ICTworks by Inveneo

When we were originally thinking about the promotion strategy for ICTworks, we specifically did not want to give it a presence on Facebook. It was our opinion that Facebook was too much of a walled garden, and didn't share well with the rest of the world wide web.

Yet, now ICTworks is on Facebook and here's three reasons why:

1. Going to where our audience is

Not only did we say that Facebook is driving ICT adoption in Africa, this quote from Emer Beamer of ButteryflyWorks reminded us that we needed to be where our audience is:

Somehow a lot of my Dutch contacts are on LinkedIn, my Irish and African friends are on Facebook and my globals on Twitter..

With almost 450 ICTworks followers on Twitter already, it was time for us to focus on another social networking site to expand the ICTworks engagement.

2. Driving traffic back to ICTworks

Yet, we still had a valid concern about loosing ICTworks traffic to another web property. So we're trying out services like RSS Graffiti to bring snippets of content from ICTworks and our Flickr sets to the Facebook wall, while providing direct links to the original content. We'll be experiementing with more services like this - and please offer your suggestions in comments.

3. Creating unique Facebook-only content

But its not all about recycling exterior content into Facebook. We'll also be creating Facebook-only content just for those who are Facebook-centric. A great example of that is the upcoming December ICT4D Twitter Chat which we'll be organizing using the Facebook events page - a much more robust platform than the ICTworks site.

Join Us for the Adventure

ICTworks on Facebook is very much a voyage of discovery. Expect to have updates on what we're seeing that works or doesn't, and how you can apply our lessons learned to expanding your own Facebook presence and impact in the developing world.