Facebook and its relevance to growing small businesses
My son just graduated from college. Like many of his peers, he's a native. As you are well aware, until last year, Facebook was a walled garden devoted to college students, many of whom are now entering the workforce.
My company, Bizzuka, is growing and we need to staff that growth. We're looking to university grads as a source for a number of entry level positions.
I've been a for sometime now and have been trying to evaluate its relevance to Bizzuka and SMBs in general, particularly those that serve the B2B marketplace. I even went to the trouble of setting up a .
Today, those three thoughts converged and I had an "aha" moment.
For us, Facebook is less about revenue or lead generation at this point and much more about appearing relevant to college graduates. We want them to see Bizzuka as a cool place to work. (And we are!)
I think this is a principle that can be applied to many small, growing businesses, especially those that don't sell consumer goods. (I mean, if you sell T-shirts, then having a Facebook presence is a given.)
Our CEO's nephew works for Bay-area startup, Ooyala. One of the recruiting tactics they used was to set up an ice cream truck outside the building where Stanford University was conducting a career fair. They gave away ice cream and Ooyala T-shirts and collected resumes in return. While I don't know the outcome of that particular recruiting effort, it was creative nonetheless. Of course, they videoed it. (See below)
As our growth continues we're going to be forced to (and I apologize in advance for using this phrase) "think outside the box" and come up with ways to separate ourselves from the competition in terms of attracting promising new hires. Our Facebook page is one way. Maybe renting an ice cream truck is another.
What do you think? As a small business, what relevance do you see in having a presence on social networks like Facebook or MySpace?
Ning: Paul Chaney
StumbleUpon: pchaney
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