I'm asked often for recommendations on blogging platforms.  I've used the "other one" and it doesn't think as I think and I had my time with HTML coding 10 years ago.  I avoid the free platforms because life experience has taught me that one gets what one pays for. 

TypePad has a page describing the features of its blogging platform and software, all of which are part of the reason I use and recommend TypePad. 

"Twenty-one, twenty-two, twenty-three..." I have twenty-three blogs and I could add twenty-three more through my Unlimited TypePad account for $14.95 per month.  I like a lot of books, a lot of shoes, and a lot of blogs, so that works for me.  TypePad is not a client and I am not a TypePad affiliate, so I don't have a financial reason to recommend TypePad.

But I do recommend it.  Here's the number one reason why:

See that text box?  "Describe your problem or question." I can type anything into that box and get an answer from TypePad. 

I haven't tried "What is the meaning of life?", but I might some day because I know the answer would be step-by-step and include a value added. 

Why do I use TypePad?  Whether my questions begin with "Greetings" or "Agh!" or "Help!", they're all mission critical.  And TypePad answers.

“All my life I’ve looked at words as though I were seeing them for the first time.”
- Ernest Hemingway

Given the current state of how people receive information about companies and their products and services - known as media fragmentation, i.e. people are everywhere, especially online - finding potential customers, much less converting them to sales, is a huge challenge.

In this age of media fragmentation, for companies seeking new business, I see two barriers.  The first is getting known.  The second is converting those who do know into customers.

Handshake 2.0’s specialty is helping companies get known.  As the nexus of a social media, Internet-based hub of multiple social media channels, social networking channels, and media distribution channels, Handshake 2.0 gets companies known.

Getting known contributes to a company’s sales process by populating the top of the sales funnel.  The arrows pointing both ways in the illustration show that Handshake 2.0 both shares and interacts with its audience.  Those who visit Handshake 2.0 as a result of that interaction have many opportunities to click through to the company’s web site.  When a visitor clicks through from Handshake 2.0 to the company’s web site, that’s a qualified lead.

What happens after that?  The qualified lead arrives at the company’s web site, the symbolic representation of the company's value proposition, its offer, its corporate vision, its office, its storefront.  The user’s experience on the site, determined primarily by how easy the site makes it to find the company’s solution to the user’s problem, is the beginning of the conversion of the qualified lead to a sale.

If the value proposition and offer aren’t evident, the conversion is unlikely to happen.

Few companies currently have the time or cash to redesign their web sites to the latest and greatest technology.  What can a company do with the site it has now to increase the possibility of converting leads that arrive to the site via any means - Handshake 2.0, search engine results, an email marketing campaign, a snail mail invitation - to sales?

Words.

Companies can revise, modify, and tweak the content on their home pages to focus on that arriving qualified lead, to be all about that user, to clearly show the problem to which their products and services are the solution.

We can look at our words again, the ones that convey who we want to be to our customers, as if for the first time.

A major challenge of measuring the ROI of social media PR and marketing is that companies don't know the answers to these questions:

“What is the ROI of our current marketing? From the x dollars we spend on marketing, how many y customers do we get?”

“What’s our contact-to-conversion ratio? How many site visitors/phone calls/emails/handshakes does it take for us to get a customer?”

“When we asked our customers, ‘How did you hear about us?’, what did they answer?” (Oops, we forgot to ask.)

While we've found that intending the business use of social media to result in direct sales results in direct disappointment, social media PR and marketing - as does traditional PR and marketing - ultimately must result in ROI.

Companies who don't know answers to questions about the results of their marketing efforts can start to measure them now.  They can do it themselves, without the help of a social media consultancy - although we're here to serve should a company want assistance! - by simply going online and doing a before-and-after measurement using two simple benchmarks.

Two Simple Benchmarks

1. Site Traffic
2. Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs)

Site Traffic as a Benchmark

1. How much traffic does our company’s site have now?
2. How much does it have after the implementation of a social media strategy?
3. Is a change in site traffic correlated with a change in the number of leads/prospects/customers in our sales funnel?

Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) as a Benchmark

1. When we use keywords related to our products and services in search engines, where is our company listed? First page? No? 68% click a search result within the first page of results… (iProspect).
2. When we use our company as a search query, what comes up? “It’s who you know” – Is what’s listed good information about us that we created to manage our brand? Is it extraneous stuff about something or someone else? Worse, is it a bad review?
3. After implementing a social media strategy, where do our company’s products and services show in search engine results? What sites are listed when we use our company as a search term?

