Facebook as a Business Tool
Using Social Networking to Communicate, Campaign and Connect
Facebook can be a powerful business tool which allows you to establish workgroups or special interest groups at very little cost.
Facebook, the online social networking tool, is often derided as a waste of time and something that is a distraction in the workplace, but it can be used as a business tool. Facebook has hit the headlines in late 2007 and 2008 as an extremely powerful means of bringing together groups of like-minded people.
Using Facebook to Establish Workgroups
Some of the features that are available as part of Facebook are ideally suited to establishing workgroups or interest groups in the business world. You can set up a membership list, where interested people sign up and take responsibility for maintaining their own contact details rather than an administrator needing to maintain a distribution list.
You can use the Events feature to plan and promote meetings or events, easily invite everyone on the membership list to attend and then automatically see who’s coming and who isn’t. Compare this with sending a large number of emails and manually collating the results.
Of course, within the workplace, you may already be using your email and diary application to achieve the same purpose, but Facebook allows you to establish a group that crosses company and even geographical boundaries to easily manage a group of people from all over the world.
Another useful feature is the discussion board which allows members of the group to post topics for discussion which all members can see. Compare this with email conversations that are hard to manage and share without flooding members’ inboxes.
The News and Photos features allow you to keep members up to date with what’s happening in the group. You can allow members of the group to post items.
Bringing Web 2.0 Technologies to Your Workplace with Facebook
Many organisations are investing heavily in “Web 2.0” technologies that allow this style of two-way communication. They recognise it as part of the collaborative workplace that is replacing the top-down autocratic style of management of the previous century. It is also a style of communication expected, indeed demanded, by the generation of workers now entering the workforce, who are often referred to as the “connected generation” because of their use of social networking tools.
But the best news is that Facebook is free. To successfully introduce a social networking tool in an organisation that is more comfortable with top-down communication will require some cultural changes. By using Facebook you can pilot the online workgroup culture at no cost and very little investment in time and training, as you’ll probably find many of your employees are already familiar with it.
Once you have established the culture, you may find you need a more powerful commercial product.
But by starting out with Facebook, you’ll already have the information and evidence you need to put forward a business plan for further investment.
Facebook as a Campaign Tool
In the Australian Federal Election in November 2007, the current leader of the Opposition, Kevin Rudd, tapped into this powerful way of connecting with a whole new generation. He achieved almost popstar status with over 19,000 “friends” and screaming teenagers when he hit the hustings, while the Prime Minister of the day, John Howard, struggled to look at ease with the informality of a two-way dialog with voters. Kevin Rudd won the election. John Howard lost his seat. Facebook played at least a small part in communicating, campaigning and connecting with the voters.
In the current US race for President the Democrat candidates Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are both using Facebook to marshal their supporters and spread their message. Currently Obama has 4 times as many “friends” as Hillary Clinton. It will be interesting to see how this translates at the polling booth.
