Bluesmoke

Social Networking Logos

If businesses haven’t yet woken up to the potential of SN they certainly need to.  To quote Bill Gates, its the way we are all communicating with each other these days…

We can all think of 1001 reasons why we could well do without the extra hassle of yet another foray into the mysteries of online marketing.
But if all you do is take a  moment to read some of the stats below, then maybe it might be convince you its time to ask your kids for a few tips on where to start.

Facebook Example…

So lets have  a look at some stats first of all. If we take a look at one of the fastest growing SN sites Facebook and have a look at their stats for a moment:

• they claim to have 350 million active users.
• Each user has on average has 130 friends and is a member of 12 groups.
• 700,000 local businesses have active pages on Facebook.
• Facebook’s average of 55 mins for each user visit

The trivia argument often levelled at SN sites now starts looking a bit weak in business terms. If you have have ever taken the time to look at the stats for your own site to see how long visitors are staying on pages, compare this to Facebook’s average of 55 mins for each user visit and you begin to see the  potential.

Sharing Vs Selling

The one thing that is radically different is in the way users interact with content. Perhaps our own carefully crafted websites were built on the assumption that we should simply present information as  a ‘one off’ without necesarily elliciting users responses (after all, it took us long enough to write the content in the first place).  But if we want to really engage potential consumers we have to allow them opportunities to express their thoughts, opinions etc., in a way a static page of text on a website cannot hope to do.  In so doing we are gathering valuable market research and feedback; our web pages are also ‘enriched’ by the extra (free) generated page content, which is all good news when MR Google pays our site a visit .

Content for free?

Businesses are certainly getting the message and eager to tap into the huge potential. Facebook  are actually keen for businesses to leverage content within own sites if we want to do this via their integration tools like Facebook connect . facebook also does all the hard work by actively prompting and encouraging members to join groups and add friends with similar interests. And not forgetting all this generates all important extra  content +  backlinks to our site – and its free! . (cf. Huffington Post -a news aggregator website which actually thrives on ‘pulling’ the majority of its content from other sites)

The youtube example:

Youtube stats? Oh just watch the clip!

Suffice it to say that user numbers are now in  billions and still growing (14.5 at the last estimate.)   You tube also enables us to test out the market very quickly and efficiently – whether you want to publish your own movie, slideshow or even embed the content on your own site, Youtube has  to be dream come true in terms of free advertising –  the tools are all there free to use for you to make it happen i.e., creating engaging user content easily without having the overhead costs. (e.g.,check out Capri Sun’s channel on Youtube )

Summary thoughts about Youtube:

• … is available universally and is free
• …frequently outperforms conventional media channels
• …provides feedback via viewer stats and comments
• … offers (free)embedding/agreggating  of content
• rapid and easy publishing and editing for more flexible marketing strategy
• huge viral marketing possibilities

A word of caution

Yep -there’s no such thing as a free lunch.  We can’t just think of SN sites as free advertising. They do have to be engaging (c.f. Facebook page visit time of 55 mins) so be prepared to offer something that is of real interest and benefits to the user – don’t just think of this as one way traffic.  Put yourself in the place of somone who is  SN savvy – they will very see through any sales ploys (however subliminal) to market your product.

Summary:

Remember any good viral marketing has to be user- driven also  so:

• Be prepared to share information, even offer free services or benefits(go on – dangle the odd carrot!) give feedback and encourage comments about products/services.
• Get up to speed – draw on your staff expertise and knowledge of blogging twittering etc discuss which are the best SN sites for your business and how they could be best utilised
• Get involved/become members of other related groups(e.g. follow in Twitter)
• Don’t be afraid to fail – review  and discuss your strategy as you would any other marketing campaign
• Don’t forget to switch on your Stats (Google analytics preferably) to monitor popularity of product/service/topic interest

Perhaps next time you are reviewing your marketing strategy perhaps Social Networking will move high up your ‘must do’ marketing agenda.