So how will marketers use it?
“Trust is essential, and it has to be authentic.” That’s what Nirav Tolia, chief executive of Nextdoor, said in an interview about building a community. You can check out the article here. Nextdoor has built more than 50,000 communities across the U.S., allowing neighbors to quickly communicate in order to make their neighborhoods a safer and better place to be. So why are people adopting this platform?
The concept is around making peoples’ lives better. Nextdoor can be used to organize neighborhood watch groups, notify neighbors of a lost dog, find a babysitter, or plan a barbecue. What’s also interesting is that the social network works with hundreds of government agencies that can send out alerts, for example, a break-in or crime nearby. Intrigued? This video shows you what it’s all about.
What I find most fascinating is how Nextdoor could ultimately become a white-glove service, like Uber for example, where users can recommend a service directly from the platform and take a portion of the cost of the service. The recommendations are coming from people you know and trust in your community, instead of a random review online. It’s a much different approach than what you would traditionally see on other social platforms. The platform is there—it’s a matter of users adopting it. Will Nextdoor (like most other social platforms) make the move towards social ad spending in order to stay afloat in a world with an overload of social networks?
Maybe Nextdoor is a prime platform for social ad spending. It’s a great way for marketers to target users with products or services because they have already joined the network for that specific need. Whether a user is looking for a new lawn mower or an opinion on the color to paint their kitchen, it’s an easy avenue from a marketer’s perspective. Even though the ads won’t be the crowdsourcing method of gaining recommendations, it will still initiate the thought of wanting to buy based on a need. Could ads take away from the community feel? It will be interesting to see what they do.
The transformations in technology continue to amaze me. There are so many ways to connect with others, and so many platforms to do so. It’s only a matter of time before technology is the primary way we will communicate, work, and make buying decisions—if it isn’t already.
Posted by Sarah Prokopchak, Account Coordinator at initiate-it, a fully committed, fully prepared, full-service agency in Richmond, Virginia. Sarah has been working with initiate-it for over two years on a variety of client accounts including Sandler, VCU Health and CarLotz.