IS SOCIAL NETWORKING MORE ABOUT NETWORKING OR MARKETING?
December 2, 2009 by Jason
Filed under FEATURED, MICRO DEBATE: BRANDING & MARKETING
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Both had valid points. Although Jeanne brought up relevant arguments, she failed to support them as Taylor did. I went for Taylor but I have to add this:
Without question one will draw their own independant conclusion of what Social Net-Marketing actually is. The point is that with a gathering of mass proportions (such as many of the popular sites have) there tends to be a little bit of everything to satisfy everyone. So, it could rally be both (which is where the voting results seem to be at right now… a tie)
My Two Cents…
Both had valid points. Although Jeanne brought up relevant arguments, she failed to support them as Taylor did. I went for Taylor but I have to add this:
Without question one will draw their own independant conclusion of what Social Net-Marketing actually is. The point is that with a gathering of mass proportions (such as many of the popular sites have) there tends to be a little bit of everything to satisfy everyone. So, it could really be both (which is where the voting results seem to be at right now… a tie)
My Two Cents…
Of course, as founder of Email Data Source, I found great interest in this debate. I think that it is really not one or the other, but both. Certainly you can look at social media technologies such as Twitter as a networking channel, but our data shows clearly that it is also being used by marketers as another channel to drive traffic to the website, quite successfully. We purposefully are taking a very narrow view the data. Others will focus on buzz, networking, etc. But our main interest was to clear out the noise of all the twitter feeds to reveal a very specific point of view: how to successfully use twitter as a effective marketing channel. This is clear: brands are using it, just as they would use email (the tweet after all can be looked at as the subject line of an email driving traffic to an offer page that replaces the body content of an email), and they are using it to increase their ROI. It is not a matter of determining the ROI of social media: the ROI is clear: you just need the proper lens to see it. We’ve tried to provide that lens.
Bill McCloskey
I agree with the the other comments in regards to both debaters having valid points. BUT at the end of the day, I agree with Taylor. Marketing is the tools we use to tell our target market about our product/service. Social Networking is one of those tools. It gives us an opportunity to be part of a community and build a relationship with our potential customers. Hopefully, if we gain their trust, they will want to engage in that relationship with us on a deeper level. In addition, we have an opportunity to connect with like minded people, thereby developing alliances that will help us better serve our customer or as Jeanne stated refer us to a potential customer.
From today’s perspective many social networks do not have a marketing order, only some social networks like Linked In and Twitter are doing but most do it just for fun or entertainment, eg Facebook, and others whose purpose is to find friends, relationships and personal publicity, so I do not think that social networks are themselves a marketing mechanism but rather entertainment in a low percentage and half to promote a product or a service
Social networking (or using social media as a whole) is about moving a target segment through the “Social Media Marketing Funnel.” It is part networking and part marketing, but what was left out of the discussion were the power of social networking/media to create loyalty and advocates. See “Social Media Conversion and the Social Media Marketing Funnel” at http://bit.ly/dsPrq.
Social Steve
While in agreement with other comments made that both debaters having valid points, the question that came up in my mind is how users perceive social networking on specific sites or in specific situations. On some sites & in situations, there’s no element of marketing involved. For eg., on FB, (the still used) MySpace and Orkut most users don’t think of social media as a tool to market themselves -they play catch up with friends, have fun finding out which Harry Potter character they are and in general, aren’t looking at social networking as a marketing tool. In fact, this is something we ourselves do. I’ve interacted with many industry professional who say “Let’s connect on LinkedIn. My FB is personal -family & friends.” Or we create multiple accounts on Twitter and FB to differentiate the purpose. So, though people are doing both -networking and marketing- they are making clear distinctions as to where & when they want to network and where & when they want to market.