Most people involved in technology will have heard of Moore’s Law. Briefly stated, back in 1965 the co-founder of chip maker Intel, Gordon Moore, wrote a whitepaper suggesting the number of transistors placed on an integrated circuit could double every two years. That means the processing power of computing devices could double every couple of years. Similarly, computing devices can get smaller as more powerful chips are created on smaller surfaces. Forty three years later, Moore’s Law still holds true.
A less famous but equally important law, phrased by the founder of 3com and the inventor of ethernet, is known as Metcalfe’s Law. In 1980, Bob Metcalfe figured the value of a telecommunications network is equal to the square of the number of nodes on the network. The addition of a relatively small number of nodes to a network enables that network to serve far more individuals or allows individuals on that network to make far more connections. The greater the number of nodes, the far more valuable the network.
Imagine trying to evaluate Facebook or MySpace by such measures. The numbers are mind boggling but social networks are living examples of Metcalfe’s Law in practice. The value of any given social network for Internet marketers is directly proportional to the number of connections individual members can make within or through that network. That’s one of the reasons Facebook, which still lacks a clear overarching revenue model, is so interesting to both Microsoft and Google.
The use of social networks for online marketing is still in its infancy but an growing number of extremely intelligent people are working to carve niches in a few of the emerging social media marketing (SMM) channels. It’s tough, intellectually challenging work but the rewards of spreading ideas or concepts through social networking applications are enormous. For search marketers, such rewards are first measured in increased traffic and then measured in increased conversions.
Watching the growth of the networks and monitoring the tone of participants is useful for Internet marketers however even the biggest brains in the industry have yet to figure out how to best use social networking to effectively promote their clients. Nevertheless, there is a gold-mine in social networks, if only the industry could articulate a method of extracting that gold without resorting to methods a kin to the cyanide based leaching process used in many real gold mines.
Bad reputations spread like wildfire across social networks and what appears to be a particularly clever means of marketing today could burn a great client tomorrow. Social media marketers are thus cautious about over-using or outright abusing the environment. That doesn’t mean SMM is as untouchable like SP@M. Many highly conscious marketers are working in the social space though much of their efforts are so subtle they hardly seem to get noticed. The big trick in social media marketing is to get a conversation started and then allow the weight of a massive network to provide the energy needed to propel that conversation to as many other people as possible.
This idea is not new but the presence of social networks makes the viral message far easier to catch on. “She tells two friends and they tell two friends and so on, and so on, and so on…” (quote from a shampoo commercial from the mid 1970’s)
Every social network has its own personality. Some, such as Linked-In or Ning are more professional in practice, used to connect like-minded business people. Others, like Twitter, have acquired the flavour of the gossip centered meeting space around the office water-cooler. In between these two polarities are a legion of social spaces including the two largest, MySpace and Facebook. Knowing your network make phrasing a message you wish to become a meme more feasible. Most importantly, knowing which nodes to talk to (the connections or connection points within each network) will make or break social media marketing efforts.
While I know of a number of current social media marketing campaigns I could use as examples, I have not sought permission from their creators to write about them. (I just thought of this post an hour ago while reading a short tribute to Metcalfe in Wired.com) The most important tip that can be passed through this post is simple in its complexity. Watch the size of the network you’re marketing through. Though bigger networks will not necessarily bring higher conversion rates (fairly few are talented enough marketers to sell ice-cubes to the Inuit), the larger networks with more connecting points will push your message to a larger number of monitors.
To recap Metcalfe’s Law: The value of a telecommunications network is equal to the square of the number of nodes on that network. — The message for savvy marketers? “Go forth when you can multiply.”
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