Social Networking World Forum Part 2: Social Media as Part of Your Marketing Mix

The second half of the morning session focused on taking your brand out to the Social Networks where your customers are already.

NetLog, a ten year old social network from Europe, with an impressive presence there and in Asia were up next. Their CEO, Lorenz Bogart, told us about successful campaigns on their site from the likes of Nike. Nike allowed the community to design a shoe that would then be worn by a top Belgian footballer.

Bogart made an interesting analogy about being a great lover (enjoyed a little too much by the day’s chair, Penny Power, from Ecademy). The notion being that if you tell someone you are a great lover, they are unlikely to believe you (sad, but probably true). If a friend tells them that you are a great lover, they are going to take the claim much more seriously (although they will think you and their friend are big tarts). I think he was trying to say that getting real people to say nice things about your brand is infinitely more powerful than just shouting your “We’re great!” message from every roof top you can get access to.

I had been looking forward to hearing from Davide Villa of Xing. This was particularly interesting for my day-job as a person hunter.

I realised though, after hearing Villa’s presentation that Xing isn’t just important for those looking for a job, but also vitally important for employee communities. 95% of Xing’s members are currently employed and many large companies, like PWC, T-Mobile and IBM use Xing to run employee and Alumni groups for staff and previous employees to communicate and network.

From a marketing angle, Villa made a point that I also like to make on a regular basis. Your brand is out there, whether you know about it or not. If you don’t get involved, then you lose out on any control. He gave Audi, the car manufacturer, as an example. They had one of the largest fan groups on Xing and a staggering number of employees using the site, but were not using it themselves for branding, customer engagement or communicating with their workforce. Suffice it to say – they were missing out on something big!

David Jones from Friendster spoke next. In my Social Networking naivity, I thought Friendster had been ahead of its time, no one had ‘got it’ and it had gone the way of the dinosaur. Apparently that’s not the case, especially if you live in Asia. We heard that in Asia, it is perfectly acceptable to use a social network as a dating site, whereas a Match.com might be frowned upon. Friendster is also having success with mobile SMS updates, pushing the information that users request directly to them, like friend requests, bulletins and comments. Friendster also allows you to send money to other users via Gcash, another useful service for it’s Asian audience that might not otherwise be able to send money so easily.

I had wanted to learn more about BT Tradespace but when I found time to poke around their stand, there was no one there. So in reflection, I am a little sad that Ivan Croxford of BT tradespace didn’t share more with us in the panel discussion that rounded off the morning. I did realise though that for many advertisers, the social web is forcing a change in mind set. Everying in advertising is geared around campaigns, but in this space we have to be invested and there day after day for the long haul.

Look out tomorrow for Part 3: Building a Brand Around Socail Media

Also See - Part 1: Social Media Today: The Facts

Tagged as: advertising, BT Tradespace, Friendster, Marketing, NetLog, social networking world forum, Social Networks, Xing