Ignacio "Nacho" Roizman's thoughts on digital marketing, particularly on the US Hispanic and Latin American markets. From the personal perspective of a passionate technology evangelist and marketing addict.

Sunday, June 11, 2006

Social Networks: How can a brand benefit from them?

Myspace, friendster, linkedin, facebook, youtube and many other online communities are getting more and more lines in the press and words such as social networks, viral marketing and word of mouth are becoming buzz words in most of agencies pitches.

Although social networks are not new, since they existed practically from the time animals started to swim in the oceans, the fact they now exist online, simply makes them obvious, explicit and tangible. Today we do not only know they exist, but we can identify the different components of those networks, measure them and eventually learn how to benefit from them or manipulate them.

First we need to understand are the elements that are an essential part of social networks, which are they key components that we, as marketers, can rest on effectively use them as alternative communication channels to traditional media.

Basically social networks are groups of individuals sharing a common interest or background. Individuals can belong to an infinite number of social networks. Relationships are the key enablers of these entities. Relationships can be thought of as bridges or connections between individuals. Individuals inside a social network have a develop a sense of belonging, they feel identified with other members of that community.

Relationships imply communication, and communication implies the existence of a sender, a message and a receiver. Therefore if marketers are able to create messages relevant enough to break the friction point on which they would be accepted and communicated throughout the network, they would have found and effective, economic alternative to traditional media.

However networks are based on the trust members have on each other, and trusts has to be earned over time, thus traditional structured one-shot pushy sales pitches or “We Care” corporate messages are not the most appropriate way to target this new form of consumer generated media channels.

Additionally not all members of social network have the same level of relevance, as all social structures, there are hierarchies. There are community leaders, or at least, as the new networks sciences call them: hubs. The interrelations of hubs create bridges among more individuals than just those two or more hubs. Social Networks tend to group in segments build up of smaller segments, tied up together by those hubs. Therefore the importance of this particular individuals.

Hubs differentiate from other members of the community because of their significantly higher amount of connections, meaning that, a higher level of interpersonal relationships. Other words that could better describe hubs from a marketing perspective are Influencers, Trend Setters or even Referents.

Those companies looking to tap the power of social networks should begin by developing a deep understanding of the dynamics and structure of the segments that build their audience and how they interrelate with each other, to eventually identify those hubs inside the network that would spread the word from a more reliable, trusted and respected position than directly from the marketer. Thus the importance for marketers to conduct an early discovery of those hubs and the deployment of a relationship marketing program that recognizes their distinct role in the community and sets off the ground for virality.


More on this subject can be found on the book Linked, by where the evolution in the understanding of networks, from the study of social networks, the spread of viruses (both biological and digital), to the growth of the internet; is describe in a plain language, for those of us who are new to the relatively recent Network Sciences.

1 Comments:

Blogger Justo said...

We recently published an article about Social Networks situation on Latinamerica in our blog.

You can read it on http://www.analytics20.org/web-analytics/white-paper-ii-social-networks-in-latin-america/

Enjoy it!

April 04, 2008 11:50 AM

 

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