Shel Israel & Jeremiah both tweeted about Charlene Li’s post on Facebook Flyers. Shel was doing his own experiment. After having exchanged a few notes with him, I’ve found him to be quite amazing. (I”m in awe because his book, Naked Conversations was where I realized the concept of a group blog & it’s value for ACDSee!).

Linking to Charlene Li’s post I learned about Facebook Flyers (details, cost, etc). But her slideshow, “Big Brands & Facebook: Case Studies and Best Practices” totally had my attention! This is what I’ve been saying over & over:

Facebook has tremendous potential for networking & marketing as long as you’re sensitive to the idea that it’s a social space.

…and Charlene summarizes what I’ve been telling my community of Digiscrappers on our other blog. Her slideshow has such a powerful message that I’m going to pull out some quotes & comment on them.

Facebook marketing requires communicating, not advertising.

Could we say that marketing soon will require communicating in a two way fashion? Is it limited to Facebook?

Then she provides the phenomenal statistic that “60 million users are projected by end of 2007”. My response to this is, how can you afford to NOT be there? The demographic information is also very interesting (it’s not college students!). And over half are women which underlines my idea that Digiscrapping storeowners aren’t wasting their time there. How many of those women own digital cameras do you think?

And I love Charlene’s best practices based on demographic information:

Adjust your marketing plans & plan for flexibility

Beware of relying on what worked yesterday, especially with fickle college students & newbie 35+ users.

In the second half, Charlene addresses brand marketing & points out that sponsored groups cost six figures for 3 months. Well, my company is small & that’s not exactly in our budget, but that’s not the point. I started a free group so that ACDSee customers could gather & we could communicate news & events. Please note: communicate not advertise!

There are 84 members in my group, so it’s not a failure. I push out a message to remind people of chats & no one has complained. We did learn this the hard way. When we were sending out mass emails to our forum membership, we did have a couple of complaints & we stopped immediately. Then we set up two opt-in newsletter mailing lists & everyone is happy. Why two? Well, we realized that not everyone wanted ACDSee specific information & many were interested in just my marketing/timesaving tips. So that was the best solution to respect our community’s wishes. And I’m proud to say that we have over 375 signed up for our newsletters. This saves them from reading our blog on a regular basis. It’s our service to our community because we realize they are busy ladies.

Charlene suggests that for sponsored groups to:

  • Create a unique experience, enable the discussion board, the wall, photos, etc
  • Read & respond to comments
  • Be transparent about your role & perspective

I think that these are important in any social media setting whether it’s your own site or at Facebook. And finally she suggests that one be a part of the Facebook experience. I don’t think that you can understand Facebook’s potential if you’re not actively involved there. Speaking of that, I have about 6 needing pokes back. And I need to go calling at the 40 some digital scrapbooking groups & see how our community is doing there. I see them talking with each other & posting their latest creations so I know that they’re happily engaging. Are they successfully marketing their stores? The feedback is that they’re enjoying themselves immensely. I see them having fun while visiting with friends and possibly even marketing their creations. Refreshing isn’t it?

I have a series of 8 articles on Facebook that outline the basics of getting started, creating groups, reading at Facebook, partying there & shopping there. And if you’re interested in Facebook and it’s marketing potential, I encourage you to attend the Facebook Conference. I will be presenting on groups & Jeremiah Owyang is keynoting!