Social Media Marketing in 2007 – MySpace or Yours?
A new study release by JupiterResearch called “Social Networking Sites: Defining Advertising Opportunities in a Competitive Landscape” finds that 48% of brand marketers plan to use social tactics in 2007. Jupiter defines social networking sites as websites designed for members to create and post content, usually in the form of profile pages, primarily in order to communicate with each other.
“Users between 18 and 34 are much more likely than older audiences to visit social networks daily,” said Emily Riley, JupiterResearch Analyst and lead author of the report. “Thirty percent of frequent social networkers trust their peers’ opinions when making a major purchase decision, but only ten percent trust advertisements. Consequently, brand marketers must harness brand advocates and influentials by providing additional motivation for frequent networkers to engage in social marketing.”
According to a ClickZ article about the study, what do you think will be the social media tactic in 2007 that is getting brand marketers all giddy about social media? Yep, it is MySpace. Or more specifically creating MySpace profiles.
“Marketers engage in several tactics on sites such as MySpace. “Many advertisers easily understand the idea of having a MySpace profile, many will start that way,” Riley told ClickZ News. “The most important thing is driving traffic to the site, and to manage the flow after leaving the site.” Riley suggests assets like widgets, skins, and forward-to-friend functionality to spark engagement.”
Are you kidding me? Your total social media marketing plan is to set-up a MySpace profile and through on a few widgets? For some brands that might work, but for the vast majority of them, social media marketing takes a lot more time and effort if you are going to be successful.
As Riley said later in the Clickz article:
“[Social networking sites] are not always effective for everybody, some advertisers have a brand that works well with a marketable video. Before an advertiser decides to use social networking, they have to think about how to attract the target audience and think about who they are targeting before attaching a brand message.”
I would add to that that MySpace is not always effective for every advertiser. Some brands would be much more successful if they were to focus on Bebo, Facebook or one of the other social networking sites. Research the demographics and look at the types of interactions that are being successful on that site before launching a campaign there.
Filed under Brand Marketing, Social Media Marketing, Social Media Optimization : Comments (4) : Mar 14th, 2007
March 14th, 2007 at 11:35 pm
[...] Original post by Social Media Optimization and software by Elliott Back [...]
March 16th, 2007 at 12:28 am
Hey, did you just change your template?
Anyway, companies are certainly using the sales model with the web. But to me a more powerful development is to use dialogue to listen and gain insight and value from customers. That’s real marketing from customer service, product marketing and talking with customers.
March 21st, 2007 at 5:57 pm
Hi John
Yes the look changed. I was finding the other one too hard to read the text.
I agree that the power is the ability to use dialogue to listen and gain insight and value from customers. I just question whether MySpace is the best platform for companies who are looking to do that.
March 23rd, 2007 at 11:28 pm
I suppose that depends on the audience. Though I think personally or organizationally owned blogs offer more opportunties for companies.