Social Networking

SEnuke: Ready for action

With so much curiosity about how social networks function, one begins to wonder if you have advertising potential within these social networks?

I have been watching social network for a while now. The truth is I am a part of various social networking sites including https://www.linkedin.com and http://www.myspace.com/ just...

There has been a virtual explosion of social-networking sites in the past couple of years. Even the big people like Google, Yahoo and MSN are receiving into it.

With so much curiosity about how social networks work, one begins to wonder if there is advertising potential within these social networks?

I have been watching social media for a while now. In fact I am an associate of various social-networking internet sites including http://www.myspace.com/ and https://www.linkedin.com just to name two.

I joined partly because I wished to see what these were, but moreover to see what effect social network would have on SEM in-the coming years. I discovered http://deckbiz.com/news/mike-marko-publishes-post-about-marketing-through-linkedin/0169746/ by browsing Google.

I've been an associate of various services for some time and the reach these sites have is amazing.

Like, from my LinkedIn network of eight people I've an expanded network of over 12,600 people.

Imagine that - I am only a click or two away from close to 13,000 others who share my related interests ranging from what I like to watch on TV to work I can give to them.

Through my connections and their connections, I'm related to people starting from the American Cancer Society, to Sun Microsystems to the University of Texas to Google.

But what advertising opportunities exist for Social Network?

Well, let's examine MySpace.

MySpace is one of many prime sites online today. Visit Mike Marko Publishes Post about Marketing through Linkedin to check up how to flirt with this enterprise. It racked up 9.4 thousand page-views in August 2005 (significantly more than Google) and new users are signing up at a rate of 3.5 million monthly.

MySpace is typical of where todays 18-30 year-old would go to manage their digital life. It allows users to publish photographs of themselves and their friends, produce a website, list a common groups, watch and share videos, suggest things to do and lists some people they consider friends. It is with this 'Friends List' where a lot of the opportunities lay.

All forty million-plus consumers of MySpace have a friends page that lists people that person considers their friend. This really is a list of people that they're interested in reading from on a normal basis, in addition to speaking with and about. Once you add somebody as your friend they can send you messages, discuss your photos, read your websites, in addition to abandon messages that you can then share with others. This is a chance for immediate feedback about you.

The ability to add friends to your page is critical for marketing to MySpace consumers. Based on Courtney Holt, mind of new media and strategic advertising at Interscope Records, 'This generation is growing up with no ever watched programmed media. 'They do not think in terms of the recording, and they don't think in terms of a TV schedule. They think with regards to TiVo, P2P, AOL, and of-course MySpace.

You can view how this could develop.

Let's say you produce a MySpace account to talk about your service or product. You website about this and look for your interests that may be shared by others.

After this you ask them to be your friend. Once they become a friend you begin your 'soft offer' begging your solution to them.

As they grow to understand it, they begin blogging and discussing it. Soon thousands or even thousand of people are talking about you and your product or service.

Do not think this will work?

I'd like to give you some examples. There are lots of artists who have gotten their start on MySpace. Simply by hosting some of their music on the web and blogging about them-selves they created a following. Soon they'd document deals and contracts lined-up.

Needless to say to work with services like MySpace you need to get anything this target market needs. If you don't then you probably should not put a lot of effort in-to MySpace.

But that will not mean other social network opportunities must be overlooked. When I stated earlier, Linked-in is more of a professional introduction service. If your service or product meets here then by all means examine it more.

And there are others also. Companies such as Yahoo!s MyWeb, Flickr, http://del.icio.us and more.

So if you have ever wondered what other online opportunities could be out there, consider social-networking. Maybe it's the next great online marketing channel..