What 3Sixty Knows…

Hi, I’m Michael. A student on the IPA’s summer school I was lucky enough to be placed at the wonder agency 3Sixty. As part of this scheme the IPA hosts a number of evening seminars. The perfect excuse for a quick drink and chat, they also give us the chance to meet and learn from industry experts.

Last night’s was on the commercial use of social networking. The speaker, and Managing Director of Kinship Networking, argued that whilst Interactive agencies preach 1-to-1 conversation as the most powerful way to persuade, they miss the connection between members of the audience. People talk to each other, something that matters now even more so than ever because people now have platforms that allow them to connect to a whole host of other people, people whose opinions and reviews we often trust far more than the message brands want us to swallow.

However, as is now well acknowledged, this does not mean that social networking is the universal, quick fix solution to all your business problems. Facebook will not work for everyone and Skittles’ overly enthusiastic embrace of social media definitely, and in my opinion still does, work against the brand, its fun clean image, and the younger generation it surely should be targeting. Just this morning I visited their homepage and was confronted with a charming little poem about a bastard child called Sam who has an unfortunate collection of sexually transmitted diseases. Just the information I was looking for.

So if word of mouth and conversations between members of the audience are now what matters, but widespread platforms such as Facebook are not always the answer, how should social networking be used? The answer, as Kinship Networking sees it and I agree, is bespoke social solutions that could mean creating new functionality or even networks built specifically to solve your business problem. It is no longer enough, and really never was, for companies to say,

“We want to use social networks”

“Great. What is it you want to achieve?”

“Err….dunno. It’s just what you do now isn’t it, everyone else is”

Networking may have allowed for a new type of agency to emerge, but it is not in itself a new media channel. The same basic marketing rules apply to online networking environments and specific objectives must be outlined as different networks and different strategies will provide different degrees of success.

The one rule than can be applied to all new networks though is this, choose a small niche and then saturate it. Facebook’s start up strategy worked this way, accepting only members of Harvard and then other Ivy League colleges. This exclusivity creates demand. More people want to get in than can and the interaction that takes place is likely to be more relevant and fulfilling than a large open network where dialogue echoes and meaningful relationships struggle to develop.

Fundamentally, social networks are online environments, not media channels. They are therefore similar to the real world social systems that we have been dealing with for years. There are lots of different media options within networks, and the best strategies will look to unite the online and offline networking medias so that they work powerfully together. Companies need to think about what they want people to talk about…not just what they want to tell them.