Can small Social Media players compete with the Facebooks and MySpaces?
March 4, 2008
Attending the PhoCusWright Bloggers Summit is a great opportunity to learn and share. I admire all the bloggers who will participate, many of whom wrote articles for the first Tips from the T-List book. I am hoping to talk about many of you about the niche social network. We all know about the Facebooks, the MySpaces. the VirtualTourists and the TripAdvisors, but I would like to know your opinion about niche social networks. As I wrote in my introduction, I recently launched a niche social network focused around Travel and Friendship called Canadamigos Network. It’s target market is mainly comprised of Hispanics around the world interested in Canada and Canadians interested in Hispanic culture and destinations. The site encourages content in both official languages of Canada in additionto Spanish. Canadamigos was quietly launched in late December and to date has grown to over 600 members from Canada, the US, Latin America and Spain.
Why launch a niche social network site? Looking at what had been happening on the Web in the past little while and understanding that if I did not add Web 2.0 tools to my business I could be at a disadvantage I started blogging for the Hispanic traveler in my BlogdeCanada.com blog. This led naturally to social media. I had been using the Ning platform as a member of Turismo 2.0 and realized that this platform could be the one to use for my own social network site. I looked at the costs (and mostly thought about the time I would surely need to dedicate to the site) and finally decided to jump in with both feet. This first year will be a kind of Beta phase during which time I will try to determine whether the project is worth the investment or not, i.e. whether the site can make money or not.
One of the incentives for a small online business like mine is the idea that marketers may be interested in very focused targeted niches. Blogger David Wilson wrote in his Social Media Optimization blog an article entitled “Niche Social Networks Will Continue To Be Hot In 2008“ that I found encouraging:
“The niche social networking market is exploding as thousands of sites have sprang up to cater to specific interests, backgrounds, professions and age groups. Nightclub frequenters can converge at DontStayIn.com. Wine connoisseurs have formed Snooth.com, and people going through divorce can commiserate at Divorce360.com. While small in numbers these sites form intimate communities of like-minded people. And that is what attracts advertisers.
Overall, ad spending on social-networking sites is expected to grow 75 percent next year, to $2.1 billion, according to eMarketer. Of the $920 million spent this year to advertise on social networks, 8.2% went to niche sites, up from 7% in 2006. In 2008, niche sites’ share of ad revenue is expected to grow to 10%.”
“The smaller niche networks allow advertisers to focus more on ads tailored to these specific audiences.
“Companies are learning that these smaller communities may reach people that are more valuable to their brands. It will someday feel more like information than marketing,” Jeremiah Owyang, a social-networking analyst at Forrester Research.”
In the case of Canadamigos.com, I see two challenges. 1) Maintaining the integrity of the site while growing it’s membership and making sure that there is always relevant content being posted and 2) tapping into marketers who are looking or may be interested in niche vehicles to promote their destination or tourism business to influencers and “low hanging fruit” consumers.
The first challenge is a matter of time. The second challenge also involves time, but it will also be a matter of education and salesmanship. Many small destinations (DMO’s) and some not so small may still be in the dark as to how to use social media to complement their marketing efforts. Furthermore, working with conventional ROI models, they may have difficulty quantifying a social media initiative (unless it’s a straight adveritising/impressions deal). Finally, there’s the issue of time and resources. The ideal arrangement would be for DMO’s or tourism businesses to not only advertise on the site, but more importantly to participate by adding content, communicating with members, etc, developing relationship with them. But this takes time and human input. Someone needs to look after the store. Quoting David Wilson: “The first social media step that many companies take is to launch a blog. The problem with this idea is committing to producing content on a consistent basis. A company’s blog that hasn’t been updated for weeks or months is perceived worse than a company that doesn’t have a blog.” DMO’s and tourism businesses (that are not already considering) will need to create new positions like “resident blogger” or “chief social media officer” (Wilson)
I look forward to barinstorm with all of you during the summit and thank you in advance for your input.
Saludos,
Jaime
Comments
One Response to “Can small Social Media players compete with the Facebooks and MySpaces?”
Got something to say?
Event Sponsors
Global Sponsors
Thanks for this great post
I agree, niche market on travel social media
see you at ITB
regards
Claude