Facebook is great for surface activities (ie people clicking ‘like’ on your status etc), but for deeper conversion, deeper discussions etc, Facebook fails as it is place for a million different actions by one individual quickly. It pans to the desire to talk too everyone at the same time, and affects our ability to concentrate on the deeper value of one good conversation at hand.

How many people have done promotions on Facebook, events etc, but the turn out on the day is lackluster.

There exists a lie about Facebook, or rather how people use Facebook. It is a failure at deeper connections. Its like speed dating - ‘Hello’…’Goodbye.’

It is not built for conversation and conversion.

Improving Our Conversation:

One way we can improve this is by ‘improving’ our conversation. Instead of talking to everybody at the same time, we can only involve ourselves in one conversation at any one time.

Limit the friends we have, groups and pages we join or are added too.

Just have a few favourite pages, and a few super cool freinds and be party to a few super cool groups.

Obviously limiting the numbers in this numbers game defeats the purpose of joining an online social network like FB, since these types of social networks are all about how large your ‘social’ networks is.

Just by saying that you realise that the premise of calling an online social network a social network is flawed…it does not compare to offline based social networks that are not about how large your social networks are, but rather what kind of social network you are in, how much influence you have in your social network, and how does your influence in your social network effects other influencers in other social networks etc.

I guess what I am saying is that Facebook makes you seem popular, but not influential. Being influential takes hard work at better conversations.

With this mind, lets take a pragmatic approach to use the speed dating of FB to create stronger online networks.

Develop your own Social Network:

Obviously the other thing is to develop your own social network, one where you can interact with others in deeper, more meaningful conversations and increasing conversions. However, this takes a serious amount of focused efforts.

The iimportant thing to remember is influence. The power of a social network lies in your ability to influence.

Strategy Using the Facebook ‘Speed’ Date - Popularity Stake

Some Steps

- Develop Facebook Account, Add Freind, Develop Facebook Pages, Get Fans, Members etc.

- Send Friends/Fans to your social network and point these too your own social network. Decide on a tipping point (ie ideal number of members reached). Once this point is reached, move away from Facebook, throw your efforts into the conversations on your social network and focus on the conversions.

- Deepen the conversation on your Social Network, but add links to Facebook page.

With this in mind, I looked at the www.amilliondifferentjourneys.com blog of PNG TPA and www.siybpng.org website of the SIYB Program in PNG.

With A Darks help, we installed Buddy Press on SIYBPNG org and I installed it on www.amilliondifferentjourneys.com.

The idea is that these will be the ‘social’ networks for these organizations, attracting members who are focused in discussing or having more in-depth conversations with each other rather than the 10 second rapid read and respond, adrenaline pumping, 6 friends a minute ‘networking’ of Facebook.

The Ultimate Secret to Success

But the secret of their success is that the person or people responsible ween themselves of their Facebook addictions and focus intently and intensely on developing their social network and the conversation of the members on it. They must focus on becoming ‘powerful,’ authoritive sources of information within their own social network.

They must create super Fans , not just simple Facebook Fans.

I have recently just applied this idea to www.pngengineering.com