Robinsons would like to add you as a friend 16. May 2008 paul.bentham@robinsons-uk.com Behind the Scenes (0) Recently, I wrote a blog entry about the difficulty of knowing when to embrace the new ideas that have come from the growth of the web. With so many people talking about 'social networking sites', I decided to spend a little time getting a little better acquainted with them. Unfortunately, being the wrong side of 30, this was a revolution that had taken place outside of my normal world, so I had to take the plunge and create my own profile somewhere. After settling on facebook, I have to say I found the whole thing quite addictive and I can certainly see why the idea has caught on so strongly. In no time at all, I seemed to find a number of friends on there, as well as people who I hadn't heard from for years. Overnight, it becomes possible to become re-connected to friends you'd almost forgotten you had. You have to say, it's a pretty powerful tool. In the meantime, I've had all sorts of emails from companies who hold seminars on 'Social Networking for Business' and the like. Inevitably, where there's a social phenomenon, business is never far behind it and it raised once again a question we'd already debated here: should we create a Robinsons page? While this is supposed to be contrary to the non-commercial ethos of social netwoking sites, it's not necessarily true to say that no companies should have a presence. Of course, many companies of all sizes do have pages of one form or another. As a customer myself, there are plenty of brands that I would be interested enough in to have a look at a page which represents them. To my mind, it's about how you do it, though. If we were to just blunder in and start trying to just sell things on there, I don't think it would work very well. It has to offer something that makes you want to visit - and then visit again. In the end, we decided upon 'The Robinsons Online Riding Club'. It's a great way to allow interaction between visitors and it's good for us to keep visitors up-to-date with what's going on here. If everybody gets something out of it, why shouldn't it be a good idea? So, follow the link, have a look and see what you think. Of course, you're very welcome to become a member, too. After that, we'll wait and see what happens next because your guess is as good as mine! Tweet