Social networking is one area of the online world that I have yet to enter and yet to understand. One thing that became abundantly clear from discussions this week in class, though, is that I am in the minority.
Its interesting to me that the classmates pointed out the effectiveness of social networking is based on the notion of ‘word of mouth.’ Most traditional marketers would shudder at the idea of relying on ‘word of mouth’ to raise awareness or market a product. When I hear ‘word of mouth’ advertising, I think of a small town five-and-dime store who’s curmudgeon owner believes that advertising is silly and all he needs is good old ‘word of mouth’ to sustain and grow his business.
At first, this notion that social networking is ‘word of mouth’ seems to be a throwback to an older style of marketing. All that is old becomes new again, though. First, social networking can provide marketers with ‘word of mouth’ opportunities in online conversations. Those conversations aren’t happening at the water cooler or on the street corner like the good old days. These are conversations happening on a much larger scale. How large? This year in June alone, more than 132 million people visited Facebook and more than 117.5 million visit MySpace (Synovate, August 2008).
So my misconceptions about social networking came from the notion that these sites offered no purpose for marketers. I go to msnbc.com for news. I go to ebay.com to shop. I go to youtube.com for videos. Social networks didn’t provide me, at face value, any specific purpose. So why visit? Daniel Nations of About.com offered the very best explanation. He said, “Think of e-mail as a P.O. box on the web. A P.O. box is a very handy way of receiving letters from people, but you aren’t going to invite people to your P.O. box to look at your family photo albums. You are going to invite them over to your home” (2008).
For obvious reasons, many businesses are intrigued by this idea. The next step is learning how businesses and specifically marketers can get involved in this forum. Just as consumers rely on ‘word of mouth’ recommendations for product recommendations or advice from friends and family, social networking sites expand that group and offered endless options for marketers to inject their own information to millions of consumers. LinkedIn.com is one example of social networking being used as a key marketing communications tool. The website is a social networking site dedicated to connecting colleagues and classmates, job and business opportunity information, and share industry advice (LinkedIn.com, 2008).
Ironically, from this week’s discussion, the idea that chat rooms are the least effective form of emerging media surprised me. Aren’t chat rooms and social networking sites very similar? They provide an online conversation with others. They also rely, to an extent, on ‘word of mouth’ as a form of marketing. CompuServe and AOL were some of the first to provide chat rooms. Both designed the function as a social networking center. Eventually, these early chat rooms evloved to instant messaging and now, the social networking sites we know today, like FaceBook (Feydakin.com, 2008). It seems that chat rooms still have their place in the world of online social networking, and shouldn’t be discounted in light of other networking options.
Chat rooms or social networking sites, regardless, I admit it. Social networking is more than just socializing. It has purpose. It has large scale. And, I’ve been convinced that it is one key element of a comprehensive marketing communications plan.
References
Feydakin.com (2008) The history of chat part one. Retreived on October 26, 2008 from http://www.feydakin.com/.
Synovate (August 2008) Social Networking Myths and Facts. Retrieved on October 26, 2008 from http://www.synovate.com/insights/infact/issues/200808/.
