When I first started this blog in September last year I could count on my right hand, the amount of Jamaican facebook groups there were. Fast forward 11 months later and they are now numbering in the hundreds. They range from the party promoters to political organisations and non-profits to beverage, food,event brands and also website owners.
What they are doing typically on the site is creating facebook groups, building out a fan page and to a much lesser extent building and launching their own facebook app booking targeted advertising to achieve their goals. All of them are on facebook in a bid to achieve a couple of things -to expose their brand and drive traffic to websites and offline events, in addition to increasing online sales as well as in their brick and mortar stores.
While this trend of brands, both emerging and established ones moving online to where their customers are is very encouraging, I’ve been asking a couple of questions. Are Jamaican brands getting the full benefit of this type of social media marketing? Do they understand the how to use facebook for full marketing effect? WHile pondering them, I decided to create a quick resource list for anyone who’s interested in mastering facebook as the killer marketing tool that it can be.
Additionally, as of July 11, 2008, we’re adding a new Facebook Friday’s feature. We’ll report on what Caribbean groups,brands and apps are doing Facebook to build community, drive traffic and sales.