I’m not sure whether this counts as obsessive, workaholic, or marginally retarded, but I’m still trying to work out a point made at one of the seminars at the Book Fair back in April. The suggestion was that we as publishers should use the internet in all its varied and glorious forms: MySpace, websites, blogging… Tick, tick, tick.
And then came… Facebook. Now I really, really don’t get this one. How on earth does one use Facebook as a form of self-promotion from a work perspective? Isn’t it just a means of showing off how many wonderful, wacky, important friends you have, creating pointless groups, and stalking your exes…? Am I missing something patently and painfully obvious?
Thank heavens it’s Friday afternoon…
KA, Lost in Translation
Just wait. Soon “I am skilled at using Facebook” will start appearing on those CVs, and then you can ask the applicants…
Hehehe: social networking, it’ll be the death of us!
I’m not sure, Katya, how these things ever tie directly to the “bottom line”, but I’m not sure it is about that. It is about making yourself and your business accessible to as many potential customers as possible — and in the social networking world this is about making “friends” with networks of folk who believe in your product and want to see the human being behind it.
All of these networks capture some new folk that only use that particular network to do their networking. The more networks you/your business are connected into the more folk you can share information with about your business.
But what you are sharing (and, importantly, learning) will also change with the tone of the network. It may well be that Facebook is a good place for you to link up to other Industry professionals rather than find new customers (although Industry folk do sometimes buy books) …
You also have to make a simple business decision: has Social Network X reached a level of leverage whereby I can’t ignore it … or not?
Markx
Incidentally, if you really don’t want to miss a trick in terms of social network marketing, take a look at this article from the Guardian, late last year: http://books.guardian.co.uk/departments/generalfiction/story/0,,1930135,00.html
Further to this, re: Facebook –
PETRONA blog mentioned this t’other day (http://petrona.typepad.com/petrona/2007/06/market-research.html): Market research 2.0 at Facebook:
“Facebook has enabled its 24 million active users to launch polls — for a fee. This move is said to be the start of a “new era” of social networking. According to the (http://www.facebook.com/polls.php) Facebook poll site, you can instantly find out what 25 million people think. ‘For as little as $6, Facebook Polls let you ask 18-24 year olds what’s hip, ask people in New York who they’re voting for, or even ask “Grey’s Anatomy” fans if they’ll actually watch the new spin-off.’”
I suppose the appeal of Facebook is really its immediacy, thinking about it. It’s the fact that we’ve become a society too ‘busy’, for want of a better word, to really be able to spend time on anything, and the quick update system by which as far as I can tell Fbook works is like a ready meal, or Match of the Day… I suspect you’re right, and there is a serious argument for its use in marketing, it’s just that people haven’t twigged on yet, and so it remains a haven for the facile and procrastination… Second Life on the other hand sounds like fantastic fun! And Rob: if anyone were to send in a CV with that – they’d have the job like that…!
KA