That same friend was sending it to me as a joke. Why? Because my value to my followers on twitter would be significantly reduced if I started advertising anything.

Advertising is not about Eyeballs

At least, not totally. Social media (Facebook, MySpace, Bebo) has allowed friends to come closer together online and share their lives. This has caused a massive issue for advertisers who were used to magazines where you buy space.  The advertisers thought that they could just follow the crowds and buy space.

Not any more! Social Network Etiquette seems to say that If you are on a social network and build a large list of followers, unless you have built that followership on the basis of a business such as being a blogger, then starting to advertise services or companies that are unrelated is a bad thing.

Advocates, Conversation and Brand Personality

This is where advocates come in. If you can generate a brand loyalty and create brand advocates, then social networks will become a powerful tool in the arsenal of the marketing department. However, to create brand advocates, you need to understand the conversation.

What is the conversation? Young people are now expecting to be able to “friend” brands in the same way that they can with their friends. So what’s needed is a brand personality to be able to friend. Without that, the conversation between a brand and it’s customer base is limited.

Your Brand needs a Personality

If you don’t have one, make it up! We did just that with @JackTheCar at a company I was part of. It was highly successful.  The hardest part was creating the identity in the first place.

And The Top Mobile Social Networks Are…

which outlines how many mobile social networks are really impacting the mobile internet space.

It seems that users are wanting to use mobiles to interact on their normal social networks, such as Facebook and MySpace, instead of wanting something mobile specific. This makes a lot of sense, since most people’s social network is on a website, why would you try to put all your friends on a new one?

Transporting Your Network

All social networks are intended to keep you on their site, so most of them will not allow you to transport your network. Some, which are email based, do let you move the emails across, and others try to utilise your email network by contacting GMail (other email systems are available!) and the like.

It makes sense to aim to control the network, as Facebook does, because it decreases adoption of other networks.  This research seems to reveal that what users want is not functionality but their friends, and they appear to be willing to accept some non-mobile features to view information about their friends.

Strategy rethink for Mobile Social Networks?

So it seems that mobile social networks need to consider their strategies for how they are going to move or enhance their user’s desktop social network and provide services other than on the mobile. Without that, the companies that have the large desktop based social networks will just add on social mobile services. But maybe there is still a way…

If you want to discuss this further and how Vida can help with mobile social network strategy, then get in touch.