The growth of Social Networks in the last couple of years has been phenomenal. Anyone related to the internet will have noticed this growth and will have been impacted in some way or another.

What is it?
Networks of people who want to communicate about everything and anything. The reason why they are on the internet is because more and more people have access to it as ease of gaining information is high through the net, so why not communicate at the same time? My Grandad was brought up in the same village as his wife – the same with the majority of his generation, they didn’t have the ease of communication like the internet, motorways, and aeroplanes. Nowadays the world is a smaller place because communication is so much easier. Social networking allows for people from all corners of the world to socialise with one another – what a great thing to be able to do. Not only this, but communication through traditional email services has now been overtaken by social networking communication.

What’s in it for me?
Today’s current marketing and economic climate is showing a slow down in proceedings. Advertising revenues will not be the same for Google and the other two biggies this year because people just can’t afford it. It is becoming increasingly competitive on Pay Per Click advertising, so much so that a lot of advertising are cutting their spends or stopping it completely.

Don’t get me wrong, PPC is not going to stop by any stretch of the imagination and will continue to be the most effective form of advertising, it is just the realisation that you really need to have everything tip top, including your website and payment processes, in order to trade effectively online.

Will PPC be replaced by SEO? No, but SEO will be just as important as there is still a big divide between those who click on SEO listings as opposed to PPC.

I am digressing. It is because of these increasing costs that we can do Social Network marketing. Facebook has 38% of all social network users, and these people are most receptive to Retail advertising. We can do Social Network advertising through PPC site targeting of Facebook where Google will strategicially position your adverts according to the Facebook content and relevance to your ad.

Traffic from Social Networking sites to other websites accounts for 7.7% of all website traffic, making it the second highest source of inbound traffic behind Search Engines. Watch this space - don’t say goodbye or ignore its growth!

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Interesting stats are coming out of the woodwork for Christmas day 2007. Not only was there the highest amount of money spent online ever on that day (£52 million) but it was also the highest day for Social Media Site usage ever in the UK, not just on Xmas days!

This sparks alarm bells with some people, and I am sure it would if I told my Granddad! The world is most definitely changing.

Fundamentally we are seeing the internet becoming ever more popular and part of our everyday lives. It is like the mobile phone; what did we do ten years ago if we couldn’t find our other half after going separate ways on a shopping spree? I can’t remember, but the mobile phone has certainly made our life easier and the internet is doing the same thing. This is the rise of a global phenomenon and will be marked as one of the major changing points in global society, but we can breakdown the change into two areas.

1. Increased search: We are increasingly searching on search engines for goods and services. We are becoming a lazy society and at some stage we may turn robotic. Without internet search engines we would find things a lot harder to find and they are becoming increasingly important.
2. Social Media sites: this shows a change in the way people interact with each other. As so many of us are online, social media sites are ideal for communication. They are somewhat addictive as well.

What is next for 2008: I reckon, after speaking to some hierarchy at Google, that we are going to see a big transition of digital media from offline to online this year and next. Things like video adverts for brand awareness that can benefit PPC and search campaigns will be growing as the TV revenues continue to decrease. Anything else I have missed?

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