Profiting
From Online Social Networking
This is the second in a series of articles we will be publishing
relaying thoughts and ideas from the Internet Retailer Conference
in Chicago, which occurred June 5th through June 7th. Peter
Kosciewicz, Director of E-Commerce for the Eastwood Company,
and Chris Saito, Senior Director, Shopping Products for Yahoo!
Shopping, delivered a presentation entitled "Social Networking:
The Peer Pursuasion Marketing Tool."
According to Kosciewicz, the Web today has grown
into an "architecture of participation" that facilitates
social networking through devices such as blogs, wikis, RSS,
podcasts, and more. Forrester Research has published studies
that show that traditional marketing is continuing to lose credibility.
For example, in 2002, 78% of respondents in
a survey said that ads are a good way to learn about a new product.
In 2004, that number had dropped to 46%. In 2002, 14% of respondents
agrees that companies generally tell the trust. As pathetic
as 14% is, in 2004, it had declined even further - down to 7%.
Social networking as a means of marketing overcomes this lack
of consumer trust because it relies on the word of the consumer
rather than the word of the producer. Research from Datamonitor
reported that 85% of repondents in a survey indicated that word-of-mouth
from friends, family, or colleagues is more trustworthy than
corporate-generated content.
So how do you take advantage of social networking
to sell more product? Simple - you open yourself up. You plant
the seeds of a community to grow up around your site by using
devices such as blogs, customer reviews, and forums to give
a voice to your customers or prospective customers. The caveat
is that you must be high quality. You must have high quality
service and a high quality product. If not, avoid this marketing
method.
Kosciewicz outlined four important rules for
using social networking on your web site:
1. Guide but don't control.
2. Never censor.
3. Don't be afraid of the negative.
4. Don't be paranoid.
If you open up a forum on your site but then
restrict what people are allowed to say, such as removing posts
that are negative toward your company or that mention your competitors,
then you will do more damage than good to your reputation. Use
negativity as a way to improve your business. If people are
negative, look at that as feedback and act on it. Make changes,
and then let your community know about it. Don't worry about
your community talking about your competition. Your attitude
has to be that you are the best, so why worry about it?
As a community develops around your web site,
certain members will establish themselves as more influential
than others. They will be more outspoken, and will be the ones
who often respond to others. Cultivate these members, because
they can be powerful allies. Once you have identified the more
influential members of your community, contact them regularly,
give them free product, become their friend. Feed your influencers
information, and they will distribute it for you. But do not
make it appear that you are only interested in them because
they can help you sell stuff. You need to be genuine.
Measuring the impact of social networking is
difficult. Unlike other forms of marketing, there is no direct
connect between social networking activity and sells. What you
will want to do is track traffic to pages such as customer reviews,
referral links, etc.
Social networking can be a powerful marketing
tool, if you have a high quality product and are not afraid
of an open dialogue with your customers.
If you would like help implementing a social
networking strategy for your web site, call Work Media at 1-888-299-4837
or email info@workmedia.net.
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