Want people to read your fan pages? Or – better yet – want people to invest (spend time) in your social pages? Of course. Every company thinks that their message is massively important. Truth is, it’s only a tiny slice of someone else’s day. You don’t get much time to make an impression. This doesn’t mean your message can’t BE massively important. The trick is making it interesting enough that people want to talk about it, not just read it. Isn’t that the idea of social media in the first place?

I read today on the Social Media Examiner that Americans, on average, spent over 7 hours on facebook in January. 4th overall, according to Neilsen. That’s more than the top 3 Parent Companies combined (Google, Microsoft & Yahoo). This is huge news to businesses who are fighting for that split second of time with their consumers, and have already lept into the realm of social media on facebook.

The secret weapon, in my opinion (and I’m not alone): RICH MEDIA. Photography. (In some cases…) Better yet, video.

Here’s an excercise for you to try.

Instead of buying or printing expensive invitations or sale flyers, paying postage, then waiting for RSVPs, try this: Invite people to your next event on a flip cam or an iphone. Upload it to YouTube. Link to it from your fan page via facebook events. Use a bit.ly link and tweet about both. Your invite just cost you a flip or an iPhone’s retail price, if you didn’t already have one. If you did, you’re pretty much out 15 minutes of your time, instead of the $100s you used to spend on invitations, postage, etc. Furthermore, you can answer questions (“Can I bring a friend?”) and even track the number of people who clicked on it via the kick ass bit.ly plug in through Firefox.

New drink at the bar? Show me. New employee? Introduce them. New location? How about a tour? New item on the menu? Show me that, too. Best part: letting people talk about it afterwards.

Watch and see how sales spike, how people know your new staffer, and know their way around the store.

I didn’t have any video on hand, so I thought I’d include this piece from the good people at socialnomics.com. Just because it would be pretty stupid to have a blog post about rich media and not include some, right? One could even argue that I should have posted this via video, huh?