The SocNet FAQs

Finally, we have come to the last post in this social media series. In the past 9 posts, i have talked you through the rise and fall of social networks, beginning with the fall of friendster and myspace and then through some of the more interesting uses of social network to gain audience and finally how social networks can help businesses and entrepreneurs find funding, market as well as publicity.

This is all well and good for businesses if they know how to utilize these forms of social networks and the general web 2.0 renaissance which include the big three words, crowd, cloud and social. But if business owners are not particularly tech-savvy or lagging in keeping pace with the influx of web 2.0 innovations, what do you suggest they do?

What i have prepared below is a list of frequently asked question that is straightforward for any business wanting to use social networks and web 2.0 to their advantages.

What if i am not particularly tech-savvy?

The easy answer to this question is of course, hire someone that is. The hard answer, would be to try to learn the social network one at a time, read the wikis, read case studies of how they use it and link ONLY what is relevant to your business. Some businesses are just not made for social network, so dont try to force fit what doesnt match up.

What if i have an idea and i want to market it, but dont know how where to start?

If your innovation is an original invention, there are a lot worse places to start it than to go to kickstarter. Form up a business plan, make it thorough for yourself, and then simplify it for the kickstarter crowd. Some online tools are available to develop business model and these are also available for tablets such as the ipad. One that i personally like is the business model generation toolbox.

If you want to proceed online, and dont know how to build an online store, use tools such as Shopify or Volusion. They have the template and resources to build your online store and a whole lot of of other things such as search engine optimization and inventory management. You can get your online store up in less than 2 days.

 

How do i use all the social network and web tools to find the market and market my product?

Google Search and AdSense is one of the easier way to gain traffic to your website. Use Google Insights to look at what people are searching for, and if there is a demand for your product. There is a whole lot of other free informations that Google is telling you about how to make your page comes up higher in google search result. Check out the link below if you are interested to learn more

Google’s Webmaster Tools

Page optimization is a continuous process and your ranking change from time to time depending on how relevant it is, so keep it relevant!

2. Build a viral video

A successful viral youtube video can generate a hell of a lot of publicity. But making a video viral takes more than just skills, it also take a lot of luck. Nevertheless, you can still do a lot of things video, make it fun, make it tell a story, and be the master of your own marketing. The good thing about video on youtube is you only have to do it once, and you can share it everywhere, as compared to talking till your jaw get loose over and over again.

3. Look for ways to make it fun for people to use or to share your sites with others. Find out how to incentivize them to visit more often, maybe by doing sales, or special events, like the Turkcell ad. Connect and interact with your customer, to give it a more personalized feel. Have and maintain your own blog, or twitter pages, find out what your customer wants and give it to them. A lot of restaurants in melbourne have their own twitter pages, Chin Chin and The Hardware Societe is two of them.

ChinChin@Melb Twitter Feeds

4. Organize and learn to work in the cloud, because it is the future and it will save you a hell of a lot of time and money.

Tools such as Evernote and Dropbox are insanely good, and once you use them, you will start banging your head on the table as to why you never use them before. Evernote, is a cloud note storage, you can write notes, copy notes, takes web-clipping and have it on all your electronic devices simultaneously. You can access it anywhere too. Dropbox is a cloud storage, and just like what it says, it stores your data in the cloud.

     

5. Finally, have fun and experiment with the tools!

That’s all folks!

 

Social Media + Luxury Brands = $$$ ?

Online sales of luxury goods may climb 20% a year by 2015 as producers build networks of potential customers on social media websites such as Facebook, according to a study published recently.
Revenue from fashion, jewellery and other luxury products is likely to reach EUR11 billion (US$15 billion) in four years, the report from Italian luxury trade group Altagamma shows.

Luxury brands are more than doubling their ‘Friends’ on Facebook annually in recognition of the link between online and offline purchases, according to the report. At least half of consumers in Europe, the US and China form an opinion or seek information online before buying in a store, Altagamma said.

For example, Burberry, the largest UK luxury goods maker, gets “the most reach and most response” from digital initiatives compared with other media. To promote the Burberry Body fragrance, which hit shelves in September 2011, Burberry offered exclusive samples to its nearly 7 million Facebook fans. It received more than 225,000 requests in little more than a week. Thus, the Internet plays a key role in increasing the hype around luxury brands and their products.

From the example above, it seems that social media is good for luxury brands and all of them should implement social media marketing in some ways.

However, there are problems with luxury brands online, such as:

1. Luxury implies a sense of exclusivity. This means that it isn’t for everyone. It’s difficult for a brand to selectively choose who to interact with and, unless done properly, this segmentation could cause a major backlash.

2. Most luxury brands are extremely hesitant to experiment with new marketing strategies. They feel that trying new things is too risky for their brand image. Instead, this hesitation can actually limit online opportunities, hurting the brand in the long run.

