Whew! Chapter 8, and we get marketing strategy. From the layout it seems Levy’s book is geared to the new social media marketer. In that respect, I can understand why marketing strategy falls late in the book. Chapter 8, a basic overview of marketing strategy, explains “the How,” but not “the Why.” Given the target market, if I’m pegging it right, I get it.
From a high level, there are three basic FB marketing strategies, each having its advantages.
- Community Building is for developing an overall strong brand presence on Facebook.
- Marketing and Promotion is primarily a strategy for raising awareness of products and services using Facebook.
- Advertising is to, well, advertise our products and services.
Levy goes into quite a bit of detail in this chapter about how we can go about organizing and launching a marketing strategy in the social networking site. He also helps us understand the distinction and possible uses of Groups and Fan Pages in Facebook. And, like in other chapters, he gives us tips. Here’s one:
Setting up a second account to manage corporate Facebook Pages or Groups can make it easier to keep personal and professional lives separated. That way, if you leave your company or someone else takes over the community management of your company’s Facebook presence, it is as easy as giving the new person the credentials to the second account. There are no ties to your personal account.
On a certain level, this breaks with the notion of mixing personal and professional social media persona discussed in the previous Privacy chapter. I’m not one to argue about these matters like, but if we are to use Levy’s strategies of spreading the world about a Fan Page or Group, it seems that mixing persona is our only option. In that case, I would say this point seem moot.
In fact, in another community I’m building, the former community manager just gave me admin rights, and that was that. He’s still part of the community, but has moved on. Having him as part of the community will be beneficial, if he participates. My recommendation would a different. But we will get at that a different day.
Okay, on to Chapter 9.
