Ignoring Social Media May Have Long-Term Effects
By Chris Crum – Fri, 04/30/2010 – 12:04pm.
Without a Social Presence Now, You May Be Behind Later
If you’re still not in the social media game, and you’re making things work, then more power to you. However, all signs point to a much more social-infused web as we move further into the future, and that social media-related advertising is only going to become bigger and bigger, and likely more effective.
I’m guessing that the longer you have had a social media presence, the more successful you will be able to be with advertising in new models based upon existing social networks. For example, you need followers to reap any benefits from Twitter’s recently launched Promoted Tweets. Twitter will not promote a tweet if you don’t have a great deal of engagement. Engagement requires followers on Twitter.
Mashable’s Adam Ostrow has a good article on what Twitter’s new ad model could mean for small business. He writes:
“Thousands of companies – large and small – are already on Twitter. Promoted Tweets introduces a way for these businesses to gain extra exposure for their messages. For example, if you own a coffee shop, when a user searches for “coffee” on Twitter, you’ll conceivably be able to have a tweet from your business sit atop the results.”
“However, these ads shouldn’t be thought of like traditional forms of online advertising, like a banner or even a text link in search, but rather an extension of what you’re already doing on Twitter. Promoted Tweets will sink or swim – quite literally – based on the response they get from users.”
He goes on to talk about the potential addition of location capabilities to promoted tweets and mobile use.
Then you have Facebook. The company, as you have no doubt heard by now, has made big waves throughout the Internet with the launch of its new Open Graph initiative and social plugins. Facebook is consuming the web, or at least it is certainly trying to. While Facebook already has a pretty interesting ad system with in its network, which targets ads to users based on the information they’ve shown in their profiles.
Some, including myself have speculated that Facebook may one day launch its own AdSense-style ad network, which would harness such data to display ads around the web. The company has made no indication that it will do this, but why wouldn’t they? Now, with the Open Graph and sites all over the web including the social plugins (like buttons, etc.), more and more user data is making its way to the profile, and other places on the web that are connected to that open graph. Obviously there is incredible potential for ad targeting here.
So with both Twitter and Facebook making interesting moves of late, where does that leave the business that has not dipped its feet into the social media pool at all? It leaves them behind. The longer you stay away from social media, the further behind you will be in attracting fans/followers/engagement. You’re not only potentially missing out on current benefits, but may be losing out on future benefits as well.
I’m not saying you can’t run a successful business without social media participation, but this stuff isn’t going away, and there is only more and more applications, strategies, and opportunities being built upon it. Is it worth it to ignore it?
By Chris Crum – Wed, 05/05/2010 – 12:34pm.
