Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, LinkedIn, Ning, Tagged, Friendster, hi5, Classmates, and now Toqqa. If you are familiar with each of these social networking sites, then you are truly ahead of the curve: I made the last one up. Toqqa doesn't exist.
It's credible, though, that it could: that a new social networking sensation has popped up seemingly overnight, while your back was turned, adding to the list of digital stuff you should know. This heady momentum, coupled with the puzzle of how brands can profitably join the online conversations, is why marketers get that dizzy feeling when attempting to devise social networking strategies.
At times like this, when you are trying to keep tabs on a rapidly evolving social phenomenon, there are two ways you can go. One is to stay right up there, to live on the curve, to be the first on the block to know what the latest thing is and how to use it. If Toqqa launched, you'd be first in.
The other route is to venture to the opposite end of the spectrum and try to understand the deep motives and desires that power the wave in the first place. From the moment you make the decision to go this way, the world will suddenly seem calmer and decisions will become easier.
First comes the recognition of something you actually knew all along but were, briefly, too dazzled to see: all apparently new human activity is a variation, or an amplification, of ancient human activity. We are right back there at human nature.
Since you are interested in making your brand part of a social conversation, you first need to know what it is within human nature that drives people to talk about brands in their everyday lives.
These conversations are not new. In 1954, William H Whyte explored the role of word of mouth in the distribution of air-conditioning brands in a Philadelphia suburb. He showed that the consumption pattern could be explained only by conversations 'over the clothes lines and across backyard fences'. What was it that persuaded people to drag air conditioning into their neighbourly chats? It wasn't just blind loyalty to the brand; a body of more recent evidence points to something deeper.
New academic research shows that consumption is used as a tool to help people ignite and develop personal relationships.
From the personal perspective, the point is not to persuade another about the virtues of Brand X. Your brand is a currency in a greater exchange: that of reciprocal friendship.
Opening up about brand choice is a means of signalling the kind of person you are, and a way of cementing and ratifying relationships. Brands can also give people low-stakes reasons to make frequent contact and share.
So your social networking strategy comes back to basic brand strategy. Be interesting, so that people have a reason to include your brand as a part of their self-identity. Innovate often, so that it gives people little things to talk about and fresh reasons to make contact. Be good at what you do, so that people welcome your brand into their conversations.
Apple is cited as a great social networking success, yet it does very little directly to bust into conversations.
It's just a very, very good brand. People will talk about your brand if it has good social ideas built into it. In addition, those conversations will happen in places other than just online - bars, streets, offices, gyms, shops, trains and, even today, over clothes lines.
Helen Edwards has a PhD in marketing, an MBA from London Business School and is a partner at Passionbrand, where she works with some of the world's biggest advertisers.
30 SECONDS ON ... Brand conversations
- Let's not forget that old media can generate the conversation in new media. The recent John Lewis 'Woman' TV ad has had more than 500,000 YouTube viewings and won an enthusiastic and emotional following online.
- Volume of activity and social media does not necessarily translate into advocacy - recent research by Vivaldi Partners and Lightspeed Research showed that Dunkin Donuts has 80% fewer Facebook and Twitter followers than Starbucks, but its fans are 35% more likely to recommend the brand.
- People talk more about brands than they think: recent video-diary research on the role of brand conversations within friendship found respondents surprised by how many of their conversations had included a reference to particular products or brands.
- Marketers are right to prize word of mouth - it has been found to be seven times as effective as print advertising and four times as effective as personal selling in influencing consumers to switch brands.