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Social Networking - Effortless Abundance in '2010
for Fast-acting Entrepreneurs
What makes up the social networking world?
Roughly 300 sites – those which boast of tens of millions of visitors,
such as Facebook or
MySpace, plus a serving of smaller or more exclusive
ones such as StudyBreakers, a site for high schoolers, or Zoeysroom, a
paid-membership site restricted to middle-school girls with interests in
math, science, engineering, and technology.
What baffles web observers is the
stratospheric number of people willing to invest time and provide
personal information in exchange for the prospect of belonging to a
group of people with whom they have something in common. Viewing the
larger picture, social networking gives satisfaction not just to the
users themselves but also to entrepreneurs looking to expand their
prospect base; employers on the lookout for job seekers; and marketers
who could finally cash in on target advertising.
The phenomenon that is social networking
One of the earliest social networking
sites was Classmates.com, launched in 1995. It principally aimed to
rekindle relationships with former classmates. Others followed suit,
albeit in trickles, over the years. Last year’s top two social
networking sites, according to Nielsen Online, were
MySpace, with more
than 57 million visitors; and Facebook, with almost 22 million visitors,
posting a hefty 89% increase from its 2005 figure. Other fast-growing
sites are LinkedIn,
Club Penguin, and
Flixster.
Almost all social networking site users
know that joining a network will help them communicate or simply get
linked to people who share their interests. However, only a small group
sees the huge business and marketing potential that social networks
have. In 2005, billionaire Rupert Murdoch purchased
MySpace for US$ 580
million, and Microsoft,
Google, and
Yahoo! have all entertained thoughts
of buying into Facebook at one time or another – proof positive that
social networking is designed for much more than merely collecting
friends.
Six degrees of separation
In 1929, a Hungarian writer named Frigyes
Karinthy wrote about his version of the shrinking-world concept. He
proposed that due to technological advances which increase the
connectedness of people, social distances actually become smaller
despite considerable physical distances between them.
Almost four decades later, an American
researcher at Harvard named Stanley Milgram theorized that people in the
U.S. seemed to be connected by about six friendship ties on average. His
research, together with Karinthy’s, and others who tried to prove the
theory mathematically, very likely inspired the term we know today as
“six degrees of separation.”
Several experiments, however contestable,
have been conducted on this theory. One of the more recent is Facebook’s
Six Degrees of Separation – the Experiment. Overtaking MySpace for the
first time in August 2007 with more than 6.5 million users, Facebook
uses an application that will show you how far (or near) you are from
other Facebook users. Apart from this, it will also show you exactly how
the connection is made.
The idea of knowing how one is connected
to another individual – whether it’s your next-door-neighbor or someone
halfway across the globe – is just one of the many fascinating concepts
attracting visitors to these hot sites.
Why people are attracted to social
networks
The different sites are designed with
specific types of users in mind, although unless explicitly stated in
the site’s Terms and Conditions page, atypical users are free to join.
For example, Facebook was initially restricted to Harvard students and
eventually expanded to include students from Ivy League schools within
two months of its launch. Since September of 2006, though, anyone 13 or
over is welcome to join. LinkedIn, on the other hand, is designed for
professionals who wish to get in touch with business contacts,
employers, employees, or people practicing in their field.
How to join
Once you register and become validated,
you can instantly create your profile, upload photos or videos, contact
existing friends and make new friends, and even “promote” your site. You
can modify your settings and get to choose whether your profile can be
viewed by the public or only by friends in your network. Some, such as LiveJournal and Xanga, offer these standard features but primarily play
up the blogging fad.
The main come-on of these sites, as
opposed to traditional web pages or e-mails which are relatively static,
is that they’re largely participatory – and sometimes, overly so.
Measures are now being taken to make sites safer from predators and
prevent them from being used as soapboxes for unjustly maligning
reputations.
Security in social networking sites
Parents are also being recruited to be
more involved in their children’s online activities, with not a few
social networking sites going to the extent of requiring a paid
subscription for unrestricted access. “When parents have to pay, that’s
a powerful control tool,” remarked Adam Thierer, a mover in the Progress
& Freedom Foundation based in Washington, DC.
