MetroplexInteractive

Email marketing has been proven to be a very effective and efficient advertising tools. If you are unfamiliar with it, email marketing refers to the process of sending emails with the intent of advertising products and services and typically comes in two forms: text emails and HTML emails, the later providing graphics and images. A recent StrongMail survey details how most companies plan to increase their usage of email marketing in 2010.

If you are familiar with Facebook you probably think of status posts being broadcast to friends, constituents, and family members. But what if you could use Facebook to help run your business operations? The fact is you can – and the best part is that it’s free.

How to Setup a Facebook Page for your Company

Facebook gives you the option to control who is in your network, who can view your status posts, and who can respond. For a company choosing to use Facebook to supplement operations I recommend creating a new Facebook Page that will be used specifically for your business operations. Set the privacy settings to ensure that only people in your network can view and respond to your status posts. Then invite your employees to befriend you on Facebook. Set rules of engagement to ensure your employees understand what is considered appropriate use of the Facebook Page. For instance, ensure they understand that all company related posts should be made to the company run Facebook Page and not their personal Facebook profile.

Running Your Business Operations with Facebook

Now that you are connected to your employees via your Facebook Page post status updates to drive the actions of your employees. For instance, use your Facebook Page for company announcements such as to notify employees that all travel expenses are due by the last week of the month. Or, describe the new product just rolled out and explain why customers may be interested in it. You can also post links to industry articles, press releases, and other information to ensure your workforce is up-to-date on the matters that impact your company.

Facebook offers an established, familiar platform that can be used to drive your businesses operations in a private, efficient and economical manner. Companies looking for a competitive advantage can leverage this free technology to make operations more efficient and effective. And in today’s economy, any tool that gives you a competitive advantage can be priceless.

Contact MetroplexInteractive to discuss how your company can use Facebook to run business operations.

The Christmas season brings many wonderful traditions such as the Twelve Days of Christmas. According to tradition, a small gift is exchanged each day prior to Christmas day for 12 days. In Fort Worth, TX the wildly successful downtown shopping and entertainment district called Sundance Square has taken the Twelve Days of Christmas to Facebook in a new twist to engage customers.

HTML emails or graphical html emails are a type of electronic mail (email) that uses graphics, backgrounds, photos and fonts not normally available in a standard email format. The formal definition is: "HTML e-mail is the use of a subset of HTML to provide formatting and semantic markup capabilities in e-mail that are not available with plain text." HTML emails have become very popular because they enable advertisers to present marketing messages in a more compelling fashion with imagery, colors and fonts that mimic other advertising mediums such as a corporate web site, tv, billboard and print ads.

DARPA's balloon contest (known as the DARPA Network Challange)is a wondeful example of the power of social media, especially when combined with crowdsourcing. The contest located 10 large balloons across the United States and offerred a $40,000 prize to the first person or team to locate all 10 balloons. How long did it take the winning team to locate and report on the location of all ten balloons? 9 hours.

This is a tremendous example of the power of social media combined with crowdsourcing. Companies should take inspiration from this example - social crowdsourcing can be used to: