There's a Facebook group called Cheltenham Nightclub/bar news. It's simply a group where Cheltenham residents share the latest news/rumours and gossip about the nightlife here in Cheltenham. Recently the group celebrated it's 1000th member.
This is a really influential group, it's played a major role in the the success of many new bars and clubs in this town. For anybody interested in opening a pub/club here in Cheltenham, they need to get themselves mentioned on this group (even local newspaper journalists take news from it. This presents a few problems then.
1) How can we find these Facebook groups? There isn't any uniformity in the way amateur enthusiasts name these groups. A variety of searches on Facebook might fail to dig them up, and they certainly wont show up in PR Planner.
2) Which industries are likely to have them? Nightclubs do, hotels don't. Gardeners do, teachers don't. The construction industry has facebook groups, the manufacturing industry doesn't.
3) What's the ethics about launching a generic group with a single view to enhancing your client?
4) How can you get your news on this group? There's plenty of blogosphere info on pitching bloggers and journalists but little about pitching influential members and groups of online social networks.
06 January 2008
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Another interesting aspect of this is how active the group in question is - can this be measured or even known in the FB environment?
What I mean is this: I know of plenty of FB groups that people join. End of story. They don't go back to look at the message board, they don't exchange mail or read messages from that group, they simply add the group as a sort of badge for their profile.
So how do you know the success of nightclubs in your home town, for example, is down to the FB group? Is there a measure that can be verified to show how many of the group's 1,000 members are actively sharing information through it? What percentage are posting and reading on the board, for example?
Be interested in any thoughts on this, it's something I've been pondering in recent weeks as FB becomes more and more like a spam engine with every passing day!
All great questions, Richard. I don't know who could possibly have the answers, but I hope we can figure social networking out soon.
I think Facebook are going to allow people to subscribe to updates on groups, which would give people a reason to actually go back to them!
We got loads of people pitching us at PR and Comms Network. Never mind whatsoever- what I object to is when people 'spam' the group with irrelevant stuff, without giving us a heads up. Running a successful Facebook group is about doing it on behalf of the community, and a polite 'would you mind' before posting means we can filter on their behalf.
Hi, its spencer nash the create from Cheltenham nightclub news
weirdly enough I came across this group while searching for facebook groups bar on 1000 members (in relation to facebook not allowing group to post members message after you reach 1000 people)
Yes, there will be alot of people who join and add it to their profile with no intention to ever look at it. But the group unlike others a subject which users want to interact with and get involve with his its a subject relating to them, unlike a group "Join to break a world record". Ok arguably the group still only has proably a lower than 20% active participation (extremly hard to measure). But the discussion forms are always being posted with information and bars and clubs are desperate to be able to send messages to our members. Infact the only nightclub that was sold out by tickets sales b4 the even was a nightclub called daokta who we messaged all members with. The nightclub used no leaflets to advertise the event or posters. No other nightclub was full new years eve, despite spending money on PR.
Ok this doesn't prove that it was due to the group only supports.
We plan to devlop and take adantage of social networking since its effect has been better than traditional advertisements such as posters and leaflets and devlope the group once facebook removes the bar on messaging members if your group has over 1,200 members.
Yes we all know facebook will be treated more and more as spam, and its populairty will be short lived due to other new medias and technologies. But for now facebook is a great oppitunity to PR in and promote.
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