Imagine what it can do for your business!
I was watching 60 Minutes last night (yes, I watch that show & love Andy Rooney) and a story came on about Egypt. Unless you live under a rock, you’ve heard about their revolution that managed to overthrow the current government in a matter of days. While most revolutions take months to years, this revolution was able to succeed rather quickly. How’d they do it?
One word: FACEBOOK
Yep, a 30 year old GOOGLE employee (note the irony) set up a Facebook group in response to an activist being beaten to death for trying to expose the corrupt police department. The group quickly grew to a half a million members within months. They even had pre-revolution meet-ups all facilitated by using Facebook to organize themselves. It is no wonder Egypt closed down the internet. But, seriously, this really makes the power of social media a concrete thing. It is no longer an ethereal entity that is somehow “not real.” Social Media is real. In fact, it might be amongst the most real places to interact because there is something about working virtually that makes people extremely honest about their opinions, as if if what they write will not hurt them in the “real world.”
Now, think about that for a moment. If Facebook, which wasn’t around 10 years ago, could do this for politics and real world matters, just imagine the power it holds in growing your business.
The power lies in word of mouth and influence. WOM is the most powerful force in marketing and is what makes PR so effective. The more of a following you grow online, the more potential to influence that you have. If you are influential, people take action based on what YOU say and what YOU do. Some major brands have gotten away with not growing a big following on social media, but this has more to do with the era in which their business arose. The grew their brand using the means available to them. Now, in order to grow your brand, you need to use whatever medium will be most effective and this is moving more and more towards technology linked to social media aka New Media.
If you want to learn how to harness the power of social media, check out our services that can either teach you how to use it or provide someone trained to do it for you.
As always, comments are appreciated. Tell me what you think about the influence of Facebook to our present day lives and what it could mean for the future.
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