According to Pew Research, one in ten American adults have used dating websites or apps. Perhaps more relevant, more than one in three who are single and looking have gone online for love. This is a significant shift in public opinion. Only eight years ago, 44% of Americans thought, "Online dating is a good way to meet people." Now, that group is up to 59%. Online dating is simply riding the trend we've been seeing for some time: we are growing more comfortable with strangers online. So how does this affect the role of marketers?
The Emergence of Interest-Based Social Networks
Online dating is one of the pioneers of interest-based social networks. What do we mean by interest-based? Consider the social networks we use in our daily lives. On Facebook, we are connected to our friends and family. Marketers value Facebook because they recognize a recommendation from a friend or family member is valuable. However, it is likely that your friends and family members share varied interests. It's great that my sister likes Bones but I prefer Monday Night Football. More recent social networks like Twitter and Pinterest are more interest-based in the connections they form. On Twitter, we follow celebrities and topics we find interesting along with other people, most of whom are strangers. On Pinterest, we follow strangers and their boards because we have similar interests.
As I mentioned, interest-based social networks are not new. However, while growth rates for traditional social networks are slowing, we are seeing an emergence of more interest-based social networks. Why is this? One, it can be simply that Facebook has already won. With 71% of the US market on Facebook as an indicator, Facebook has very little growth left in most mature markets. The same can be said for LinkedIn and their 250 million-plus members.
Secondly, as humans, we simply have a limitation on how many people we can know. Psychologist Robin Dunbar believes humans can only form genuine social relationships with about 150 people, known as the Dunbar number. The Dunbar number, however, does not affect interest-based social networks because the number of people sharing our interests is not capped. If I like Salesforce on Facebook and follow it on Twitter, I share that interest with millions of Salesforce users. In this context, it also means if one of these users shares their opinion of a new Salesforce application, I would value her opinion more because of our shared interest.
No Catfish for Marketers
Some marketers criticize Facebook because they believe the "likes" don't necessarily translate to action or map the interest graph of their target customers. They worry these likes are the marketer's equivalent of being catfished - fake and/or not genuine. After all, all social networks suffer from phantom users. Studies show bots can drive 25% or more of all online traffic. Should marketers abandon social then? Not so fast. While Facebook has had a ROI problem before, they are addressing this issue head-on. More importantly, marketers can take advantage of interest-based social networks in ways not provided by traditional social networks.
Let's say you are Sephora and you want to target an ad specifically to young women between the ages of 15 to 22. On Facebook or Google Adwords, you'll specify your demographics and your ad will be served to millions of women looking at the ad. One drawback in this campaign, though, is that the ad is served to each woman individually. There isn't a conversation being formed between other makeup enthusiasts (unless you specifically follow Sephora on Facebook). On interest-based social networks, however, you can join online communities with like-minded peers, like this Pin board or this sub-Reddit on makeup. This doesn't only work for B2C. For example, if you are targeting accountants for your tax software, you can visit this accounting-oriented Twitter account or this sub-Reddit for accounting
As a marketer, this is an incredibly powerful tool because you are targeting a very specific demographic having a shared experience. Shared experiences used to be resigned to real-time events like concerts or conferences. Today, a shared experience can be viral content on Twitter or someone's board on Pinterest.
The Power of Beachheads
Marketers should see these interest-based social networks as a densely populated cluster of early adopters. Whether you're promoting the Twilight films or a new marketing automation tool, your earliest adopters are always your biggest fans. What this means is that marketers can leverage these networks as beachheads into the mainstream. The military uses beachheads as a temporary breach in enemy territory before reinforcements can arrive to secure the area, like Normandy in World War II. Marketers can leverage a similar tactic in seeding their content with their most receptive audience.
What happens when a marketer establishes a beachhead on an interest-based site like Twitter or Reddit? You start seeing the virality emerge out of influential beachheads to their followers, which in turns spreads to second and third degree connections until you reach late adopters or even new customers.Twitter wanted to see how their videos went viral so their UK Research team did some digging around. What they found led to some fascinating visuals but also some important lessons.
Two of their key takeaways were to target influencers and existing communities. Virality doesn't always happen over night though. Stanford researchers examined how a meme goes viral on Reddit. It turns out there isn't a secret sauce. One interesting observation was that a meme might go viral after its second or third time on the site.
They found that each image on Reddit was resubmitted an average of seven times. They also found that Reddit has a memory, and it's about 45 days. The chances of negative reactions to reposted content become much milder after that point.
As marketers, we should be resilient in reaching out to our core audience, even if the first message doesn't land. Marketo, for example, definitely wants you to know it's created The Definitive Guide to Engaging Email Marketing by syndicating its content in multiple locations.
We Have So Much in Common
I believe we are in a new era of interest-based social networks. These networks likely don't have your friends on them and it's possible you may access them anonymously. This doesn't mean you don't form engaging relationships or thoughtful conversations on them. Rather, it's possible you may be even more engaged on these networks because you are amongst your peers. On the dating site OkCupid, for example, it asks, "the most private thing I'm willing to admit." On my own profile, I said, "I tried online dating" and that means I have something in common with everyone else on the site.