Social Media Advertising – A chronology

Influencer Marketing dates back to the golden barter days. People who have had strong opinion and held sway over others have always been able to push items. In the absence of requisite knowledge we trust our kins, friends, subject matter experts to give us sound advices. Increasingly, consumers are turning to subject matter experts for advice and they may sit right in their home or thousands of miles away in Alaska. This is far more prevalent when the item being deliberated upon is a big ticket item, a once in a lifetime purchase item.

Marketing in the real world has made use of this phenomenon in numerous ways – celebrity advertising being one of them. If it is not Dhoni in every second ad then you are staring at Kareena Kapoor. Without doubt the consumers are being inundated with countless many advertisers vying for their share of attention and, importantly, share of wallet. Every opportunity to create an impression is being tightly scrutinized as a moment of truth.

Social media is one platform to create impressions. Social Networking sites provide an excellent platform to raise question whenever people face a doubt. If the consumers are seeking solution on the networking sites how could the advertisers be absent from such a forum. But a consumer could spring forth from anywhere? Where should an organization be present? The desire of the advertisers to be present on every possible platform requires lot of resources and has been as date – a qualified success.

But as social media advertisement matures, we will see more and more turf wars being played out. Let us take you through the chronology of small and bigger battles that have waged in this arena. Let us peep into the past a little to see how things will shape up in years to come.

The biggest migration in the history of human kind happened in 2003-2004 when people moved form Orkut to Facebook in huge numbers. Suddenly Facebook was every advertisers’ best friend. Facebook came in as a harbinger where consumers spent considerable amount of their idle time – a time advertisers could intrude and make impressions in. This was a direct way of reaching out to the customers. Everyone jumped on to the bandwagon. Almost 75% (source: Compete.com) of all Fortune 100 companies have a Facebook page and at least 90% (source compete.com) of them update their pages at least once in a week.

Slowly Corporate Facebook pages have become a hygiene factor. No one notices if you have one. Even if being present is not making a lot of economic sense for everyone, it is still better than being conspicuous by absence.  

Facebook was the first time advertisers tasted the waters of online social media advertising. Spreading word through Facebook moves at its own pace. The message does take time to spread to the intended audience. With more experimentation, I am sure, shrewd marketers would be able to devise more concrete and effective ways.  Meanwhile there was a lot of traction being seen in the blogging space.  

Microblogging to be precise. Twitter emerged on the picture as a wildfire. A microblogging site where people could share their status in real time made perfect sense. Their 140 character limitation worked wonders for them. Definitely a masterstroke to realize that blogging was already where people could get as verbose and expressive as possible. But that was more of a story telling. Old is boring. Real time is fun. Brilliantly, they targeted people who were a little handicapped when it came to waxing eloquence and spoke precise and concise.

Twitter was born with a silver spoon in its mouth and the staggering success it achieved would be hard to emulate. Without doubt Twitter holds the pole position in marketers’ minds for advertising and engaging their audience. 340 million tweets are exchanged daily as of March 2012. More than 50% of all references of a Fortune 100 companies are made on the Twitter.

One astounding fact that might startle everyone is that Twitter is the most preferred site when it comes to sharing videos…of course only the URL. That would leave anyone, with slightest business acumen, confounded as to why did not Twitter integrate videos in its offering. They did not want to tone down their USP of simplicity of text, perhaps? They are the best people to answer that and let us leave that to them.

Tumblr saw an opportunity in the space and came up with a microblogging site which provided multimedia capabilities. Essentially it was a Twitter where one could express through text (still 140 characters), videos, pictures, blogs and the best part was that there were more precisely delineated categories.  This simplification and wholesome offering was quickly latched on by the users. For those who might be interested, Twitter and Tumblr share most of the investors.

Tumblr promoted itself as a curating site where people could express their deepest and unknown desires. It provided them with themes, analogous to interior designers, and encouraged people to decorate their personal space as they would decorate their own house. This definitely touched a chord somewhere and its user base swelled in no time. Tumblr reached 14M unique visits in August 2012.

But Twitter and YouTube kept on growing as well. One could infer that communication through pictures did have a lot of value in itself. You give someone too many options and u make things more complex for him. The same seemed to have acted against Tumblr just a touch.

Pinterest was quick to comprehend that “making a house” of pictures alone was a pretty business in itself and it would look pretty as well, definitely lot less cluttered. And Pinterest came on the bandwagon and the success it has achieved has been unparalleled. In just two years of its existence it already is the third largest followed social networking site. It has garnered around 12M unique visitors who dedicate close to 800 seconds on average on the site every day.  

Whether it was by design or by luck, Pinterest users are predominantly females who seem happiest pinning their crafts projects, parenting tips, recipes, decorative items for the home.

Fancy came ahead to restore the balance of the world. Male discrimination is not a nice thing to have. Whether it was the hurt male ego or lack of options for male counterparts that drew them to Fancy, but Fancy has registered phenomenal growth in the only 6 months of its existence. Fancy integrated e-commerce within itself so that it made business sense from the day zero. It is partly a store, a blog, a magazine and a wish list.  60% of The Fancy users are men who are more often than not posting consumer goods of the Fab.com variety, high fashion clothes and accessories and exotic locales.

Though Fancy is too small right now to be considered a serious threat to Pinterest or Tumblr, but the growth it is posting and with its built-in business model, it is definitely going to be one to watch out for.