Optimizing Social Media

By Barbara Bacci Mirque

LinkedIn’s Reid Hoffman imparted the Holy Grail about achieving impactful advertising on social networking sites at Monday’s ANA Advertising Financial Management Conference. He believes the massive growth these sites are witnessing is because for the user they represent a trusted network and the decisions an individual makes are more likely to be influenced by people they know. The key to success with social media he said, is to truly understand the DNA of the site and act accordingly.  For example, Twitter specializes in what people are doing now.  Facebook is all about being playful and checking in with friends and family. LinkedIn is professional networking and corresponding people search. If you understand the site context and target and fine tune your messaging so it is part of the site, your advertising will resonate with the users. These sites will deliver advertising value because people put in information that is important to them, thus enabling micro targeting.   Social media and Web 2.0 are still in its infancy but Hoffman believes advertising will be an integral and fundamental component. He advises advertisers to experiment and take some risk as long as what you do is relevant and appropriate to the site’s context. As far as predicting the future, in Silicon Valley the future resides two months out he told the audience, so all bets are off but he predicts in the next five years the social networking sites will be even more open than they are now.