Twitter & Facebook – sleight of hand marketing?

Posted on | February 22, 2009

In the last couple of months I’ve noticed more and more businesses advertising on Facebook. For the most part, this advertising is fairly direct – paid for advertising that appears on the side of your page and is aimed at a certain demographic.

And it’s not a bad idea, but I can’t help feel that the best part of these networks (and I’m starting to include twitter in this) can only really be used by ’sleight’ of hand marketing. I call it sleight of hand, most people would refer to it as viral.

The point is most consumers are pretty savvy these days. If you really want to up your return with these online communities, you’re much better off working the system from a difference. Facebook groups are popular for this.

The key aspect is more people will talk about it if they aren’t feeling like they are being sold to – and the more people that talk about it, the better.

I’m going to ask a couple people I know (really good viral, sorry, sleight of hand people) to give a bit of their perspective on this over the next month or so. Feel free to drop a line if you have something to say.

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