One of the things that has been on my mind since I attended the Gnomedex 8.0 conference was how social media can positively and negatively affect the FundingUniverse brand. Now, I realize that “social media” is a very popular buzz word these days — everyone (& their dog) is talking about social media and I’m trying to decide if the buzz is justified or if this is a fad similar to podcasts and other new media.
Some of you might be asking… what is Social Media? I’m no social media expert, but I’m referring to the following platforms:
- Company Blog
- iPhone & Facebook Applications
While it may be a little early to in some of the platform’s life cycle, I think that there is a significant upside opportunity by embracing these platforms. For example, the highly-read blog TechCrunch leverages their entries & pageviews by frequently communicating with over 24,000 followers on Twitter. It’s also interesting to look at companies built as Facebook or iPhone Applications (including Paul Allen’s We’re Related Facebook App that I talked about in a recent post).
We’re excited to use these platforms to continually build the FundingUniverse community. We haven’t fully flushed out our strategies, but we have chosen to start with the following:
- We’ve created 2 twitter accounts: 1 that is a FundingUniverse general (@fundinguniverse) to focus on announcements, events, interesting news, etc. about the company and another that is dedicated to providing tips on angel/vc investing & small business lending. (@fundingtips)
- We have a FundingUniverse Facebook Group
- 2 Groups on Linkedin: FundingUniverse Entrepreneur Network, and FundingUniverse Angel Investor & VC Network (which we keep private for only angels & VCs to join)
- And, if you haven’t noticed, we’ve put a lot more emphasis on our company blog
It’ll be interesting to see where all of this goes and if it’s worth the thoughts, energy, & time that it is currently demanding.
