When it Comes to Social Media, Think Old School

While social media is a reasonable new term to most marketers, the sites within the social media realm have often been around for quite some time. It's easy to focus your time and efforts on the current trendy "darlings" of the social media landscape, (umm...Digg anyone?) but most businesses would be far better served to focus their social media marketing on established sites like Yahoo Local Search or Amazon.com product reviews. That's not just me offering up the advice either, a new study from iProspect and Jupiter Research confirms it.

The study defines social media and social networking sites as the sites that allow Internet users to create content that can be viewed by other users. It found that the younger the user, the more likely they were to spend time on "new school" social media sites like MySpace and YouTube. That should come as no surprise to anyone that targets the younger demographic. However, since most businesses are looking to sell to more than just the college crowd, it's important to note that Amazon.com reviews (an old school social media site) were ranked as the most influential in terms of influencing purchase decisions.

In fact, the study showed that 33% of Internet users find their buying decisions being influenced by sites with consumer generated reviews and content. (No surprise to me...I plan on heading over to Ask City when I wrap up this blog post so that I can find someplace to get great NYC pizza here in Manhattan.)

An important thing to note? 90% of the users that visited social media and social networking sites did NOT post any content. That tells us a little something about how far social media still has to go in terms of growing up. People are willing to listen to the suggestions of others, but many of them are not yet ready to add their own opinions to the public mix. Convincing your happy customers to review you may be one of your biggest challenges when it comes to getting involved in the social media space.