What’s Constant: Change
Ahhh… yesterday. As much as we yearn for the good old days, life is constantly changing. Changes in our consumer culture will always translate to change in business methods. Knowing that change is constant, and staying flexible with methods to market products, is what will establish a long and fruitful shelf life.
I have a few minutes to spare, so I check my Facebook via my iPhone. Let’s see, one friend is recommending a Wine Country Tour and wants to see who will buy in with her; looks like another friend is now at Michael’s getting some school supplies for his class; and a youth baseball site I like is offering 25% off on approved bats, just in tome for Little League’s all-star season. Oh, I just got an email from Groupon advertising that wonderful Italian restaurant we go to. I’ll “share” that on my Facebook page. All of these posted within the past hour.
It’s not that I have a ton of friends, but the ones I do have, I take their “likes” and recommendations seriously. According to the Facebook Press Room page, the average user has 120 friends, is connected to 80 community pages, and creates 90 pieces of content each month. With more than 500 million active users all over the world, that’s a lot of “word of post” recommendations. A posting from one friend gets reposted by another, then another…you get the picture. One like or share can easily translate into a truckload of dollars for the corporate brand or budding entrepreneur.
Brands can easily capture the audience by creating and maintaining a current Facebook page with useful information for the consumer. Sale info, special promotions, new products are what brand friends want to know. And brands don’t need to just wait around to be friended. Let your website visitors clearly know you have a Facebook page, associate your product with synergetic websites, and send out email blasts. Get the likes going and friend recommendations will add up.
Facebook likes and web links have become the new social norm of word of mouth recommendations. Rather than sitting around chatting while we wait to pick up kids from school, from our mobile phones we post our consumer experiences on our home page, which notifies the friend standing next to us. Mobile word of mouth is the most reliable product endorsement. The times, they are a changing…and the only constant is change.