Sunday, January 17, 2010

Social Networking, the New Magic Beans

It seems every issue of every business magazine I see has an article on Social Networking. News shows are starting to run segments on the phenomenon. What really caught my eye was the fact that facebook was the most visited site on the Internet on Christmas day.

Now it's hit the big time for certain! And companies of all size and types are flooding onto the Internet to try to be a part of the craze. But, I still have these feeling that they've got nothing in their hands quite yet, other than those magic beans. (I'm not certain if they traded the cow for them or not. Let's not take the analogy too literally, shall we?)

Social Networking has a lot of potential, that's for sure. With all those eyeballs converging into one place with a way to know what people like and don't like, it's an advertisers dream. But do you dare advertise there? Plenty will and fail. Because, remember folks are going there to hang out and have fun. Too much advertising will reduce the tendency of visitors to go there. And it's all too easy for each person to exclude you off their feed if you get too "sales-y."

Instead, the idea here is to have companies become part of the community discussion. Offer tips and tricks, offer information about your business that will benefit your customers. Become part of the trust equation and they will look for you when they need to buy next. And they will need to buy - economic slumps only last so long...

No comments:

Post a Comment