There was an interesting question on Ecademy yesterday: Does Facebook work for business?
I guess it depends how you define ‘work’ and what your required outcome is.
One of the characteristics of social networks is that many members do not want to be sold to, though they are generally happy to be engaged with. As an example, I set up a new group on Facebook yesterday called What Are You Selling? The group picked up 34 members in a matter of hours, and is designed to attract attention to the new Simply Sales Jobs Club on Ecademy, which in turn is intended to attract attention to the specialist sales recruitment site Simply Sales Jobs.
The people at Simply Sales Jobs see the opportunity to promote their business in social networks, but they realise that for it to ‘work’ they have to add value and enagage with the community. So the idea of the Facebook and Ecademy clubs is to a) add value to people who have already registered with Simply Sales Jobs and b) to attract new people to register on their recruitment site – whilst at the same time building the Simply Sales Jobs brand, creating value, implying expertise and building Community.
Selling and marketing on social networks has many facets and requires patience and constant experimentation. The point is that you can and at next to no cost. If it was as simple as ‘post it and sell it’ we’d all be multi-millionaires by now.
Philip
