Months after the release of "The Social Network", I sit there watching and say to myself "I could do that!" But as the character that plays Mark Zuckerburg says "You know you really don't need a damn forensic team to get to the bottom of this. If you guys were the inventors of Facebook you'd have invented Facebook"
Although imitation is the best form of flattery, successful entrepeneurs know that to stand out in the crowd doing the same thing as everyone else is usually not the way to go. I am sure that people might have referred to Facebook as the "new MySpace" or the "new Friendster", and for a time it seemed that was the case to me. However, over the past few weeks of watching interviews with Facebook CEO, Mark Zuckerburg, his focus, and reason for success, is not on copying someone else, but taking a common sense approach to Social Networking.
Interview after interview, the billionaire boy genius repeats the focus: make it comfortable for people to share information. From a business standpoint, there was a saying that the best form of advertising is word-of-mouth. However, social networking has changed the forum for that thought as adequately stated in "The Social Network" : "Bosnia? They don't have roads, but they have Facebook."
Now I'm sure everyone reading this is so good with sales that they can sell ice to an Eskimo, but what if, and this is a crazy assumption, that the Eskimos would rather have a portable heater? In this instance, you aren't going to change your industry, because ice is what you know and have a passion for. I've learned that Marketing is 95% research and 5% advertisement, and this is where social networking helps. Running with this cliche example, say you have a website that geographically and demographically focuses on Eskimos, and your website is about selling ice. Implementing social techniques within your site you may find out there is a need for ice picks. Well this falls in the realm of your industry, so you adjust your focus to ice picks. People don't want to pick their own ice, so you still have ice as a product to sell, however, your clientelle widens and your business increases. Adding social networking techniques may broaden your clientelle and give you the realization that the water purification units you use for producing ice is also a desire for your clientelle.
Can every website be the new Facebook? What's the point? However, instead of trying to copy what is already successful, or contrarily, reinvent the wheel, why not use the foundations of social marketing (marketing 2.0) to work for your industry corporation. If you don't believe that this is the way to go, Facebook me.
