If you’re involved in social networking you might have to fight off advertising this year as advertisers are trying to figure out a way to get to your eyeballs. Of course, if you’re an advertiser then you might be sexing up those eyeballs with your own ads. There’s just one catch – how?
Yes, there are a lot of people involved in social networking and from the way it looks right now, this will only grow. So advertising prospects are looking pretty good for advertisers right now. The problem is, many social networkers don’t like advertising. They’re at the social networks to network, not be advertised to. So even if they see your ad the chance of them clicking on it is pretty slim.
The challenge for social networks this year will be to figure out a way to sell advertising to advertisers that the networkers on their sites will tolerate. The risk for the networking sites is the possibility of losing visitors if they feel they are just a person to be marketed to. And that’s always a risk with an online website of any kind. The content and its benefits must outweigh the obtrusiveness of the advertising. Otherwise, your credibility will head south.
Not to Facebook: Sell advertising, but make your ads subtle.
