HOW LONG WILL THE SOCIAL MEDIA FAD LAST?

We hear that question every day.  Here is our response.

Jon Gibs, senior director of Nielsen/NetRatings, said social media sites are the "reality television of the Internet."
“The content is relatively inexpensive for publishers to produce, and social networking is not a fad that will disappear," Gibs points out. "If anything, it will become more ingrained in mainstream sites, just as reality TV programming has become ubiquitous in network programming.”

This means immense opportunity for any business owner or executive. First of all, online advertising is far more affordable than television or traditional media advertising. But more importantly, there are ways to market yourself in the various social networks without spending money on advertising.

These strategies include maintaining your own blog, creating profiles for your company on MySpace and other networks to interact directly with your audience (without spamming, as we’ve seen recently occurring on MySpace), producing engaging and buzz-worthy content that gets circulated among bookmarking websites (as well as Technorati), and producing media content for networks like YouTube and BlogTalkRadio.

The key to success in marketing with social media sites is to understand that there’s no middle man here. No marketing hoopla.  And no wall of corporate messaging to hide behind.  This is where brand management steps into the forefront.  Communicating while protecting your brand is paramount when dealing with social media marketing.

Social networks and media sites are transparent and to effectively engage their audiences you have to be willing to be transparent as well.  Then all you need are some creative strategies for communicating with your audience – which we are happy to provide you here at marketingorange.com