3. Because of a luxury brand’s need to maintain the appropriate aesthetics, social media can be a more expensive proposition for them. Building an application or web page is an expensive, arduous task for any major brand. It’s important to remember that social media for brands is not free.

What do you think the solutions can be for these problems?

Should all luxury brands use social media? 

 

Social Gaming Network

Remember the old times where people use to play games on their own, or with a few of their friends in their living room with the consoles?

Those days are probably long gone, because simply games are much more fun to be played with a lot of other people in different continents.

The thing about games is that deep down in the core, they are a social activities, therefore making games social by enabling gamers to interact not just with their friends but everyone else around the world is a brilliant idea.

Currently there are many social games developer and networks, a few of the famous one is Zynga, the creator of all things Ville, including FarmVille, and now Empire & Allies as well as Steam, for those more serious gamers, with game such as Modern Warfare and Battlefield 3.

Both networks embed the social element into gaming, their games are made to be played with other people. And what joy is it to be able to build empire and go to war together with your best buddies, even if he is halfway around the world.

Zynga games are particularly social because they are embedded into applications such as Facebook. Friends on facebook invite other friends and play with each other, invite each other, visit each other and generally do things together. The games are simple, and do not need constant maintenance or worse still, stressful thinking about strategy and whatnot. Furthermore, zynga games can be run on most smart mobile devices such as Android, or iOS, making time on the train pass faster.

Do you reckon social games network such as what Zynga has created will pick up in the future?

What effects does it have on the 21st century children who are born to play games with other people online, as compared to playing outside?

Let me know your thoughts in the comments below!

 

Social Network for Entrepreneurs

Imagine a story: You and your friends were talking about making the greatest invention the world has ever seen and you want to profit from it, but you are not sure if anyone would buy it or would give you the money to build it. So how do you find the solution?

Would facebook, twitter, linked-in, or youtube be able to find you the source of funding? Although those social networks or a combination of those will probably help you gain some, there are better ways on the web to raise funding. A new wave of internet innovation called crowd-sourcing or crowd-funding is coming your way.

Kickstarter is one of those. Kickstarter is the largest funding platform for creative projects in the world. Every week, tens of thousands of amazing people pledge millions of dollars to projects from the worlds of music, film, art, technology, design, food, publishing and other creative fields.

Kickstarter is a crowd-funding project website, where inventors can create a kickstarter page to literally kickstart the project.

Inventors post up a brief summary of what the project is intended to do, a few pictures or illustration of the finished product, as well as what do people get in return for funding their project. The reward is usually the form of the finished project at a heavily discountedprices.

Two of Kickstarter most successful project is shown in the links below:

Coffee Joulies

Capture Camera Clip System

They both have gathered much more funding than they originally asked for.

Overall, around 44% of Kickstarter project meets their funding requirement, a relatively good success rate as compared to the lots of awkward moment asking your friends, family and relatives for funding to start your project which may or may not appeal to them.

Another useful purpose of crowd-funding sites like this is that you can test the market receptivity to your idea, without even spending much at all to create an illustration of what the idea is about.

Website like kickstarter takes a lot the risk out creating something truly innovative, and the ability to sell it to a large number of audience even before a prototype is finished.

What do you guys think of Kickstarter and what issues do you think will come up with a website such as this?

 

Social Networks = $$$ for Businesses ?

Social networks such as Facebook has proved wildly popular for sharing everything from videos of Lady Gaga to photos of a drunken night out. But these networks’ public nature makes them unsuitable for exchanging sensitive corporate material and probably those photos too. This has opened the door to firms such as Salesforce.com, Socialtext, Yammer and others that have created tailored made networks for businesses, behind corporate firewalls. Like the big public networks, these custom-made ones typically allow employees to see who else is active, set up project groups and exchange stuff among themselves. Firms that use them say they have made it easier for staff to find important information and to collaborate with their fellow workers.

For example, Bajaj Finance, an Indian consumer lending firm that has been using Chatter, Salesforce.com’s social networking system, for over a year, says it has led to much smoother communication between its sales staff and underwriters. In the past, the assessment of which potential customers to take on involved lots of bilateral emails and instant messaging. Loan documents were exchanged on a separate electronic network, adding a layer of complexity. Now all of this happens on its social network. The network has helped the firm make speedier and better decisions about which risk to underwrite.

What do you guys think about the value added by social networks for businesses and how effective they are?

What are the possible pitfalls of using social networks for work related activities?

 

Social Networking VS Online Dating

Match.com, eHarmony and other traditional online dating sites should take notice; there could be some new competitors.  It could be coming from Facebook, Twitter and other social networking sites.

Social networking could solve many of the complaints of traditional dating sites:

-          there is just too much searching involved based on limited parameters.

-          time is being spent more and more on social networks.

The question therefore is how can social networking fit into dating?

The part that is now missing on Facebook and other social networking sites; they’re good for finding friends, but might not be where you’ll find your dream partner. Also, people still want to separate their dating from their active current friends.

