Social Networking Tool of Marketing

Let's start with the bottom line: Social networks are getting too much consumer traffic for retailers to ignore. MySpace was the number one Web site, based on page visits in December 2007, according to comScore.

Social networks centre on younger demographic groups - so not all retailers should have social networks at the top of their agendas. However, social networks are expanding into other groups that retailers care about, such as career-based social networks (for example, LinkedIn), shopping-based social networks (for example, Kaboodle), employee groups on Facebook and MySpace, and so on.

Retailers must have a position on social networks. These positions can range from creating their own social community to gather feedback, to creating a marketing presence on large social networks, to doing nothing but observing how brands are discussed and perceived. To help retailers formulate their positioning strategies on social networks, Gartner has created a list of the top 10 things retailers should know about social networks - and what to do.

1. There Are Social Sites, and Then There Are Social Platforms

Any retailer's Web site can become social. Creating discussion forums, consumer reviews - and essentially any vehicle that enables consumers to create their own content, share it with others, and consequently interact with one another - will transform a "normal" site into a social site.

In contrast, a social platform is a large public site that enables users to do the same things as on a social site, but also creates a platform that encourages and eases the development of applications, widgets and mashups.

What a retailer is capable of doing on a social network will be determined by the platform's capabilities.

2 Social Network Sites Span Well Beyond MySpace and Facebook - But the Market Is Starting to Reconsolidate

According to comScore, 207 domains are classified as social networks, while other sources claim well more than 300.

Where does anyone find the time to spend on all of these social networks? Gartner Media analysts estimate that an individual is able to participate in one to three social networks in any meaningful way. comScore noted that, in September 2007, at the 207 sites that are considered social networks, a daily average of 46.7 visitors logged in an average of 22 times a month - which comes to 9.7 minutes per visit.

3 Social Networks Are Rich in Word-of-Mouth Discussions About Retailers and Products

If someone spends any amount of time on a major social network, they will quickly realize that word-of-mouth discussion about brands, products and retailers is rampant. Friends discuss with friends what they bought, what they are thinking of buying and what they think about items they never buy.

As a result, social networks are becoming a direct launch point to retailer Web sites.

4 Social Graphs Make Word-of-Mouth Relationships Known and Usable

Social graphs describe how friends are formally linked to each other on a social network. The term and the concept are far from being new. What is new is the prospect of accessing the social graph - not just for analysis - but for action.

Finally, analysis of social graphs can be useful in understanding how consumer groups are linked to each other. For example, you might discover that 20% of your target market on a social network is linked to pro-environment-focused groups or individuals.

5 Viral Propagation Is Boosted in Social Networks

One of the earliest marketing initiatives that took full advantage of the social Web's capabilities was viral marketing.

However, retailers should note that there is a "boosting" effect with social networks. With a few mouse clicks, members can bring in external content and broadcast it to their networks of friends. These same friends can do the same with even fewer mouse clicks. In the past, links to content (or embedded content) would pass from blog site to blog site or via e-mail from one person to another. The social network equivalent would be consumers that send an e-mail with interesting content they want to share to their entire e-mail contact list - every time. E-mail can do the same thing, but social networks culturally encourage viral propagation.

6 Applications for Social Networks Are Easier to Build - Opening Up a Whole New Way for Retailers to Interact With Consumers

The latest push in the social network world has been the focus on creating a platform that will enable individuals and companies alike to build applications (sometimes called widgets) that are designed to run on the social network.

Some retailers have also eagerly adopted the application- or widget-building trend. For example, Topshop offers Fashion Fix, which allows members to vote for designs. Wal-Mart and Target have also created applications both coincidentally focused on helping students pick furniture. Amazon.com offers APIs that enable members to mash up content, such as applications that can display a member's Amazon.com wish list on the member's profile.

7 Social Networks Are a Huge Source of Consumer Data, but Retailers Cannot Easily Access It - And Privacy Will Become a Major Issue

In addition to the social graph, social networks contain a huge amount of data that members put into their profiles.

Privacy concerns are appropriately huge as well. Some people are starting to regret having put so much information about themselves and their friends on the social networks. Access to this information should decrease over time. Access to consumer data will be dictated by a combination of the social networks and the members on that network, and perhaps eventually legislation. Social networks could provide anonymous and aggregated data to work with the privacy concerns. Members can opt in or out of data sharing, depending on who is viewing the information.

8 Communities, Groups and Networks Can Be Created by Anyone and Are Impossible to Fully Control

Social interaction and community building are at the heart of social networks. Many of these sites were "built by the people, for the people." Sometimes called the "other Internet," social networks are places that people go to as an alternative to the controlled "corporate" Internet.

9 Social Networks Are Not Capable of Commerce - Yet

Large-scale commerce capability does not exist on social networks. There are applications that leverage the affiliate network click-through revenue models. There are applications that facilitate the movement of money.

Will there be commerce capabilities on social networks? The biggest threat to commerce on social networks is the perception that a social network has "sold out" to the corporations. That means the social network has simply become another channel by which retailers can sell products.

10 Social Networks Are Merging Into the Real-Time World - For Example, Making It Onto the Mobile Phone

The pervasiveness of social networks is reaching out beyond the desktop or laptop computer. The ability to access social networks from mobile phones is being promoted by the wireless carriers. At one extreme, some members are "reporting" where they are and what they are doing to their networks of friends on a real-time basis via mobile technology.

Although nothing major has manifested itself in the retail world, it is easy to see that consumers armed with a mobile version of a social network application can broadcast to their friends what they are shopping for. Today, those same consumers can access any number of retail price comparison and review sites from a mobile phone. With a mobile social network application, they can also "ping" their networks of friends for advice - while they shop. In some ways, the ability for consumers to ping their social networks while shopping is only slightly different from consumers simply calling their friends on mobile phones (or using instant messaging). The difference, of course, is that reaching out to their entire networks is made very easy.

Beyond of that, there is a smart way from marketers that utilized those 10 advantages of Social Networking to promote their site and at the end to promotes their products or services.

Take payperpost as the example.
Thi site offering to the advertiser to buzz their website through people posts of their blog. Doing this, advertiser can get a backlink from each people who talking/writing a post to their blogs. This is a smart way to lived up their rank, here so the advertisers' website will be easier to be indexed by search engine.

Why Blogger may post about the advertisers on their blog? It's simple. Because PayPerPost will pay bloggers for doing that. It's called "get paid to blog". This the other smart influenced that PayPerPost do to link the advertisers with the bloggers.

That's what so called "WIN WIN SOLUTION"