Spinoffs
The more popular sites have spawned
antithetical networks, too, such as Enemybook, developed by an MIT
student who thought of bashing the superficiality of Facebook. This site
allows you to vent your true feelings on certain people you don’t
particularly like. Facebook is nowhere near fazed, however, because
sites such as Enemybook, Snubster, or Hatespace, are more of quick goofs
than real threats.
The social networking and social media marketing gold mine
According to a nationwide survey
conducted by the Pew Internet & American Life Project, a staggering 55%
of all U.S. teens accessing the Internet are users of social networking
sites. Social media marketing is an essential part of a successful business plan.
In Canada, a study presented by leading
marketing research firm Ipsos Reid showed that about 4 out of 10
Internet-enabled adults in the country have visited a social network
site, while 29% have actually submitted a profile on at least one of
them.
Relative newcomer Tagged, with about 30
million registered members, posted an impressive 386% growth in its
number of visitors from 2006-2007. These are figures that advertisers
simply cannot ignore. The Ipsos report discovered that 75% of social
networking site visitors in Canada comparison shopped for products
online, while only 57% of non-visitors did so.
Marketers are thus looking into the vast
potentials of social networks and social media marketing, given these contrasting behaviors between
users and non-users. They’re also excited about the possibility of
zeroing in on a desired demographic, made possible by the accessibility
of data from users’ profiles.
The challenge, therefore, for web
developers and managers of social networking sites, is to ensure that
enough positive interest is generated in order to maintain their
foothold in the market. Those who are looking at developing their own
social networks, on the other hand, must not be tempted to take
shortcuts in developing their sites, as doing so may ultimately lead
them to failure.
How to successfully create a social
network and social media marketing plan
Simply put, there are no shortcuts to
developing a social network site which you’ll expect to generate a
handsome following – and consequently, respectable revenues.
With more than 10 years’ experience in
creating portals, e-commerce, and advanced web applications, EXCEL-WEST
stresses the importance of creating a blueprint prior to developing your
social network and social media marketing plan.
Creating a blueprint
This is essential in ensuring your
success in the highly competitive arena of social networking. It
requires an understanding of business development, of your market
potential, of your market reach, and also of your demographic. Not
creating a blueprint for your social network or any advanced web
application is like building a house without a blueprint. If you build
your social network site without one, you’ll ultimately run into a lot
of excessive costs and possibly a loss of your opportunity to be first
to market with your social network.
This should always be your first step.
During this process, information is provided to your project manager and
website engineer regarding the number of anticipated visitors, number of
users, the market reach, your demographic, and the market potential.
Why is it essential to know all these?
These factors will determine what program
language your social network should be written in, what database should
be used, what web hosting plan should be chosen, and which life cycle
has to do with ensuring that the structure that you’ve built is able to
handle the traffic that you’re projecting for the first 1-2 years. It
means working with a vision engineer and someone that’s able to
forward-think and forward-plan.
What you don’t want to have happen is to
spend thousands of dollars and several months of your time developing a
social network, only to have it inundated with success and traffic on a
structure that is not able to handle that success and traffic. In cases
such as this, you are basically left with a situation where the site
doesn’t function – causing you to lose your market potential and your
market advantage.
Work only with experts
If you decide to invest in a site with a
lot of potential for growth, work only with people who know what they’re
doing. Anyone can put up a social network for you in a matter of days,
but if it’s not the proper structure and if it’s not built properly, the
structure would likely collapse if you develop several hundred members
while your site is not properly outfitted with the right design. When
this happens, you’ve pretty much lost your opportunity with those
potential members, and it’s very hard to get them back to your new
architecture. This is exactly why proper planning is so important. More
information can be found at our resource site
www.officeontheinternet.com
For more information, or
an estimate on developing a social
network, contact us here at EXCEL-WEST, 888-317-9300. We look
forward to working with you to help you achieve your successful social media marketing plan and social
network website.
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