One would have to be living under a rock if they couldn’t name at least one social network! How’s about My Space dot com?? OK, got it? Good!
Now, how does social networking relate to informational marketing. Well, in a a word, EVERYTHING! The cardinal fact in info marketing is that word-of-mouth is the best kind and that’s what social networking is all about. How many times have you been pushed over the purchase precipice with that one positive comment from someone who just happened to make their (seemingly) unbiased opinion on one of these incredible forums.
Ebay, Amazon and other large Internet retailers have included the social marketing aspect into most of their product pages. NewEgg.com and other niche sites have done the same. Hell, Word Press has the same feature of allowing comments to be added, thus enriching the online user’s experience. Now, if we could just get the SERP to allow interactive commenting, wouldn’t that be grand!
The infamous YouTube.com, as well as MetCafe.com and the various gazillion wanna be similar sites all utilize the social network concepts by allowing them to create, add or comment on the comment. It’s a self perpetuating website that adds more and more value as the users increase their participation. It’s kind of like a living, breathing and growing organism. All this servers to communicate information and to those who know how to promote relevent products make the most money from it!
So, next time you find yourself engrossed in a social networking site, take a step back and really see how information is being marketed. Is it an information video that is promoting a particual service or product? Perhaps it’s an instructional video on a particular piece of software you maybe interested in purchasing sometime in the future.