"How did you hear about us?"  Realistically speaking, busy companies are going to continue to forget to ask that question.  Making the phone call, composing and sending out the email, creating the survey, keeping track of the answers - all that takes time.

Using these two simple benchmarks in a before-and-after fashion will still not answer "How did you hear about us?" But it will begin to answer how many have heard and how they're finding a company and its products and services - or not finding them.

What’s the ROI of social media marketing?  Using these two simple benchmarks, companies can start to measure results and answer that question for themselves.

I once heard a PR guy say he was a “manager of expectations” which appalled me for its reductionism since, as a PR gal, I consider myself an “opener of possibilities.”  Still, as more companies turn to social media to generate business, I find myself filling both roles.

We’re delighted James Ball found our social media sales funnel illustration of value and used it to deepen the conversation about social media R.O.I.  As a social media PR and marketing agency, we use social media on behalf of our clients and our own company.  In our work in both areas, we have found:

The 1) use of social media and 2) sales are not causal and conditional, i.e. if a company uses social media, then a new sale will result. 

The use of social media can bring potential clients and customers to the "top" of the sales funnel, beginning the sales process.  As James Ball writes in Visualizing Social Media ROI on Social Media Today, “Social media channels are ‘touch-points’ whereby you can effectively convert conversations into leads.” 

From the “manager of expectations”: 

That potential customers come closer to the top of a company’s sales funnel because of the value of the information and conversation they find in the company's use of social media is a fine and reasonable expectation to have.  Expecting immediate use of social media to result in immediate sales will result in immediate disappointment.

From the “opener of possibilities”:

No more profound truth about how business is ultimately done exists than this: 

“It’s who you know” fosters the trust that results in word-of-mouth referrals that result in handshakes on deals.  Especially online, "It's still who you know."

The optimal use of social media is to share the "who" of a company, what products and services it offers, and to engage in conversations - just like at a dinner party or in a grocery store line - that foster mutual “It’s who you know" on those subjects and others that serendipitously arise. Demanding a
one-to-one correspondence between the use of social media and direct sales limits the opening of possibilities.

We want to thank James Ball for using our illustration for Social Media Today.  He expanded an online conversation, cited us as the source, and linked back to the original post.  First class.

You're welcome to share this graphic by Kelsey Sarles for Handshake Media, Incorporated, a social media public relations and marketing agency and parent company of Handshake 2.0. We only ask that if you quote it or use it, please cite its source and include a link.  Here is a .pdf version of  Populating the Top of the Sales Funnel Through Social Media.

My ritual on Sunday evenings is to tap into Mack Collier's Twitter feed to find out what he has planned for that evening's #blogchat. Blogchat is an online Twitter chat forum that features a keynote guest who brings his or her expertise about the world of blogging to an intense audience of hundreds of Tweeters and bloggers.

Mack's invitation to #blogchat Sunday, February 21, 2010 read:

@MackCollier: Want to discuss corporate blogging? Dell's Chief Blogger @lionelatdell joins #blogchat tomorrow nite at 8pm CT! 

Corporate blogging with Lionel Menchaca, chief blogger at Dell? Oh, yeah, I'm in. I'm sure you've seen pictures on television and in the movies of celebrities being mobbed by the press - manic reporters shouting out their questions hoping theirs will be one that gets answered. Blogchat is like that, minus the body press. I dove in along with more than 200 other bloggers firing questions to @lionelatdell. He responded.

The first question I tweeted was this:

@LionelatDell If I gotta start a corporate blog tomorrow/ No time to learn. What are the 3 bottom-line things to know? #blogchat

Lionel's reply:

@zkellyq 3 bottom line things for a corp blog: 1) know ur scope and objective 2) know the audience ur wanting to connect with... #blogchat

@zkellyq and 3) Be ready to deal with the negatives head on...Very important. It's what I mean when I say blog the right way. #blogchat

2nd Question:

@LionelatDell If u were to found a start-up, would u set up a blog for ur new co? Why, why not? #blogchat

Lionel's reply:

@zkellyq If I were a startup, w to start a blog or not would depend on what we did, but yeah, starting a blog probably makes sense #blogchat

Not only did Lionel answer my direct questions, his responses to other participants answered questions that were also on my mind. Throughout #blogchat, he found a way to respond to his audience and also tell the story of how Michael Dell set the directive for a corporate blog. But, before the first word was ever keyed into a post, months were spent listening:

@LionelatDell That listening period in April 2006 became the foundation for our SM strategy. We launched the blog 4 months later. #blogchat

When asked "Why is Dell blogging?" He responded by saying "to educate and serve are my main goals."

