Posted by Jason Elkins in Internet, Social Media | 0 Comments
Facebook – Blurring the Lines Between Personal Space and Business Opportunities
I use Facebook to support my personal and business networks. Those lines seem to be blurring. My business ‘friends’ are commenting on updates that are a bit more personal in nature, and my ‘friends’ that I spend time with outside of Facebook, will comment on work related posts. I’m inclined to blur the lines anyway… I like people and tend to do business with friends or become friends with many of my customers. Recently I reconnected with a man I attended church with years ago. After viewing some of our websites that I displayed on Facebook, he called me from his home in Florida and we ended up putting a website together for him. If it wasn’t for Facebook, I’m not sure if we would have connected otherwise, and I’m confident that he would have found a local resource.
Take a look at just how popular Facebook has become (stats all from Facebook itself):
- More than 350 million active users
- 50% of our active users log on to Facebook in any given day
- More than 35 million users update their status each day
- More than 55 million status updates posted each day
- More than 2.5 billion photos uploaded to the site each month
- More than 3.5 billion pieces of content (web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, photo albums, etc.) shared each week
- More than 3.5 million events created each month
- More than 1.6 million active Pages on Facebook
- More than 700,000 local businesses have active Pages on Facebook
- Pages have created more than 5.3 billion fans
With this explosion of Facebook, I see more opportunities to share our lives, our work and our personality with the world. This has positive and negative implications.
I recently met with a company that I had connected with online. We used a chat application to answer questions about their website project, and through that exchange we ‘got to know each other’. In addition to sharing work related information, she talked to me about her family and showed me pictures from her wedding. When we got together in person, it was a bit awkward at first. I felt comfortable online, and yet, it took a little time when we finally met face to face to have that same level of comfort. This reminded me of a story my friend told me about one of his Facebook contacts. He said that he approached a woman in a company lunch room and innocently asked how she was adjusting to her new puppy. He could tell right away that she was creeped out by his question… They were really only ‘friends’ in the digital world. Some of my friends have gone so far as to set up two Facebook accounts, one for personal, and one for business.
How have your Facebook relationships affected your business? Do you think the time you spend in your Facebook account has a positive impact on your business? Can you track any sales or business opportunities directly related to your Facebook activity?
