The rapid evolution of social media has led to consumers controlling brands rather than marketers. Influencing news coverage through press releases and media relations is far more difficult now with news channels creating and shaping stories hand-in-hand with the general public. 30 percent of frequent social networkers trust their peers’ opinions when making a major purchase decision, but only 10 percent trust an advertisement (1). 77 percent of online shopper’s read consumer reviews before making a purchase (2).

Participatory websites like YouTube, Wikipedia, and Flickr now account for 12 percent of all web traffic (3). Content generation on social media sites is still low, with Hitwise report findings suggesting that less than 1 percent of internet users are generating content, with the rest only viewing the generated content(3). Sites that are simpler to edit like Wikipedia see user participation (editing/uploading) to the tune of 4.38 percent. However, content generation on video and photo sites is low (less than 1 percent).

Social Media spending was 7.8 percent of the total Online Marketing Budget allocated by US Marketing Professionals in Q3 2007(4). Brand marketers are realizing the importance of social media. Monitoring social media sites like news and blogs to check any negative publicity and support positive publicity is crucial. Further, companies should keep track of emerging trends on social media sites and modify business strategy accordingly.

Social sites are also realizing the need for better advertising and tracking platforms. Google’s OpenSocial platform and Facebook’s SocialAds are steps in this direction. Google’s recently launched OpenSocial platform has been grabbing a lot of attention. Social gadgets built using the OpenSocial platform will work across many popular social networking sites including Orkut, MySpace, hi5, LinkedIn, Ning and SalesForce. Google’s portable social gadgets are poised to give tough competition to the widely popular Facebook platform.

References:

JupiterResearch Press Release [http://www.jupiterresearch.com/bin/item.pl/press:press_release/2007/id=07.03.12-social_network_sites.html/] Jupiter Research – “Retail Marketing: Driving Sales Through Consumer-Created Content” Hitwise US 2.0 Research Note: Measuring Web 2.0 Consumer Participation, June 2007 Coremetrics , “2nd Annual Face of the New Marketer”, provided to eMarketer, October 30, 2007

By: Tulika Dube

graphics design services

With phrases such as “tweeting”, “un-friending” and “liking” now becoming common place terms, confused business owners frequently ask me “what is social media?” and “how can I use it to promote my business?”

Put simply, social media is people using the web to have conversations. A fairly simple concept, but it’s simplicity shouldn’t be used to underestimate its power. While people may use social networking sites to have conversations about topics as mundane as what they had for lunch, they also delve into more pressing topics, such as politics, religion, world events and even your brand.

In August 2009, Cadbury felt the full force brunt of an anti-Cadbury campaign that disgruntled consumers launched on Facebook. The Facebook pages “Take palm oil out of Cadbury chocolate bars” and “Boycott Cadbury Palm Oil Chocolate” accumulated over 3,500 fans between them and sent such a clear message to the New Zealand confectionery producer that they issued a formal apology to consumers and announced they would cease using palm oil in their products.

Meanwhile, more positive examples of social media “chatter” can be found in the numerous Facebook fan pages dedicated to the Coke brand – my personal favorite being the “It’s not Christmas until the Coke lorry is on the telly” page. People use these pages as a platform to express their appreciation of a particular product or brand and share their experiences. What amazingly powerful information for the Coke marketing machine to have access to – real world examples of what marketing works and what doesn’t.

The opportunity social media presents for your business is the ability to listen, participate and influence these online conversations. Think of it like being able to position your best sales person at the first worldwide networking event. Instead of just “working ” a room, your sales people can “work” the nation, or even the world. How useful would it be for your business to get direct access to your target market and ask them what they want? The return and impact on your internal systems, product/service development and marketing would be immeasurable.

But it is important to know how to stimulate this type of conversation. After all, simply setting up a Facebook page or Twitter account isn’t enough to get people chatting about your business. You need to have a clear social media strategy in place that outlines your goals, guidelines, tactics and even a crisis plan.

Part of this strategy needs to address what type of content you will provide on social networking sites and what resource you will dedicate to this. Many companies make the mistake of setting up a social media presence and either neglect it (dedicating no resource to keep it up to date and interesting), or spend all their time pushing out “hard sell” post after “hard sell” post, and wondering why their fan base isn’t growing.

Like in a face to face networking situation, you can’t spend the entire time talking about yourself -otherwise your potential prospects will quickly excuse themselves (or in the social media landscape “un-friend/un-follow” you) and avoid you altogether. Instead, you need to dedicate resource to engage people by asking them about themselves (and experiences with your brand/products), listen to what they have to say, offer your company’s opinions and share advice/experience. Through this “give and take” philosophy, you can then start weaving in posts promoting your latest product/service launch or special offer. Remember, social media is online conversations, not online broadcasting without a listening ear.

By: Wendy Schollum

full internet marketing service