Profiting From the internet Social Networking

Jerry Work

This is the second in a series of articles we will be publishing relaying thoughts and ideas from the Internet Retailer Conference in Chicago, which occurred June 5th throughout June 7th. Peter Kosciewicz, Director of E-Commerce for the Eastwood Company, and Chris Saito, Senior Director, Shopping Products for Yahoo! Shopping, delivered a presentation entitled "Social Networking: The Peer Pursuasion Marketing Tool."

According to Kosciewicz, the Web today has grown into an "architecture of participation" that facilitates social networking through devices such as blogs, wikis, RSS, podcasts, and additional. Internet Social Network Forrester Research has published studies that show that conventional marketing is continuing to lose credibility. For example, in 2002, 78% of respondents in a survey said that ads are a good way to learn about a new product. In 2004, that lot had dropped to 46%. In 2002, 14% of respondents agrees that companies commonly tell the trust. As pathetic as 14% is, in 2004, it had declined even further - down to 7%. Social networking as a means of marketing overcomes this lack of consumer trust because it relies on the word of the consumer rather than the word of the producer. Research from Datamonitor reported that 85% of repondents in a survey indicated that word-of-mouth from friends, family, or colleagues is additional trustworthy than corporate-generated content.

So how do you establish advantage of social networking to sell additional product? Simple - you open yourself up. You plant the seeds of a community to grow up around your site by using devices such as blogs, customer reviews, and forums to give a voice to your customers or prospective customers. The caveat is that you must be extreme quality. You must have high quality service and a extreme excellence product. If not, avoid this marketing method.

Kosciewicz outlined four meaningful rules for using social networking on your web site:

1. Guide but don't control.
2. Never censor.
3. Don't be afraid of the negative.
4. Don't be paranoid.

If you open up a forum on your site in any case then inhibit what people are allowed to say, such as removing posts that are negative toward your company or that mention your competitors, then you will pull off additional damage than good to your reputation. Use negativity as a way to improve your business. If people are negative, look at that as feedback and act on it. Make changes, and then let your community know about it. Don't worry about your community talking about your competition. Your attitude has to be that you are the exemplar, so why worry about it?

As a community develops around your web site, definite members will establish oneself as additional influential than others. They will be additional outspoken, and will be the ones who often respond to others. Cultivate these members, because they can be strong allies. Once you have identified the additional influential members of your community, concord them regularly, give them free product, become their friend. Feed your influencers communication, and they will distribute it for you. However do not make it appear that you are only interested in them because they can help you sell stuff. You be forced to be genuine.

Measuring the impact of social networking is difficult. Unlike other forms of marketing, there is no direct connect between social networking activity and sells. What you will want to do is track traffic to pages such as customer reviews, referral links, etc.

Social networking can be a formidable marketing tool, if you have a extreme superiority product and are not afraid of an open dialogue with your customers.

If you would like help implementing a social networking strategy for your web site, call Work Media at 1-888-299-4837 or email info@workmedia.net.

About the Author :

Jerry Work is a partner in Work Media, a Nashville-based Internet marketing firm that specializes in helping companies implement aggressive, multi-pronged Internet marketing plans. Check up on out WM's blog site, http://ICanBeFound.com, for additional articles. WorkMedia.net


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