Online Social Networks – Your Online Marketing Partner

Tuesday, April 29, 2008, 0:58
Business and Technology, Internet, Technology
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By now, I’m pretty sure that you’ve all heard about the phenomenon started by sites like Friendster, MySpace, Facebook, etc. These sites are called social networking sites and most this is where people connect with friends or look for new friends.

After tremendous success of social networking sites, it was inevitable that these virtual representations of ourselves will eventually start to evolve into a virtual economy.

It probably started with a casual message from an old friend like, “How’s everything?” followed by a casual response like, “Everything is great, I’m working for blah blah blah or I just started a business on blah blah.” Then, “Oh, that’s interesting – tell me more about it” or “Hey, do you know someone who can blah blah hook me up on something.” And that marked the start of the virtual economy spanning over different industries.

If you are an individual or an established company, this is a must – setup an account on all the big social networking sites. Think of these subdomains as virtual representations of yourself or of your organizations. Imagine how Nike felt when a guy from Indonesia registered an account with multiply – nike.multiply.com and left it blank / inactive. They just missed a huge opportunity to set it up and connect with customers on an “e-personal” level.

Here are my prediction:

Invasion of Brands
In the near future, Industry giants will wake up and open their eyes to this opportunity. Who wins? The big social networking sites – they can start charging for exclusive groups or exclusive use of these subdomain names. And the big brands will reach their target markets with detailed demographics – going as far as to their favorite color! Technology will track very specific information about members and this will be the promise or the commitment that these networking sites will offer to the big players to justify out-of-this-world fees.

New Channel for Product Information

Subscribing to corporate or brand newsletters for updates will not go away – but will greatly be affected by this. People will no longer subscribe to your corporate newsletter from your very expensive website to get updates on your products. They will opt to just add you/ your company/ the brand as a business contact, or even a friend on a social networking site. Why? Simple human behavior. We are social beings! People log on to their virtual selves almost daily to connect with their friends and this is where they are most vulnerable to check out your business not because the site empowers you to reach your target market, but because the site empowers your target market to choose and decide on their own. A whole new marketing strategy will be born – it will tickle the market, it will intrigue the market, it will shock the market, it will interact and technology will allow it to be more customized and focused.

Consider this, people don’t ignore email updates that come from social networking sites – I’m sure I don’t need to explain this further because I’m pretty sure that you are nodding your head, guilty of this behavior.

Discovery and Curiosity

This is the future of online marketing – no more spamming, no more mass emails crossing your fingers, grateful for getting at least 10 hits even if you have 100 misses. Empower the market, let them discover and tickle their curiosity.