SocNet - Leveraging Social Networking for Your Site (Part 1 of 3)

SocNet? Yes, you heard me right…

Lately, just like in the movie 1984, I've been trying to reduce my vocabulary by combining existing words. This one is long overdue, and stands for, of course, Social Networking.

Much has been discussed about the buzz around the success of sites like YouTube, Myspace and Facebook, and how they put the power of the internet back into the hands of the user. And as much as the “wow” factor is perpetually newsworthy, much less has been discussed about how you can leverage these types of applications, or simply learn from them to improve the relationship between you and your audience. What has been discovered is that internet users like to have control, and whether site owners like it or not, they have it. They like to be heard, they like to be popular, they like to be unique and to be listened to, and this is what SocNet has empowered them with.

Now how can you empower your audience? Well, understanding first that, depending on the type of site that you have, there can be many levels to your audience’s onsite relationship, and as Rick Tobin mentions in his latest sponsoredb2b blog post, “You see, it’s not about getting more traffic; it’s about doing more with your traffic.”

Attracting new visitors:

Myspace: Having a MySpace page is a good way to start at the grassroots level, incurring friends participating in group discussions, establishing your site and the people (or personality) of your organization as unique and personable. What this means is that there is potential for referrals as long as you manage your brand reputation effectively.

The other way to dramatically increase activity on your site is… and this is a longshot… if you have a tool or application that can make the life of MySpace users that much easier, then promote it heavily, and it will get eaten up. An example of this comes from the most recent Hitwise report on Consumer Generated Media, where Photobucket, an image hosting website has had a 43% increase in visits from March to September 2006, with 8 times the number of visits as the competitors such as Flickr. And, as of September, 57 % of all of that traffic was driven by MySpace… Something to chew on anyways.

Youtube: Not only is YouTube the Wunderkind of online video because they allow your friends and family to keep up with your zany college antics by visiting the YouTube site and dialing up your videos. It is also one more way to increase the engagement level of users on your own website too. Sites like YouTube and Google Video are not terribly selfish, and are willing to spread the wealth by offering site owners the code that enables you to place whatever video you want on your own website, saving you the bandwidth of serving the video yourself.

Also, if your site is one that benefits by having longer viewing sessions, for instance, an advertising model, then incorporating video is a natural fit. According to the same Hitwise report mentioned above, the average visitor session at YouTube runs approximately 18 and a half minutes, meaning plenty of exposure to your video content, but advertising as well.

Blog: Well, this one you’re more likely to be pretty familiar with, considering a blog is where you found this article. Anyways, blogs are strong tools for a slow build, with subscribers spreading the word, attracting an audience of “like types”. Normally a vocal group, your Blog audience will let you know if they are stirred into discussion by offering their opinion.

Reputation Management is extremely important at all times, especially with blogs. With so much content being generated by users, some of it is bound to be negative. But if you're proactive and have the capacity to diffuse heated situations and are up for some healthy, sometimes passionate discussion, then you can weather that storm, and gain respect from those reading about you as the "faceless organization."

Here are a few of my favorites just to give you a head start, comment to your heart’s content:

Web Analytics World
Sponsored B2B
SEO Space
Out Of My Gord
SearchTank
Demystifying Usability

Professional Communities: There are also a number of highly recommended professional communities to establish yourself and your site in. Ryze, or LinkedIn, are 2 such communities that allow professionals to connect in much the same way that MySpace has done for the average user, except the popularity on these types of sites is much more focused to the industry that the user is involved in. By establishing yourself as an authority in your industry and collecting a list of other connections that recommend you as well, there is plenty of opportunity to leverage that into networking or career opportunities, consulting offers, new ventures or business deals, as indicated by the contact options in your own profile.

This is something that cannot be faked, and as long as you have a good product, or offer some knowledge in your area of expertise that others can find informative or innovative, then put yourself out there.

Orkut (a Google property) is similar in fashion to both LinkedIn and Ryze, but is somewhat less focused on business or industry, and is open to general profiles as well. Orkut was, until recently, unavailable to the public, but for those waiting to get an invite from the exclusive club don’t have to wait anymore, now you’re allowed through the front door.

This is one article in a series of 3 articles about ways to leverage SocNet throughout the entire relationship of your audience to the website. This article is looking specifically into how to attract new visitors using consumer generated media, and will be followed by 2 more articles:

Improving the Experience Once Your Audience is on the Site
And
Post Purchase or Continuing the Relationship.

A Second Life to Make a First Impression

If you're in or around my age, and so I don't have to say what my age is, I'll just assume that you are, then you are among the first generation to have grown up with computers, and have spent a fair amount of your youth dropping quarters into Gauntlet, Kung Fu and Street Fighter 2 down at your local arcade. During those years, you spent your days at school, and your nights playing outside with your friends or down at that same arcade spending your allowance. Being the first generation to really have grown up with this type of technology has skewed other generations opinions of us, and not always for the best. Video games are associated with little boys entertaining themselves, but it is likely that is the perception because that's what we did as children and no one before us really set the standard, so it's up to us to make a stand for our childish games!

Anyways, what I'm getting at is that since leaving school and moving into the real world, many of us have been partly shut off from the social routine that we enjoyed as kids. Many of us are employed, working full time in an engaging (or not) career and even married, meaning that you generally go to work, stay until the work is done, go home to your best friend, go to bed and do it all over again. We don't generally have the time that we did as kids to socialize every day and night of the week.

This is where I find sites like Second Life really fascinating. A good friend of mine introduced me to Second Life about a year ago and everytime i think about it, I find it fascinating! Linden (the company behind Second Life) has developed a virtual world that has been in existence since 2003 and can now claim to have almost 1.5 million inhabitants. See the trend below of search volume over the past couple of years:


What this means to those of us taking back our video game roots, is that social networking sites and applications like this give us the ability to interact with other people, all over the world, in a way that we haven't been able to since school. By signing up for an account with Second Life your daily routine doesn't have to change, and you're able to interact with groups or individuals all without leaving the couch, for as long or short a time as you'd like. There are many facets of this application that mimic the real world, even appealing to the desire for status. You can go so far as building a home and outfitting it with all the furniture, bells and whistles that you can think of. Of course, this requires a paid subscription to this virtual world, and for some it is well worth it, but I don't plan on going into that here!

The schoolyard used to be where we found out what was cool, who was a jerk, who had a crush on who, all of which really doesn't mean a thing on an individual basis, outside of enjoying the moment, but it's the moments that define us. We would be entirely different people if we didn't have the social interaction that we had as kids.

I'm not telling you to spend all your time ignoring the real world and spend all your time online in a quasi-real world, i mean, go to the pub if that's what you do. But for those of us that miss that comraderie, and that connection that you can make with a good friend, look into it. Those of us that got beat up in school, I'm sorry, there are nice people out there...