Collaborative filtering is a process which automatically create groups of customers with similar buying experience and behaviour. Every company buy and rent lists of people with particular experience and who can possibly buy product through direct advertising, coupons, phone calls, and online stores. Large companies spend millions dollars to keep updated information about groups of people they can possibly target.
Web 2.0 and social networking made collaborative filtering even easier because now companies don’t have to track customer right after he bought product… people join communities and groups of people through social sites by themself and it is easy to find shopping interests right away. When large companies still spend millions to track shoppers let’s take a look how small business owner can find customer through social networks creating collaborative process.
First of all we should make sure that our small business owner don’t spam and play fair game on the field of social media. Spam is “dark side” of web advertising which also never lead to long term success. Using social sites to sell product and services you should become a proud member of this network sharing valuable information with community. Strong articles, support, activity, and good profile is the way to do business right.
For example you sell books about US history. Your online store contain products about JFK, Pilgrims, Native Americans, Bunker Hill, and other related information.
Let’s take a look on MySpace Network and their public groups you might be interested in:
- Military and military supporters group. (48 557 members)
- Active young America group. (8 637 members)
- MySpace book club group. (20 149 members)
- The book club (17 264 members)
- Florida State University group (8 163 members)
Total in 5 groups: over 102 000 people with interests which could be interested in your product. Digging deeper it is possible to find over a 1000 large and medium groups with millions members.
If we go to Zimbio social network (news and stories network for web publishers) we can find over a hundreds groups which related to your business. Thousands members read newest articles and updates in the community they joined or subscribed. The same way you can join many social networks.
How it possible to reach all this people without spam and policy abuse?
- Create profile with your personal information, contact page, links to your online stores.
- Upload content, post strong articles / posts with valuable information.
- Use your business logo and slogan.
- Join communities and begin to contribute them.
- Add most active members to your friend list.
- Give good feedbacks to active users.
- Post a lot to create recognition.
If you become to spam, your message will be delivered to some users who just block you and report abuse. When you contribute to community it brings trust and authority which you can use for marketing. Later, begin to use strong words like: “one of the members on my website told”, “as person who sell books online my opinion is”, ”i love this book too and i actually sell it in my store”, “interesting book arrived to my store and i was happy to read it”, ”thank you Jimmy that you registered on my online store and left nice feedback” etc. You don’t have to spam or send direct messages to visit your website, people browse your profile and visit your site because of curiosity to your person as potential friend.
