DiamondFans

A facebook page we started in March 2008, DiamondFans, has grown to over a million fans or “likes”. I’ve been talking about DiamondFans for a while and it’s been an wild ride up to this point. I’d say it’s become a great asset for my business and personal brand. If you’re looking for ways to benefit from your facebook page, I can only tell you how it’s helped me and Samuelson’s Diamonds.

1) PR

The page has gotten Samuelson’s Diamonds a tremendous amount of media coverage. From trade magazines to local and national publications, we’ve been there. Pretty cool for a 90 year old small family business to be ranked ahead of most national and international brands.

Click here for the press release titled, “Baltimore Jeweler Beating Ravens to 1 Million Fans on Facebook.”

2) RELATIONSHIP BUILDING

DiamondFans has gotten my foot in the door, meeting and building relationships with the best and brightest in the jewelry and tech industries. I’ve been a featured speaker at numerous jewelry trade shows and even shows like Etail. So I’m thankful for that and I’ve learned a lot and continue to learn from it. We have gained new clients and customers from all over the world and that has been unbelievable.

3) WEBSITE TRAFFIC

Let’s not kid ourselves. A page with a million fans generates some serious web traffic for whatever it is promoting. In this case it’s diamonds, diamond education, and my business of course. Back when facebook tracked IMPRESSIONS (which they do not do anymore), we were recieving 300,000 impressions per link. The clicks follow. Now facebook is tracking “people reached” and “people talking about this” which is actually a much more useful stat. I wonder if twitter could do this – which brings me to my next post which may be titled, “Is It Better To Have A Million Facebook Likes Or A Million Twitter Followers?”. Let’s just say this – a lot more people are reading our DiamondFans posts than most celebrity tweets. There aren’t many who even have a million followers. Tweets are really useless jumble compared to the interaction on a facebook page. It’s so much richer with pix, videos, comments, likes, etc.

4) INSIGHTS INTO TASTES AND TRENDS

If I ever want to know what kind of reaction a diamond or piece of jewelry will get, I poll the DiamondFans. I can see what metals, trends, diamond shapes and jewelry people “like” and I learn from it as a diamond dealer and jewelry retailer. You can’t ask for a better way to test the waters.

CONCLUSION

I know most people will be looking for #5 to be SALES. It really doesn’t have much to do with direct sales so if that’s all you’re looking for, you may not find it on a fan page. If you’re looking to communicate with your customers, pages are very effective. If you’re looking to get visitors to your website and more people to notice your brand, it’s great for that too. However, I do think that Facebook may build an easy, user friendly platform to sell product on your page. Some are doing it now but through outside apps which don’t seem to work as well – plus facebook can’t make any money from that. Either way, I do know that we are doing more business than we were 3 1/2 years ago.

So who knows where this will go?  I’m loving it and I think it’s doing a lot of good for people who LOVE DIAMONDS LIKE ME!

So is mixing messages ever a good idea? I’ve had my Foursquare and Twitter access off and on – I still can’t figure that one out, even after I wrote this post, “Foursquare or Stalkersquare?”. What do you think? Do you use sites like ping.fm to update all of your networks or use them all differently? Which go together like chocolate and peanut butter?

Now I really appreciate honest, no BS feedback, but one more thing that is also interesting. Aside from impacting business relationships, when does this stuff impact personal or family relationships? Because unfortunately, the message didn’t start out with, “How’s the family” or “Seen any good music lately?”

So what do you think, mix your updates or keep them separate?

From the Baltimore Business Journal:

Ron Samuelson, CEO of Samuelson’s Diamonds in Baltimore, uses Twitter – a communication service emblazoned with a  bird logo – to spur business and attributes much of his success of the year-old account to the service.

Samuelson also has used Facebook and personal blogging to reach customers who would otherwise see him as just a guy sitting behind a counter, pandering diamonds.

…

Samuelson’s shop of 10 employees was starting in 1922, far from the days of tweets and Facebook fan pages.

“The crowd I do business with now are very tech-savvy, so we have a full service Web site too, where we drive all our traffic,” Samuelson said.

From JCK Magazine:

Facebook’s personal nature is one of the things that draw people to it. Samuelson feels it’s important for a page to have personality. “One customer who friend-requested me said, ‘That’s so cool. You are just a regular guy who plays guitar,” notes Samuelson. “And that is what sales is—you find something in common with somebody.”

From MD Daily Record:

After 87 years and three generations of selling engagement rings, the Samuelsons are trying real estate development on for size.

The family-run business, anchored by a retail diamond store at the corner of West Baltimore and North Paca streets, is teaming up with Baltimore County developer David S. Brown Enterprises and Washington-based firm A&R Development to return a key downtown Baltimore block between the University of Maryland and the central business district to its former glory as a “thriving downtown area.”

Where did they find me?  A PR firm?  An ad agency?  Did I give them free diamonds?  NO!  From MY BLOG and TWITTER FEED.  So all of you business owners out there need to get on the bus and take the ride.

As Jerry Garcia said, “The bus come by and I got on, that’s where it all began…”

Here's the winner

Check out this video I did with Kara in the store back in October.

Saturday night Feinfest 2008 where my band opens for The Bridge. Stay tuned…

Check out this video where Warren dusts Trey’s whole bag of tricks…

Tomorrow, my wife Laura and I are off to Florida for the Miss Internet Pageant. Actually, I am judging the pageant through a buddy of mine who is the owner/creator. It should be very interesting to say the least. Of course being the diamond guy at the beauty pageant only happens when you’re married with two kids, right?

Here’s a video we took the last time I was in Florida. Professional? No. Fun? Hell yeah!

What will be next??