Good reads for 05.05.08

Posted on May 5, 2008 by Melissa Worden

Here are some good reads on using/creating communities on social networking sites:

>> Who rules the roost: MySpace may still top the social networking sites, according the Nielsen, but LinkedIn is the runaway winner last month with a 319% growth year-over-year. Wowzers. That’s quite a success story.

>> Kids are consumers, too: Is your brand engaging teens & tweens (9-17 year olds) on social networks? It better, because nearly half of these kids are likely to seek out and interact with advertiser brands, according to an Alloy Media + Marketing whitepaper.

What this means most to me is that it could be point to how marketing and information sharing/consumption will change and grow in the next few years with these kids.

Among the findings:

* Nearly half (47%) of 9-17 year olds, including more than half (55%) of teens, report participation in one or more advertiser-branded activity types in the last month.
* More than 90% of tweens and teens say they’d like to hear about one or more types of entertainment products in social-networking sites.
* Close to half (45%) say they’d like to hear about enthusiast or special interest products, such as technology, sports, and automotive.
* Four in ten, including more than two-thirds of girls (68%), say they’d like to hear about apparel and personal care products on social-networking sites.
* One-fourth want to hear about food and beverage products.
* 31% also say they want to hear about more serious offerings such as college information or products that can help them with school.
* Overall, 20% of teens report adding branded content to their own websites in the last month.

>> Gender plays a role: Women use social networks more, have more friends than men, according to a Rapleaf study of 30.74 million social networkers. The report looked at people using Bebo, Facebook, Friendster, Hi5, LiveJournal, MySpace and Flickr.

This doesn’t surprise me too much (including the quote below), but it’s good to keep in mind when working within these sites. You need to know who your reader/consumer is and why they’re interacting with your product:

Rapleaf therefore theorizes that women are spending more time on social networks building and nurturing relationships, whereas men are likely spending more time acquiring relationships (a transactional approach) than nurturing them.

>> Posting about your brand is a social experience, too: What drives consumers to post content about products and services to the Web? It’s “product experience,” according to survey data from Nielsen CGM/Homescan Buzzfacts.

Critically, “product experience” includes both the quality of the product and the quality of customer service, stresses Pete Blackshaw, EVP of Nielsen Online’s just-launched Digital Strategic Services (DSS) group.

…

Over half (55%) of consumers said they posted because they had used and liked a product; 28% because they had used a product and didn’t like it, or wanted a refund; and 27% said they had read a comment about a product on a site, blog or message board and responded to it.

>> Going viral may be a buzzword, but is viral marketing being used effectively? Or is it just plain overused? Andrew Wallenstein for Hollywood Reporter says “viral marketing has gone positively bubonic” with the lead up to the summer movie season.

… when too many movies adopt the same understated marketing tone, its novelty wears off. When “Cloverfield” played around with viral strategies, it was cool. Now that everyone else is copying — not so cool.

He continues …

But are these elaborate schemes worth the resources the studios devote to them. Even among the most dyed-in-the-wool fans, it is hard to believe too many have the time or inclination to justify all this. And even if they did, what sense is there in pitching woo so fervently to an audience already guaranteed to show up to theatres? Maybe money is better spent targeting audience segments that aren’t as likely to buy tickets.