Social Networks and Marketing provides a primer on social networks targeted toward marketing practitioners and scholars. It explores main concepts, theoretical ideas, and empirical findings, with a focus on questions of relevance to managers: How and when do network patterns matter? How does network structure affect consumer behavior? What kinds of social networks are important for particular marketing decisions?
Social Networks are attractive because consumers are connecting with other consumers and the trust tends to be higher. Secondly, there’s a tremendous amount of buzz from the media for this newest form of marketing. Lastly, there’s lots of folks using social networks (about 2/3rds of all North American youth use it daily, and about 1/3rd of NA adults use it as least once a month –data From Forrester Research, Q4, 2007)
First and foremost, any marketing campaign or activity should match with a business objective, regardless of the tools being used.
Every community is different, and each has unique goals (from supporting products, to each other, or to just be entertained) the campaign focus should therefore meet the needs of the community, before the needs of the marketer. Effective campaigns will first understand the core drivers, interests, and rituals of the community and learn how to meet those desires. (Expanded by Laurel Papworth)
The most successful social networking campaigns and efforts involve the audience.
Social networks are designed for information to quickly move from member to member, so campaigns that lean on these capabilities perform the best. These attributes known as Velocity, Viralness, and Spread are key.
In some campaigns, the best way to get members to return is to offer them media. Depending on demographics and community needs, this could be audio, videos, or demos
Members in social networks like to communicate with each other, or self-express. As a result, campaigns should satisfy these needs with the appropriate tools
This encompasses the overall experience of the campaign, the content and navigation items should be where expected, the language familiar to the audience, and overall look and feel of the site appeasing.
Successful campaigns have a longer term value, rather than a short term ‘disposble campaign”. These campaigns add value by being a useful application to the members, rather than just quick dose of entertainment.
As more people contribute or interact with the campaign, the value is increased. This can be in the form of content that is created by the community, contests, voting, or games.
Successful marketing campaigns aren’t single channel, in fact they utilizie multiple channels and mediums to enhance the overall activity. The same thing applies to marketing campaigns on social networks, those that are promoted from other locations such as (corporate websites, email newsletter, blogs, podcasts) outside fo the social network have a great chance for success.
Social networks are living, breathing organisms made up of real people connecting with each other. Marketing campaigns also should share these attributes and show be flexible to change in-flight, yield to legitimate requests or complaints of the community. Those campaigns that reflect the same dynamic behavior as human interaction have a higher chance to be interacted –and accepted –by the community.
: In some cases, companies that participate in the discussions or conversations will yield to a more successful marketing campaign. Activities can range from recognition, company interaction, or attention to members perhaps from a community manager
The problem with that approach is that you tend to focus on immediate means of monetizing the value of social networks such as MySpace, Orkut, Friendster, LinkedIn,Mixx, Stumbleupon, Reddit,Twiter and Flikr, while ignoring the real reason these networks were setup and how you can use those ideas to help your business.
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MySpace, Orkut and Friendster grew as means to stay in touch with friends, meet new people online and to share ideas. LinkedIn has a similar slant – it is great for entrepreneurs and professionals who want to mine their contacts for hiring / outsourcing. And Flickr is just a blindingly simple tool for sharing photos.
The success of social networks marks a dynamic shift in how people are using the Internet. We’ve evolved from just searching for information to creating and participating in social spaces with other individuals through the Internet. This model is based upon the hive mentality where people identify themselves as part of a group with similar likes and interests that draw them together. This is easy to do online because the traditional communication barriers of physical locations no longer exist.
Some optimistic news today in a study dug up by eMarketer: lots of small businesses plan to increase their spending on social network marketing in 2009. In fact, 25% of the small businesses surveyed by Ad-ology Research indicated that they would increase spending on the medium this year, a higher percentage than any other marketing format.
Meanwhile, 33% of small businesses indicated that they would keep spending on social networking about the same, while only 5% reported that they plan to spend less than in the previous year. Surprisingly, while 37% of small businesses in the survey don’t use social networking at all, that’s a smaller percentage than any other medium, including email marketing, search engine marketing, and even just maintaining a company website.
What to make of the data? While certainly hopeful news for those that work in social media, overall, the numbers would seemingly point to what might be a better-than-expected year overall for businesses that depend on online marketing dollars. In all but a few areas (online video, podcasting, and mobile), small businesses indicate they are growing (or keeping the same) and not shrinking their marketing budgets.
Costs are certainly being cut elsewhere – the unemployment rate in the US is at a 16-year high – but maybe, just maybe, online marketing is a bit better off than other areas of the economy.
Social networking sites (SNSes) like MySpace.com and Facebook attract large numbers of mostly young users who are eager to engage with their favorite brands. But most marketers use traditional marketing tactics like run-of-site advertising and static microsites to push messages into these networks. Instead, to realize the full value of marketing on SNSes, marketers should be prepared to engage in a personal relationship with users by providing something of value. Promotions are good in this context, but even better are information or brand elements that users can pass on to their friends.
One of the hottest ways promoted to build your internet network marketing business is through social networks. Unfortunately people heard about it and totally took it out of control. Especially in the network marketing world. The fastest way to be seen as a loser in a social network is to join one and immediately start posting about your awesome business opportunity. People really read your post, I do and the people that are just spamming biz ops I tend to label nubs. Which is to bad, because I actually do spend money online and join businesses…
How To Attract Prospects Using Social Networking
It is a fact, you will only bring people into your business that is at your skill level or lower. It is highly unlikely that you will find some big heavy hitter type jumping on your business opportunity in a social network. The first thing you can do is investigate the social network and see who are the people that are the most active in that network. More than likely they probably have valuable information they are dying to share with you. Participate in forum discussions, add friends and visit their profile page leave a nice comment.
It is okay to promote your business on your personal space in a social network, if a person is interested they will find you. To tell you the truth a person looking for you is better than you looking for them. The more blog post/articles you write the more people will come visit your page. Don’t write articles about your business, write articles about your niche subject in general.
People do not join followers, people join leaders. Make sure that when you write your articles that you add value by either educating or inspiring the people reading.
Strive to be one of the few and you will find success in the network marketing industry. Leaders don’t peddle their business like some cheap car salesman, a leader attracts people to them because they are seen as the person who knows what direction to go. Always position yourself as this expert.
In mid-June, when computer maker Dell announced it had earned million in revenue from using Twitter, a popular micro-blogging site, the Internet and blogosphere were all atwitter about the news. Finally, proof that social media had the potential to not only increase traffic but also sales. Though as Dell was quick to mention, it took 18 months to make that first million via Twitter, albeit only six to earn the last.
You’ve got a Web site, a blog, and maybe even an RSS feed. Think you’re done with Web 2.0? Think again. Social networking
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