2009-08-07 00:18:23 - Social Media might be the most powerful Internet Marketing tool created yet, or it might not be.

The jury is still out and the technology is too new to determine exactly how effective it can be as a medium. There are those in the internet marketing field who claim that they can produce guaranteed results with Facebook, Twitter, Linked In and others but these “predictable” techniques are generally not taken seriously by those who have studied viral marketing.

Viral marketing is marketing through conversation. Think of it as starting a rumor back in high school. You knew that someone was going to tell someone else, usually in front of others, and then the rumor would catch fire and be all around school in a matter of a few days. This was highly effective but also presented a number

of potential problems, not the least of which was the tendency to distort or embellish the story as it was passed on.

The effectiveness and problems are both present in viral marketing done with social networks. Putting out a topic for discussion in front of an audience is a great way to get immediate new business. Facebook conversation threads can provide free advertising which will bring instant quality hits while the interaction is going on, but the quality decreases after the thread has ended and word of mouth takes over. The facts get distorted and visitors may start coming to your site that have no interest in the product or service you have available.

Twitter has an even smaller window of opportunity. A tweat stays on someone’s Twitter page for maybe fifteen minutes during the course of a busy day. They move very fast and you need to keep a steady stream of tweats going out if you want to get really good results. You also need a huge audience, or group of “followers” as Twitter calls them.

There is no question that social media is a powerful tool in internet marketing, but just how powerful and effective is still being determined. The results cannot be predicted because no one really knows what they are. Testing is still being done and new approaches are coming to light every day. One that is raising waves currently is the power of Twitter as a search engine. Because of the huge volume they get and the popularity of “tweating” in both business and personal markets Twitter is actually positioned to give Google some competition.

Many companies are also now building social networking communities that are specific to their particular type of business. A good example of this is in financial markets where investors are relying more and more on information gathered in a community effort and less on the paid “professionals” who have lost some credibility in the current economic crisis. This is another aspect of social marketing that could change the way business is done. With communities focused on specific topics it is now much easier to just ask if a product or service is in demand and will sell before it is put on the market.