Jamie Baughman

If you don’t have a social networking profile set up on one of the following sites, not to worry. You can be set up and ready to roll in a matter of minutes. Most are free and very easy to use. The ones that charge a fee are reasonable. For those who are not knee deep in the ever-changing landscape of social networking we’ve written a quick cheat sheet on the most popular and hottest sites.

We’ve also included some marketing strategies for each one. But, before you go hog wild with your next guerrilla marketing push, remember that these sites are largely used for social interaction between friends and co-workers. Using these sites as a means to establish your brand and market a product is still a nascent field. Your first directive should always be to question whether or not you’re respecting the privacy of users and using the network for its intent and be honest! There are many examples of viral campaigns that were uncovered as elaborate hoaxes hatched by design firms or ad agencies. The result has not been pretty.

With that said though, it can be a great way to engage in a positive exchange between brand and consumer. Here are some of the largest and hottest social networking sites. Have fun!.

YouTube: With over 1Billion pageviews per day, YouTube is the largest video-sharing site on the web. Founded in 2005 and acquired by Google in 2006, YouTube is as an important media hub as any other in print or broadcast communication. Users can easily create a profile and upload video content to the site.

Try: Create a video promoting your site or company’s product and upload it to YouTube. Go for a straight commercial type shoot or go low-tech and shoot a homemade looking office video. When you think about your YouTube video think humor and something unconventional. Remember, even though it’s free doesn’t mean that you should throw up a ton of bad content. Make sure, whether homemade or professional produced, have the content be memorable. It’s still about telling a great story.

MySpace: If you have a teenage child, neice, nephew or neighbor (or are still trying to live out your college years) or have a band, you’re well acquainted with MySpace.  A popular watering hole for the 15-25 demographic and a massively popular social network for bands, solo performers and indie filmmakers.  MySpace has also seen a boon in corporate-run pages for big budget films, A-list bands and even celebrities.  I would encourage you to look into myspace if your company has any sort of media bend or your target audience is 25 or younger.  Although it’s losing ground rapidly to Facebook, MySpace still has well over 100Million unique visitors per month.  Joining MySpace is simple, and creating a fully filled out profile is also a relatively easy task.  There are areas for adding photos, video, and adding some of your favorite music in a custom player on your page.

Over the course of the last couple quarters, MySpace has drawn some fire for it’s over commercialization of its site.  What was supposed to be a mechanism for friends to connect with one another and indie bands to find a fanbase has now become rife with the likes of BK’s King and Britney Spears emailing you asking to be added to your friends list.  If you use a MySpace page to promote yourself, just be leery of not encroaching too much on users privacy.  It could backfire.

Try: Create a page for yourself or your business.  Add friends that fit your target demographic and send out selective content.  Maybe a special offer for MySpace friends, or if you’re a media-centric site, try releasing some content to your MySpace friends before anyone else.  Bands have famously used this to offer pre-release tracks to their audience…and hey, the distribution’s free.

Facebook: Definitely one of the hottest properties in the social networking landscape at the moment.  Unlike YouTube and MySpace (owned by Google and Fox Interactive Media respectively), Facebook is privately owned and operates out of Palo Alto, CA.   Facebook is essentially like MySpace in that it allows users to create a profile, add friends and become “fans” of their favorite musician, actor, tv show, etc.  Facebook is also home to a powerful adserving engine that serves up CPC advertising much like Google Adwords.  In some sense, Facebook offers a better advertising angle due to the fact that you can much more precisely target who sees your ad.  Compared to almost any other kind of advertising, Facebook is very affordable.  Just last month Facebook announced they had reached 200Million active users so your advertising reach is great.

Try: Create a “Fan” page or a “Group” to promote your business or product.  Like the other social networking sites, this requires a creative approach to marketing…no hard sells.  Distribute something that is creative, interesting and has real value.  It’s definitely important to remember that, even though you may be tempted to send out offers ad nauseum, hold back.  You don’t want the user to feel like they’re under an advertising attack.

LinkedIn: Think of LinkedIn as the social network for professional relationship management.  If you want to maintain a social networking profile that’s safe to show colleagues without fear of your weird cousin’s drunk wedding photos showing up, LinkedIn is the way to go.  This may be the most useful (in the practical sense) application for social networking as it exists primarily as an online resume or CV.  The idea is to be able to keep a profile and connect with others you trust in a business capacity.

There are both free and paid memberships; if you’re in the business of hobnobbing, I’d say the paid membership is worth the money.  It allows you to more easily connect with others and grow your network.  Once you sign up, make sure to complete your profile by asking for (and giving out) recommendations, adding your job history and make sure to be thorough and honest.  A website with 40Million users is not a good place to fluff your resume.

Try: Join a LinkedIn group.  LinkedIn groups facilitate the conversation between like-minded individuals.  There are groups for just about everything.  Join one that is in an area that you feel confident you are at or close to expert level in.  An area where you could productively add to the conversation.  Start to post on the group message board regularly and soon you’ll start to get some recognition and hopefully some additional traffic to your site.

The above sites are all useful in their own way.  The most important recommendation is to pick one or two you think would be most useful and commit to using them a set amount of time each week.  Many people sign up, dump a bunch of content then run for the hills never to update their profile again.  Spend a little time each week to add some new content and at least give the appearance that somebody’s still home.  That alone will help get more visitors engaged in your brand and traffic to your site.

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