Social Networking & Bookmarking - Get Social!

An Online Marketing Whitepaper By David Dubrino

Social Networking has taken the online world by storm. In the past four years the amount of adults using social networking sites has risen from 8% in 2005 to 35% in 2009 (PewInternet.org). In another study by Cone Media in 2008 it was found that:

• 93% of consumers felt that a business should have a presence in social media
• 85% felt that they should not only have a presence, but also interact with its consumers via social media
• And 56% said they found a stronger connection with a company and that they were better served if they had the option to interact with them in a social arena.

Picture if you will, a place where you are instantly tapped into all of your friends, what they’re doing, what they’ve written, posted, blogged about taken pictures of or even commented on recently. A social network could also be a place where you were surrounded with hundreds or even thousands of people that you’ve never met before, but that share your interests, hobbies and tastes.

Social Networking is so prevalent in this day and age that even in our industry there are shining examples of it everywhere. Everyone is on twitter, including designers that specialize in indoor, outdoor, luxury, antiques and even celebrity designers like HGTV's David Bromstad and Angelo Surmelis have active discussions with their fans via twitter. Nearly every hotel, line of hotel and hospitality company is on twitter including the Marriot, Four Seasons, boutique hotel chains and more. Publications like Metropolitan Home, Interior Design, Hotels Magazine while organizations like the AIA and the HD Expo are on twitter as an easy way to inform their members and members of their news and events. Last but certainly not least, even manufacturers are using twitter to represent their brand, including luxury brands MGS Designs, Danze Faucets, Grohe and Miele who also has an entire blog site that serves as a portal for all of their social networking tools: www.foreverbetter.co.uk.

While twitter is just a micro-blogging service, Social Bookmarking sites allow you to bookmark interesting websites, articles, pictures, videos or anything else you find on the Web. Social Networking sites are a little bit different as they allow people to talk to each other on a daily basis, whether it's through comments, message boards, groups or any other number of communication conduits. These networks include individuals, groups (people with similar interests), organizations (such as non-profits) and companies who are all online in one virtual world. It is in this virtual community that people have the option of sharing, messaging, posting, blogging and contributing to each other’s writings, photos and videos.

It is vital to every company and luxury brand that they are participating in social networking, because if they are not actively bringing their brands into these social discussions, another brand will. Consumers are quickly becoming accustomed to social interactions with the companies that they like, and they are overwhelmingly moving towards the point where they PREFER it to any other form of communication (which is noted in the above statistics).

As a case study, blogs such as Styleture continue to grow due to the combination of an interior design Facebook fan page for their Facebook members, and they are also bringing people to their blog through social bookmarking accounts, social networking accounts AND their twitter feed, creating a perfect, intermingled circle of related social media. This ensures that every base is covered within the world of social media, and that they are all intermingled. This concept is important because it serves to cross promote each of the social arenas so that more members will be join each, extending the reach that each account has in this very niche specific social marketplace.

Regardless of the number of contributions you receive from your social marketing efforts, the bottom line is that these huge groups of social users have now been exposed to your brand and social media, and on your terms not the competition's. Another added bonus from social networking is that when you do it effectively, the search engines will take notice and give your new social content more "authority", and then they will pass this authority on to your corporate and social websites.

Your new social conversations will result in one-on-one and one-to-many communications with current and prospective customers, vendors, competitors and fans through all of these social media outlets. All the while that these social relationships and conversations are taking place, the search engines will see these relationships and reward your site for these branding efforts. Social Media will help you fuel brand loyalty, word of mouth discussions, innovations through trend recognition, product exposure and future sales.