However, Facebook could have an advantage over dating sites, because love can be found when you’re not even looking for it. And then there are the companies that are adding the love element. The Facebook app Are you Interested reportedly has more than 13 million users, which rivals the number of users for Match.com and eHarmony.

So, do you think that social networks are better avenues for people to find love compare to traditional online dating sites?

How this might present opportunities for marketers?

 

America’s Election Campaign

President Barack Obama kicked off his 2012 Presidential campaign overnight and he did it on YouTube with the video titled “It Begins with Us.”

Still, 19 months before the actual election, this launch on social media is a hint that the early work of campaigning will be building a grassroots and digital-roots campaign corps. The real winner of this strategy may well be YouTube as unprecedented numbers of peer-to-peer campaign pitches proliferate around the social networks on behalf of all the candidates.

I will admit that Barack Obama’s Harvard degree wasn’t all. The online campaigns did get to me. It shows that he listen and answer to his people. His presence in Youtube made him accessible to everyone. This may make a lot of difference in Americans, especially the younger generation. It is making sure that they are heard in the decision made in the political reasoning of the nation. Thus, Obama has given politics a new face and a new platform for presidential campaigns.

What do you guys think about this campaign?

Will this always work well for every politician?

 

Brilliant and simple Twitter campaign

Recently, a Turkish telecom company (Turkcell) shows some excellent innovation using some of the most common Twitter features. The campaign revolved around a series of games that were all run through Twitter with post-its being removed at each stage for people to try and win the phone.

The best little twist is the fact that users had to try and get a celebrity to re-tweet them as the very last clue to win the phone. The entire campaign generated a whopping 56,000 Tweets around the competition over the 3 days that the activity was run. Interestingly, this campaign was aimed at targeting heavy users of the Internet who are apparently smart at filtering out ads on their daily Internet travels.

These facts are amazing since the “grand prize” was only a “normal” mobile phone (not even iPhone 4 or iPad) but people still active in tweeting.

This brings up the interesting point where people response to simple concept because of its relevance and connection. This shows that potential customers may actually participate actively in such simple marketing concept as long as that campaign relevant and connecting those customers with their friends and family.

However, I do wonder whether this type of marketing campaign will always be successful in all types of products. Any thoughts on that?

Any risks in doing this type of campaign?

 

Myspace Party Crasher!

MySpace was the most popular social networking site in the US from June 2006 till March 2008.  Myspace was overtaken internationally by its main competitor, Facebook, based on monthly unique visitors. Since then MySpace has declined steadily in spite of several drastic redesigns. The site ranking of Myspace in July 2011 was 85, as opposed to number 2 position held by Facebook.

Currently, Myspace has been redesigned to be mostly used to promote music related events. Thus, it is often used as a venue for publicizing parties, sometimes with the host’s knowledge and sometimes without. There have been some well-publicized incidents where MySpace parties have caused thousands of dollars damage to property, and even (in at least one case) loss of life.

For example, a party hosted by a 16 yo boy from Melbourne was advertised on MySpace and attracted 500 people. Police cars were attacked; the dog squad and a helicopter were called in. The Sydney Morning Herald’s online technology writer, Asher Moses, has noted that MySpace parties are particularly prone to gatecrashing because news of events can spread to uninvited guests via newsfeeds.

Moreover, in April 2007, a 17 yo British girl hosted a party after distributing information about it on Myspace that was reportedly subtitled “Let’s trash the average family-sized house disco party.” Her parents were left with an approximately $48,000 bill from police.

These facts are quite bizzared to me. I’m quite puzzled by the fact that no one from Myspace actually watching for this issue. It even allows underage people to promote parties on their site.

This issue also bring up the ethical consideration in marketing through social media. Does this era represent the rise, fall and irresponsible behaviour in social media all at the same time?

What do you guys think about this issue? Any idea on what Myspace can do to prevent this party problem?

 

Friendster Disaster

Friendster was previously known as a social networking site (established in 2002), before the site was redesigned. In May of 2011, the company repositioned itself into a social gaming site and discontinued user social network accounts.

Friendster had over 8.2 million registered users and over 1 million unique visitors a month globally. Over 90% of Friendster’s traffic came from Asia. However, since it deleted all content and became a gaming site, that number has dropped to 1.2 million registered users.

I once used Friendster, till it dissapeared and become a social gaming site. I just found out a few days ago that I couldn’t even access my profile. Apparently, Friendster replace it  with a nonsense avatar profile.

It was just rediculous…

Oh well, almost everyone are using Facebook now and the change probably has no effect at all.

The reason why Friendster repositoned itself to a social gaming site still puzzled me though…

Friendster said that in the new and improved website, the focus will be on pure “entertainment and fun”, and aims not to compete, but rather to complement Facebook.

Honestly, really?! Is this for real?!

Which of you think that this will work?