New Opportunities with the 1% Rule and Social Marketing

I have been actively learning about how to use online social networks as a resource to develop word of mouth marketing. I have been spending a lot of time on the blogs of the member board for the Word of Mouth Marketing Summit and have found some very intriguing opportunities that can be applied to more localized marketing efforts.

Before I get into opportunities, I want to share with you the 1% rule and it’s sister, the 10% rule. Ben McConnell and Jackie Huba posted the rule on their blog and it is stated as:

The 1% Rule: Roughly 1% of your site visitors will create content within a democratized community. (Horowitz also says that some 10% of the total audience "synthesizes" the content, or interacts with it.)

So this rule states that for a given online community, 1% of the visitors will stop to create a profile and 99% will zip on through. In addition, of those 1% that stop, only 10% will become a contributing member.

Now for the opportunity…. How do we use the 1% and 10% rules to garner the biggest amount of exposure?

It is as simple as be the one and ten percent. Online social networks are popping up at an exponetial rate and the interests and reach of participants in these communites are becoming more and more tailored; which by the way is a marketer’s dream to have a direct communication link into a target market. My advice is to start looking for the online networks that serve your targe market or specific community. If you come across them, be sure to leave a profile, and stop by once in a while to participate. To give you a personal example, I spend my time on ActiveRain, I share my thoughts on MyBlogLog, and Ibsteam seems to send a small amount of traffic my way. I even Konnect every once in a while and grow within the netvibes eco system.

If you are looking for a way to take advantage of the explosive growth in online social networks to attract real estate clients, identiyf the social networks that appeal to your target market and dive right in. Sumit your feed, participate in the networks and blog blog blog.

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