It was brought to my attention there are a few studies currently being done on if there is a real need for businesses to be everywhere online verse being on just one social space.
Operational Marketing
Though I was not privy to any of the figures on the studies, and of course I’m locked down by NDA to not mention who is conducting the study, I was however excited to hear Google+ is become much more interesting to the business sector than any of the other spaces.
Only One
As I have mentioned before, the conversation by many of todays business owners and executives surround the questionable value of them being in every social networking space. The reasoning these businesses are told they need to be in all spaces has to do with marketers advising them that consumer are scattered throughout the internet with many only in one social space. So in order for a business to saturating the market coverage they needed to be in all spaces. What these business owners are finding in this resent study is that this 2008 way of thinking of social networking is not true anymore.
Consumers Settling On Searchable Space
What they are finding..and I have to believe has some validity due to the conversations I have with consumers…is consumers are fed up with Spam type marketing. Unwanted messaging and advertising is forcing the consumer market to roam the social spaces looking for the space that does the best job of eliminating unwanted messages in their social conversations. What also is being discovered is the need businesses have to curtail their costs of marketing in every space. What they tell me they are testing is if they only promote a service or product on one site will consumers go to that site to buy. The results they tell me about shows consumers look first to the search engine once they see an interesting product promotion in their space and then click from the search engine results to take them to learn more about the product. The most clicked results from the search engine are Google+ posts from the businesses G+ Page.
Google+: Businesses New Target
It seems consumers..being people like you and me… have found Google+ as a social space that at least is visible in their attempt to control spam and other more perverted attitudes. The survey theses companies are making also has found many consumers have also moved to ‘group viewers’ like Tweetdeck and HootSuite to view content from their spaces which makes their online viewership at best arms length.
Businesses Are Not Being Fooled
There is nothing new with their findings…which is through private sources and ‘proprietary software engineering’… that the majority of the profile databases on the other social spaces are either abandoned or set up by programs giving the spaces an illusion of having billions of users. They saw where even the ones that are seemingly active have questionable connections to big house marketing firms who are known to flood a social stream of conversation that suits their clients need for popularity.
Clear Reason for Only One
I was not excited to hear for competitive reasons most of the info being gathered from these studies will not be published outside the companies walls. However, what is clear from what I am being told is for a fact that businesses..the ones who carry a lot of clout in the economy..are seeing there not being a real clear reason for them to be on every social space and see from the studies that consumers will migrate to where their products are found from search engine results. Logically, that would place Google+ as the target for the one place these businesses set up shop.
What will happen to the other social spaces when consumers and businesses leave them? Well, I would think now would not be a good time for an honest IPO.
Let me know how I can help.
