Social networking and marketing : concrete opportunities

Linked In, Facebook, Bebo, MySpace: social gathering places where entertainment abounds, but where there are also several advertising and publicity opportunities. The most popular site of this type in Canada is Facebook, where millions of Canadians reunite, exchange information, create all kinds of content and exchange in an extremely effective way.

Increased range

The traffic and scope of Facebook and other social networks saw a massive explosion in 2007 (89% in the USA). Facebook alone reaches XX French Canadians every month. Visitors visit several times a week, even several times a day, and there is increasing quasi social pressure to register on the site. Who hasn’t received an invitation?

The meeting of different silos

The first Internet users who started to publish content did so with one main theme: photographs (with Flickr, for example), in blogs or with video using YouTube. But none enabled the union of these elements in a very effective way while providing easy sharing with other Internet users. Social networking sites let you automatically share information with a large number of contacts. ‘Personal’ reputation is what makes the message travel far, or not. Social network marketing should take inspiration from network marketing: it’s the advanced version of the ‘send to a friend’ functionality.

Popularity, traffic and conversions

Companies can create a profile, a group to promote a concept or even events to which contacts or groups of people can be invited. All this without the risk of being intrusive as the members of these networks have different ways to protect themselves or prevent content from specified members being sent to them.

Companies can also buy targeted publicity. What I have seen was contextual and far from intrusive, but it is likely that it’ll become increasingly visible on Facebook, for example.

All these tactics can help direct traffic and increase the prominence of a promotional site, or a site that generates business opportunities. They can also improve product and service sales. We have proof from different client projects.

Sites where we’ve used such techniques have seen a rise in traffic that was worth the extra work. Furthermore, conversion rates and navigation time on these sites was significantly greater than the average visitors. The groups that we created on social networks generated plenty of comments and discussions about campaigns, several hundred members joined them, came to events and much more. It is also easy to identify brand ambassadors that spread the message to their contacts.

Music groups and charities could also easily benefit from these visibility techniques, because they do not have a ‘malicious’ corporate aura.

Recruitment and mobilization

We cannot ignore the recruitment possibilities for companies that use social networks. Facebook or more directly Linked In are extremely effective tools in this respect. It is easy to geographically identify people who share interests, skills, experience and... desires. You can offer the right job to the right people at the right time, and therefore find that rare gem. Job seekers and companies are more satisfied with this than more traditional job postings.

Finally, impressive quantities of people can be mobilized and rallied together for a cause. I leave you with the following anecdote. A member of the Adviso team created a group on Facebook denouncing the STM strike this May. 5 days after creating it, the group had over 7500 members, prompting a journalist from the CBC to contact him to discuss the phenomenon.

Sign up to these networks and join the conversation!