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Plan: Introduction Part I: All about Social network sites 1. Social Network Sites: A Definition 2. History of Social Network Sites 3. Brief history of Twitter, Myspace and Facebook Part II: Marketing through the social network 1. Facebook marketing 2. Marketing techniques for facebook 3. Example of a company using Facebook marketing services Conclusion 1 | Page Abstract: Social network sites (SNSs) are increasingly attracting the attention of more and more users around the world. This academic research explains why social network sites are so special and unique by giving some keys of their success. The purpose of this research is to provide a conceptual and an historical context for social network sites, and get an idea about how the marketing department works in these sites. We begin by defining what is a social network site and then present the historical development of SNSs, after that we shall speak about marketing through SNSs. We conclude with an example of a company using Facebook marketing services. 2 | Page Introduction: Since their introduction, social network sites (SNSs) such as MySpace, Facebook and Twitter have attracted millions of users, some of us have integrated these sites into their daily practices. There are hundreds of SNSs supporting a wide range of interests and practices that individuals chose according to their needs, expectation and what kind of persons they are seeking. One of these sites has exceeded 500 million users and dream of a more prestigious future by innovating the online marketing services very well. This emergent phenomenon allowed users to keep in touch with their friends in an easy and cheap way. So what makes social network sites unique? What is the historical development of SNSs? And how a small company can use SNSs marketing services for it advertising strategy? Part I: All about Social network sites 1. Social Network Sites: A Definition: According to Danah m. boyd 1& Nicole B. Ellison 2a social network sites is a web-based services that allow individuals to construct a public or semi-public profile within a bounded system, articulate a list of other users with whom they share a connection, and view and traverse their list of connections and those made by others within the system. What makes them unique? What makes social network sites unique is not that they allow individuals to meet strangers, but rather that they enable users to view profiles that display an articulated list of Friends who are also users of the system. After joining an SNS, an individual is asked to fill out forms containing a series of questions. The profile is generated using the answers to these questions, which typically include descriptors such as age, location, interests, and an "about me" section. Most sites also encourage users to upload a profile photo. Some sites allow users to improve their profiles by adding multimedia content or modifying their profile's look and feel. 2. History of Social Network Sites: The first social network site launched in 1997. SixDegrees.com allowed users to create profiles, list their Friends and, surf the Friends lists. Profiles existed on most major dating sites and many community sites. AIM and ICQ buddy lists supported Danah m. boyd is a Ph.D. candidate in the School of Information at the University of CaliforniaBerkeley and a Fellow at the Harvard University Berkman Center for Internet and Society. Her research focuses on how people negotiate mediated contexts like social network sites for sociable purposes. 1 2 Nicole B. Ellison is an assistant professor in the Department of Telecommunication, Information Studies, and Media at Michigan State University. Her research explores issues of self-presentation, relationship development, and identity in online environments such as weblogs, online dating sites, and social network sites. 3 | Page lists of Friends, although those Friends were not visible to others. Classmates.com allowed people to affiliate with their high school or college and surf the network for others who were also affiliated, but users could not create profiles or list Friends until years later. From 1997 to 2001, a number of community tools began supporting various combinations of profiles and publicly articulated Friends. AsianAvenue, BlackPlanet, and MiGente allowed users to create personal, professional, and dating profiles users could identify Friends on their personal profiles without seeking approval for those connections. Like any brief history of a major phenomenon, ours still incomplete. In the following paragraph we shall discuss Twitter, MySpace, and Facebook, three SNSs that have changed the conception of SNSs and introduce a business approach to their system. 3. Brief history of Twitter, Myspace and Facebook: a. Twitter: Twitter was founded in March 2006 by Evan Williams, Jack Dorsey, and Biz Stone. In 2006 Williams and Biz Stone co-founded Obvious Corp along with other former Odeo employees. Twitter was created as a separate company in April 2007 by Obvious Corp. Since its creation in 2006, Twitter has become very popular worldwide. Its revenue raised over US$57 million in 2009, against $35 million in 2008. Twitter is the fastest growing free micro-blogging software that allows keeping in touch with people by creating their own pages where they can express their interests, their life or may be their problems. b. Myspace: The origin of the MySpace.com domain was a site owned by YourZ.com, Inc. It was founded in August 2003 by Tom Anderson. Shortly after launching the site, team member Chris DeWolfe suggested that they start a new kind of profile dedicated to talented musicians who need help for producing their albums, Myspace take these artists in charge and make them in contact with a potential producer. This idea allowed to Myspace to make a large and successful community. c. Facebook: Facebook was launched in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg for following Boston University students. The network was extended to other Boston universities and all US universities few mounts later. It became Facebook.com in August 2005 after the address was purchased for $200,000. US high schools could sign up from September 2005, then it began to spread worldwide, reaching UK universities the following month. 