Building Your Online Business Community
Online Business Communities have rapidly become a competitive marketplace. Companies are investing millions into their own communities, and with mixed results.
According to a recent article on SocialMediaToday.com, author Jerry Bowles writes “…several giant corporations have launched online business communities aimed at engaging small business owners and managers through a conversational social media approach” and lists more than half a dozen companies having invested $1M to $5M each into their Online Business Communities. Membership counts in these online communities range from single digits to tens of thousands. Time obviously a major factor for low member counts, but not the only reason.
Sites such as LinkedIn and Plaxo which are universally geared towards Online Professionals and fall in to the Social Networking category generate a lot of buzz traffic and offer a useful way to keep connected with close and distant contacts have an advantage in that they are not tied to a tight niche market or industry. Online Business Communities for big corporate well-known and established companies such as those listed in Bowles’ article, e.g. American Express, Visa, Dell, Intuit/QuickBooks, have the luxury of pre-exisitng large member groups with common and also recurring needs and interests specific to those organizations and their products also have an edge with their Online Business Communities because of those factors.
But one category of Online Business Communities to question are those in the niche market segments or industries that are starting up. We touched on the subject a couple weeks ago in the post about DrivingSales.com Dealer Auto Sales Website Strategy, but there are others. The challenge with such Online Business Communities is their unique value proposition. Without an actual product or service, what are these online communities accomplishing? What can they do to develop and keep an audience aside from developing an audience for the sake of it?
Bowles makes some excellent observations that are good take-aways from his article which such all communities must consider.
3. The quality of the content of a web community trumps the most well-financed demand generation program. No amount of promotion can keep people coming to a community that is not engaging and useful.
6. Participants in smaller business communties are more engaged and likely to participate than those in bigger communities so make your community only as big as it needs to be. Two thousand engaged and qualified potential customers is better than a million page views.
8. That leads to what I modestly call Jerry’s corollary: the online communities that are most likely to succeed are those that are focused narrowly on engaging buyers of specialized, high-end products.
A concern with Online Business Communities that sprout from venture capital and which are designed for niche market segments and industries rather than evolving naturally from its customer audience is that through mere idealism they are putting the cart before the horse so to say in that they expect a software communications system to perpetuate the need for a business model.
MySpace evolved out of the need for bands to promote themselves which led to widespread popularity in promotion of individual persons. Facebook evolved that commodity into a more marketer-friendly environment. Both of these catered to a specific generation (or two). LinkedIn honed that down to a universal class of people, i.e. Online Business Professionals. But these sites are ultimately appeal to millions which is what gives them a chance to be successful.
Banking your model on something that will only appeal to a few thousand people makes for tremendous challenge. It limits advertising capabilities and puts you at the disadvantage with conversions and numbers.
Pick Your Domain Name Before It’s Too Late
Glaciers and polar bears aren’t the only things that have been disappearing in the world lately. Some Internet analysts predict that domain names will be scarce in the near future. And that future could be the next year or two.
With increased online communication and commerce, it’s getting more difficult to find a name to identify your affiliate marketing campaign, business or company in the online community. And even if you are lucky enough to get your ideal “dream name,” it’s likely going to be very similar to one that’s already out there. Analysts feel this will inevitably lead to “every possible private and brand name being used up.”
One indication that this could happen soon is that registrations for new domain names are down lately. With the popular social networking website Myspace, it takes users an average of 10 percent longer to find a unique name with each passing month. This vitually forced the highly-paid naming teams at Nokia to reuse the name “Prism” for one of the company’s later models.
The global naming crisis is also hitting the pharmaceutical industry. Marketers in this $700-billion field are struggling to find new names for medications. Because they use certain letters to evoke specific connotations (such as “v” to connote virility and “x” to conjure up the idea of super science), it’s even more difficult to think of new names.
But if you want to begin or increase your online presence, the staff at Bluehost.com will help you find a unique name before hosting your site. With some help, you’ll be more likely to find something that describes your products and services wonderfully.
Facebook Versus Myspace: Comparing and Contrasting
With Facebook becoming an increasingly popular method for social networking and connecting with other people, many Internet users have compared it to the popular Myspace website. But that’s not a fair comparison because there are distinct differences between the sites that set them apart from each other. First, let’s look at some of the similarities between the two sites:
• Both sites are ideal for networking and finding people with similar interests and hobbies as well as people in the same geographic area.
