How Changes in Social Media Will Benefit Your Business
by Erin Lehr
April 27, 2010
The past few weeks have seen potentially huge developments in the social media landscape – with especially big implications for businesses.
Facebook continues its quest to not only maintain its status as the most dominant online community – a recent study shows that it commands 41 percent of all social media traffic – but to also expand even further. Starting this month, Facebook unveiled several new features that introduce the concept of “Community Pages,” which they describe as “the best collections of shared knowledge” about a particular topic.
The most notable – and most talked about – change to Facebook is its replacement of the ‘Become a Fan’ option on a company’s fan page to the more simple ‘Like’ option, very similar to how users can “like” the statuses, photos and comments of other users. This change enables an easier and less-committed way for users to connect with their favorite brands.
Community pages have big value for businesses, especially in light of a recent study that quantified the value of Facebook “fans”. According to the study, each “fan” on a company’s page is valued at $3.60 a piece. With “fans” now being replaced by users who can simply “like” a company, brands are now able to build communities and “fan” bases more quickly than ever before.
In its own quest to become a social media giant, Twitter is now launching options to appeal to businesses and brands. The company announced it would begin allowing companies to pay to have their Tweets top the micro-blogging site’s search results (very similar to Google’s paid advertising model). This signifies a huge move for Twitter, as it strengthens its relationships – and potential revenue base – with companies. In fact, 65% of Fortune 100 companies are now tweeting on a regular basis – representing a huge opportunity for growth and profitability. So how should companies approach the new Twitter advertising feature? Mashable, a respected authority on all things social media, gives great insight into how companies should approach the unknown – but likely enormous – potential of Twitter advertising. Similar to all digital marketing via online communities, community building and generating relevant content still remains crucial in an effective campaign.
These recent changes, like all new developments in the social media sphere, are still too new to be able to gauge their effectiveness on users. The only certain thing is that these developments are definitely not the last on the ever-changing digital horizon, which continues to constantly shape the realms of business and marketing daily.