4 | Page In September 2006, the network was extended beyond educational institutions to anyone with a registered email address. The site remains free to join, and makes a profit through advertising revenue. It annual revenue was about $ 300 million in the year 2008. It has international operations and regional headquarters around the world. Due to its wide popularity around the world, it has a large potential for advertising. Prior to Facebook, online advertisement consisted mostly of annoying pop ups and banners. However, Facebook has innovated the online marketing very well by employing some exciting strategies. Part II- Marketing Through the social network: 1. Facebook Marketing A popular website Compte.com had reported in the year 2009 that Facebook was the most popular social networking site. Its popularity has risen mainly due to its elegant interface and variety of applications that are provided to the customers. There have been numerous attempts of buying Facebook by big organizations such as Yahoo but those attempts have not materialized till now. Most big corporations are registered with Facebook and are using it as a platform to connect with their customers. There are numerous applications which have been used quite effectively by them to connect with their customers. Facebook allows creation of profile pages, discussion forums and polls etc which can be used by these organizations to gauge the feedback of the customers for their products. This feedback can be used to improve upon their policies, products and services. Facebook has even started creation of customized advertisement campaigns for different organizations. Using this, audience is presented relative advertisement to their location, age, gender etc. This helps the individual users to get access of advertisement of such products which might be useful to them. For example a person living in a cold location such as Alaska would be shown advertisement of heating solutions. Further, the female members would be presented advertisement of prom dresses. Such utilities have helped in the rapid popularity of Facebook. Millions of users access Facebook daily and efforts are being put to develop effective tools to tap the huge fan following for advertisements. The different advertisers can create groups and promote them among the users who have related interests. So, how can a small companies use? By using some marketing techniques 2. Marketing Techniques for Facebook 5 | Page You can use the following techniques when it comes to using Facebook as an effective and low cost marketing tool that also enables you to develop the trust and the credibility with the people who use Facebook. Establishing a Facebook Group: You can create a Facebook group for a product or service to enable Facebook users to engage with the product and to interact with other people who also benefits from the product or service. The group established can be used to promote the product or service effectively that can reach millions of users in a low cost manner. Through establishing a Facebook group for a product or service, you are also enabled to connect with your market through posting engaging content like blogs, posts, videos, and pictures that can help promote and sell the product or service to your market. Creating a Fan Page for a Product or Service: Creating a fan page for a product or service can be used to gauge how many Facebook users use a certain product or service that created that specific fan page; this can help a lot when it comes to analyzing the market and successfully determining the demographics of the fans of the product or service. Utilizing Facebook Paid Space: Using Facebook paid space is also an effective yet low cost marketing tactic you can use to expose your product or service to the millions of users worldwide. This can provide a great amount of daily exposure and it will easily become a lot more popular. When it comes to finding an effective yet low cost platform that you can use for the effective promotion of different products and services, using this popular social platform is an effective way to reach your target market easily and to develop the trust of the users and the product’s capability. It is important that you fully understand how Facebook works so that you can effectively use it as an effective low cost marketing tool, knowing more about this popular social platform will definitely help you utilize it well for your marketing endeavors. 3. Facebook: The Small Business Marketing Tool Five years ago, Facebook was nothing but a thought. Today, it is not only the most popular website on the internet, but it is also where 400 million users visit to exchange messages, posts photos and play games. Facebook is a marketing opportunity that you cannot pass up as a small business. Many large businesses use Facebook as a way to market themselves, and as a small business you should be thinking of marketing yourself on Facebook. How do you go about this? Well, it is surprisingly easy. 1. First of all, you want to add as many friends as you can to begin this form of small business marketing. Facebook as a limit of 5,000 friends but that offers you a great networking opportunity. Add your friends, their friends, family and more and you will see your friend list greatly increase. 6 | Page 2. Create a fan page for your business. This fan page is where you will put up pictures of your business, information about it, and how people can reach you. ²3. Invite all your friends on Facebook to your fan page. This will give you hundreds or even a couple thousand fans on your fan page. So, now what do you do? Now you use the fan page to its full advantage for your small business marketing. The first thing you do is begin to put up notices on the fan page to get people interested. These can include things like “Today only, 50 percent off!” and that will help notify people about your sale on your website. Every time you post something on your fan page, your customers will see it on their own Facebook pages. It is like giving them an advertisement without them even realizing it. Another way you can make sure that you help get customers coming to your website to buy products is by offering special deals for your customers. So, you put something on your fan page that says “Come to the website and use this Code: K838LJ and get one free product with anything you buy! So, now you are giving a special offer only to your fans that they will be able to take advantage of. If your fan page has 10,000 fans, you are reaching as many as you would with a newspaper or television advertisement without ever having to pay a dime, except for the cost of your internet. That is what makes Facebook such a great way to go about small business marketing. 4. Example of a company using Facebook marketing services LARAKI is a Moroccan luxury cars manufacturer. It founded by Abdeslam Laraki in Casablanca when he was 31 years old. In 2001 Laraki launch his first car call Fulgura after a large success, he expect to launch a new car called Borac. Laraki fans page have more than 2000 contacts in Morocco. They can see pictures and videos of different models cars of Laraki. In the same time, they can give them 7 | Page opinions. Laraki isn’t a big business like any businesses in worldwide. It’s most important that Laraki use this method of marketing, they spend not money for that because it’s free. 8 | Page