Social Networks Not Clicking?

That was the conclusion reached by market research company IDC in a recent study as described by MediaWeek. It seems that while IDC recognizes the aggressive growth rate of social networks, they see ads being ignored.

According to IDC’s report (U.S. Consumer Online Attitudes Survey Results Part III), more than three quarters of social networking site users log on at least once a week, and 57 percent do so daily. And these folks are logging an increasingly large amount of time on these properties, as more than 61 percent of users spend more than a half hour on these sites per session, with 38 percent staying at least an hour.

Yet despite those huge usage numbers, social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook significantly under perform when compared to overall online advertising, found IDC. Just 57 percent of social net users report clicking on an ad over the past year versus 79 percent of all users, according to IDC’s study. A similar disparity is evident when it comes to online shopping.

Social networking sites continue to evolve how they display ads in order to combat this lackluster facebook ad example performance. Facebook has made several enhancements to its advertising options including new ads that appear in news feeds as well as ads that appear next to relevant user actions.

I disagree with placing all the blame on these social networking sites. Many advertisers have just not figured out how to use this new advertising medium. Advertisers make the common mistake of treating these social networking sites like a media buy and throw up the same creative ad units they use in display campaigns. Messaging must be tailored to this audience and ad designs should look to leverage the social networking platform rather than ask it to mimic other advertising platforms. At NETexponent we have been running social media campaigns for several months and just formally launched our Social Media Services division. Here are a few of the tips we have learned.

1. Target - Social networking sites offer a slew of tools that advertisers can use to target their audience by demographic, geography, and interests. The interest targeting ability is what really makes these marketing channels unique so be sure to target accordingly. You may want to target different campaigns to different segments to enhance your ability to tailor the ad to each segment.

2. Tailor - Make sure your message is tailored to your audience. Once you target the right segment be sure to customize the marketing message so that it appeals to that audience but keep in mind that you are in a social media environment. Hard sell call to action messages like “buy now” may not work in this environment. Try first to engage your users with softer call to actions such as “learn more” or if you have customer testimonials try “hear what others have to say”. Create different messages for each segment you target since they will most likely respond to the most relevant message.

3. Test - Many social sites provide enhanced reporting but none of it will replace your good old ad serving solution. Test out different ads and even test ads that look like text to see how they perform. In addition to testing landing pages perhaps you want to test driving traffic to your company/product fan page. How about special consumer offers for facebook users?

My overall point is that advertisers have a unique opportunity to tap into this new and growing online channel. Nobody has published the secret formula for success but it is out there if you are willing to search for it. I have seen the rewards and they are definitely worth the effort.