What do you think about advertising in social networks?

[Ghost]

For a small business , do you think advertising in social network like orkut help to reap profits?
How does advertising in social networks work ?

[rajan2365]

No Way...You might be deceived...

[PoisonApple.com]

Hi! I actually own a business and advertise using social networks. Underground Social Network Advertising is the future of marketing because it allows you to target your key demographic and reach millions of people with just a few clicks. Not to mention that the users of these social sites are pretty obsessive about logging on and checking their messages every 5 minutes so you'll get plenty of exposure.

What I did when I first started my business was to use social networking sites to make contacts with people in my industry (clothing) and to reach teens and young adults who were my potential customers by adding them as friends on my personal page.

I actually dedicated an hour a day to adding friends on my Myspace to increase my exposure. Advertising firms are now taking social networking sites seriously and are devoting serious resources into it. I have friends who's jobs are only to add people on myspace for companies and bands.

My business has thrived because of social networking sites and you know what the best thing is? It's free. It just takes a little bit of creativity

Hope that helps!

~Mark Lim
http://www.PoisonApple.com

[relievedsoap830]

Basic social networking has been around since the early days of the internet, in the form of instant messaging, message boards and forums. Yet, social networks began to take a new form with the creation of sites like Friendster and GeoCities, which allowed people to express themselves in text online. Recently a bright spotlight was placed on these interaction tools. The Web 2.0 movement has evolved social networking sites like MySpace, Facebook and TagWorld and positioned them as the front-runners in the field.

Online social networks are here to stay and will continue to gain traction and offer users more interactivity than other media. Advertisers are going to need to take some responsible risks in the new channel.

[Madrid]

Yes social marketing does workout well but not reap profits..it can bring u some organic traffic to your business..

[mucus592585]

Hey,

(Bare with me on this one, I'll answer your questions and share some damn good techniques)

I own my own marketing company and have been involved in the internet industry for a long time now so am quite clued up/experienced in pretty much all forms of web promotion and marketing.

The answer to the question is your profit depends on what you're selling, how well your selling it and who to. Social network advertising can see you reap profits or sew losses due to high advertising costs and low conversions, but they are fantastic sources for traffic!!

The reason social network advertising is so effective is that they are places where countless amounts of millions of people go on a daily basis, like everyone watching MTV at the same time, it’s maximum exposure for your brand services. The other major benefit of advertising on social networking sites is that you can highly target the ads you place there.

Rather than traditional advertising, which will be viewed by a random audience, advertisers can use these networks to target their ads at a very specific audience; you can target it in many ways such as geographic location, sex, age range, gender, single, married etc.

This way the adds are most successful and if it is an online business/service you're promoting then it's a good idea if you use these services, although be warned, it can be very expensive (Depending on the size and popularity of the network).

They generally run off what's called a CPM system (Cost per thousand impressions). This means that for every time your advert pops up on a web page it's classed as one impression, for every time it reaches 1000 impressions the site will charge you the CPM premium (Again the cost will depend on the size and popularity of the network).

This can be a very costly approach if you are a small business as most of the major web 2.0 sites have so many members thus having many millions of pages for your advert to pop up on, they also generally have a minimum spend which can be quite high (Facebook currently has a $50,000 monthly minimum investment for add banners).

I'd look at starting a page/fake profile on the social networks and drive the traffic to your site, it's called SMO (Social media optimization) and it works a f*****g treat, believe you me!!

I am a keen user of social networks and have utilized their power for my own SEO and revenue generating benefit. Create a fake profile and invite as many of your target audience as you can, you'll be surprised how many people will accept the request!

You can do this very well on sites like Facebook using their 'Groups' feature. If you're selling games consoles, for example, do a search within the social network for 'PS3/Xbox 360/Play Station' etc and then click on the 'Groups' tab to seclude the results to groups only. Have a look at the groups that you're left with.

The members of these groups, often hundreds of thousands, are the people who you know know that are interested in your product/niche. Go through the members and request a ton of them to be your friends, this is called building a list and is where most online services make over half of their sales (Using backend sales).

All you need to do then is create a group of your own about your service/product (The name of the group needs to be eye catching and inventive), in your fake profile, then invite all of your 'Friends list' (Prospective buyers) to the group (When I say friends list, by the way, I'm talking about 2,000+ friends in your list, send as many friends requests as you possibly can).

This will then trigger a viral reaction in the form of 'the butterfly effect' and spread your brand/service/website through the network where the members view your site through a third party referral (The group invitation).

Referrals from a third party (the friend who invited them to your group) or an expert in the field is always trusted by prospectives as they have no reason to lie.

There are three main objectives here:
1- To drive targeted traffic to your site
2- Create brand awareness for your website, free of charge
And the most important part
3- To get high PR/authority links back to your site (Bookmark the pages where you’ve left these backlinks, it will only increase the authority of the page that is pointing back to your site)

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You don't need to advertise in social networks, if you're willing to put some effort in you'll reap the rewards, trust me. Utilize web 2.0 to work for you; use sites such as Squidoo, YouTube, Blogger, WordPress to name just a few and cover the internet with your content rather than spending on one add in one social network.

A little heads up if you do decide to use social networking advertising- Add banners are pretty much the worst form of web promotion, the CTR (Click through rate) is very low and not very cost effective at all, look for another form of advertising withing the network. HOT TIP: Text link ads are far more effective than premium banner ads!

If you are looking for a unique social network to advertise on I’d advise you to keep an eye out for the ‘Global Covenant’, a massive new UK project that has totally redesigned the social networking concept, a welcomed evolution of social networking; even the BBC and Sky are involved inside the project. Pretty exciting stuff!!

I’ve been helping a global client base increase their profits, traffic, conversions, performance etc for a long time now, if you want to talk to me through Skype and have a brainstorm or need help with marketing strategies feel free to add me (Skype username- Internet.Marketer, Marcus Hill, UK) and we’ll have a chat (free of charge by the way).

Hope this info gave you a little insight to web 2.0 advertising and has answered your questions.

All the best!!!