Facebook Business Users Perspective
Published by Rodney Rumford November 11th, 2007 in Facebook, facebook Business.
Business and Facebook: How do business professionals use Facebook?: A Facebook Business Users Perspective. While attending Barcamp in San Diego I presented a session on Facebook. I spoke with about 30 individual business people and asked them how they used facebook. The responses ranged from “I don’t have an account” to “I think it is OK but I don’t really get how Facebook can be used for business” to “I use it intensely for my business and I love it”.
There were lot’s of great responses from the group.
After the Facebook session I interviewed Jennifer Hatfield about how she uses Facebook for business from a business professionals perspective. Jennifer is a very bright and talented Sr. Product Manager.
We discuss how she uses Facebook for keeping in touch and continuing business relationships with other professionals. Business users need to remember that business is all about people and your relationships with those people. Keeping connected to those people in your network is important for a multitude of reasons.
She talks about how she keeps in touch with her network of work, career and business connections worldwide (London, NY, San Diego, etc.). She keeps connected to her peers from Qualcomm, Ogilvy & Mather, etc. via Facebook.
She shared why she prefers facebook to Linked In from a business perspective and how the Facebook experience is much richer and more personal with those business contacts. She also talks about how Facebook really makes communicating easy and much more personal than Linked In (too stark & regimented).
She also likes knowing co-workers birthdays (I showed her the Cool Cards Application with a Birthday Reminder feature after she mentioned that and she thought it was useful) as that adds another layer of valuable information. She also talked about how the news feed alerted her about the Barcamp meeting and how she became aware of the event because of it.
Facebook is quickly making it’s way into business professionals lives and fundamentally changing the ways in which they communicate, interact, forge relationships and stay connected.
Watch the enlightening interview with Jennifer here.
Technorati Tags: facebook, facebook business
Very good interview, and a really clear emphasis on using the core features of Facebook (rather than Applications or Groups) to stay in touch informally and keep a business relationship active.
Thanks Gordon. That was sort of the point of the interview. Even if you never touch an application, facebook has great business value. Keeping those connections and staying in touch is very easy with facebook. An efficient way to stay connected and communicate is what facebook does very well at it’s core.
We are building an “internal” Facebook at work to connect all our business applications through a single interface and to turn our people directory into a social network. But, we want to connect that to the public Facebook. In December, I am running a few workshops similar to what you describe above for the business, under the heading; “Imagine if….”
We are in the Financial Advice business where our agents consult with clients and service their financial needs with appropriate products. Facebook is not only useful in that space, but also for agents to keep in touch with one another and to connect back with the business. The Facebook Ads can also assist with targeted marketing and word of mouth referrals between Facebook friends.
Yes! I agree with Jennifer - Facebook rocks for business purposes.
I’ve never had much success myself with MySpace (makes my head hurt with the visual noise and spammyness over there) or LinkedIn (too stuffy and “flat” and no pics).
However, on Facebook there’s a special rapport between members. We can check out someone’s profile pic and read a bunch of personal info they’ve willingly shared… and find all kinds of commonalities over which to relate.
I believe it’s not time=money, it’s relationships=money and Facebook makes it extremely easy to build relationships with quality professionals.
Cheers,
Mari
Her point about how business is all about people really struck me.
Is it just me? I feel we’re on the verge of seeing a change in how business is done globally with more transparency, and Facebook will be a key part of it … as long as it doesn’t become “MyFace” or “Spacebook”