Leadpile’s Blog

Much has been written and spoken about Twitter recently.  Some people love it, and others view it as a waste of time.  Also, the lack of a business model that produces revenue has been discussed.  Does Twitter act like email, search, and/or social networking?  The answers currently appear to be no, no, and yes.

This week, the people at Hitwise came out with some research on where people are going after visiting Twitter.  Indications are that Twitter is acting more like social networking than search or email.  Two out of five visitors are visiting social networks or entertainment sites after visiting Twitter.

At this point, very little Twitter traffic is visiting retail sites (search activity) nor is the traffic visiting finance, business or dating sites (email activity).  It appears to be more about social networking and distributing content, especially photo-sharing, than on selling products or services.

Things are sure to change rapidly, but it appears that the monetization of Twitter and its growing traffic is a work in progress.  This potentially huge opportunity is still there for the taking.

Leadpile Lead Exchange would like to wish Facebook a Happy 5th birthday. According to the Valley Wag website, Facebook originated on the campus of Harvard University. Eventually, the social networking site went from one university to universities all across the nation. Presently, Facebook is not just used by university students as a social networking site, it is used by more than 1.5 million people (including Leadpile Lead Exchange). HAPPY BIRTHDAY Facebook!

While the record labels are struggling to bring in revenue, social networking sites are where many companies are turning to help save them. According to Business Week, “The record industry has been hammered in recent years by online piracy and a dearth of mega-hits, with sales sliding steadily since their peak of $14.6 billion in 1999. As CDs sales have dropped, the labels have tried repeatedly to develop digital strategies to make up the difference, and they’ve all come up short. Last year was the industry’s worst yet in terms of revenue losses. The total value of digital and traditional sales dropped 12% in 2007, to $10.4 billion, compared with a 4.4% slide the year before, according to the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA).”
Record labels are looking to utilize the internet to help this struggling industry, and why not partner up with social networking? Will MySpace Music be able to handle such a large partnership? They certainly have the audience for the record companies, but will it be used effectively? I guess we will all see how successful this partnership is, and if it works I am sure the rest of the record labels will be looking at social networking to increase sales.
Leadpile Lead Exchange works in affiliate marketing, and this sounds like another form of affiliate marketing that could also work effectively.

Social media is an area of marketing that is very popular.  Some critics say how can you do effective marketing with social media, and then you hear others say if you are not in the social media arena, you better get into it!
Many surveys that I read spoke about the effectiveness of social media sites and a common point was raised in a lot of these surveys:  consumers buy things that their peers/friends/contacts in these social networking sites also buy.  The most successful companies are using the networking sites, but ALSO creating interactive advertising that involves the people on the sites.  Conducting surveys, questionairs and other brief interactive/conversational marketing tactics.  Not only does this type of marketing get the feedback of the people, it allows companies to get some potential word of mouth advertising going.  This could be an ideal place where a company rolls out new products and gets the potential momentum for that product, even before it hits the shelves.  
Social networking sites are part of the social media craze.  Other examples of social media are blogs (like this one), social news sites and sites like youtube.  All these sites have something in common- a common place for people to express their thoughts and opinions, yet also read what others are talking about too.  How can you go wrong reading some unbiased feedback about a particular subject that you are interested in?  The old way of marketing was companies had their websites and you had to take their word everything they said on the website was actually correct.
I would say social media is something that could make or break companies.  Therefore, treating customers with the utmost respect is ideal, because if you don’t- you could be all over the next blog entries.  
On a final note, I have had a lot of conversations with prospective clients that did their homework before joining the Leadpile marketplace.  This “homework” is them visiting various social media sites and reading positive posts about the marketplace.  So THANK YOU social media!