Social Networking has taken the Internet by Storm. It changed how companies advertised. A social networking site is currently outperforming two of the major search engines. Myspace sent more traffic to web pages in 2007 than Yahoo and MSN combined.

Social networking is a cultural phenomenon that is still evolving.

The basic concept is simple: Online social networks enable people to create profiles, describe their interests, share their thoughts in blogs or postings, and connect with other people. But the variations on the theme are endless.

Social networking’s audience is comprised of 37% of US adult Internet users. 70% of online teens. A full 40% of these use digg on a regular basis making it one of the top 25 US, and top 100 websites in the world. An industry white paper by eMarkete - projects that by 2011, one-half of online adults and 84% of online teens in the US will use social networking.

Power of Social Networking

A Google ad is intrusive. It is a way to ‘escape’ a website users do not want to be on. A social networking site has the ‘conversion to buyer’ power of a trade magazine, the targeting ability of direct mail or email, and the range of television.

The reason is that Social Networking lets advertisers build ‘branding power’ by association.

Marketers spent $920 million advertising on social networking sites in the US in 2007 year. This number will increase to a projected $1.6 billion in 2008. Worldwide, spending will grow 81%, from $1.2 billion in 2007 to $2.2 billion in 2008.

If social network marketing delivers on the promise of peer recommendation and ‘click’ power, then the social networking platforms will outperform the search engines by 2010.

Evolution of the Internet

There is evidence that the search engines are starting to fear the ‘user run’ social networking sites. Google is branching into television. Microsoft is fighting to merge MSN with Yahoo, which is the only search engine to embrace the Social Network revolution. The best way to do this is build lenses and profiles.

Start talking to people instead of selling them. Submit your articles to the networks, participate on sites such as Myspace. These are the new ‘corner store.’ The ‘Facebook Generation’ and ‘tech audience’ are highly motivated by relationships. They are more likely to buy from a company on their buddy list than a national branded company.

What This Means To Your Business?

Once again the graphic advertising is becoming more valuable than text. For years, businesses had few options. Text ads on the search engines, or buttons on Content Management Systems.

The Social Networks are displaying magazine quality advertising on their pages, to as little as 1000 users for $.05 a click or view. This is much lower than the search engines that start at $1.00 for the average ‘effective’ non-targeted PPC campaign.

You must understand the difference between page clicks and page views before signing up, as views show your entire web page as if the visitor landed on your page, but they are still in the Social Networking site. This may be alarming for new webmasters who want to see unique user hits in their stats counter.

If you can overcome the expectation, Social Networking is an excellent marketing tool. You can try out different campaigns, target markets, and reach thousands of users within a few hours. All you need is a top-quality graphic ad, ad copy that ‘motivates’ the target audience and a product to sell.