Social Networking – Best Word Of Mouth You Can Get
Monday, December 18th, 2006 at 6:00 pm by Evelyn Grazini, AC Student and Staff Writer
Social Networking is a new big word for something that’s been done for a long time. It basically means “Word of Mouth.”
That’s why social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook are so popular. People sometimes want to know what others think about a product or service before they buy it. The best way to do this is ask your friend who might know. Now, with the existence of these very large networking sites, you can ask a lot of people at once for their opinion, and probably get quite a few different answers.
The American Marketing Association (AMA) did a survey and found that the social networking sites may now be playing a larger and more influential role in e-commerce than was first expected.
I started a MySpace page at the beginning of the year, although I have to admit, I haven’t been very good at updating it. However, it was easy to start, and doesn’t hurt as a linking tool to my other web sites. If you don’t have a site, you should put one up. You never know when it might come in handy for one of your affiliate products.
When the AMA survey was complete, they found out that 47% of those surveyed said they would visit a social networking site to search for products and gift ideas; 29% said that they would buy the products on the sites if they found something they liked.
While this may seem like a good thing for marketers, there is one other thing to be aware of.
Negative word mouth can kill a site much faster than referrals from others can help, according to research done by Gomez. They did a survey to see if customers would tell others about a negative experience. And, not surprisingly, 47% of the people who responded to their survey said they would definitely spread the word.
When talking about negative word of mouth, remember that customer service is not the only thing that people complain about. People get upset with a web site and leave for a lot of different reasons. Here are just a few:
- More than three unsuccessful attempts to complete a purchase
- Slow loading website pages
- Slow loading Home pages
- Confusing order processes
Make sure you take these points into consideration when you are building your website. Hopefully your site will be praised and recommended by the 47% who are using social networking as one of their shopping avenues.
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Social networking is definitely a big part of society today. It seems as though everyone has a Myspace these days. I think it’s pretty cool that we can all interact and stay connected with each other over the net. There is a new social networking site that has been introduced to the US called Cyworld. It’s a safer alternative for teens and younger adults, and is more for the creative expressive type of person. It’s a really cool site you can design your own minihome, create your own minime, connect with a bunch of friends, basically all the features of myspace but with a little more creativity. You can check it out at http://www.cyworld.com . I work with Cyworld, just giving you guys the scoop!