about this stuff.

I recognize the fact that I’m ‘old school’ here when it comes to this stuff.

Now we’ve got You Tube channels, Twitter, Facebook, Linked in, and all kinds of other online ‘social’ media… where your customers (and mine) are all actively engaged in conversation and looking for things.

So like it or not… you better be showing up there, because if you’re not someone else is.

There are herd ‘poachers’ everywhere.

But even still, I’ve been able to keep it mostly at an arms length… because in our office we have someone responsible for what we call ‘content distribution.’

For the most part Eric and I do all the ‘content creation’- meaning we write articles and record videos.

Then we have a team of other folks (different people for different media) that publish the content and get it out there through sending emails, posting to the blog, putting a new page on our website, submitting a press release, submitting articles to trade magazines, posting videos to youtube, hooking up our blog to automatically ping our twitter account, and the like.

But over the last several months we’ve started to do more testing (both for ourselves and clients) with Facebook.

And I’ll tell you that this media is really unlike all the others.

The Power of Facebook

EVERYONE is on Facebook. And I mean everyone.

If you don’t know a whole lot about it, the platform offers paid micro-targeted advertising opportunities, incredible networking opportunities, and really solid relationship building communication.

Latest stats put the user count as somewhere around 500 million users.

That’s a BIG pond to go fishing in.

Since we first put up a fanpage just a month or two ago, and set-up an events page for MEGA TRAINING this year… we’re been seeing activity and engagement from a number of folks..

Some folks Eric and I haven’t talked to in a looong time… are all of a sudden ‘popping out of the woodwork’.

And the clients we’ve been working with on testing some facebook marketing are seeing the same thing.

So it seems Facebook is a key media that many folks are now ‘tuned into’ in a way they are NOT to regular media like emails, offline newsletters, etc..

It would appear… that this is becoming a new ‘staple’ media for strong client relationship building AND a key media for low cost lead generation (both paid ads… and viral ‘friends’ you pick up through networking).

What does this all mean and why am I sharing it with you?

Because without going into specific numbers and details with you here, I’ll share that we’re seeing more and more results from Facebook… and I believe every business owner needs to come up with a strategy for leveraging this platform more.

Does it take some time to get more involved with another media?

Yes.

Can it still be a time waster?

Yes. But you can directly track lead generation cost per lead, conversion, and customer lifetime value now… which at least makes me feel better about the front end (external marketing).

The internal marketing is harder to track, but now becoming a key piece of comprehensive client relationship building that must be done… this is now just another media to ‘tack onto’ the list of how you already communicate with your herd.

Does it cross over my personal preferences for privacy and separation of work and home life?

Yes. I’m still committed to keeping my privacy, but you can work in ‘enough’ here and there… just as you do with other media… to round things out a bit.

And even that being said… the numbers don’t lie that Facebook is a winner.

So I’ve decided to get over my hangups about it and ease into things.

Bottom line is that in I think everyone needs to be taking advantage of the marketing opportunities on this platform… including me… even if you kinda hate social media.

I believe this is so important that next month I’ve called in a favor with a BIG GUN internet marketer friend of mine to do a special Facebook training for all our VIP folks.

And we’ll also be having him come out and give a special training at our MEGA TRAINING event this year in October.

More to follow soon, but in the meantime if you’re not on Facebook sign up for an account.

If you’re on Facebook, then you can ‘friend’ us up on our Fanpage here:

Become an NPE Facebook Fan Here

I’m gonna slowly warm up to getting more involved in this personally.

Unlike other media (you tube videos, twitter, etc.) this is a hard media to delegate at least some amount of personal involvement… because you’ll find you’re gonna start getting personal emails from key contacts through the Facebook platform.

Emails that you don’t really want to have staff handling for you, although I think having someone go through it and filter is probably a good idea (just like our staff does for the hundreds of emails our office gets every week) so you only have to deal with the most important ones… and let support folks handle more of the general stuff and ‘noise’.

Why don’t key contacts just send you a regular email or communicate through standard channels?

Dunno. Like I said, I guess I’m old school here and just naturally have an aversion to it myself.

But key folks are engaged here, so I’m gonna step up to be more engaged here too.

As I said.. the numbers don’t lie.

To your success,
Sean

P.S. In October at MEGA TRAINING we’re gonna share some details on the tests we’ve been running here, and also feature some pretty incredible case studies on marketing with Facebook. Powerful stuff for sure… and it’s like anything else… the more you get involved in all the different ‘pieces’ of it… the more everything works together and starts to snowball in growing your business.

If you want to stay tuned into how we’re doing it, then friend us up here:

Become an NPE Facebook Fan Here