social networking sites

Nowadays, more and more companies are putting links to their Facebook pages, LinkedIn profiles, YouTube pages and more in their online marketing efforts. These are sites where their customers/prospects are hanging out anyway.

The goal is to EASILY give your customers/prospects as many opportunities as possible to connect without being too aggressive. Through these connections, you can really see the personal side of a company plus, in some cases, get access to great promotional offers and other value-added content.

Lately, I’ve seen a huge spike in companies inviting me to connect with them via social networking sites. They want me to become a fan on Facebook, follow them on Twitter or watch their videos on YouTube.

There’s one main problem.

They’re not giving me a compelling reason to connect.

I will typically only connect with a company if they:

• Have a product or service I believe in
• Offer special promotions or discounts
• Provide value-added content and resources

In addition to the three points outlined above, it has to be EASY for me to connect.

Today I received an invite that sparked this entry. I got an email from Calistoga Cafe promoting one of their sandwiches (I wrote about Calistoga’s email marketing efforts in a previous post). At the bottom of today’s email, there was a link to visit them on Facebook for special offers. See below.

Instead of linking directly to their Facebook group page (I would recommend businesses setting up a Facebook page over a group. Here’s a good article about the difference between the two), they gave me a general link to Facebook and a search term to look for their page. How many people are actually going to take the time to do this? Also, their Facebook page says absolutely nothing about special offers.

I love eating at Calistoga and I really think they are missing an opportunity to connect with their loyal customers.

There is something to be said about making an effort and getting out there on the social networking sites. At the same time, everyone is doing it now. You have to do something to stand out.

Give people a reason to want to connect and make it easy.