If you are wondering how to be successful on Facebook, check out this interview I conducted recently with Walt Wilson, a former executive with Apple Computer and the founder and chairman of Global Media Outreach, www.globalmediaoutreach.com. 
Tell us about Global Media Outreach and why you think you have been successful in obtaining a large, online audience.
Global Media Outreach (GMO) is focused on reaching people all over the world. As a Silicon Valley non-profit, we are able to bring technology and business expertise to the world of missions and adapt traditional missions focus to the online world.
We found that millions of people are going online every day searching for help, hope and connection. By providing a way for people to find what they need in a friendly, safe and efficient way, our global audience has continued to grow significantly. The use and acceptance of technology worldwide has made it much easier to build this community.
By providing sites and responses in multiple languages, GMO has also seen significant response in countries all over the world. And because we are able to track all of these results online through our systems, we’ve been able to be very flexible in changing things when needed, adapting to our audience’s needs and quickly see what works and what doesn’t. That gives us a much faster response time than what you typically see “on the ground.”
You recently hit one million Facebook likes. How did that success come about?
The key thing GMO has learned about Facebook and the people who consistently participate in GodLife, our site at http://www.godlife.com, is that the need for community and feedback are very important.
Instead of just posting information, we ask for concurrence and feedback to encourage interactive participation. We also applied the things we learned in building the audience for our websites such as flexibility, adapting quickly to what the audience responds to, and getting to know our members better so we can respond to their needs.
What has been most successful in your marketing efforts and why?
What we found is that presenting the key information in a very simple, focused way has been most effective. We experimented with multiple types of sites – including sites that were graphically heavy, with a ton of information – and what we found is that our best response came when people are able to find what they are looking for in a clear, concise manner with a direct action related to it.
What tips do you have for other organizations trying to increase their online popularity through social media?
Get to know your audience. It’s easy to just push information out, but becoming engaged as an organization is the best way to know how to relate to your members. Understanding what they respond to and connecting with them is how to build the relationship. It’s less about how large your audience is and more about how highly they are engaging with you.
Short, relevant content has been the most effective for us, and I think the most important lesson we’ve learned is to show that we really do care about our members. We don’t just want a large audience, we want a great community.
Thanks for the great tips and information Walt! For more information about Global Media Outreach, visit www.globalmediaoutreach.com. And if you have questions about your PR and SEO copywriting activities, please write to me below or at www.rembrandtwrites.com.
