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Advertising in Online Social Networks

Hello again, this is Philip Nicholson writing. This time around I'm addressing advertising in online social networks.

One of the most logical business applications for social networks is advertising. The problem is that most Internet advertisers don't know how to effectively market to these social networks. Rule #16 of the "95 Theses" from the Cluetrain Manifesto states: "Already, companies that speak in the language of the pitch, the dog-and-pony show, are no longer speaking to anyone." Pop-ups and banner ads have been so overused in Internet advertising that they won't be effective to the online social networking crowd, an audience that is all-too-familiar with the annoyances of these stereotyped methods.

What's going to make advertising to social networks effective is to engage the audience, and the audience will be engaged by targeted advertising and interactivity. Google has hit the nail on the head with their targeted ad system in Gmail. Teens aren't as concerned about "big brother" as they are about getting content that actually matters to them.

The beauty of online social networks is that because of their community nature, companies don't have to spy on users to find out what's interesting to them. They can just take a look at where and to what extent the users are participating, and the content they're contributing. Also, targeted ads on a social network centered around a certain topic are going to be much more effective. The popular school-oriented teen social network Facebook uses "flyers" to present ads targeted toward students. The concept of interactivity can be shown through a MySpace clone, TagWorld, which recently ran a promotion for the upcoming film "Snakes on a Plane." Participants were encouraged to submit their original music for a shot at a spot on the film's soundtrack.

Of course it's impractical to run contests all the time just to advertise; the importance of advertising is content. In my blog articles earlier this month, I've said that nothing keeps these social networks for teens running more than the content and the practice of developing content. If companies can put their product/service out in the open as a discussion topic, it WILL get publicity. Such use of advertising is taking word-of-mouth to a broader scale due to the vast reach of the Internet. This is especially true among teens and their social networks because they are an audience that relies almost solely on the attention and opinions of their peers.

That's it for now. Tom is planning a podcast with me at his Talking Portraits site in the near future. I'll look forward to discussing online teen social networking more then.

Thanks again to Tom for offering me this guest position. As always, I appreciate the readers' questions and feedback.

Philip