Would You Join a Brand Based Social Network?
There’s been a ton of press lately pertaining to big business jumping in on the Social Networking bandwagon. From NBC, to the BBC, and even Proctor & Gamble, everyone seems to want to create their own social network in order to leverage all of that user generated goodness to promote their brand. Although there are huge opportunities to be discovered in how Social Networks can build new revenue streams and strengthen brand loyalty, to me the strategy of trying to create your own mountain is the wrong way to go, let me explain…
Social Networks provide the ability for people to create friend’s lists, nurture a controlled image of oneself, and interact with a community in ways that can become an extremely rewarding and addictive experience. This is obviously a simplistic description of what’s taking place, but when it comes to the net effect social networks have, these features are what I see as the most common denominators driving the success of the top players in the market today. A problem starts to become apparent when you think about the effort versus reward of maintaining your presence in any one of these specific networks. No matter how rewarding emotionally or otherwise, the number that you could reasonably dedicate enough time to garner any viable reward has to be limited unless you don’t need an income and can resign yourself to button mashing as your only contact with the outside world.
If we assume that you actually have a normal life such that you’re a disposable income generating consumer, only one, two, or maybe a max of three networks will be able to garner enough of your time to make the relationship rewarding. If this is the case, no matter how much you love a brand, product, service, or vertical niche, would you be able to spend enough time to help the community grow if you’re already maintaining profiles and relationships on MySpace, Bebo, or any other of the plentitude of social networking sites that exists today? Not unless you decided to jump ship, in which case their network better offer something amazing that I've yet to see.
So, if I were a brand manager, would the first thing I do once I realized just how much potential Social Networks have in store be to hire a bunch of developers / marketers and try to build another a-typical Social Network? Or, should I find Social Networks that compliment my brand strategically by leveraging those that have users who match my customer target profile in order to achieve my goals? I'm thinking the latter, and I may be able to show you proof sooner than you think.
