Can Social Media sell?

There’s a lot of buzz going around social media – every company wants a twitter account and a facebook page, probably just to be hip. But does ‘hipness’ sell?

I decided to start a simple experiment – I want to sell my car – a 13-year-old Audi A3.

So here are the details of my experiment:

Social Media: I will post every 3 days a link to the photos of the car – on my facebook profile and on twitter. I also changed my profile picture to the one you see to the left. It is apparent that this limits the exposure of my ad to only my circle of friends (I don’t keep people I don’t personally know as friends in facebook) and to those who find my twitter gibberish interesting. Nevertheless several friends already re-shared my ad on facebook, thus it is already getting exposure to people who are beyond my circle of “friends”.

The non-social Internet media: On the other hand I’ve also posted an ad in the most-visited portal for vehicle sales in Bulgaria (see my ad).

The old media: As a bonus for publishing an ad in the vehicle portal, I also requested the portal to publish my ad in a local newspaper free of charge, but without a picture of the vehicle.

The goal: let’s see where does the sale lead originate from – my facebook ad or the mobile portal or even worse – offline (the newspaper).

I will update this post once I sell the car, I’ll also try to keep track of the generated leads and also the usual haggling.

It is important to note that this ‘experiment’ takes place in Bulgaria, furthermore in a city with population of about 200 000. My presumption is that people are not so technology-inclined as in bigger cities. Let’s see!

Update: Well, the car is sold, and the lead came from the portal! The best offer I got from the people in my social circle was an offer for my seats, and the wheels. Apparently direct social media sells are no good at this time!