Internet Advertising on Social Networks
With the explosion of social networking sites such as Myspace, Facebook LinkedIn and YouTube to name a few, many marketers are wondering about the promotional opportunities that they offered. While many of these sites enjoy large amounts of traffic, it doesn’t necessarily guarantee that you’ll see lots of interest in your site unless you approach advertising on social networks in the right way.
It’s important to remember that social networking sites are powerful word-of-mouth tools. This means you rarely communicate with just target audience, rather you are talking to that audience and their friends, family and co-workers. This is because if your initial contact is appealing then the person that saw your message will forward it to the rest of their network. That’s pretty powerful stuff.
There are a lot of different ways you can advertise on social networks from creating profile pages or buying banner ads to buying advertising directly from the social networking sites. For example, Myspace allows you to fill out an online form that leads to a representative calling you to talk about different advertising options. Facebook has polls and flyers as well as additional options for sale.
While it may seem like, and occasionally be, a good idea to purchase advertising from these social networks keep in mind that the people using the sites are Internet savvy and quite possibly a little jaded or doubtful of any ads they’ll see. That’s why word-of-mouth is so important on social networking sites.
In order to create a reason for social networkers to share your information successfully you’ll need to research what they are sharing already. Then figure out how your site or products can be integrated into that. It may be a good idea to outsource the production of you Internet advertising to young, hip interns that know what entertains people in this sphere.
Another possibility is that Myspace and Facebook are too broad for your angle. Wikipedia offers a pretty comprehensive list of social networking sites here. Whatever your angle remember that intrusive, spammy acts just push people away. Let them know you’re there and do something interesting and the word will spread eventually
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