Facebook just turned five years old, and there are now as many as 150 million people using it.
Web-based social networking tools are the new craze, and they’re being used by more and more small business people, community organizers, and budget-minded consumers. Here are five ways you can use social networking to boost your bottom line:
- Form a buying club — Annie Hope Malki in Miami was unhappy with the high cost of organic produce. She thought if she could round up enough other people in Florida interested in going organic, she could form a regional buying club.
So just a few weeks ago, she put up a Facebook group called “Annie’s Organic Buying Club.” She’s gotten 85 people to sign up so far, and she’s close to having the clout she needs. “My goal is to get organic produce for our members for 30 percent less,” she says. You can join Annie’s Facebook group, or find more at her website. You can also check out organic companies inputting the word “organic” in the WeSearch tool at WeSeed.
- Share the discounts — Paulette Strauss started the Friends & Family Discount group last fall because she was receiving so many e-mails with friends and family discount codes. “They were starting to clog up my inbox, so I thought it would be great to have them all in one place,” she says.
So Strauss stepped into action: “I invited 40 of my friends to join the group, and two months later, over 1,000 people had joined. The feedback I have received from people who post on the page is that they love that all of the discounts are easily accessible and they wouldn't have known about some of the offers without seeing them on the Friends & Family Discount page.” Go to the Groups section and enter Friends & Family Discount in “search for groups” to take a peek.
- Get a client — Financial planner Cathy Curtis of Oakland, California, has been on Facebook for the past six months. Within four months she got her first client from her Facebook campaign. Cathy created a “Women and Money” group page filled with information and links, and now she’s up to 130 sign-ups. “I have no idea who they are and where they come from,” Cathy says. “A Facebook group is so viral, it goes everywhere.” Cathy also uses her Facebook group to drive people to her website.
- Rent your house — Type in “vacation rental” in the search function of Facebook groups and all kinds of pages come up. Sure, there are plenty of other ways to advertise vacation and rental properties online. But with Facebook, your place can have “fans,” and the fact that they’ve joined your group shows up on their pages, where their friends see it and might also click or join. And so on it goes, spreading virally.
A friend of mine happened to have a place in Tahoe she wanted to rent out: She discovered a Facebook group called “Why Not Rent This House in Tahoe?” She joined, and now “Every time someone sees my Facebook page they will read the phrase – Why Not Rent This Tahoe House? I don’t want to alienate our friends by bringing it up in every conversion, but hey, there it is on my page so it does the incessant talking for me.”
- Publicize your event — Volunteers, charity workers, and community organizers now have another way to spread the word on their fundraising activities. When the Sacramento Junior League posted info on Facebook about their annual Crab Feed, early tickets sales took off. “We sold more tickets further in advance than we typically do,” says Amy Wister, the organization’s VP of Fundraising. “In this economy, had we not used a social network to spread the word on the event, we really would have been in trouble.”
And, importantly: “With people in their 20s, 30s, and 40s, it is so mainstream that it is a great way to build brand recognition,” Amy notes.
It works. It takes just a few minutes to build a Facebook page, and the results can happen right away. It’s fun to see the connections trickle in.
Happy birthday, Facebook—I’m looking forward to new ways to use you over the next five years!
Jennifer Openshaw, author of The Millionaire Zone, is co-founder and president of WeSeed, whose mission is to enable people to discover the stock market in their everyday lives through their passions, their fashion, their careers, their kids, and the brands they know and love. You can reach her at jopenshaw@weseed.com.
