why i decided to create facebook page.

I aint a subject expert to tell you what needs to be done, i am here to share my experience with setting up facebook page for the another project i am working on.

first why i wanted facebook page, i read this infographic at marketinconfessions , it states by the time we read these lines (average 1 min) , the following happens inside facebook

• 510,404 Comments
• 382,861 Posts liked
• 231,605 Messages sent
• 135,849 Photos added
• 98,604 Friendships approved
• 82,557 Status Updates
• 79,364 Wall posts
• 74,204 Event invites received
• 72,816 Pages liked
• 66,168 Photos tagged

that’s a lot of activity online, and all these activity carried out by engaging audience, all these numbers are already convincing to have a presence in facebook for the brands, but if you still wondering why, let me explain, as a business you need your own audience and connect with the right people and then engage those audience with your brand, that is were we need to create facebook page, a platform to engage customers along with the brand.

As of now i didn’t do much to my facebook page, just the page has been created, added admin details, linked twitter to the page wall, filled info section. Once i am satisfied with all the information i have provided in facebook page, it is time to get many fans/likes, that’s another milestone, as of now i have no idea how to go about it, will share once i find any.

when you advertise, you better deliver else say NO

Small story:

advertisement1

once upon a time Lion and Tiger were near the lake and about to drink water, just before that, Lion uttered a loud Roar, and Tiger asked “why now?! just you and me are here, don’t you think its foolish?!” Lion replied, “well, i am king of the forest and i have to communicate the message every now and then, that’s my Advertisement and sending the message nobody come near”

Rabbit over heard the conversation and thought “if only this noise is required i can make noise and drink my share of water peacefully” so practiced enough to give a roar with its squeaky voice while drinking water, one fine day Fox walking by wanted to see where the noise is coming from and spotted the Rabbit and ate it.

Moral of the story: “when you advertise, be prepared to deliver or handle the situation”

with the power of social media and with proper blending of Inbound Marketing strategies, you will start attracting prospective customers even before you really are something, when you land the customer be ready to deliver else communicate you are not doing it NOW!

why? :-

it is simply over promise and under deliver situation when you don’t deliver what is expected of from you, you are just burning a bridge or future opportunity lead. i am not saying to play it safe, i am saying “deliver” at any cost, if not politely say, NO and direct them in right direction.

when you put your future lead in right direction you make much trusted customer for you, who will turn to you in future as well.

Do you know what is benefit selling?

first, is there such classification as “benefit selling”?

well i am not a management or marketing professional, so i am not sure, i googled and i just found few websites talking exclusively about it, maybe they have different terms for it.

what is benefit selling is?

simply put, you sell the benefit the customers going to enjoy buy owning the product for its unique features etc., instead of detailing out the features.

why this works?

take apple iPod advertisements for example, instead of speaking technical details about the product, they simply say “it loads 12,000 songs, 8 hours of music, sexy chrome finish” that is they are selling the benefit not the product features, this eliminates the customers to put extra effort to relate the features to the benefit they might get.

and in psychology perspective everybody wants to help themselves first, then they are ready to help others.

if a sales person approach a customer and says, “hi buy this mp3 player, it has 8GB space, i will get good commission for each sale”, even if the customer is in need of it, he wouldn’t buy, he wouldn’t buy from that sales person unless he sees some benefit for him.

alternatively, if the sales person approach the customer and says, “do you know listening to music increases concentration power? ”, “it looks really cool to wear a mp3 all the time” and “i am selling mp3 players hand picked myself, want to buy one?”

second approach leaves no option but feeling if he buys the mp3 players he buys only from the second sales person. because he sees the benefit of best hand picked mp3 player, he already know he wants to improve concentration or look fashionable.

that is exactly selling benefits instead of detailed feature information.

Get rid of the managers

“Get rid of the managers” this was the second point in the Article “9 Things That Motivate Employees More Than Money” at Inc.com, i have been thinking about the real need for managers, as a minimalist myself, was thinking do we need them for a tech companies?

Introduction to popular kids game:
As a kid, me and neighbor’s kids would play a game, game would work like this, you need to tell a meaningful and lengthy message to another kid in your team and message is passed on from one kid to another and when it reaches the final kid, you need to compare the initial and last received messages, often time it would loose the core message and end up very hilarious messages.

Normally business would need two key people, the business owner and the technical specialist, the business owner comes in with the vision of getting some work done, and technical specialists will get that vision to product, business owner pay for that service. As business grow, business owner had problem talking to large crowd of technical specialists, then he developed two senior most from pool of technical specialist as his point of contact, to talk to other technical specialists, things are still fine until those new point of contacts started to develop 100 new point of contacts, eg: for a team of 30 member there are 5 managers between the technical specialist and the business owner.

most of the time the business owner is only good to communicate his vision to his team, that just gives the enough jolt of motivation to act in the direction, but the problem now is the kids game described above, we cannot ignore the fact that the news get diluted or worse modified from business owner to the last technical specialist, with so many middle managers, also vice-versa, business owner may not be properly informed about the exact problem that technical specialist sees.

we cannot eliminate managers, they are required when company is growing, but many business owner forget it is a luxury, they need to have them only when it is absolute necessary, we should keep the managers count at the very least possible, else we are nailing our business’s coffin. As a business owner we need to regularly talk and connect with our technical specialists, and cross check (never in presence of your manager) are we communicated properly – similar to this one

Good:

business owner: i said A

technical specialist: i heard A and said B

business owner: yes, i heard B

Okay:

business owner: i said A

technical specialist: i heard gibberish + A + gibberish

Bad:

business owner: i said A

technical specialist: i heard Z and i said Y

business, no, i heard L

if you think you are not communicated properly, you know what need to be done.