In the past decade, businesses found a new best friend in the form of social networks that allowed them to interact with customers in real time. Business social networking gave birth to two promising fields both of which have emerged to be useful in helping businesses control and measure successes. They are Social Media Campaigns or Social Media Marketing and Social Network Development. While both are offshoots of the social network era and are widely used by businesses, they both are quite different from each other.

Let’s see how:

Meanings

Social Media Marketing simply means that you use the existing social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, Linked-in, Instagram, Tumblr, Pinterest etc in order to attract and engage customers. Social Network Development, on the other hand, is a wider term that involves creating niche platforms for targeted customers so as to solve their problems, address their needs and build lasting loyalty through continuous value-additions. While SMM is widely used to attract customers, it has mostly failed to engage them in the longer run. Social media a double-edged sword since customers are openly complaining against any sub-standards and despite real-time query handling, these may have a damaging effect on the retention of customers. But businesses who are opting to add a layer of social network personality to niche web and mobile applications are able to truly address the needs of customers, thereby building lasting engagement and loyalty.

What’s more effective?

A survey revealed that 90% of companies now use social media for business—yet most aren’t certain it adds value to the bottom line, and more than 60% have trouble assessing its impact or turning metrics in actionable ideas. Those who can measure results directly have discovered social media is far less effective at driving direct purchases than email or search advertising. This means that Social Media Marketing may have reached a saturation point already. Thus, many mature companies, corporations and startups are waking up to isolate their customers onto a common platform where word-of-mouth mechanics still prevail and personalized engagement leads to sales. Take for example, http://frenzy.me/ is a web application that used the social networking habit of consumers to create a networking platform where buyers engage in fashion conversations and are able to ‘shop images’ used in the blogs and fashion articles. This web application first engaged consumers with fashion bloggers and allowed noted brands, designers to showcase their product images embedded in the articles.

Problem solving and social network development

One of the major reasons why businesses are switching to social network development instead of spending a lot of social media campaigns is that the latter has failed to engage customers fruitfully. This means millions of people engage in social media interactions with these companies but they may not necessarily be the intended buyers. Using social networking applications onto an existing business or building a custom social network platform for targeted customers is a better use of money and resources as it ensures long-term results. One such example is http://enroll.com/ that has successfully onboarded 1,50,000 needy users onto its platform for providing educational resources to parents, students and tutors.
Many sports leagues are now opting to an exclusive sports social network instead of engaging fans only on their Facebook or Twitter pages. The idea is to build a lasting brand loyalty among ONLY those audiences who are likely to buy your products or services. When a social network personality is added into a business, it becomes an inherent sales process that adds trust.