Using Social Networks To Talk Up a Product
The social-networking bandwagon is getting awfully crowded.
For companies looking to better connect with consumers and build brand loyalty, social networks are increasingly looking like the ideal tool.
Users get a forum in which to share information, pictures and videos about themselves and their likes and dislikes — and, companies hope, talk up a product.
Companies, in turn, get real-time feedback on trends and products. And they can even bounce off ideas still in the works.
The incentive is obvious: people are flocking to social-networking sites like MySpace and Facebook, according to Web-tracking service Nielsen/NetRatings.
MySpace, which is owned by News Corp., got more than 53 million unique visitors in November, making it the seventh most popular site on the Internet, while privately held Facebook got about 11.6 million visitors.
Over the summer, sports-apparel maker Nike Inc. set up a social-networking site, Joga.com, for soccer enthusiasts.
The site, built with some technical help from search engine Google Inc., encourages local soccer groups to sign up and create profile pages. Fans can blog, create communities around particular teams or players and organize local games. The site also includes pictures and exclusive video, profiles of famous players and articles about various styles of play.
Nike says that by the end of the World Cup games last July, Joga.com had attracted one million users, the most recent data the company would disclose.
Photo by adobemac.
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