The #blogchat complete transcript includes over 2,000 tweets from 273 participants and I'm sure there were even more who were listening. 

Photo credit:  Treepie and Barbet by Nidhin G Poothully

***

Z. Kelly Queijo is the founder of college visit planning site SmartCollegeVisit and a frequent contributor to Handshake 2.0. You're invited to follow SmartCollegeVisit on Twitter, @collegevisit.

When people type search terms into search engines, 68% click a search result within the first page of results (iProspect).  That means for 32% of search engine users, results on other pages essentially don't exist.

Google is the top of the top 5 search engines and receives several hundred million search queries each day.

First page matters.  Especially with Google.

For high placement in organic Google search results for single words describing a company's product or service, competition is stiff.  However, to still achieve business results, related terms or phrases will do.

Appearing on the first page of search results for "widget" would be ideal.  "Widget parts" will do.  A person in search of the products or services a company offers can still find them.  And as Brian Clark points out, that's what search engines are for: "quality search results for people."

At the end of our post, A Google Real-Time Search Story - LeBron James Had a Parotidectomy, Too, we highlighted its purpose:  To use social media to bring traffic to a static, legacy, hard-to-find site of high value.  The site was created in 2003 and last updated in 2008: Poked and Parotid - Journal of My Parotid Tumor. 

We were going for first page results for "parotidectomy." "Parotidectomy scar" would do.

(We very much appreciate Andy Little for allowing us to use his site for this example. No pun intended, but no company had to lose face by us using its party-like-its-1999 site instead.)

A Google Real-Time Search Story was posted on February 11, 2010, 5:30 AM EST. 

A Google search using the term "parotidectomy" shows a link to our post is not on the first page of results, nor is the site we value.  We perused the next two pages since, according to iProspect, "92% of search engine users click a result within the first three pages of search results." Nada.

Conclusion:

One blog post, publicized through Twitter and Facebook, didn't crack the nut of first page search results for our top desired term.

For "parotidectomy scar," the site we value is not in the results on page one, two or three.  Our post - which links to the valued site - was at the top of page two on February 14, 2010, 7:00 AM EST.

Conclusions:

• People who want to know what parotid surgery is really like and how bad - or good - that paroditectomy scar will be, will have an easier time finding the site we found provides the best answers to those questions.  "Widget parts," rather than "widgets," will do.
• We would need to write a 10-page white paper on the SEO heart, mind and knowledge that went into creating the first post, and another one on the social media strategy that went into sharing it.
• That said, companies who use search engines for business results are vendors to Google.  We can spread our peddler's cloths arranged with SEO ware we consider of high value - web site, blog post, Twitter tweet - but Google chooses based on what it values. And according to Google, that's this:  "The perfect search engine," says [Google] co-founder Larry Page, "would understand exactly what you mean and give back exactly what you want."
• Google offers an overview of how it determines value.  Google doesn't say, "If you do this, you will be on page one."
• Google asks of us:  "Create a useful, information-rich site...  Make pages primarily for users, not for search engines."
• High-quality social media, used even minimally and briefly, can help resurrect a static, legacy, hard-to-find site from Internet obscurity.

***

Without Andy Little's initiative to write a blog in 2003, and his permission in 2010 to use his site for a case study, this demonstration of how individuals, organizations, and companies can use social media to share their information, ideas, expertise - even kindness - with the world would not have been possible.  Both professionaly and personally, I extend to him my heartfelt thanks.

This post is about a good deed.

It's also one more blog post in the tome being written about the social media news that businesses dread hearing:  The dot-com days of building a web site and having people come are over.  The finest site on the planet, chock full of the most carefully selected keywords, will no longer bring traffic in a world where search engines feature recent and real-time content. 

According to Google on real-time search, "Whether it's an eyewitness tweet, a breaking news story or a fresh blog post, you can find it on Google right after it's published on the web."

"Right after it's published" would not include the home page of a business or corporate Web site built in, say, 2003.

This post is also a study of real-time search results.

Here's a screenshot of Google search results taken on February 10, 2010, at 3:45 EST using the search term "parotidectomy."

