Much has been written about online branding for individuals and businesses. Advertisers are flocking to social networks with the aim of insuring their presence within personal networks that have affinities for products or services offered.
Traditional advertising approaches are aimed at attracting buyers through awareness and unique messages using different mediums. Today most of the profiles on social networks are personal profiles. This has recently changed. Business profiles now enable businesses to reach consumers and other businesses directly rather than through traditional online advertising mediums.
Today's social networks are designed for individuals to create profiles categorized by meta tags indicating a taxonomy of affinities. A business has presence in a network through its people. Business 3.0 enables a business to have a presence within networks by having its own business profile. These business profiles include a listing of its products and services, e-commerce engines for people to exchange products and services and links to the people in the network who represent the interest of the business. The principles for business profiling will be different than those for individual profiles. The rules of the game will again change.
Social networks are ripe ground for businesses to directly market and sell their products and services to people and other businesses. While many may say that is already true today, the difference is enabling businesses to have a direct vs. indirect presence within networks.
Through social networks, businesses are able to connect with other businesses and have their presence seen directly rather than only through people in a particular business network.
Enabling businesses to have and manage their own profiles within networks and exchange goods and services through these networks may in fact be the process that further ignites the medium to become more than just a "social network". Additionally, many businesses spend thousands of dollars to participate in trade shows and conventions throughout any given year. Social networks represent a medium for a 24/7 trade show at a fraction of the cost of "physical trade shows and conventions". Business 3.0 is launching a virtual exhibit hall to be accessed through multiple networks within the next week.
Since launching late last year, Business 3.0 has had over 700 businesses register profiles and utilize their application as a new tool to reach customers. In addition the Business 3.0 application is now able to integrate business and personal profiles. Business 3.0 has also launched a shopping mall enabling businesses to sell products directly to users within social networks. Next is the launch of an e-commerce payment solution that is significantly less expensive than the current dominant system, Paypal.
Just think about the possibilities.