FreshNetworks Blog

For the last few days I’ve been privy to an interesting  example of how not to use social networks for marketing. It all started when somebody I don’t know (let’s call him John) asked to be my friend on Facebook.

I don’t know John and have never known John. It became clear that we were both members of a couple of groups and that was, I assumed, where he had got my details from. I have a fairly tight group of friends on Facebook and use it mainly to keep in touch with people I know and don’t get to see as often as I like. So I haven’t accepted his invite. I did look at his profile though and the very day he asked me to be his friend he also befriended almost 200 other people.

People are popular, but often not all at the same time like this so I wanted to find out why.

As I checked back at John’s profile, signs came with his changing statuses. First was one telling us that his new book was out in a few months and we should call his PA to reserve a copy. Next came an update about a radio interview he was doing and then came one about an event.

It may be a coincidence but it seemed as though John had found people with interests aligned with his new book and asked them to be his friend so that he could constantly market his new book through their feeds.

Clever you might think and there are lots of people (myself included) who feed their blog posts and other items through Facebook. The problem came in John’s approach to adding friends.

Over the last couple of days posts have appeared on his wall saying things like

Thanks for the ad. Who are you?

This wasn’t just spam. John is a real person who has found people with similar interests to him and asked to befriend them. This happens all the time. That John was trying to use this for marketing just highlights the complexities of using Facebook for this.

Facebook is a very personal space. It’s the place I go to to find out about my friends, post my photos and read my messages. This can be a very difficult context for brands, or anybody trying to market a product, to enter. You are interrupting a user’s experience and need to do it sensibly and sensitively. Whilst some people will be happy to receive your updates to their news-feed, others will see this as an intrusion.

Of course dealing with this is easy. Just don’t befriend them. From the marketers perspective this makes it difficult to control who you can get your message to.

Some more reading

• Facebook Marketing
• The Facebook Platform is Biased Toward “Fun” Apps
• Three Reasons To Become Friends With FriendFeed
• Social Networking – Go Where the Fish Are!