Though the handwriting has been on the wall for quite sometime, the stunning endorsement of Facebook’s value should trigger to the entire business community, both large and small that lines of communication and relationships to the marketplace will continue to evolve as they have over the last decade. While hand-to-hand relationship marketing will always have its place, to ignore marketplace horizon is akin to business suicide. Those who do not respond and adopt proactive social media plans, with the aid of skilled professionals, will be a vestige of the past and quite possibly fighting for the business survival.

Social Media has went through a drastic serious of changes in the last decade from the networking of MySpace to the then upstart Facebook, with its youthful base. Despite the near shock of the valuation price, Facebook is undervalued at $50 billion. The massive “country” called Facebook with well more that 500 million subscribers, is well positioned for an IPO, with Goldman now in line to handle the deal. The maturation of Facebook from its early days has triumphed the financial growth of social media but more importantly for these purposes signalled the delivery of information, including marketing and news. With technological improvements and design changes to Facebook and heavyweight upstart Twitter, connectivity with clients has made the medium the first route for expeditious contact with the marketplace, the crystal palace of Marshall McLuhan’s Global Village where the medium is the message.

Prepared by J. Davies
©Helix World Media, 2010.
All rights reserved

The once street feel of Facebook has all but disappeared as the frontier days of 2005 where you could sense a pulsing base beat of trends has been replaced with endless applications, multi-tiered selling tactics and rapidly aging population. The sheer volume of groups and pages, of which users have chosen to casually “like” have turned Facebook into a “tire-kicker’s” shopping mall, where they stroll by stores but never pull out the bill-fold and in many cases echo the voyeuristic problems that crippled MySpace. While it boasts a vast membership base, social media campaigns need to be cautioned that it is not an issue of simply running out your product but finding a route for regular interaction within your desired market and equally ensuring you are positioned correctly.

Twitter has its own unique set of concerns but diametrically the opposite of common marketing approaches and in many ways more of a brand awareness tool to facilitate the next step in the selling equation. The portal offers a youthful zeal, with speed of information and in combination with a natural private barrier allows for the building of a brand but in the bite-sized morsel. The hurdle for business to understand is by the sheer size of “followers” your reader is inundated with “tweets” and needs a hook that leads them to content or landing page within a small timeframe. While there are weaknesses to this platform, it offers a tremendous method of pushing information quickly into the market, leading them to your website. Twitter is not an answer on its own but rather an integral component for well-informed businesses to get their message out and begin the marketing cycle.

Shining brightly in the horizon is Tumblr, a subtle star in the Social Media sky. Boasting ease of use and engaging, the fresh faced blogging platform offers users a visual experience and at this stage, has maintained its edge that screams branding opportunity. The youthful energy rolls through Tumblr low and hard and works perfectly in the overall branding experience and needs to be recognized by businesses quickly.

Prepared by J. Davies
©Helix World Media, 2010.
All rights reserved