The Profitable Advantage of Social Marketing

by : Jonathan Haryanto

It is really hard to convey how different marketing on the web is today compared to years ago. Today, business professionals are recognizing the profitable advantages of social networking sites, and are seeking niche networks to communicate fluidly with others in their line of work and outside their industry. Social networking - perhaps you've heard of it before, but are not quite sure what it means. Free traffic is one thing. Free traffic while building extreme customer loyalty through community building and interaction is a whole different ball game. Take it from someone who has done it all over the last decade. Social marketing, once you catch the bug and learn to do it right, is the most freeing feeling a marketer can have on the web. Especially for marketers who've had to do marketing the old fashioned way and in-your-face direct sales.

Social networking is the grouping of individuals into specific groups, like small rural communities or a neighborhood subdivision. The trend of social networking on the web began with people wanting to reconnect with lost school friends. Then it expanded to sharing messages, music, and videos with people sharing pieces of their culture and life interests. Some of these advantages to business networking sites are their on demand information, quicker communication than through email, an improved culture at work, and a more personable and trustworthy professional presence with pictures, blogs, and information for potential partners and clients to access.

Although social networking is possible in person, especially in schools or in the workplace, it is most popular online. This is because unlike most high schools, colleges, or workplaces, the internet is filled with millions of individuals who are looking to meet other internet users and develop friendships and business relationships, too. The websites are known as social sites. Social networking websites function like an online community of internet users. Depending on the website in question, many of these online community members share a common interest such as hobbies, religion, or politics. Once you are granted access to a social networking website you can begin to socialize. This socialization may include reading the profile pages of other members and possibly even contacting them.

The friends that you can make are just one of the many benefits to social networking online. Another one of those benefits includes diversity because the internet gives individuals, from all around the world, access to social networking sties. This means that although you are in the United States, you could develop an online friendship with someone in Oregon or Switzerland. Not only will you make a new friend, but you just might learn a thing or two about a new culture and new languages. And, learning is always a good thing.

Once you've convinced yourself that you are sufficiently informed, you can begin to search for networking communities to join. This can easily be done by performing a standard internet search. Your search will likely return a number of results, including MySpace, FriendWise, FriendFinder, Yahoo! 360, Facebook, Orkut, and Classmates. Early Internet applications such as Usenet and bulletin board systems allowed people to communicate and network, often in closed systems. But with the advent of the web in the mid-'90s, people could connect in more visually appealing and public ways. Classmates.com let people connect with old classmates online, and SixDegrees.com offered a way to meet "friends of friends" - with its name referring to the six degrees of separation between everyone in the world.

After the dot-com bust in 2000, SixDegrees was shut down and eventually Friendster became the leader in social networking sites. A common feature of these services was the list of "friends" or contacts that each user maintained, driving usage of the site by people inviting more friends, who invited more friends, and so on and so on.

The year 2007 has been marked by the booming growth of MySpace rival Facebook, which started life in 2004 as a closed network for college students, and later high school students.
Meanwhile, another trend paralleled the rise of the big social networking sites: smaller, more focused business social networking sites. The first one was Ryze, launched by entrepreneur Adrian Scott in 2001 to help him remember all his business contacts. Later came the more popular LinkedIn, which allows you to post your career trajectory and ask "connections" for jobs or business introductions. Both services bring in revenues by running advertising and selling premium services for power users.

With a 10 year perspective on web marketing, all we can say is that social marketing is the coolest way to generated traffic, links, and search engine rankings for thousands of keywords. And what it creates is bigger profits, more interest, and the kind of attention, branding, and respect you simply cannot get with any other form of marketing. Social marketing means being genuine in every part of your business. That's why many marketers are up in arms over social marketing today.