Diary of an Online Marketer

Perhaps the fastest growing areas of Internet content are the Social Networks. While Search Engines like Google and Bing are still the primary paths for people to find goods and services online, the traffic generated from social networks is steadily increasing. The popularity of Facebook, YouTube, and the many other Web 2.0 and Social Media sites makes them a potentially important component of your online growth strategy.

Advantage Internet Marketing can help you develop a strategy to take advantage of these tools and increase your website traffic and online lead generation and/or sales and revenue.

Two factors are at play in the importance of Social Networks – the volume of active users, and the affinity provided by the social model. Active users of social networks have a high comfort level with their interactions, because the model is predicated on social interaction. In other words, the user feels more at home in the online neighborhoods and social circles he or she belongs to. It therefore may be easier to win that initial trust (or at least, curiosity). Up against that, however, is the sheer volume of branches and pathways available to the user, which tends to reduce focus and dilute the impact of a marketing message.

Many of the same principles of marketing and communications that apply to the Internet in general are also at play in the social network environment. A clear message must be communicated, consistent with the brand, and some kind of unique attraction should be offered to the user (information, entertainment, or other social utility such as that offered by Facebook Causes or Fan Clubs).

In addition, especially because of the huge amount of information being disseminated through these networks, a consistent effort must be made over a protracted period of time, in order to reinforce the message and the brand. This is nothing new, of course – the same has long been known to apply to print advertising and other traditional media.

Advertising on Social Networks has also begun to take off. However, it is still unclear if these sites are reliable revenue generators and if their ROI matches traditional Pay-per-Click advertising (like Google’s AdWords system). Our assessment is that at present, traffic generated from Facebook advertising tends to be more casual, as it is often generated from ads on marginally related pages. In other words, people may visit but they won’t necessarily buy. AdWords, on the other hand, drives traffic that by and large is generated by people who are actively searching for something, and Google does its level best to ensure that they are presented with ads for goods and services related to their search.v

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