The ‘Aging’ of Facebook and Twitter

Author: Mark McInnis (3 Articles)

Dir. of Account Services:  master logistician | creative verbalist | conquistador of music and comedy

The extreme growth of Facebook and Twitter over the past several months has garnered a lot of attention and buzz, but the most interesting article I read was by Chris Matyszczyk, a creative director who advises major corporations on content creation and marketing. He is described as bringing an irreverent, sarcastic, and sometimes ironic voice to the tech world.

He explores the impact that the aging of members of social media sites will have on advertisers on those sites.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-17852_3-10215837-71.html

Although the social networking sites will continue to explore new, innovative ways to generate advertising dollars, essentially he predicts the greatest success will be found if they provide advertisers with something recognizable as traditional, monetizable advertising.

The trends Matyszczyk points out in this write up expand beyond the inherent advertising opportunities within the social networks, but into many other marketing disciplines including continued growth for experiential marketers.  As an agency we continue to stress that once a brand has made the investment in an experiential marketing campaign to engage their target consumers; it is critical to continue the conversation with these new people.

As I continue to see more and more reports of these increased adoption rates of social networking communities by consumers in a wide variety of demographics; it is clear to me that this will provide another channel to continue these conversations.   On par with many experiential marketing campaigns, these consumers are now able to choose their level of interaction and engagement within a familiar environment.  Just some of the early examples I have come across include “Fan Pages” and “Groups” where like-minded individuals are able to gain access to the latest updates, information, news, etc. about products, services, retailers, entertainment, and just about anything else imaginable.

http://mashable.com/2009/04/13/facebook-brand-marketers/

Experiential marketing does the best job of speeding up the consumer trial process, however maintaining contact with these potential new long term consumers and preventing “drop off” after the engagement must be the next step.