Social Networking; A delicate balance for a website

Posted by Terence on 24 September 2008 in General

'Social networking' is one of the major buzzphrases in the online marketing world at the moment, with a report by Jupiter Research last year stating that nearly 50% of all Brand Marketers intended to use social marketing tactics for their product. Some of the most well-known and fastest growing sites in recent years have been those which involved their users networking with one another, and creating their own content for a website, such as the likes of Youtube and Facebook. These sites are multi million pound businesses in their own right, which bring in massive numbers of visitors daily.

Naturally, it didn't take long for the marketers to realise this was a potential goldmine. If you can create something which generates hype and interest among a group of people, it can spread exponentially, without much further investment. In a world where everyone is friends with everyone else, and people aren't tied to not mentioning or linking to a certain company or brand, if you find the right spark, it can spread out at a fantastic rate. If optimising a website for search engines, content which can catch the attention of a social network of people in just the right way can bring in visitors at an alarming rate, as well as up the inbound links. This can often involve something as subtle as providing a simple way of linking back to a certain page which other users might then spot and follow. One of the most famous examples of this being the BBC News site (a site which isn't in massive need of search optimisation). Every article there has a simple and unobtrusive box on the page allowing the page to be 'bookmarked' on several networking sites. Other people have created complex viral campaigns, often videos or simple games which people find fun or entertaining and thus wish to link their friend back to, with only a simple logo or link mentioning the original company behind them to bring in the traffic. Whilst this traditionally used to be in the form of emails being sent from one person to the next, many networking sites now provide the ability to embed small applications directly into the site (often featuring them in 'most popular' lists).

Unfortunately by the very nature of social networking depending upon people, it can be hard to find the hook, and it can be equally hard sometimes to convince a marketing department to invest in a campaign where the return is not always guaranteed. It is also possible to go entirely overboard in an attempt to include modern social networking techniques, without really considering how best to fit them into a current product or service. Remember, people are not stupid, and trying too hard is almost as bad as not trying at all. One very recent example of this is the relaunch of the ITV2 website. ITV, running a channel targeting a youth audience with ITV2, naturally want to tap into the group of people most likely to use social networking sites. To which end they've focused greatly on linking through to every social networking site proudly proclaiming on their homepage 'Like Facebook? Stick your profile on the page by clicking ‘Add content'. Got a Gmail account? Add that too. Same goes for Twitter, Flickr, MySpace, YouTube, Last.fm, Blogger and loads more. Check them and update them, all in one place'.

The core goal of the site, which is still to get people watching TV programmes, is almost lost in a wall of 'add your link here' text, and additionally it's missing an important message; Why should you use them to gather all your social networking, as opposed to hundreds of similar aggregators? Which of these 'social' sites is most appropriate for connecting to a television station website? Where is the focus on its Unique Selling Point ahead of the social networking? A catch-all barrage strategy such as this may not last a long time, and will probably be quietly dropped in the next rebrand. But with just the right mix of networking, connecting to your site and its content in relevant ways, you can make the latest internet trend work for you.