December 2, 2008

Social Media profiles: the next internet economy

by Brian Turner

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Ben McKay asks Could you Buy or Sell Social Media Profiles like Business Assets? - to which the resounding answer has to be “yes!”.

The growth of social media has meant that tapping into this market has become a lucrative business, and while at present most try and buy favours from the influencers, it’s obvious the buying and selling of accounts will go mainstream over the next two years.

Why? Simple: supply & demand.

Firstly, there’s a demand to be able to leverage social media; secondly, the current collapse in economic conditions means that there are a lot of skilled people out there out of a job.

It only takes one company with the time and organisation enough to bring a lot of stay at home mums, part-time workers, students, and those made redundant, into a super social media army.

That means having a large number of people to actively work within social media, but also means that additional profiles can be developed and sold for interested companies.

While some may react with horror to the prospect, I’m staying realistic on the topic, and that means having to plan on how to work around it.

I remember years ago on Threadwatch someone suggesting that human user data would be really difficult to manipulate - but as social media has developed since then, it’s clear that social media has been parcelled up for market, and this trend will only continue.

Forget Social Media - think targeted traffic

However, despite the issue of supply and demand fully servicing such a future, at some point people are going to stop and ask what sort of traffic they are attracting - and find that while social media is good for eyeballs and brand awareness, it is desperately poor as a sales process, and the links aren’t necessarily that great either.

In which case, targeted social media will inevitably become the most important talking point.

This is the reality I’m actively working in already. :)

There are hundreds of online communities out there in any general business sector, and over the past few months, without touching Digg, Stumbleupon, Reddit, or the other giants in social media, I’ve managed to send tens of thousands of targeted visitors to specific services - with a high conversion rate as well.

So while I can see an economy developing in big social media, and it’s worth planning for this effect, never underestimate the importance of targeting.

After all, getting traffic is really easy - just add some celebrity names and adult keywords on your site and watch your server burn up.

Getting targeted traffic has always been the challenge, and in that regard, Social Media marketing is very immature and directly on a par with early SEO when ranking porn for Disney keywords was the method, because it delivered traffic.

In the meantime, there is plenty of time and opportunity to really tap into targeted communities - just forget the term “social media” and think forums and blogs, and set up key conversational relationships with key online audiences instead.

Questions? Discuss this in our Internet Business forums for help and advice

Story link: Social Media profiles: the next internet economy

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