A Prescription in Marketing

I have a confession to make.

I might be addicted to Facebook.

I originally signed up with Facebook to test out some pay per click ads. While I did get traffic, it wasn’t the kind of targeted QUALITY traffic I wanted. But hey, you never know until you test, right?

Well, a couple of my marketing buddies saw I had a Facebook account and added me as their friend. Then I started searching to see who else I knew had an account on Facebook.

Turns out LOTS of people I know did. I started adding them all as my friends, and then Facebook started suggesting other people I may know who were friends of my friends!

And I discovered I knew many of them, too!

In fact, once I started adding friends, I began seeing what they were up to, what they were posting on their “wall”, what they were twittering, what they were doing.

And of course they could also see what I was doing.

I noticed something else, too.

I added some people as friends who I had never met personally, but who I wanted to meet. Including other marketing experts and even big-name musicians I had long admired.

Now these folks all have to approve your friend request, and the funny thing was…

THEY ALWAYS DID!

Even if they didn’t know me from a hole in the wall, every single one of them approved my request.

So I thought, this is pretty cool. I’m now friends with Trey Anastasio and Bela Fleck, among others! (I’ve seen them both in concert many times).

And my home page constantly gets updated with new information fed from all of my friend’s pages. I’ve got people bidding on my photo, nominating me the “coolest person in the world,” and all kinds of other fun things.

And the networking capabilities are unparalleled!

Now I’ve long known about Facebook, and even sites like LinkedIn (one of my copywriting clients once wrote a physical book about using LinkedIn for the recruiting business, and I wrote his sales copy).

But it’s one thing to know something exists, and another to play with it and try it out for yourself.

This whole thing probably started last Friday, when I was on the Friday Warrior Chat (Here’s the download link to get the chat software. It happens every Friday night starting at 7 Pm EST or so). Fellow Warrior George Sepich asked me why my Facebook picture was just a big question mark.

(Meaning I hadn’t uploaded a picture yet.)

I blinked in surprise. It had never occurred to me that people were looking me up there. As I said, I originally used Facebook just for advertising.

So I made a mental note that I would upload a picture and update my profile.

And, well. I guess it just snowballed from there.

Which brings me to the point of this blog post.

I want to build a large network of like-minded individuals in OUR community. So if you have an account on Facebook, would you mind adding me as YOUR friend?

You can do so here:

http://profile.to/johnritz/

And if you don’t have a Facebook account, you can join for free (I highly recommend you do so… you never know when it might come in handy and you connect with the perfect business partner or client).

I’m also going to be attending Ken McArthur’s JV Alert Live seminar this summer in Philly, like I did last year.

In fact, I’ll be part of the copywriting panel he’s going to host, and I’m attending as his guest.

So another reason I’m trying to connect with everyone on Facebook is to hook up BEFORE I go to this event, and to set up some projects in advance.

I hope you can make it, too! I’ll be telling you more about that as it gets nearer, but in the meantime, I’d like to connect with YOU on Facebook. Simply add me as one of your friends here.

Until next time,

John

P.S. I found out AFTER I added all my friends that John Reese was doing something similar and ultimately reached the 5000 friend limit of Facebook. I’m not trying to do anything like that. I just want to connect with all of my friends there and explore some business opportunities and casual fun!

Trackback This Post | Subscribe to the comments through RSS Feed