How to Harness the Power of “Social Bookmark” Websites.
Many companies these days that try to sell products in the form of digital media have the common problem of dealing with illegal downloading. After all, why pay for something when it’s actually more convenient to download it for free? The online gaming industry suffered from this for many years. An example of this would be Spore; countless hours were spent developing this “revolutionary game” that would supposedly change everything. The only revolutionary thing about Spore, however, was that it was pirated 1,700,000 times in less than three months.
An online gaming company known as Valve, however, seems to have pioneered a successful way to make money by distributing and managing over 1,100 games to about 25 million customers across the globe. Many players are willing to buy the game and “own” it in digital format to be a part of the close-knit online community.
I spend a lot of my time on “Social Bookmark” sites like Reddit or Digg, and I’ve noticed that the online gaming sections will be filled with constant praise for Valve. This is probably due to the fact that they treat their customers very well, as in reading 10,000’s of emails a day and responding to a lot of them. And when they respond to an email, users will share their experience on social media websites.
Approximately 250,000 users view this positive feedback on a daily basis. It seems that in our new social media driven world, treating customers exceptionally well is the best kind of marketing. Finally. When you treat the customers nicely, the customers will sell the product for you.