Social network have the exciting marketing potential of a new media, however too much hype may result in the proverbial bubble bursting, as the net bubble did a few years ago. To temper the eager machinations of companies willing to throw millions into this pot, came the creation of social media monitoring tools; of which there are now quite a few.
At a time when bids are developing within social networks to promote brands, all attention will focus on the use of data placed within this new media, mainly including Facebook, especially since the press announced a partnership to exchange data between Yahoo and Facebook so as to optimize the targeting for advertisements. It is therefore timely to review the behaviour of Internet users vis-a-vis social networks to understand the magnitude of the phenomenon.
There are a great number of measuring tools which let a user know which pages were visited and when. It is possible to monitor how many times a page was visited, at which times per day and in most cases how long. The real problem that social media monitors face is that they give very little information as to a person's motivations for clicking on and staying on a page. Without reasons and motivation, then any adverts placed within pages are simply trial and error based.
The great thing about profiles on Facebook, Twitter and Windows Live are that they give demographic details about the users. The age, sex and location of users is all inputted into the database by the user. The problem arises however with the fact that none of the information is verified, except for email addresses, which (obviously) the social network sites are not quick to give away.
Gaining the attention of potential customers via social media marketing will have very little effect if it does not lead to an avenue of sale. Social media monitoring allows the removal of some of the trial and error aspects. The real advances in social media marketing will come with opt-in users being linked to social media monitoring systems. There are lots of people whom opt-in to social media advertising platforms. They happily receive emails, network messages and mobile phone texts. The next advance will be to increase the amount of opt-in users and link them to social media monitoring. The examination of the patterns these people exhibit will help gain a better understanding of the social media users motivations on a whole. This will lead to more targeted adverts which will yield better sales.
It is not uncommon today to receive emails from marketing brands that mention their presence on social networks, which encourage recipients of the message, via a "call to action" button to become a "fan of the brand", and to share information with their friends and contacts. Not to mention they do not hesitate to offer gains to encourage these users to relay a promotion/ an offer/ information or recommend a product to their network. The coupling of email marketing and social networking offers tremendous potential for acquiring new customers at lower cost.
Given the extent of and potential market offered, integrating social networks into its marketing strategy seems obvious to advertisers today. The future social monitoring tools will need to find a way to discover how a user will feel/think about marketing messages? How to ensure he/she will receive consistent messages? How to ensure the legitimacy of communication and how to ensure that messages are bouncing from one media to another? With such an audience of all ages being members of social networks, it becomes imperative for advertisers to target users precisely to optimize their shares of potential acquisition and customer loyalty.
While the Internet has certainly shaken up traditional communication channels, the diversity of media available to consumers today has a real impact on different marketingand monitoring approaches. The challenge is not to choose a communication channel to reach the client but to identify their favourite channels and create an interactive relationship between the advertiser and the consumer.
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