Re-appraising Facebook for our clients

My relationship with FB as a corporate recruiting tool is a complex one (and all stuff below is a gross over simplification but its a blog post so why not)

1. We use it increasingly for PPC campaigns - very efficient/highly targeted for a certain demographic
2. We have set up with caution - Company Pages. the caution is an area i have covered many times previously. But all the classic caveats - fitting corp culture, unregulated content, a place for social interaction not biz etc
3. Therefore - our general advice is tread with care - and invest first in LI and Twitter and industry related networks/forums/blogs

But......

i know one should not be too dogmatic and permanent in any view in digital (i have been and will continue to be wrong on many issues) but i can't help that what became a 2009 view - has almost became a mantra and that is bad.

I keep up to date and know what is going on (particularly in US) and am aware that many companies use FB as their go to place for landing pages for marketing campaigns and indeed permanent sites for talking about product/with their customers etc. However it was only when i was in US a couple of weeks ago that i saw juts how much US corporate big brand marketing is centred around and through FB. If they are happy to engage then why not UK recruitment brands??

So once again - in this hugely exciting ever changing industry - its time to dump my preconceptions/assumptions in the bin and think again - i would not want it any other way.............................

i think

OME NEWS

Mildly exciting times for OME - so here goes with recent developments

1. New recruit starts next week - an account manager called Lissa Cardwell - we really need to add some extra account management to support the growing client list (all the current ones seem to be staying for 2011 too - he says touching wood). Is it good or bad to be out on media and client lunches and bashes in 1st 2 weeks in a company? Lets hope she comes back after Xmas
2. New clients include Lebara Mobile, Druines, TGI Fridays, BrowHaus
3. Hugely exciting stuff going on at Carphone Warehouse which i cant talk about at mo
4. On a personal level - i seem to be spending 80% of my time rolling out LinkedIn groups, Social Media pilots, candidate process mapping - media, careers site, ATS, reporting. I sort of miss doing a more trad digital media plan. I still do quite a lot of buying but that's because its the most fun bit of my job so don't want to let it go.
5. The year will end up being about +45% on 2009 - would love to make it 50% up so still some time....
6. We have bought a new agency mgmt system (Concept), engaged a new firm of accountants and just ordered new PCs for everyone - spending money hurts but these are "good" costs and will help us grow over next 2 years.

So all positive - which is great as Sumners child No4 arrives in March!

Times Paywall Update

Update on stats from Times here, essentially they have 105,000 paying customers and may generate about £5.5million from that number, a lot of progress needs to be made to make it a success and you can read those figs as very grim but as in previous post lets see if they can get some growth into those numbers. At moment they are hurting financially from decision - and the ramifications are potentially long term/permanent but the potential prize is huge too.