CN Group offers free classifieds to Facebook friends

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Local newspaper publisher CN Group is offering free classified advertising to its Facebook following after seeing a steady growth in audience on the social network. Facebook friends of the North-West Evening Mail will be offered a free advert in the paper's classifieds section, normally worth £14.60. The ads can only be taken out for items selling for less than £100.

" The Evening Mail recently passed the 3,000 friends mark on Facebook and we thought it was time to review whether we are making the most of our connection with this huge number of people in the Barrow area," Nick Turner, head of digital content development, told Journalism.co.uk.

"We also want to strengthen our connection with our Facebook friends and increase their awareness and use of our commercial services. I suspect that many of our Facebook friends are not regular buyers of our newspaper and this is a good way to highlight our commercial services to them while gathering some feedback about the paper and the website so we can make the business more responsive to people locally."

The advertising deal is the first of a number of offers planned by the newspaper to reward its Facebook following. The paper's profile on Facebook promised friends hundreds of pounds of offers over the coming months in an update on Thursday.

"We have already given Facebook friends first notice of ticket sales for major bands through our Readers Travel service which brought in quite a bit of extra business. We are also exploring discounts at local restaurants for our Facebook friends and discounted offers on services such as photographic reprints," said Turner.

The group is also using the social network for newsgathering and to gauge reader reaction to news coverage.

"Editorially we have been working to ensure there is more regular contact with the Evening Mail journalists and more opportunities for Facebook friends to suggest stories or have their comments and views included in our coverage. We post updates on topics we are covering in the paper and get dozens of comments and each week we have a vox pop in the paper where the comments all come from Facebook rather than people we stop in the street," said Turner, adding that much of paper's work with Facebook has been led by assistant news editor Richard Herbert.

"We've had a number of splashes and good stories suggested via Facebook - this week some soldiers posted a message on our wall suggesting we interview them about their time in Afghanistan and last night a message popped up in the chat window to say there was a bomb scare.

"We get some silly comments now and again and some robust debate, but we often find that other Facebook users will defend the paper and we've certainly had a lot of positive comments about this latest offer."

Speaking to Journalism.co.uk, Herbert said the Mail news team has found Facebook extremely useful in particular for having personal, human interest stories highlighted by readers on the network.

"One of the biggest issues has been school admissions. We posted a message inviting people to tell us their experiences of the school admissions system and within just one hour, we had received scores of responses. Those responses helped generate several stories about the admissions system and its effects on families," he said.

"On Monday a woman got in touch with us through Facebook and told how her husband was stuck in Africa because of the volcano ash travel chaos. We promptly chased it up and arranged pictures of her and her family for yet another strong human interest story."

The Mail also uses Facebook to promote stories and competitions, and posts a daily question to its friends on the network to gauge their reaction to stories elsewhere in the paper.