Social Networks and Brands – Maturing Phase

Ad Age published an article today whose title says it all – How to Get the Most Out of Social Networks and Not Annoy Users. The problem with brand presence in Social Networks is that most brands aren’t aware of:

1. A presence doesn’t mean JUST a presence. Means adding value and significance to the Social Network. If the brand is just there and has a non-active profile it is worse than not having anything on at all.

2. Each Social Network is a Social Network on it’s own. The users expect different functionality and tools depending on where they are. So contextualize your presence.

3. There is so much clutter on Social Networks that you should get your presence to be subtle and interesting in order to get user to visit the page. Pushing massive communication just for the sake of getting consumers is considered bad practice and generally annoying.

I could go on, but that’s material for an article on it’s own. Just consider that the time for “Let’s go to Social Network X just for the sake of it” is definitely over. Plan you presence as you would plan on any other medium – if you want have an Ad on TV you’ll be careful as to do an ad that has quality and try to get it on prime time. You probably won’t do a shabby commercial that plays at 6 a.m. (unless that’s your target, of course). The big difference between Social Network Medium Planning and TV Planning is that while at 6 a.m. there won’t be that many people watching, on Social Networks everybody is watching all the time. So plan it carefully.