 
This search engine results page, or SERP, contains no social media links - no blog posts, no Twitter tweets, no Facebook fan page updates, no YouTube videos.  One listing mentions "Surgical Video," but the video doesn't work.

I've been to all those pages.  And probably a hundred more.  This post is also about corporate and CEO transparency. I'm scheduled for a parotidectomy on Monday.  I did what most people do when they want to know about the unknown:  I Googled it. 

May I be as tough as LeBron James.  I know I'll have a large scar like his at first. A thin, half-mooned shaped one later would be nice.  I wrote how I felt about parotidectomy, parotid surgery, the risks, and the scar on my CEO blog.

The scar is where the story of the good deed begins.

Since even a kidney can be removed through laparoscopy, I was hoping a way had been found to reach up to my neck, snip the salivary gland, deflate, be done with it.  Ah, that parotid gland - a facial nerve runs through it. One snip of the facial nerve and I'm an eye-hanging drooler. The facial incision is as long and winding as the Tour de France to give the surgeon room to work.

Room to work on the face - my face...  Agh, how would I look afterwards?!  I typed "parotidectomy scar" into Google Images.  Feel free to look for yourself, but I’m not including a link to, or a screenshot of, that scary page.  Anyway, one guy’s scar had healed nicely.  I clicked on the image to get a closer look.  It took me to a blog.

The guy got diagnosed with a tumor in his parotid gland and, with a forthcoming parotidectomy, decided to let his friends and family know "what was happening," by keeping a blog:  Poked and Parotid - Journal of My Parotid Tumor. 

That was in 2003.  On the Epilogue page, the last update was 2008.

On the Contact Andy page, I read, “If you have questions or want to send email for any reason, you can…  Over the years, I have gotten emails from all over the world and try to respond as quickly as possible.  Please feel free to write any time."

Feeling so frightened, so alone, knowing I was certainly looking at a dead site with a dead email address, I still found myself reaching out to a complete stranger, online at that, sobbing, sending an email to "Andy."

Andy wrote back.

I have his permission to share that story and who he is:  Andy Little.

Whether he had replied to me or not, humanity, bravery and kindness permeate the pages of Andy Little's blog.

Of all the sites I've studied about parotid surgery, Andy’s is the most valuable to me and the one to which I return for answers and comfort.

It was also one of the hardest to find. 

Let's change that and pass his kindness and good deed forward.

And let's test social media and Google's offer - "you can find it on Google right after it's published on the web."

Okay, basic social media tools:  blog posts, Twitter tweets, Facebook page updates, LinkedIn status updates, YouTube videos.

This is a blog post on parotidectomy.  I’ve carefully used Brian Clark’s SEO copywriting guidelines to create the text (link to authoritative sources - Brian Clark - check).  Then I’ll use the knowledge and expertise compiled in Handshake 2.0’s Social Media category to create Twitter tweets, Facebook page updates, and LinkedIn status updates. 

Hmm, the YouTube video.  I'm still thinking about it, but even I may have found a limit to my CEO transparency.  Truly, if you want to know what's happening to me, read Andy.  He's got the whole process chronicled. 

I’m counting on Google’s real-time search and a 2010 social media face lift - ooh, wish I hadn't used that term - to a 2003 blog, last updated in 2008, to give real-time help to people like I am who type their fears into Google.  I hope the ones who need him find Andy.  His scar looks good.

And Andy writes back.

"The mission of a manufacturer is to overcome poverty by producing an abundant supply of goods... The mission of a manufacturer is to create material abundance by providing goods as plentiful and inexpensive as tap water. This is how we can banish poverty, bring happiness to people's lives and make this world into a paradise."

- Matsushita Konosuke announcing in 1932 a 250-year plan to implement his vision for the company that would become Panasonic

According to eMarketer, "Marketers must connect business goals to social media objectives."

What would Matsushita Konosuke's social media objectives and strategy have been given his business goals?

In Making the List - Branding on Twitter, Z. Kelly Queijo quotes Ryan Paugh, Co-Founder and Director of Community, Brazen Careerist, Inc.:  “Twitter Lists are a great way to bring like-minded people together. If a brand wants to create a community around their product then a Twitter List is a great way to help make that happen.”

We're a company on a mission. We've got business goals, a brand and a product, and a vision for community. If a Twitter List can make things happen - our #1 social media objective - then we're making Twitter Lists. 

