If you’ve been hibernating or visiting another planet; social networking sites are online sites where people connect with each other and then share news, chat, post pictures and so on. All the stuff you used to do face to face not so long ago!! An example of a benefit is everyone you know can view your pictures online: you don’t have to invite them all round for a slide show. This makes it easier to stay in touch and keep up to date with your friends. it has developed byond this and now people have virtual friends: people they met online and only have an online relationship with.

You may well be asking ‘how on earth can a business use such sites to promote themselves?’ This is a question many people are asking and some people are even dipping their toes and trying things out. Facebook has introduced Pay Per Click advertising for example: replicating the Google model within their own site. The aim is to make the ads relevant to the user based on their demographic information. This seems like a sound business model, but there are many users that are vehemently opposed to such moves and believe social networking should be about making, building and maintaining friendships only. If the audience is against advertising within the site, how effective can the ads be? Are there alternatives that are less obviously commercial, but still as effective? Web 2.0 is another term used for the move to user generated content on the Internet; blogs, wikis, forums, etc. The focus has shifted to web users finding information (content) that is valuable to them or is of interest to them. This is the approach we are considering to see if businesses can really utilise social networking sites. Our philosophy being that users will only take any notice if you have something to say that is of interest or of value: blatant commercial advertising is being ignored more and more.

How then can a business promote itself via this media? I don’t think it will be effective for all businesses. You need to be able to provide something to the members that will interest them - almost all of them want to know ‘What’s In It For Me?’ (WIIFM). You may even need to give something away as a ‘hook’ in to your business.

We’re about to work with some clients to trial various methods and see which ones work. We’ll post news and updates here about how we get on.

Have you used social networking sites to promote your buisiness? What did you do? How successful was it? If you haven’t used these sites to promote your business, what is your view of this approach? Is it something you would consider using?

Accoring to The BBC, big businesses are taking this very seriously - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7359927.stm - if they’re prepared to spend so much money in this area isn’t it something you should at least consider?

There are now even studies of ‘Facebook Psychology’ - maybe we should look here to understand what motivates the users, then we will be able to interact with them more effectively - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7357934.stm

Alternatively, maybe we should recognise that Facebook users are just people and their motivations are probably the same as everyone else’s and such studies are an just attempt by academics to look cool and up to date??
Read the article and I think you’ll agree they’re just saying we all want to be accepted and we give in to peer pressure - is this really something new? Or is it just a case of the people interacting in the same way they always have just in a different place?
Do these people have anything relevant to say to businesses looking to use social networking sites?