Spinfield: Web marketing trends today, tomorrow, and beyond…

Last week, I touched on social networks and their growing importance in the online marketing arena. Social networks are quickly growing into outlets in which everyone can participate. As I mentioned, social networks such as MySpace have many different sections such as movies, music, music videos, comedy, sports, weather, news, job listings, politics and much more.

Many businesses are creating profiles within social networks to better connect to their customers. The greatest part is any size business with any budget can create profiles to connect to consumers. Here are a few examples:

• American Eagle Outfitters on MySpace
• Nordstrom on MySpace
• Playhouse Square Cleveland on MySpace Music
  
• Jim Gaffigan on MySpace Comedy
• Vera Bradley on Facebook
• Victoria’s Secret PINK on Facebook
• WWF-World Wildlife Fund on Care2

Jeremiah Owyang discusses social networks on his Web Strategy Blog. According to a Forrester Research study, even with the impending recession, online marketers plan to continue to increase spending on social networking efforts. According to the online marketing channels spend chart presented, interactive marketers would spend most of their budget on social network projects.

One of the major advantages of social networks is to be where your consumers already are searching. This is a trend that has made online marketing so important to the changing industry. If someone searches for you, you NEED to be there or they may move on, or lose interest. This is important in search engines as SEO and SEM have proven, but also in social media. What if someone searches for you on MySpace where they currently get all of their other information? Will they find you? The social network stats should be enough to get any marketer interested:

• Facebook- More than 70 million active users, with active users doubling every 6 months.
• MySpace- More than 110 million active monthly users.

This should be compelling evidence from the two largest social networking sites that you can potentially reach millions of people, or at least ‘be there’ when they look for your brand. At the same time social networking is essentially free! You will need someone to manage and build your page/network, but there is no fee to join.

Social networks bring people together and help businesses connect to their customers. They bring links to your site and can help improve rankings while improving relationships. Many social networks, such as Care2, have a specific focus allowing you to more precisely target consumers. It is important to get involved as soon as possible. Social network sites are not going away any time soon!

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