Recently, Facebook created the Facebook. This button extends Facebook’s like feature to other sites on the web. If users are logged into their facebook account, then they can “like” or “recommend” a web page to all of their facebook friends as they are reading it from the site.

Facebook is the most popular social media network,  everyone from age 11 to 77 are on Facebook. Each user has a news feed where they see updates from their friends. The news feed shows the link their friends like, people their friend added, pages their friends became a fan of and much more. Now if a user has 410 facebook friends, and he clicks “like” on your post, then it will be shown to all of his 410 friends. This is the best free word of mouth advertising you can get. But this does not end here. It gets better. Lets say, Angela  likes a link from one site, and Randy also clicks like on that same link. Lauren who is a mutual friend of both Angela and Randy will see a text like:

Your Friends Angela and Randy liked The Net Impact’s  Link: Who Had the Assist to Your Conversion Goal?

The like feature  is powerful because not only create an excellent platform for word of mouth advertising, but by mentioning two friends liking this post Lauren is twice as likely to click like on your link. This button has the potential to  making your article go viral on facebook.

Find out more about coding and customize your Facebook Like button here.

You are one of the 400 million people on Facebook who spend spend 500 billion minutes per month on Facebook.  You are one of the 105 million plus people out there tweeting away.You are among the 2 billion visitors to YouTube daily. As a matter of fact … you spend almost as much time on social media as watching television!  You are even using social media while watching television!  Entertainment multitasking, is that “multi-taining?”

We are in the age of user-generated content.  Companies are quickly realizing they cannot avoid online consumers interacting with their brands online, yet this exchange is only minimally occurring through their company website.  Let’s face it; no one goes to your international B2B website to hang out with friends and share product opinions.  Your website visitors are not your pals.  With social media, however, they can be your “fans.”   If you want that to happen, go where your customers already choose to meet and develop ways to involve yourself appropriately.  Listen first; then engage them in conversation.  Remember that if you don’t listen to these voices and consider them your fans, you run the risk of making them foes.

So, if social media is here to stay (do you doubt that it is?), and if Facebook and Twitter can be relatively inexpensive, what does this mean for your firm’s very prestigious, costly and carefully managed website? Corporate websites represent legally required information, a powerbase for your brand andmarketing approach that social media sites usually cannot equal.  So, while the website is still the fundamental aspect of online branding, many businesses have greatly benefited by investing time (yes, it takes time) into using social media networks to go directly to where their consumers “meet by choice” each point of interaction having a unique “face” to the public.   Successful online marketers tend to think “one brand – many faces.” 

In conclusion, social media is important, very important, but without the anchor of your corporate website, your brand would be floating adrift on each new conversation current.  Social media continues to expand rapidly to new audiences by new applications.  The growth is driving online interactions everywhere at once.   But your brand, represented by your website, shouldn’t be going everywhere at once.  Remember that every photo you put up on Facebook, every message mashed into 140 characters on Twitter and every storytelling video posted on YouTube needs to be purposeful and must still reflect your company’s image and message.  Who knows?  The next link that drives the next big business deal to your website might just arise from a response to “What are you up to?”