Introduction to Social Marketing
Your goal in starting or promoting your food market business was to generate an income and build assets for you and your family. Using Social Marketing for food market traders will help you achieve this goal. Social Marketing is done through MySpace, Facebook and other related social networking websites. You can create a Niche Social Networking Club on these websites and invite users into it. The users that join your social networking group will be your target market which you will have to monetize by luring them into your website through incentives such as discounts, free products, promotions, etc.
Social networking is different from your typical sales promotion store. Individuals that you find via social networking are not looking forward to shopping, instead they are looking forward to communicating with the same group of people that have similar interests. In other words, Social Networking is a way of grabbing attention of your potential customers, but once you grab their attention you will have to work your way into a relationship with your group before you can proceed and tell them to buy from you. In this lesson, we will go over several techniques on how to do just that. Until you have created a relationship your social group, they will probably not buy from you.
After you succeed in building a relationship with your group, you can then market to them like you would with your regular website email list except you would be using the Social Networking tools to do it. Ultimately, your goal is for the users to register on your website, participate in activities you may have with your market business and buy products from your website.
WHAT IS SOCIAL NETWORKING?
We have all likely heard of it before, but not everyone knows what it means? If you were asked to define what social networking is, would you be able to give an accurate definition? Unfortunately, most individuals cannot, even though it is likely that they participate in some form of social networking, especially online.
Social networking is defined as the grouping of individuals together in a specific group, often like a small community or a neighbourhood. Although social networking is possible in person especially in schools or in the workplace, it is the most popular online. Unlike most high schools, colleges, or workplaces, the Internet is filled with millions of individuals who are looking forward to meeting other Internet users and develop friendships.
Social networking websites are an online community of Internet users. Social networking websites are often split into niches and have online community members join them that share a common bond, whether that bond is hobbies, religion, or politics. Some social network websites have personal profiles for friends and family such as Facebook or MySpace.
Social networking websites typically have an open membership, which means that anyone can become a member, no matter what their hobbies, beliefs, or views are. Once you are inside this online community, you can begin to create your own network of friends; thus eliminating others that do not meet your criteria. Social networking websites are very popular because it brings a personalization into meeting new people. In 1995 it was AOL (America Online) which came out with text based chat rooms and got people to communicate between each other on the internet. Social networking evolved in 1999 with Friendster taking the lead. Friendster was able to put a face on an individual and create advanced algorithms to find potential friend matches. Followed by MySpace with its popularity and Facebook with its organization, social networking grew from a few million users to several hundred million users within a decade.
TOP SOCIAL NETWORKING WEBSITES
Ranked by unique worldwide visitors November, 2008; comScore
1. Blogger (222 million)
2. Facebook (200 million)
3. MySpace (126 million)
4. Wordpress (114 million)
5. Windows Live Spaces (87 million)
6. Yahoo Geocities (69 million)
7. Flickr (64 million)
8. hi5 (58 million)
9. Orkut (46 million)
10. Six Apart (46 million)
11. Baidu Space (40 million)
12. Friendster (31 million)
13. 56.com (29 million)
14. Webs.com (24 million)
15. Bebo (24 million)
16. Scribd (23 million)
17. Lycos Tripod (23 million)
18. Tagged (22 million)
19. imeem (22 million)
20. Netlog (21 million)
UNDERSTANDING SOCIAL NETWORKING & SOCIAL MARKETING
Millions of people use social networking websites, and you’ll find hundreds, even thousands that fit your target market. You probably have great expectations and think it’s going to be an easy task to get them to become your friends, and then become your customers. Many people get a “Wow” feeling when they see how transparent the social networking website is and how many members are on it. There are several things these individuals don’t understand:
• Just because it is so easy to contact the members of these web sites, doesn’t mean they are your friends and will do what you tell them to do.
• If you think you’re alone, you should join the thousands of spammers who think just like you and spam the hell out of the social networking sites. You will have better luck trying to get a stranger walking down the street to listen to you, then sending out a cold message to someone on the Social Networking website and getting a response from them. Keep in mind that telephone solicitation is on the decline. New techniques must be used for Social Marketing. Your shout outs, “BUY FROM ME, WE HAVE THE BEST PRICES” will only work at flea markets, not on the internet. Do not start your typical shout outs and spamming of your potential customers, or you will lose more potential clients than you will gain.
Individuals on Social networking websites are not interested in your products or buying from you. They are on the social networking websites to share pictures, talk with friends, gossip and communicate with NON-TELEMARKETING PEOPLE. Imagine yourself on the social networking website sharing photos with your family and someone sends you a message with “CHECK OUT MY SITE, I SELL PARTS FOR YOUR CAR”. Are you really going to check out that website after this individual has intruded on your personal space and came to your personal profile to pitch you something to buy from them? You will be annoyed, violated and will probably have the message deleted before you even finish reading it.
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