Is MySpace a Social Network?

MySpace is the largest social network in the world, with more than 122 million members. However, the company does not necessarily want to be known as king of the social networks.

As some industry observers— including some at eMarketer—have questioned social media’s financial prospects, it is enlightening to note that even the top company in the space sees the term as potentially confining.

In a briefing with eMarketer, MySpace CEO and co-founder Chris DeWolfe put it this way: “From the very beginning, we’ve always said that we were a next-generation portal and that MySpace was all about people connecting over shared interests.”

Jeff Berman, the company’s president of sales and marketing, added, “The classic portal model is content-driven, and it’s top-down with a separate communications platform.

“We sit in a hybrid space. If you think about how others in the space are trying to define what they want to be, you hear more people talking about wanting to be the starting point on the Internet. Well, that’s what we are,” Mr. Berman continued.

This is not just a matter of semantics: Ad spending on social networks still represents a small fraction of total online ad spending—much less than the search and display ads of the largest portals.

courtesy: www.emarketer.com

Social Network Marketing – Great, but Not for Everyone?

MySpace, Bebo, Facebook– these channels are becoming a part of the marketing mix (at least in thought, if not in action yet), and considering the size of these communities and the traffic they attract, it comes as no surprise. While Google pipped Microsoft to the post by clinching a deal with MySpace, Microsoft is certainly not letting go of what will inevitably grow to be a good marketing channel. It has signed an agreement for the exclusive distribution of banner ads on Facebook, which has a registered user base of over 9 million.

Like affiliate marketing, social network marketing is becoming a separate powerful marketing channel; and again, like affiliate marketing, leveraging these networks may be closely tied to search marketing (though it doesn’t have to be that way). From what we know of the demographics, this avenue is not for all kinds of companies and all kinds of products. For example, music, DVDs, iPODs, student loans – most likely yes; mortgages, grocery– most likely, not.

I think venues such as MySpace and Facebook provide a nice platform for individual affiliate publishers to drive traffic/ sales. However, as things are today, these may not be as effective a channel for the larger affiliate publishers (companies) — in terms of scale and costs. But it is certainly something we cannot be completely detached from, because I suspect a sustainable and scalable model for large affiliates to emerge sooner rather than later.

courtesy: trafficjunction.co.uk

Dueling Social Marketing Definitions

On the heels of Jay Bernhardt’s explanation of why the CDC uses the term “health marketing” instead of “social marketing” and Craig Lefebvre’s take on the term (“What the heck is health marketing?”), comes a new offensive on the definition of social marketing from the other direction.

Jupiter Research has just launched a new Social Marketing research service that will “provide marketers and site owners with recommendations on how to profit from the use of consumer generated content, blogs, podcasts and other emerging media tools.” Apparently they didn’t get the memo that there is already a long-established field called social marketing that uses marketing to bring about health and social change.

The burgeoning use of the term “social marketing” to refer to social media has already created confusion among techie types I know who have misunderstood what type of work I do. This leads to people talking past each other, thinking that the other knows what they mean when they are not on the same page at all. It’s as if one group of people suddenly started calling a new kind of dog a “cat;” they are very similar in general — four legs, furry, domesticated — but in the details they are quite different.

As a result of my initial discussion of this issue in March, the folks at Forrester Research decided to change the name of their “Social Marketing Bootcamp” to “Social Computing Bootcamp,” and they no longer use the term “social marketing” to avoid exactly this type of confusion. While I agree that “social marketing” would have been a great term to adopt if it did not already mean something else, it’s about 35 years too late for that.

I hope that, like Forrester, Jupiter will take another look at their erroneous terminology and take another stab at coming up with a term that is clear and accurate. Social network marketing, social media, consumer generated media, digital marketing — whatever they want to call it is fine. It would help potential clients find them instead of the many firms who offer social marketing services (using the real definition). And people won’t assume that Jupiter does health & social change research when they mention their social marketing research services. Do a google search for “social marketing” and you’ll see that for pages and pages of results there is nothing but links for companies and organizations working toward social change.

So if you are a social marketer, please join me in leaving a comment for Emily Riley, the lead analyst on the Social Marketing Service at Jupiter Research to let her know why they should consider changing the name, as well as letting other companies know when they use the term incorrectly.

It’s not just a matter of semantics. It’s about all of us doing the work we do best and making sure that the right people know about it. Everyone wins when clarity reigns.

courtesy: www.social-marketing.com

Social Network Marketing

Social Network Marketing uses already established social networks to infiltrate the marketing message. Another way is to establish a social network around a brand or product.

Using social networks as promotional tools is a pretty smart idea. The whole network is already set up. As friends are connected with friends of friends of friends, viral marketing is just a click away. People freely give away all kinds of information, starting with name, age and email-address, to hobbies, interests and almost everything else which is necessary to dig into the right target group. The challenge is not to interfere too clumsily, because that might scare away the users. Not many solutions are out so far, but marketers are starting to get the idea!

courtesy:www.business-opportunities.biz

Social Networks Are Niche Marketing Gold Mines

Social Networking sites can be much more than fun distractions and a way to keep track of your friends. Used correctly they can be very powerful List building tools. Websites like Twitter, Stumbleupon, Hubpages, Squidoo and Facebook are excellent tools for networking with and marketing to others in your niche. They are also great ways to drive traffic to your websites. If you want to build a niche list they are an invaluable resource.

The Micro-blogging site Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that allows users to follow one another through posts of 140 characters or less. It is a great place for posting small bits of information and for directing people to blogs or squeeze pages.

Stumbleupon is a social bookmarking site that works from a tool bar downloaded to your browser. It allows users to discover and rate web pages and ultimately functions to give social validity to some sites over others. The more your site is liked the higher value it is given by search engines. Stumbleupon is also a great tool for finding others in your niche.

Social Networking sites are extremely valuable tools for building niche lists. You don’t want to send spam or blatant advertising through these sites, but you can drive prospects to your squeeze page or your website where you can give them an incentive to share their contact information with you through an opt-in box.

The goal with using any of these sites is to build up your list. If you can attract people in your niche market, drive them to your site and have them sign up for your mailings, suddenly you have a growing list of people who are interested in the products you are offering.

courtesy:www.business-opportunities.biz