The potential to make a better brand with facebook

This article was updated on July 16th, 2013 at 06:06 am

If you haven’t integrated Facebook yet on your website, I can challenge you that you are missing out on valuable traffic. Period. But different to popular belief, Facebook is not just about social plugins or comment integration. The true potential of Facebook is its people, and those who made it big so far, have realized it. Others, are on the way.

Facebook may be criticized for its traffic value and “professionalism quotient” but it’s a reality that there is no other social media catalyst available that can promote your content to the scale what Facebook can do. And if you have not been utilizing it so far, now is the time. Do it and see the difference.

Facebook Integration: Why is it important?

Facebook is where people are. Though it has this college image stuck on it unfairly, everybody is on it, probably even your boss who doesn’t accept it publicly. And digital marketers today, realize this power. Today, the rush is to get a bite out of it, whatever it takes. Never before in history have big brands embraced or accepted a third party network like Facebook for their own promotional purposes.

Today, even aggressive big brands like Nike are okay with placing their brand “after” Facebook. (facebook.com/nike). We haven’t seen anything like this in the near or distant future.

Make your brand talk to people, real people

Do you have a popular brand already? Then it might make sense to hop on to facebook and piggyback on its traffic than trying to woo people out of it.

People on Facebook are fun loving folks. They won’t leave it, no matter what. (See how Google+ tried and failed, even with a better product.) So forget the idea of getting a bite out of it. Instead, here’s what you can do.

Figure out how your product can transform itself to the Facebook audience.

The reason why you’re trying to promote your product (or website or brand) is that its not popular anyways, or at least to the level that you wished for. So now is the time. Figure out how you can transform your brand and adapt to a better product. If you never had a conversational medium, now is the time. Learn to talk to people. Learn to listen to feedback.

Learn from Feedback, make it a habit

Many of us are scared to get feedback, so much that we don’t listen or give a chance. Truth is that there might be someone out there who can help you with a better idea or make you realize a flaw in your product that you have been missing so far. Unless you accept feedback, you are not going to grow.

On Facebook, feedback is a daily process. Every minute you get feedback from other people. It often is negative feedback or criticism (technically a wrong word in this context, but still). But they are the most valuable comments you can ever get. The idea is not to fight, but to embrace the feedback and act upon it. Today, brands use Facebook to get feedback from its users. From product reviews to pricing strategies, everything can be done on Facebook. Now, who needs the research agency, when you have your customers talking to you every minute?

People see faces, not brands in your products

The reason why automobile companies try to make the front grill of a vehicle look similar to a smiley (or a face with an attitude that matches the brand) is because of the fact that, people see faces in products. Your brand manager might have made the best efforts to make your product look cute but if it doesn’t match up to the expectations, how good is it?

Facebook is an excellent platform to “humanize” your brand. And it is free, can you think of one good reason, why you should not make use of it?

Find out opportunities in the market

Facebook is an excellent platform to figure out if there are opportunities to grow in the market. Very often you find people asking for outlet details or product availability in certain areas. These kind of interaction with your target audience is the most valuable insight you can get about improving your product.

Facebook being an open platform will give you all kinds of intelligence that otherwise might have costed you a bomb for research. So, why not make use of it?

A popular brand is always close to people

Why are popular brands really popular? Of course they have amazing products, but at the core of it, it’s the relationship between the user and the brand. Be it a premium one or an FMCG, people trust brands because they “connect” with them. We humans see faces in brands, and we prefer friendly ones, the ones that smile and the ones that talk to you like a friend. If you’re a very rich guy who sits in the top aisle, without any interaction what so ever with others, no matter how big you are, people wouldn’t give a damn. Well, they might not avoid you but they sure wouldn’t want to prefer you over the friendly ones.

So the really popular brands are the ones that are close to people, who interact and talk to people day in and day out, stand with them and make their lives better. And today, there is no other platform that lets you do this so efficiently other than Facebook.