The social networking scene – Development, Marketing and Monetization

So I have had some time to put my web 2.0 experience as the primary researcher, writer (Respectance Blog), and host of Respectance- a Silicon Valley venture capital funded social networking site into perspective.  Here are some of my thoughts on the development, marketing and monetization of such a site.

 As much as the internet pundits hate to acknowledge it, social networking is within the context of the general population, still a niche activity.  General use of social networks is growing daily as broad band and viral penetration continues.  Within the realm of Social Networking there are many ‘flavours‘. There are the big boys FaceBook and myspace, and then there are the myriad of niche sites such as Respectance.  There is something for everyone, but how does any one company find the customers that they need?

Through honest and frank web evangelism I brought our first thousands of members on board.  It was not easy, death and grieving is a taboo subject, to reach out and convince people to share their visceral feelings in order to produce (for our purposes) genuine high value content.  Market research was extensive, design and feel of the site crucial to attracting the target demographic (women 25-50), and of course writing things that people are interested in hearing about in a concise and easy manner.

I ran our SEM campaigns and found that SEM was a great way to bring people in.  Unfortuantely for a startup it’s also a great way to ’send money out’.  The cost/benefit of any SEM campaign must be constantly analysed and CTRs aren’t necessarily the way to measure success.  It may allow you to count the people in the door, but did they stay long enough to have the ‘cup of coffee’?

While I was there we tried many marketing campaigns based on good will agreements with non-profits, attempting penetration of chat rooms, and forums.  Some of the campaigns were successful, many weren’t.  Time lines were tight, budget tight, staffing few.  New people came and brought ideas.  There isn’t a marketing ‘how to’ manual out there yet for this kind of marketing.  What people like, what catches on, it’s all still a very elusive target. 

There is a critical mass of members that any social networking site must have in order to use any of the ‘no fee for service’ monetization models.  Even then it seems making money is not at all easy.

 

Sometimes more is just more

I realized last week when I was away  for a week and finally checked my email, that I was swamped with notifications from all of the social networking sites that I belong to.  I know that I probably belong to more than the average person, as part of the market research I did for a job included  ‘experienceing’ other sites.  Holy cow though, can you say SPAM?

I’ve gone in and turned off most of the auto messages.  Frankly, when I first signed up to the really popular ones like fb and myspace they were new and very shiny.  Now they are becoming a pain in the butt.

Sometimes more (applications, notifications etc) is just more.  It’s not better.

Thanks to David Armano and his article for making people think about this.