For me, Facebook was an integral part of my college experience - it was a natural extension to my real-life social networking. Just meet someone? Look them up and find out a little (or, in the case of over-sharers, a lot) about that person.
Need to contact a classmate? Look them up and send them a message - don’t know someone’s e-mail address? If they - and you - are on Facebook, all you need is their name. It’s an easy way of contact and maintaining casual connections without giving away specific contact information.
To start, these social networks were all about networking people for fun and social reasons. Other networks such as LinkedIn sprung up to target business networking, but the lines between fun-networks and business-networks are becoming blurred.
Employers oftentimes keep track of Myspace or Facebook pages of their employees - it’s not uncommon that employees have been fired for inappropriate “friending” or inappropriate pictures made public through these networks. But social networks are not just for tracking people - the reason Facebook and Myspace are worth so much money is because of their advertising potential. They’re ready-made repositories for sorted, organized and classified demographics. Simply put, social networks are full of potential customers.
There are many ways to dig into this type of marketing, though no one is the best - traditional banner-style ads can work, but are costly. Organic, viral marketing can explode your product or business to a large audience, but is often like trying to capture lightning in a bottle.
The real trick is to understand how these networks put people in touch with one another, and how people use them. CNN has a really good list of the social networks they use in their own research, and in their own personal experience - what makes them work, what makes them valuable. When you understand how these systems are used, it’s much easier to apply it to business.
Check back next week when we see the top ten ways to advertise on social networks.
