Posted on: February 7, 2010 by Peter
Myspace started many years ago and although it wasn’t the first social network it certainly takes the prize of igniting the web 2.0 era. It’s such a household name that I’m sure I don’t have to explain what it is – and if you don’t, are you sure you are an Internet marketer?!
MySpace is very different to Facebook because it is an open social network and it encourages people who don’t know each other to become friends. This can create a much more powerful marketing platform that Facebook because you can get the word out about your site to more people. Often it’s a case of if you add someone as your friend they’ll add you back.
However, before you go ahead and add everyone as your friend there are some things you need to know about MySpace marketing before you begin.
1. Do NOT Sell on myspace! This is one of the biggest mistakes newbies (and spammers) make when they begin marketing on social network sites. You are there to network, interact, not to promote your business (directly at least). You need to be a little bit more savvy about how you work your website or offer in to the conversation, just posting your links over and over again is not the way to do it!
2. MySpace is about you, not your business. While it’s ok to have a little something about your site or business, it should only be a brief mention. You don’t want to be turning your friends and colleagues in to customers just yet!
3. Get Chatting! I know this seems like a weird thing to say but don’t just sign up, edit your profile and never go back, get involved, even if it’s just an area you are interested in and not necessarily directly linked to your business. The aim of the game is to build a network of relationships – and those people might know people that need your product or service!
At the end of the day people are more comfortable dealing with people they know or they think they know. Even brief contact on a social network site stands you in good stead to get business and referrals when ever someone needs them.
Posted on: December 22, 2009 by Peter
Buzz marketing is one of the terms that’s not thrown around too much and talked about even less and as such it has a bit of air of mystery about it which is a shame because when used correctly buzz marketing can have a dramatic effect on increasing your sales. Although you may not have heard of the term buzz marketing, I’m sure you have heard of the phrase “creating a buzz” which is very much the same thing – it’s about getting people to talk about your product, and more importantly talking positively about it.
You want your message to go viral when you undertake a buzz marketing campaign, have a think about the email forwards you get from time to time, funny pictures or funny jokes, or if you have ever been on a website and liked it enough to email, tweet or IM someone else about it – well that’s what you want to aim for in buzz marketing.
Just creating something that gets passed around though is not always enough, it needs to have a clear message back to your website and promote your brand. Follow these three methods to leverage your buzz marketing campaign:
Use Social Media: This is nearly always overlooked by many Internet Marketers who tend to focus on email lists, PPC and search engines, but there are so many more people who can easily be targeted on places like Facebook, LinkedIn and MySpace to get the buzz going on a particular product. It is best achieved by joining already active groups in niches that your product is aimed at and starting to name drop (not spam) your product in the conversation.
Don’t Sell! This may sound counter intuitive, but the aim of buzz marketing is to get people talking about your product, not for you to sell your product. Sales pitches don’t make for good viral campaigns, people don’t like to mention sales pitches or think they are trying to be sold something so anything salesy is strictly off limits. You need to have a rapport and acceptance of the community before you begin to mention your product.
Be Consistent: As with so many marketing methods on the internet, you must be consistent when interacting with people and it’s got to be done in a natural way, simply updating all the conversations with single sentence replies is considered bad form, you need to dedicate time every day to really get involved with the conversation at hand, creating the buzz doesn’t happen overnight.
By now your own head should be ‘buzzing’ with new ideas about buzz marketing and strategies you can use to get people talking about your product simply by engaging and networking with them. The ultimate goal of course is to have people talking about your product without even mentioning it yourself!
