Thursday, January 11, 2007
Turn social networking from threat to opportunity
Pretty well every media commentator you read is saying that social networking sites are the big thing right now and that they’re taking young people away from traditional media.
True. Along with games, other online activities (including online gaming, IM-ing, texting, watching internet TV - including YouTube) plus all the other offline stuff young people do instead of staying at home and consuming traditional media (and being exposed to traditional adverts to pay for them).
So that’s the threat part of the SWOT matrix. But where’s the opportunity?
Well, getting into the social networking yourself – which is what ITV did with its acquisition of Friends Reunited and News Corp did with its purchase of MySpace. Both, presumably, because it was quicker and easier to buy an established well-known and successful name in the field than to take the risk of spending money on creating your own without any guarantee of success.
But neither has yet set out a plan of how they’re going to integrate them into their existing portfolio of assets and, most importantly, monetise them. And avoid being seen as the middle-aged dad trying to be “down with da kidz”.
So what do local media in the UK do?
Well, why not grow your own local social networks?
Simple idea that wouldn’t cost much but which could be done tomorrow – host your own online communities for local people (and ex-pats) with similar interests!
They don’t have to be huge or multitudinous (you could have a form or e-mail address to let groups petition you to open a new forum on their topic, which would mean you’d only have areas for which there was demand) and you could easily organise display and sponsor link ads to appear alongside their chats for topics/stuff they’re into.
Yes you’d have to have staff mediating it for legal reasons (they libel someone in there, you’re responsible), but you’d have an attraction for them in that the people they were networking with online could also be met IRL (“In Real Life” i.e. offline), you’d be keeping them inside your site and hopefully have them keep coming back (your advertisers would like that) and maybe going to other areas for info.
You could also know lots about them from the info you could get them to provide as part of the process of getting a login. So you’d have accurate demographics for your advertisers to use to target ads at them.
Ok, it wouldn’t be MySpace, but it would be YourSpace and TheirLocalSpace and far better then not having them near your ads and other content at all.
True. Along with games, other online activities (including online gaming, IM-ing, texting, watching internet TV - including YouTube) plus all the other offline stuff young people do instead of staying at home and consuming traditional media (and being exposed to traditional adverts to pay for them).
So that’s the threat part of the SWOT matrix. But where’s the opportunity?
Well, getting into the social networking yourself – which is what ITV did with its acquisition of Friends Reunited and News Corp did with its purchase of MySpace. Both, presumably, because it was quicker and easier to buy an established well-known and successful name in the field than to take the risk of spending money on creating your own without any guarantee of success.
But neither has yet set out a plan of how they’re going to integrate them into their existing portfolio of assets and, most importantly, monetise them. And avoid being seen as the middle-aged dad trying to be “down with da kidz”.
So what do local media in the UK do?
Well, why not grow your own local social networks?
Simple idea that wouldn’t cost much but which could be done tomorrow – host your own online communities for local people (and ex-pats) with similar interests!
They don’t have to be huge or multitudinous (you could have a form or e-mail address to let groups petition you to open a new forum on their topic, which would mean you’d only have areas for which there was demand) and you could easily organise display and sponsor link ads to appear alongside their chats for topics/stuff they’re into.
Yes you’d have to have staff mediating it for legal reasons (they libel someone in there, you’re responsible), but you’d have an attraction for them in that the people they were networking with online could also be met IRL (“In Real Life” i.e. offline), you’d be keeping them inside your site and hopefully have them keep coming back (your advertisers would like that) and maybe going to other areas for info.
You could also know lots about them from the info you could get them to provide as part of the process of getting a login. So you’d have accurate demographics for your advertisers to use to target ads at them.
Ok, it wouldn’t be MySpace, but it would be YourSpace and TheirLocalSpace and far better then not having them near your ads and other content at all.
Labels: newspapers, social networks, strategy, threats
