Social Media - The Next Great Marketing Medium?

With therefore much interest in how social networks function, one begins to wonder if you have marketing potential within these social networks?

I have been seeing social media for some time now. In fact I'm a member of numerous social network websites including http://www.myspace.com/ and https://www.linkedin.com only...

There has been a virtual explosion of social network web sites in the past few years. Even the players like Google, Yahoo and MSN are becoming into it.

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

I have been seeing social networking for some time now. In reality I am a part of various social-networking internet sites including https://www.linkedin.com and http://www.myspace.com/ simply to name two.

I joined partly because I wanted to see what they were, but moreover to see on SEM what influence social media could have in-the coming years. This pictorial image site has endless disturbing tips for the reason for this idea.

I have been an associate of various ser-vices for some time and the reach these sites have is extraordinary.

As an example, from my LinkedIn network of seven people I have an expanded network of over 12,600 people.

That is amazing - I am only a click or two away from close to 13,000 other folks who share my similar 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 attached to people including the American Cancer Society, to Sun Microsystems to the University of Texas to Google.

But what advertising possibilities are there for Social Network?

Well, let us examine MySpace.

MySpace is one of the prime sites on the net today. I-t racked up 9.4 billion page-views in August 2005 (significantly more than Google) and new people are signing up at a rate of 3.5 million per month.

MySpace is typical of where todays 18-30 year-old goes to manage their digital life. It allows people to publish photos of themselves and their friends, develop a weblog, record a common groups, watch and share videos, suggest things you can do and lists a couple of people they consider friends. It is with this 'Friends List' where the majority of the possibilities lay. Be taught further on the affiliated paper - Browse this hyperlink: needs.

All forty million-plus consumers of MySpace have a friends site that lists people that person considers their friend. This is a list of people who they are interested in conversing with and about, in addition to reading from on a normal basis. I found out about open in a new browser by browsing Yahoo. Once you put somebody as your friend they can send you messages, discuss your pictures, read your blogs, in addition to leave messages that you can then give the others. That is the opportunity for instant feedback about you.

The capacity to add friends to your page is critical for advertising to MySpace users. In accordance with Courtney Holt, mind of new media and strategic marketing at Interscope Records, 'This technology is growing up with out ever seen programmed media. 'They don't think in terms of the album, and they do not think in terms of the TV schedule. They think in terms of TiVo, P2P, AOL, and naturally MySpace.

You can see how this might grow.

Let us say you create a MySpace account to talk about your product or service. You weblog about this and seek out others that'll share your interests.

You then ask them to be your friend. If you believe anything, you will possibly wish to learn about partner site. When they become a friend you start your 'gentle market' pitching your solution in their mind.

They begin blogging and sharing it, as they grow to understand it. Quickly hundreds or even thousand of individuals are referring to you and your product or service.

Don't think this will work?

Allow me to give you a few examples. There are numerous artists who've gotten their begin MySpace. By simply hosting some of their music o-nline and blogging about them-selves they developed a following. Soon they had report deals and contracts lined-up.

Needless to say to utilize services like MySpace you'll need to get some thing this target audience needs. If you do not then you probably should not put a lot of energy in to MySpace.

But that will not mean other social networking opportunities ought to be ignored. As I mentioned previously, LinkedIn is more of a specialist introduction service. If your service or product fits here then by all means explore it more.

And there are the others too. Companies including Flickr, Yahoo!s MyWeb, http://del.icio.us and more.

If you have ever wondered what other online possibilities may be out there, con-sider social-networking. Maybe it's another great website marketing channel..