Benefiting From Social Network Sites

Of all the aspects of Social Media Marketing (SMM), social networking sites or profile sites have attracted the most attention from main stream marketers as they involve huge potential markets that run into tens and even a couple of hundred millions. A study co-authored by a Wharton University of Pennsylvania (USA) professor found that consumers are far more likely to buy a company's product if they are "network neighbors" of an existing customer.

The report continues to note that "results indicate that a firm can benefit from the use of social networks to predict the likely hood of purchasing". This study evidently has identified the network marketing potential inherent in these social profile sites.

Online social network sites enable people to create profiles, describe their interests, share thought and connect with other people. They are becoming a cultural phenomena with examples including MySpace, FaceBook, Frienster, Hi5, LinkedIN and more. Socially they provide a place to digitally hang out and make friends. Commercially it is a place one can potentially get some serious viral marketing using word of mouth as individuals rave about your product, company or service.

This is created as one online friend tells another online friend that tells another online friend and so on. Indeed an angle that has been identified for marketing profile sites include creating communities around a company or a product allowing customer and potential customers to discuss the company or product freely. Such communities can then be used to collect market intelligence, correct perception and direct discussions ultimately encouraging sales. Companies in the US like Helga and Burger King that have MySpace profiles have attempted this avenue with some level of success.

For smaller web business without much of a work force, marketing social profiles poses two major problems. First is that these sites tend to be mercurial. Since most are used by teenagers and young adults, they have the tendency to migrate to new services very quickly. For example Freindster was among the first social profile networking sites. By late 2003 it had over 20 million users. In 2005 it slipped to under one million members as many migrated to the formerly great MySpace which is believed to have built its membership to over 200 million members.

Then guess what, today Myspace is so yesterday. The new kid on the block getting reviews in international business magazines is FaceBook. These major shifts occur as new services come with better functionality. So a web business could take time to work a particular hot profile site only to see its efforts reduced to naught in a matter of months.

The second problem is that marketing social profile site takes time. It involves frequent blogging, updating of your profile, visiting tens of other profiles daily as you look for friends etc. Considering that all this effort may not get sustainable results as users shift to new services makes one wonder how can a small website benefit from social sites?

Just like news and bookmarking sites, the easiest means to benefit from profile sites is to target them for link popularity. If you can remember link popularity which is expressed by Page Rank (PR) can assist a site to improve its Search Engine traffic. Profile sites usually have high PR which you can "siphon" to improve your websites PR. And though this may take time, the effort has sustainable results you can count on.

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