In this post I'm going to discuss the social networking websites I have decided to target and why.
In deciding which sites to use I looked at:
- Members and traffic
- Usability
- Accessibility- How easy is it to market and promote on these sites
- Customizability and design- How can I customize and modify my page for more effective marketing?
- Competition- Who else is marketing and profiting from these sites?
As I stated in my Getting Started Post, I will be using Myspace and Bebo and another two. Here are my decisions and why. I used this wikipedia article , that listed all the social networking sites and their stats. I Recommend you have a look. Also, I have excluded youtube from my list because I will be looking at that in a different way. That doesn't mean I have forgotten it!
1) Myspace:
Market leader with 245,000,000 profiles, myspace spans a global
demography that is simply impossible to ignore.
On top of that the profiles, although they are ugly, are very customizable, which in return makes it easier to promote my bridge sites. The use of broadcast messages are vital to the myspace marketing concept.
Competition: The amount of marketers on myspace is unknown, but clearly myspace is the most targeted website by marketers because of the vast amount of members, making the competition tough.
Plan: Create Four profiles, each profile will have a different marketing approach, i.e. promotion method, content type, relationship etc. Hopefully, this will determine what approach works best for any other ventures that may arise if this one proves successful. Also I must take a look at groups and develop one.
2) Bebo:
Predominately european based, bebo has in excess of 40,000,000 active users. Having briefly used some social networking sites, I think that bebo is the best in terms of design, function and enjoyment. However, the commenting system works differently to myspace, html is forbidden making it harder to market through comments. That said the group profiles that can be created often attract hundreds of thousands of members. Many of the groups that have vast amount of members are never capitalized on, this is one of the reasons I believe that the competition on bebo maybe be irrelevant or non-existent.
Plan: Create three profiles and two groups. The groups will fall under my niche and serve as a stepping stone to my bridge sites. As with my myspace plan , each profile I setup will follow a different approach and promotion route to determine the best one.
3) Facebook
124,000,000 million profiles strong, large amount of students, which suites my niche and I hate it. But it's simply to huge to ignore.
I am sure I will get used to it and maybe it will prove to be the most effective site to promote on. An aspect that does appeal to me is the facebook flyer program which I will discuss in later posts.
Plan: Create two profiles, add friends, basic content and promote my bridge sites. This plan will become more clear with facebook once I begin with it.
4) You decide.
Choosing these sites was quite difficult. Every social networking site covers some sort of area that another doesn't. So I have decided to let you decide. I have added a poll in the sidebar and I would love if you voted to help me decide. The poll will close in a month. I have broken the options down to 4; Xanga, habbo, netlog and livejournal.
Please leave a comment on this post stating which one of those 4 you think is the best and why.
Remember this is just the beginning. Eventually I will drop sites and add more depending on results.
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