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 *****s use it as least once a month ?data From Forrester Research, Q4, 2007)
Marketing Campaigns on Social Networks share the following attributes:
Meets a business objective: First and foremost, any marketing campaign or activity should match with a business objective, regardless of the tools being used.
Supports Community Goals: 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)
Encourage Member Interaction: The most successful social networking campaigns and efforts involve the audience.
Quickly scale: 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.
Utilize Media: 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
Foster self-expression or communication: 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
Offer a satisfying User Experience: 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.
Provide longer term utility: 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.
Enhance Value as Community participants: 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.
Integration with other marketing activities: 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.
Maintain agility during the campaign: 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.
Company Participation: 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
How can social networks make me more money?
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.
Top Social Networking Websites
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.
Social Networking Still the #1 Growth Area in Online Marketing
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.
Internet Network Marketing ? Bringing Value to Social Networks
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.
The Secret To Success
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.
Social Network Marketing Meets Small Business
In mid-June, when computer maker Dell announced it had earned $3 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.
The Business Face of Social Networking
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 sites?community-driven Web sites that aim to connect friends and colleagues into an interwoven fabric of a network?should be next up on your business agenda. The sites can help you find referrals, vet ideas, get advice and more?usually for free.
When it comes to social networking for business, we?re not referring to MySpace, FaceBook and other online popularity contests where teens and 20-somethings (plus 30-somethings who wish they were still 20-somethings) post embellished or embarrassing tidbits about themselves in the name of ?connecting? with friends and strangers. (Though it doesn?t hurt to have a presence there, if that demographic is your target market).
Instead, there?s a universe of sites built by business people for business people, with the goal of establishing a community where business owners can connect with one another, get questions answered, get referrals for employees and foster new business relationships.
If you already have a presence on the Internet, why do you need branch out even more? ?Having a Web site for your company is definitely helpful, but truth be told, no one thing alone will bring you and your company enough business,? said Krista Canfield, PR Manager for LinkedIn, the 800-pound gorilla of business social networking sites. ?It?s best to take a multi-pronged approach in order to ensure that your business is getting as much exposure as possible.?
How to correctly use social networks for marketing?
There are several guidelines that you can use, and here are some of them:
1.??????????? Use your real photo in your profile picture: do not use dollar signs, the logo of your sites, or lavish stuffs like sports cars. There is no better turnoff than someone who boasts about him or herself. Use a modest, professional picture of yourself. People want to know you as who you are, and as a human being.
2.??????????? Tell about yourself wholeheartedly in your info page: tell people about who you are, what you do, what your hobby is, and even your favorite sports team. People are open to others that share the same interests, let people relate to you by opening up yourself, only then you can begin to establish a more serious connection for your social network friends.
3.??????????? Once connected, don?t promote right away: I have confirmed many friend requests in my FaceBook page coming from internet marketers and network marketers. What mostly happen is that once I confirm their requests, they start inviting me to their business groups or opportunities, some even tagging me on product pictures that I have never even used in my life. Don?t do this please. Doing this is such a turn off honestly.
4.??????????? Share interesting stuff, not just your business: I often see that most new marketers post about their products often in their status updates. This is also a mistake. You are not letting anyone to get to know you by doing this. Shares things that are more personal in your updates more often, then people will relate to you. Then, once and a while, you can promote your business in your status updates, but this time people will actually read it because they have seen you as an honest guy who likes to share stuffs that are interesting and news-worthy.
In conclusion, use social networks in its main function, don?t use it as a blatant spam machine that will ruin not only your business, but reputation as well.
Source: http://www.sub-add.eu/the-new-gen-marketing-with-social-networks/
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