Those who have come across the term "social networking" must have heard of MySpace, right? If not, allow me to provide a quick briefing.
Where Friendster failed, MySpace succeeded. Acquired by News Corp, MySpace became one of the biggest influences of what is today known as social media, aka social networking. To give an idea of why I say this, Techweb reports MySpace recently received an estimated 27.5 billion page views!
Even more striking is that by August 2006, a reported 100 million registered users will generate the content that receives these incredible page views. And if that wasn`t enough to drop your jaw, then maybe Yahoo Video`s 21 million visitors will. And these aren`t the only players on the Net.
What is social media?
Social media basically refers to an increasingly popular mechanism that provides a gush of valuable content, all of which is generated by the site`s users. The content is generally about users` personal experiences and gets published in the form of words, images, audio and video. The reason why this form of Internet activity is so popular is because it lets users connect with peers, which in turn replicates the social contact that they would otherwise exchange in the real world.
It lets users connect with peers, which in turn replicates the social contact that they would otherwise exchange in the real world.
Gallianno "Gino" Cosme, online communications manager for Siemens South Africa.
Consumers are embracing social networking too; instead of searching the Net for information pertaining to products, services or even entertainment, users can now log onto a social networking site and read what their peers have to say. Yahoo Answers and Yebba use the same model by letting their users generate answers to other users` questions. Flickr is yet another example of how users can publish, exchange and search photos and images. For once, online community actually means something.
From forming groups of similar interest to expressing themselves anonymously if they so choose, social media affords marketers an opportunity to generate brand interest in a way never seen before. Instead of relying on above the line advertising, companies can also embrace consumer-generated content by giving their consumers a voice, facilitating peer-to-peer contact, and of course, through serving ads on such social network sites.
Corporate giants are taking note of this growing trend. Techcrunch recently mentioned that Microsoft and Apple have embarked on building a networking community too. Costing $99/year, Microsoft is allowing users to compile code to be run on PCs through access to XNA Game Studio Express, a XNA programming framework used for making Xbox games. Apple, on the other hand, is reportedly building social networking into Leopard, its new operating system, examples of which include team logins and enhanced iChat, to name but a few.
What is the secret?
Why is this form of online activity becoming so immensely popular? I once wrote an article that explained that in order to satisfy Web users, sites have to give them what they want, in effect being a valuable source for whatever the user was interested in and that the company could offer. And that`s exactly what social media does: it provides an array of lifestyle-related content of interest to users, in turn establishing valuable relationships with users through tracking their usage patterns and segmenting same. It`s taking what marketers have learnt from the Web (fresh content, analytics, Web 2.0, marketing, etc) and putting it all to practice.
What I enjoy most is complementing offline marketing campaigns with online media. Because social media concentrates on the consumer, and because many target audiences fall within this league, pushing a marketing message that reaches the consumer in both their off- and online environments can only equate to successful branding.
Could this be the start of a medium that will follow Google`s success?
Gino Cosme is online communications manager for Siemens South Africa.
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