Handshake 2.0 isn't exactly a product, but it's an enterprise of Handshake Media, Incorporated, part of whose vision is the creation of affluent communities through regional economic development.  Our current contribution to that development is social media public relations and marketing initiatives.  We've specified how we think a regional social media economic deveopment initiative would look and work.

We've got a pretty simple logic to our vision.  The better companies do and the better individuals in those companies do, the more people they can hire.  Handshake 2.0 showcases companies, and people in companies, to help them do very well.

We've started "collecting" the like-minded - the corporate leadership - in our region in Twitter Lists.  We're tossing our stone into the tap water pool beginning in Blacksburg, Virginia and the surrounding New River Valley of Virginia.  The "where" doesn't matter, however. Any region, industry, organization or collaborative could do the same or for other purposes. Let the ripples begin!

Our Twitter List logic is simple, too.  People do business with people they know.  Our Handshake 2.0 Twitter Lists introduce the members of the corporate leadership on Twitter in one locale to each other.  The existence of the List is an opportunity to introduce this leadership to others on Twitter.  We know each other a bit better than before. 

Let's do business.

Let's work on that mission.

Handshake 2.0's Twitter List of Company Founders

Handshake 2.0's Twitter List of Business, Company, and Corporate Executives

Are you on our lists?  If you're not, please let us know to add you!  Please DM us at Handshake 2.0 on Twitter.

***

Graphic: Z. Kelly Queijo

Much ado exists about the pros and cons of outsourcing corporate social media.

In The Story of a Corporate Facebook Page, I used the metaphor of Shakespeare's  A Misummer Night’s Dream and the idea of a play within a play to begin to use Handshake 2.0’s Facebook Page as a case study for companies seeking their own answers to "What do we do about Facebook?"

In this case study, creation of a Facebook page for an enterprise - Handshake 2.0 - essentially was outsourced to a third party social media services provider - Handshake Media.  The "play within a play" is that Handshake Media owns Handshake 2.0.  While the story isn't Shakespeare, it does have a thick plot.  With animals.

“Feed the beast.” 

Once a social media site is up, whether it's a blog, a Twitter account, or a Facebook page, a company is holding an empty bag of dog chow for a sad-eyed puppy.

Through social media content - generally text, images, and video - people and companies express who they are and what they’re doing, and fans can share the same.  And in terms of cold, hard business reality, Google and other search engines now list real-time social media content in their search results.  If a company isn’t providing real-time content, it’s decreasing its likelihood of appearing in searches done by people they definitely want to know and be known by.  And as we say at Handshake 2.0, even online, "It's still who you know."

How does a company feed the content best?  In-house or outsource?  I'm both, so here's my story.

Updating a Corporate Facebook Page - How Often, How Much, and How Long Does it Take?

I update Handshake 2.0’s Facebook Fan page on weekdays, once per day, usually in the morning, often with several updates.  I respond to fans’ comments at that time as well. 

Creating the content of the updates requires thinking.  What do we want to have happen as a result of our Facebook page?  What content could I post today that would align with our vision?  Usually the answer is a “value-added” about posts on Handshake 2.0.  What hasn’t been said in the post that I could share on Facebook for greater “who you know” interest, entertainment, connection and value for the Facebook page’s visitors?

Sometimes I know the answer immediately and the mechanics of typing the update in Word to double-check spelling and grammar, pasting that into the update box on Facebook, copying and pasting the link from a browser, clicking to attach the correct picture - all that takes 10 minutes.

When the answer isn’t immediate and I need to reread, think, do research, or generate new content rather than a value-added - that can take a half an hour. 

I average about 1.5 hours per week updating our corporate Facebook Fan page and interacting with fans.  We charge $100 per hour for my consulting services.  If I were outsourcing my Facebook Fan page to my company as a third-party provider, it would cost me $150 per week, or $600 per month for a 4-week month.

Since the beginning of 2009, the top sources of traffic to Handshake 2.0, according to Google Analytics, have been direct traffic, Google search results, Twitter and Facebook.  In the last quarter of 2009, traffic to Handshake 2.0 increased by 25% when we stopped using feeds to update our Facebook page and added thoughtful, personal updates instead.

I’ve written about the difference in value of traffic vs. audience, but traffic is the standard measure by which the value of an online property is measured.  The second measure is where the site’s content appears in search results.  Those measures make sense.  "It’s who you know" - word of mouth generates business referrals - so the more you know, the more business is likely.  To be valued beyond its content, Handshake 2.0 needs traffic and high search engine listings.

