Social Networking in the B2B Marketplace

by Admin


07 Dec
 None    Internet Related


by Jody Nimetz


by Jody Nimetz
http://www.enquiro.com

A few weeks ago I posted about the role of social networks in the B2B marketplace. This morning I attended a webinar, presented by Hitwise, which focused on the growing popularity of social networking sites. LeeAnn Prescott of Hitwise mentioned that in October 2006, social networking accounted for 1 in every 20 internet visits. 82% of these were from myspace.com. That does seem like a lot doesn't it? By the way did you know that a search in Google for 'myspace' returns about a half of a billion results?


The webinar went on to state that:

  • the average session time spent on social networking sites was three times longer than on the average site (27+ minutes vs. 10 min)
  • in October, the average session time on MySpace was 30 min 22 sec
  • the average social network user belongs to 3 or more social network type sites


These really are some amazing stats. For a more comprehensive recap of the Hitwise webinar, visit analytics expert Manoj Jasra's Web Analytics World blog.

Social Networking in the B2B World

So where does social networking leave B2B marketers? Well, as I mentioned in my previous post, social networking has not yet caught on with the B2B market. This doesn't mean that social networking won't catch on with the B2B crowd; it just means that it may be a matter of time. I am a little skeptical about the B2B marketplace participation in the social networking scene. The main reason for my skepticism is the fact the B2B market is hyper-competitive and the sharing of information and data through social networks may not be as forthcoming as it is in traditional social networks such as MySpace. Having said that, the reason social networking may have not taken off as much in the B2B world is that really there are not that many significant B2B social networking sites out there. How many can you name off the top of your head?

That may change though. Dave Networks has recently released its B2B platform with its S.O.C.I.A.L. (Social Online Community & IPTV Application Library) platform. This platform allows companies to build social IPTV communities around various brands to help grow a social group base and generate user participation for their brand. Dave Networks has a new site dedicated to building IPTV social communities around brands. It will be interesting to see how many B2B companies leverage this kind of technology.

The B2B market is being rapidly conditioned to understand and accept social networking, video sharing, blogging, RSS and other technologies as new forms of communication and information access. With a longer selling cycle this means B2B marketers need to establish creative ways of deploying content that their potential consumers are thirsty for.

Do you have the juice to quench their thirst?


Jody Nimetz
Senior Organic Search Marketing Strategist
Search Engine Positioning by Searchengineposition
Enquiro Full Service Search Engine Marketing
SEO-Space Blog

Copyright 2006 - Enquiro Search Solutions.



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