Are Social Networks The Next Big Thing For Business?

Ok I’ll hold my hands up here and say that in the past I was less than taken with Myspace…even so much as taking to calling it the annoying younger sibling of blogging. To an extent I do still stand by that assessment, but if Myspace is the younger sister then Facebook is the toddler that’s growing up fast!

I have a Facebook account (and yes feel free to log on and invite me to be a friend!) and I use it for two or three different purposes.

Firstly there is the social networking side of things. I got into Facebook when I had an invite via Friends Reunited to join a friend who had moved to Australia on there, then another old school friend who is currently working in Japan found me on there and so you see how the ball got rolling…they had old school friends on there listed as their friends who I hooked up with again after not seeing them for a good few years. Then I got nosey (as I do!) and started looking up old friends and new and started to add them in too. And so this is how I keep in touch with all my friends world wide and let them know simultaneously what I’m up to. It basically makes life very simple!

Then came the fun/silly/wilfing part of Facebook. I put in “Freya” into the search bit and found a couple of other Freyas on there…so I dropped them a message – said hi and how it was funny we had the same first name etc. Soon we got linked up and again, once you are linked you can see other peoples profiles, so I had a look to see what groups they were in and found a couple of “Freya” related groups…so joined them too and hooked up with more Freyas. It was at this point that a work colleague called me a saddo as she noticed that I was (in her words) “collecting” Freyas, and maybe I was but hey that’s the fun of Facebook. I now have more Friends on my profile who are called Freya than “non Freya” friends!

Then I was contacted by someone called Dan…Bletsoe! I’d never heard of him before, but out of the blue got a friends request. So replied yes and away we went merrily chatting away – only to be joined by yet more Bletsoes! And so it continues with more of the Bletsoe clan turning up across the world.

Now that I’ more comfortable with using Facebook I’ve been using it more recently for business purposes. Is it working? You better your sweet Facebook profile it is!!! We have posted up a group called…”a Homefinder in every town” as a way of finding more interested parties who may like to take our franchises across the UK – it’s been up a couple of weeks and I’ve already had 3 enquiries from interested parties! Not bad going really…so we’ve decided to ratchet things up a little by making Facebook more a part of our ongoing marketing plans. We will be including our press releases and video footage up there too and targeting specific groups on there to get our message across.

So is Facebook the future of business? …perhaps if it’s included in a “mix” of marketing, and for PR purposes – yes it really is working.

My only warning would be this: It is highly addictive once you get started you will have trouble getting off there…you have been warned!