FT offers students Facebook freebie
The Financial Times (FT) has led the way in social media marketing engagement, reaching out to students through social networking giant Facebook.
Sculpting a search engine marketing (SEM) approach around the network, the newspaper is now offering free subscription to its online pages for students, via a Facebook application.
The strategy is likely to enable penetration into a new market of readers without massive search engine optimisation (SEO) and offline marketing outlays, but offers free of charge a service which is normally worth GBP98.99 annually.
Ien Cheng, publisher and managing editor of FT.com, said: "This application is part of our ongoing efforts to reach a new generation of readers who we hope will become life-long fans of the FT."
The social media SEM approach will see the FT attempt to harness viral marketing capacity, with the Facebook application searching a user’s contacts list and asking the new subscriber if they want to spread invitations to select friends.
Students subscribing to the site will be able to re-apply for free four times, after which the FT hopes to have built up a young readership willing to shell out on paid subscriptions.
