June 04, 2009
There's no Business like the Social Networking Business
Social networking means a new frontier for businesses in Imperial County
While the recession continues to dominate the U.S. economy, there is one industry that is thriving, and two marketing professionals in Imperial County believe a there's a brave new world ahead for businesses that embrace the social networking economics of the Web.
The MySpace site claims to have set a record for one day web hits with 4.5 billion page views. To put that last number in perspective, the U.S. Census Bureau estimates there are only 6.7 billion people on the entire planet.
It's called social network marketing. Advertisers are now embracing Web sites such as Facebook and MySpace to reach target markets, and with good reason: the user statistics are staggering.
According to the Web site Web-Strategist.com, Facebook now has more than 60 million active users. There have been an average of 250,000 new registrations per day since January of 2007, and an average of 3 per cent weekly growth since January of 2007.
Perhaps even more incredible is the fact that the number of active Facebook users has doubled every six months since 2007.
The demographics of the users show that the social network is penetrating new markets. There are over 55,000 networks, and more than half of Facebook users are not in college. Perhaps most significantly, the fastest growing demographic of users is people 25-years-old and older. Web-Strategist .com shows that Facebook is the sixth most visited site in the United States with more than 65 billion page views per month.
Aaron Popejoy, Creative Director for The Conveyor Group in Imperial, said younger residents of Imperial County are quite familiar with the intricacies of social networking.
“The younger generations here have been tied in for a long time with MySpace and now Facebook, and are much more keen on how to use blogs to interact with one another with text messaging,” Popejoy said.
The numbers for MySpace are equally jaw-dropping. Web-Strategist.com indicates that MySpace is the most visited Web Site in North America, with an incredible one in four Americans claiming to have created a MySpace page, and 300,000 people signing up on the site around the world every day. The MySpace site claims to have set a record for one day web hits with 4.5 billion page views in one day.
To put that last number in perspective, the U.S. Census Bureau estimates there are only 6.7 billion people on the entire planet.
To view the Web-Strategist Web site click HERE
Popejoy says marketing efforts in larger cities are migrating to the web at a rapid pace.
Popejoy said businesses are now taking social network marketing one step further by creating their own blogs for user feedback and product review. “We do have a slower pace here and we have a little more resistance to move to the Web. There are still a lot of phone calls going on, which is great, there is still a lot of face to face, which is great,” said Popejoy. “You don't get that necessarily in the metro areas. But those trends are picking up here a lot faster than I think most people recognize.”
Another Imperial County marketing professional said the precision with which advertisers can target potential customers is a big reason for the growing popularity of social network marketing.
Bill Gay of Reliance Public Relations says that precision is an effective marketing tool.
“They can target it,” said Gay. “You can place an ad on Facebook, and you can tell them you want it you want to have it go to the San Diego area.”
One aspect of social network marketing that is extremely attractive to advertisers is the ability to determine just how many users have seen the their ad. There are web usage applications that provide accurate feedback to marketing firms. When compared to sales data, the ad viewership data is crucial for determining the effectiveness of a marketing campaign
Popejoy said businesses are now taking social network marketing one step further by creating their own blogs for user feedback and product review.
There are major employers (here), even the Border Patrol. How do people feel about them? Who better to stand by what they are doing, and to educate the public about what they are doing than the people who are part of those organizations?"
- Aaron Popejoy, Creative Director, The Conveyor Group“User feedback and reviews on products and services - that is a blog whether you like it or not,” Popejoy said. “And what I like to let people know – our clients and future clients and prospects, is that the conversation is going on – you can participate it or not, but avoiding it means you are just not participating – it is still going on.”
Popejoy says social networking is an opportunity for businesses to influence public perception about their product.
“It's really been about manipulating the user experience, by providing a framework or a road map of how you want them to think about your company,” said Popejoy.
Gay and Popejoy both said that if companies start to lead the discussion about their products through blogs, then that also requires an effort to monitor the discussion so false or misleading information can be dealt with quickly.
“That is an interesting question,” Gay said. “What is the filter? It's a very interesting question and it is one that is talked about in the industry a lot.”
As Imperial County continues to deal with the effects of the recession, the impacts of the new marketing concepts are still not known, but Popejoy says social network marketing will give businesses here a powerful tool , even though two of the biggest industries here are government and agriculture.
“You see that there are some big organizations here, and they do struggle with public perception,” said Popejoy. “You've got the health care industry, our water and power delivery. There are major employers (here), even the Border Patrol. How do people feel about them? Who better to stand by what they are doing, and to educate the public about what they are doing than the people who are part of those organizations?