by Neil Ashworth

This article was originally published in The Productivity Institute (PI) Newsletter

It’s no secret that the current economic downturn is forcing more and more business owners to look closely at their expenditure and cut costs where they can in order to streamline the business model and manage the bottom line. What was previously an aim for many is now a necessity for all and if you are going to compete in the current climate you had better employ the same level of micro management to your own business.

It’s no surprise therefore that more and more small business owners are turning to social media platforms such as Facebook, MySpace, YouTube and Twitter in an effort to increase interest in their business and reduce advertising and marketing costs at the same time.

Just think about it for a moment. Could there be an easier way to drive targeted traffic to your website than to head into a couple of Facebook groups, start to follow a few people with similar interests on Twitter, add a few videos to YouTube and show the world what you have to offer?

So, where’s the problem? Why are so many businesses of all sizes struggling to do battle in the social media marketing arena?

The problem for a lot of small business owners is simple and falls into these three categories:

• Lack of knowledge
• Lack of strategy
• Lack of application

Let’s look at these three areas against the backdrop of Facebook and it’s user dynamics to try to establish what can and cannot be expected from this particular social media platform;

Facebook has over 200,000,000 users who have created small, large and medium sized micro-communities within this global collection of minds. Groups have sprung up and grown from a handful of college students to hundreds of thousands of unique individuals in a matter of weeks. Music, videos and pictures are exchanged across time and space by likeminded individuals who have chosen to share a piece of themselves with the world. Large companies, politicians and sportsmen and women have used this platform to launch products, win elections and rally support and yet the average small business owner still struggles to understand the concept and to maximize their position within this arena.

For many business owners, the frustration of trying to establish a marketing strategy and campaign over six to twelve months without any visible ROI leads to a reluctance to engage the Facebook community on its own terms; before long, another failed marketer has left the field, battle weary and fatigued from all those late night exchanges, uncertain if they will ever live to fight another Facebook day. Many revert to complaining about wasted time and resources and express a quiet concern over the potential harm of Facebook addiction. Sound familiar?

The Facebook community is just that - a community that wants to be treated as one. If you have ever read anything about the way people interact as communities form, develop and become stand alone entities in their own right, then you will understand that your entry into that community will be viewed in many different ways. Some people will welcome you with open arms, while others will see you coming from a distance and wonder about your motives. Its human dynamics spread across cyberspace and magnified by the constant relay of news feeds, group postings and status updates.

Like everywhere else on the Internet, people who use Facebook are looking for two things; entertainment and education. They are not looking for a business opportunity or to buy a product or service from you, me or anyone else for that matter but that’s not to say that they won’t if you get the marketing model right and stick to it. Facebook is unique in its ability to offer a constant and timely wave of new information and content for users to exchange across groups, friends walls and within notes and personal pages and unlike Twitter with its frenzy of noise and activity, Facebook delivers this flow of content like a constantly moving sea, allowing each of it’s users to become a part, a spectator or a leader of a particular topic.

But it’s through these topics and the content that users share that the real business is done and the skill is in directing this constantly moving sea out into the wider world beyond Facebook and towards an occasional visit to your own site, product or service all done in an educational or entertaining way.

Provide content and people will look at it. Provide value and people will pay attention to it. Provide entertainment and people will go looking for it.

Neil Ashworth is an Ex-Pro Soccer player, marathon running, social media marketing enthusiast who provides advice, support and training to people looking to build a business online using social media marketing tools and techniques. He is a part of the Carbon Copy Pro online marketing team which is currently expanding across the US market at a rapid pace due to its step-by-step internet marketing system. If you are considering an internet based business model as a change of career or as a way out of your current circumstances then Talk To Neil HERE right now.