Every company needs traffic from all sources, including from search engines.  It's the source of "It's who you know" leads.

Based on the Handshake 2.0 case study, and given that I am "a play within a play," both an in-house, corporate Facebook page manager, and a provider of outsourced Facebook page services, would I outsource my Facebook page management to a third party?

For me, the answer depends on these questions.

1. Can we co-create enough content to "feed the beast"?  Do I have a blog, an email newsletter, a direct mailing from which my third party company and I can co-create value-added content for my corporate Facebook page?  If not, creating original, mission-driven and mission-worthy content will take time and thought, both of which are costly, whether done in-house or outsourced.

2. How does my sales funnel and contact-to-conversion ratio work?  If from 1000 visitors to my site, I can get 1 conversion that results in $1000 in sales, how much am I willing to pay for those 1000 visitors?

3. What percentage of my sales ultimately originate from search engine results?  Do people use Google to check out me or my company before they even begin to think of contacting me?  If so, when I Google myself or my company, what shows?  When search terms related to my business are used, does my company appear in the results?  With Google now measuring the size of a social media footprint, i.e. current content in social media channels like Facebook, am I being outplayed by my competitors who use social media, however modestly, even ineptly?

I don't have a clever quote to end this post.  I have shared over and over again how much I care about companies using social media in a way that will work for them and produce desired business results.  What occurs to me is Juliet's lament about already being engaged when she meets Romeo.  I want no good company with good people and good products and services to utter, "Too early seen unknown, and known too late!"

***

For more ideas about corporate, business and enterprise Facebook pages, feel free to view our category for Social Media.

These two posts read together may prove of value:

The Story of a Corporate Facebook Page
Outsourcing a Coporate Facebook Page

Fans of Shakespeare may remember that in A Misummer Night’s Dream, a troupe of actors perform a play for the main characters in the play, hence the phrase, “a play within a play.”

I’d like to offer “a play within a play” and a research case study on one component of a company’s corporate social media strategy: a Facebook Page. 

The "play within a play" is the story of Handshake 2.0’s Facebook Page unfolding within the context of outsourcing its creation to a third party social media provider - Handshake Media, Handshake 2.0’s own parent company.

First, the setting. Handshake Media's CTO launched Handshake 2.0’s Facebook fan page in June, 2009, and we set up the content to be automatically generated including our Twitter feed and our site’s content feed.  The resultant page resembled lines of inscrutable code with post titles, Twitter tweets, URLs and no updates made personally and no photos or images.  Interaction regarding that content was taking place at the source - replies and retweets on Twitter, comments on the blog - so we had no comments or updates from our few Facebook fans.  But, by gosh, we had a corporate Facebook page and we could link to it from our site’s home page!

Our thinking evolved, as did Facebook’s features, and we revised our strategy in the third quarter of the year by asking the question we should have asked before launching the page in the first place:  What do we want to have happen as a result of our corporate Facebook page?

Answers can range from building brand awareness to building customer relationships, but for us, Facebook fits beautifully with our vision:  People do business with people they know.  Online, “It’s still who you know.” Our Facebook page could be one more “handshake way” of helping our clients and site users get known. 

The Twitter and blog feeds are gone. I now post updates to our Facebook page myself by hand.  I do my best to post content that showcases “who to know” and invites interaction among all who might do business together.

According to Google Analytics, comparing the traffic sources from the last two quarters of the year, 7/31/09 - 9/30/09 to 10/1/09 - 12/31/10, traffic to Handshake 2.0 from Facebook increased by 25%.  For the full year, from 1/1/09 to 12/30/09, traffic to the site from Facebook more than doubled.

For this case study of one, our conclusion is "The play's the thing." Or the story's the thing.  While we entered the Facebook show sort of haphazardly as one of a crowd of groupies, once we paused and thought about what we were doing and why, we realized a corporate Facebook presence is more like a play within a play where actors and audience switch roles until which is which hardly matters. They mutually create the story of people and companies and how they work and play together.

Handshake 2.0

Promote Your Page Too

***

For more ideas about corporate, business and enterprise Facebook pages, feel free to view our category for Social Media.

These two posts read together may prove of value:

The Story of a Corporate Facebook Page
Outsourcing a Coporate Facebook Page