What use is a Facebook plug-in to your business?

I had a few questions from people I know about the facebook plugins that I have on this blog site.
First watch this video from Facebook itself so we are all on the same page, then we will look at the relevance to your business after the video.

Using this for your business

Now key to these things is figuring out first why and then how to use it for your business.

Hopefully the ‘why’ is fairly obvious… You want people to spread the word that they like your business to all of their friends. Although there may be other specific reasons of why you want to do this or what outcome you want.

The ‘how’ might take a little imagination.
If you have a website then you want to enable your customers/clients/members to interact with it.
I think one of the easiest ways is to add a blogging platform to your site (this site is on the wordpress platform which is free).

Now you may not want to spend your time ‘blogging’. You don’t have to the wordpress platform is very customisable, in fact many ‘websites’ are done with wordpress. For example you might have a feedback page for your products or services which allow people to comment on their experience with you including a facebook ‘like’ button.

Depending on the plugin you use, your customer’s friends will then see that you liked your page, or even see the comment they had about it.

As you will notice I have added a couple of other plugins to this blog:

“Login with Facebook” plugin
Why would I do this. Well I want people to leave a comment, to interact. It is far easier to allow them to do this by clicking on the ‘login with facebook’ button. They then have a personalised experience in that it already has their profile photo from facebook included with the comment. No need to upload a photo.

“Find Us on Facebook” plugin
You may want to keep your website strictly on topic or on your own product, which is fine. But if you then feel the need to have a medium to share things that are industry related or a little off topic, you could either use twitter or in this case a facebook ‘fanpage’.

I think that this is a fairly compelling plugin. What I really like about it is the photos of the people who ‘like’ your facebook fan page. This offers social proof. Even better, if the person has logged on with the facebook login button, then any friends that they have who have also ‘liked’ the fanpage will be shown first in the photos. A powerful endorsement for your visitor to also click  the liek button. (My only criticism of the one on my site at time of writing is that there is no clear call to action: “Click Like now!”)

So that is a very brief comment on Facebook Plugins. If you like what you read why don’t you press the like button just below!  ;o)

Update

12th August 2010

Not even suggesting that the media takes notice of what I post… ;o)
But NZ Herald had a story on Social Media and business today:

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/small-business/news/article.cfm?c_id=85&objectid=10665380

The only thing is that the concentrated on corporates, and missed the point that SME businesses have the advantage in being more agile.

The only warning I have for SME businesses in regards to Social Media is that you need to be sure that the tail does not wag the dog!!