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Social Media - Internet PR and Marketing Strategy Part One

11/14/2006

Consumer generated media is no longer just a buzz word that PR and marketing practitioners can ignore. It is here to stay and it is driving a radical shift in the way people find and distribute information.  Why should you be paying attention?

One in every twenty web visits is now to a social networking site. This figure has doubled in the last year.   HitWise

Why do people go to social networking sites? The top four benefits are

• Meet people (78%)
• Find entertainment (47%)
• Learn something new (38%)
• Influence others (23%)

MySpace is still the number one social site and enjoys a whopping 81.92% market share among the social networks. However, there are other social sites that are growing rapidly while the MySpace traffic has evened off.

 

 

 

 

 

And the MySpace visit or s are no longer only teenagers – almost half the visit or s to the popular social netw or k site are now 35 or over--up from less than 40 percent last year.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Are they genuine users of the site or just parents checking up on their kids? That’s impossible to say, but the figures of time spent on the site could be a more reliable indicator of the demographic:

The average 12- to 17-year-old spends 260 minutes on MySpace and views about 808 pages. By contrast, the average 35- to 54-year-old spends 179 minutes on the site and looks at 560 pages, reports Ad Age.

As online “socialites” spend more time on these sites, they become impervious to traditional media; says the report S-Commerce: beyond MySpace and YouTube. Over one-third of social networkers spend less time watching television, and reading newspapers or magazines as a result of increased usage of social networks.

 

So is this of interest to online marketers? Indeed.

Online socialites say peers and colleagues hold more influence over their purchase than any other source of information.

Annual discretionary income for online socialites is nearly $8,000, 20% higher than consumers who have not used a social networking site, and they spend nearly 25% of their disposable income on online purchases (versus 17% for non-socialites).

 

So it’s no surprise to find that MySpace is not just a place for teenagers to hang out and meet friends – it is also driving traffic downstream to shopping and classified sites. The volume of traffic from MySpace to these sites has more than doubled in the last six months.  And it is also send traffic to  banking, telecommunications and travel sites.

"Search is a proven method of driving online retail site traffic," said Bill Tancer, General Manager of Global Research at Hitwise,

"With the growth of MySpace and others, online retailers should expand their focus beyond search to consider social networking sites as a source of additional traffic."

 

Social sites like MySpace are driving traffic to Google too.

 

However, just advertising on MySpace or other social sites may not be the best stategy. The most successful internet marketing strategies currently being used by companies are:

• Branded micro-sites
• Customer reviews and ratings
• Online customer forums
• Peer-to-peer transactions
• Product-focused blogs
• Community-created products

A thorough investigation into the demographics of a network is in order if you plan to use social media as a PR and marketing tool.

Next week: How to implement a social media strategy

Technorati Tags: social media, social networking, myspace, youtube, internet marketing strategy