• Facebook and Myspace are proven ways to connect with old friends.
• Both websites allow users to exhibit their personalities in a variety of ways.
• You can find users in a wide range of ages, interests and locations across both social media sites.
• The two sites continue to attract new visitors and users every day.
And now, some differences:
• Facebook is more business-friendly. Many companies are currently testing its effectiveness as a social marketing tool. One Canada-based retailer was recently shocked at the widespread effect of its advertising campaign on the website.
• Myspace still accounts for more than 75 percent of the social network traffic in the United States. The website attracted over 60 million visitors in December of last year. Facebook only drew less than 23 million visitors during the same period.
• Facebook users are generally from an older demographic that is more focused on marketing strategies. Very few businesses go to Myspace for online marketing.
• Myspace is geared more towards the younger crowd. You’ll find a larger number of teens and “tweens” on that site than you will on Facebook.
Whichever one you choose for online brand marketing campaigns for your business, it’s best to have a goal in mind when you create an account. After that, you can begin networking through either of these social media sites.
Maximizing Success with Adwords Demographics
If you’ve got a website that caters specifically to a certain age group or target audience, your advertisements may be wasted on Internet users that don’t match your goals.
That’s why Google Adwords is offering something called “demographic bidding.” With this new system, your online marketing strategies can reach new and exciting goals. With demographic bidding, you can enable more attention-grabbing product placements for your Adsense ads to increase their impact on viewers. That way, your target audience is more likely to see the products meant for them.
Think of it this way: You are wasting your advertising dollars if you are paying for Adwords to display ads about the latest video game system if the only people seeing it are senior citizens.
The new system works because Google will receive the specific demographic data from various social networks. Myspace, Facebook and others often ask for users’ ages and other information when they sign up for accounts. Google will then use that information and display your Adwords ads to your target groups on those websites. Or the company can simply prevent your ads from displaying to groups outside of your target audience.
Google outlines three steps for those interested in this new program:
1. Sign up with Google Adwords and create a campaign.
2. Wait for the campaign to run for a week to gather demographic information and assess the impact of the campaign.
3. Increase your bids for groups with good values or hide the ads from groups with poor responses.
The parallels of Web 2.0 and real life
Do you ever consider what makes Web 2.0-minded systems like MySpace, YouTube, Wikipedia, and LinkedIn so popular?
The obvious answer is because the users control their own experience and influence that of others. When you join these online communities you are able to present a compartmentalized version of who you are and network with everyone else in the system.
Kind of like real life, wouldn’t you say?
This is just how the real world works. We are all in a system (society) with rules and guidelines, or protocols to which we adhere to create a persona of our selves that we share with others and network. Naturally, any system that can mimic this sort of creativity and liberty in our online experience is going to win over some users.
When you look around you, one thing you see everywhere is advertising and it is usually loud, big, and bold. Take a drive down the highway to a metropolitan area and tell me what you see. Billboards, billboards, billboards. You see ads on bus stops and on buildings. You hear ads on radio, TV, and let’s not forget magazines. The point is, ads are everywhere and they are typically geared towards a particular audience that is likely to be viewing them.
The same goes for online advertising, but with the Internet, advertising can be taken a step further. There is a level of precision and reporting that go along with online advertising. So why, according to The Wall Street Journal, was only 5% of money spent on advertising done online?
I think it might have something to do with price. A quick analysis of advertising with The Wall Street Journal shows that a full page color ad for the US circulation would cost about $254,000. With 1.7M readers the advertiser is paying $0.15 an “impression”. Step down to a 1/7 page ad the advertiser cost would be about $28,400, or $0.016 per impression. A typical banner ad on the Web costs advertisers now about $20 CPM (cost per thousand impressions). This equates to about $0.02 per impression.
This is a very rough calculation but you get the point. The cost for advertising on the Web can be and typically is significantly less expensive which I think is the reason why 95% more money is spent in off-line advertising. This will change in time, and probably not too far off. There are companies out there getting a jump on this and with behavioral advertising hitting the scene, the cost for online advertising will rise steadily and quickly, possibly some day surpassing print and television advertising.
