As if it weren't already enough the constantly struggle we experience to find balance in our everyday lives, now with the advent of the new social networking sites, we have to find balance in our online worlds as well?!
So what is social networking? If you’re like most people you, at the very least, have a LinkedIn and Facebook account. Both of these sites rely on you filling in your personal information so that people can identify and find you, add you to their network and share your network. Each of these networks manages millions of profiles. In fact, 51 per cent of online Canadians have a profile on some sort of social networking forum. These profiles offer incredible insight and not only reveal who people are but what their interests are, what they do, who they are friends with. So the question becomes how do we as marketers take advantage of this enormous network? How do we capitalize on these people who have assigning themselves to sub communities and have defined themselves in great detail outlining their interests, activities and professional accomplishments? And what should the message be when we do communicate with these groups?
The difficulty that I see is that with each of these tools comes a separate set of unspoken rules and each relate to a specific part of our lives which have their own rules and boundaries. Tools like LinkedIn are defined as purely professional tools intended to connect people on a business level. Tools like Facebook however have blurred the line between professional and personal.
We are constantly being told to achieve balance in our lives and make sure that we draw a line between our personal and professional worlds yet most people have professional and personal contact in their Facebook accounts. So how much does that mix influence behaviour and personal information disclosure? Perhaps more importantly, if we use these vehicles to market, is our message really getting to the right people?
As marketers it is necessary for us to explore the pros and cons of these tools and look at the impact they have on marketing and on ourselves as users. So whether your sell is B2B or B2C, social networking should be on your radar and should be approached with the same caution and balance that we use in our lives.
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