SIPA UK Blog

New SIPA UK group set up on Facebook

Following an enthusiastic show of hands at the latest SIPA UK E-marketing conference a couple of weeks back, I have now set up a Facebook group for SIPA UK members.

This is the Facebook group for UK specialised information publishers, large and small, to discuss their challenges, share ideas and network with their peers.

If you are already a Facebook member, you can find the group at: SIPA UK Facebook group

Alternatively, you can join the rest of the world's population on Facebook by signing up now.

Although, I would be first to admit that take-up amongst Melcrum staff has been slow. Why? Because, a lot of people see Facebook as a place for friends. But those divides between work and play are tumbling down. After all, is work a place you go to each day, or something you do?

With more of us working remotely, social media brings colleagues and friends closer together.

But what do you think? Is Facebook a tool for business too?

Robin

Facebook & a shameless plug

Without wishing to add to the overall media hysteria about Facebook I would like to highlight the usefulness of the 'groups' function to specialist publishers. For a long time our events teams have talked about building social networks around conferences and exhibitions. We have worried that our delegates and visitors don't get enough opportunity to interact and that the audience we have spent so many marketing dollars to collect then go away until you start promoting to them for the next related event or the following year.

Now, there are several simple solutions that don't require any technology investment on your part. Why build a social network when they already exist and can be adapted to your business needs? The groups function on services like Facebook and LinkedIn is so easy to use and set up & link to that you can quickly gather hundreds of 'friends' to your brand or event.

Want to see an example?

Here's the plug. From December 4-6 at Olympia in London Incisive Media will host the Online Information show. It is aimed at knoweldge managers, information professionals and e-publishers & features over 200 exhibitors, a range of free to attend seminars and a 1,000 person conference on 'Applying Web 2.0 technologies in your business'. It's a fantastic event that a lot of SIPA members both attend and exhibit at. Please come along. This year, for the first time we have established a Facebook group for the event where delegates and exhibitors can come together to arrange meetings, make product announcements and ask advice. 

In the 3 weeks since it was set up we have over 150 members and the discussion has started. With hindsight we should have set the group up as Online Information rather than a group specific to this year's show but it's been an interesting experiment and one which I would encourage you all to play around with (assuming Facebook hasn't been barred on your company servers...)

Rory Brown, Incisive Media