Go to where the customers are...don't make them work harder. Remember, our business exists to solve their problems...not to create new ones.

Great advice to the exec...use what the customer uses and deliver greater value thru that channel.

Michael,

Good posts but it leaves me with two critical questions:

1. Why is it best to be present on but one social media site?
2. Being present won't gain much for a business. How should they present themselves?

I think you gave them some sound advice about not starting their own network.

This approach-- recreating something that already exists in a better, more popular form somewhere else-- is common to clients playing in the interweb arena.

It sort of defies common sense. I mean why would I go to say, lifetakesvisa.com to discuss sports when more authentic sites like espn.com-- or even my local newspaper-- offer a similar option.

I use social networks for personal -- not business -- reasons. I had a Friendster profile. Then everyone moved to MySpace several years ago and I went, too. Now it's Facebook.

But I'm going much more grudgingly to Facebook. For all the talk about its elegant architecture and less juvenile image, it feels to me like a networking site filled with roadblocks. MySpace, by contrast, feels like the wide open plain.

How this might apply to business strategy: If you're interested in networking with others who are also on Facebook, it's a natural choice. But if you'd like anyone who wanders in off the online "street" to have easy access to your profile, MySpace makes much more sense.

Well done, Michael. We have a saying around here that goes "You can't always throw the party and hope everyone comes. Sometimes you have to go to the party."

Make sense?

Makes a lot of sense, Spike.
At The Toad Stool, we call it "Your Brand Is Not My Friend™"

This is wise advice for some companies that do not have the resources or following to start their own social site, but for those that want to maintain a strong brand and identity, it may not be the best choice. Certainly, integration into different platforms like Facebook is essential, however, piggybacking through your own channel or group does not give you your own community. A person who goes to different community sites for different reasons, to get different information and interact with different sorts of people. To reference Tangerine Toad’s comment, I wouldn’t go to lifetakesvisa.com to just discuss sports – maybe I’m there to suggest adding sports events to the rewards program, or I have credit questions, etc.? People want to find like-minded peers to make connections and have discussions with – it’s easiest to find these peers in an environment that is built around a specific topic, like espn.com. In an atmosphere like Facebook, everyone is joining for a different reason. Let's face it successful online brands already have half of the problem of building a social network solved, they have the traffic and consumer affiliation with their brand, now they have to create a place that allows for the interactions to take place To reference Spike - They are already the venue for the party now they have to provide the the bar or entertainment so people can meet and socialize.

Its an important question for corporations considering starting their own social network, Michael: How many networks will people sign up for and more importantly, how many networks can people really actively participate in?

For corporations or brands trying to decide upon a FB Group, a MySpace page or their own thing, they really need to start with what their goals are and who their target participants are....the depth and the dimensions of the relationship existing or desired between the brand/corporation and the community would be an important consideration for sustaining a stand alone community.

Great post!
Marianne

I don't buy the concept that people only want to be part of one or two online social network. In “real life” people are part of a number of social nets. You have them at work, for play, for hobbies, for religion, for politics, and a host of other activities. So why wouldn’t that be the same for the web?

In fact, I believe that the growth of the social networking aspect of the internet will become very niche oriented. Marketingprofs is a great example. It is a business social network, so is linkedin. I am active on both. I also use some of the photo sharing networks and have joined and am part of several other business networks. If I had a social life (;-) I might even have joined a few more.

My advice to your client would have been (depending on the budget they had and their business) to do both. Get involved with MySpace and Facebook and start developing their own network of customers and prospects.

While I don't know the application, the notion that users don't want to be involved with more than a few social networks seems strange. Relevance is the critical component for anything but trivial use.

If a company aims to use social networks to deepen their relationship with customers and prospects then they need to know a lot more about the environment and how the interactions are taking place than they will be able to know in facebook or myspace. We have experience with hosted social networks for lead maturation and driving sales cycles (www.bnj.com) It might be a much deeper dive than the company you were talking with needs to make, but you've presented this as general advice, and people accepting it as fact will leave a lot on the table.

Some people have recently expressed their concerns to me about the security of such sites as Bebo and Facebook. In particular they wondered what these companies are going to use personal data for in the future.

What do you think about this issue? Are their concerns unfounded?