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I just had a brainwave

by Adam Smith
6 replies
So I was thinking...

I live in a town of around 60,000 people. What if I created a facebook account in the name of my town and began adding everyone from the town - admittedly it would take quite a while to add them all, but I think people would actually want to become friends with me if I was called my town name.

Now in the initial stages I would look through the local newspaper once a week to find out what business is offering a special offer that week.

I would then promote that offer to my facebook friends - not pushy but just a status update saying something along the lines of "Town name has found this great offer for you - **offer**"

This would build a relationship with your friends.

Once you have been doing this for a few weeks and your friends list is larger, you could then actually approach businesses with a Groupon kind of offer - I have a list of 10,000 people who live in *Town* who check the list EVERY DAY for offers. If you put a special offer on this week I will promote it to my list for a fee.

If successful then I would add other local towns - rinse and repeat.

Is there anyone out there doing this already, or can anyone see an pitfalls with this idea?
#brainwave
  • Profile picture of the author Amigo
    Yes, that's a great IDEA!!
    But do you think they have any kind of knowledge related to your offers?
    May be some people know and some don't..
    I had done this using Orkut but didn't got a good response, may be country differs.. In my country, mostly people don't know whats online marketing..
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    • Profile picture of the author sjohn
      Thats sounds like a good idea
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  • Profile picture of the author Adam Smith
    Hey amigo, if that's the case then you could always approach a business and ask them if they want a trial. Say "you give me an offer and I'll promote it for free to see the response" people love seeing results and if done correctly im sure that first free offer would more than pay for your fee for the next offer
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  • Profile picture of the author Adam Smith
    Iv actually acted on this brainwave and created a new facebook profile in the name of my home town.

    I searched for friends who lived in merthyr and attempted to add them all.. but I was then flagged up by FB for possibly adding people who I dont really know - which is crazy because I know almost all of them so far lol

    The first lesson I have learnt is to only add a few friends per day and let others add you as at the moment I am stuck with a 2 day ban on adding new friends.

    I shall keep you up to date with how many friends I have, and how responsive they are to the offers I send out.
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  • Profile picture of the author webapex
    Clever idea, but an actual user account under a business or city name violates their terms and could vanish just when it starts getting attention.

    Maybe your actually doing a fan page, where it's more of a gay issue, though your supposed to "have permission to represent the entity", or a FB group, where you have little control, but more participation. (always have backup administrators for groups so it can't be orphaned by terminated uses)

    I believe ou can have apps on a fan page that can help users tell all their friends with a click.
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    • Profile picture of the author rlhurst
      I believe FB has a rule against using "generic" names. You risk getting the page pulled at some point if you do. Maybe you could make it more unique by naming it "citizensof...." or "townresidents". Something like that?
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