How to Drive Insane Traffic and Earn Money With Facebook Revealed
As you may know, Facebook is no longer just for friends to keep in touch with each other. So, without any further delays, let’s get started on promoting and earning more money for your business on Facebook! Simply follow the 5 simple steps below.
1. Go to the sign-up page at http://www.facebook.com/pages/create.php (This applies to you only if you don’t have an accoutn yet, which I suspect most you do)
2. Choose an appropriate category for your business. This can’t be changed later (if you want to change it, you have to delete that page and start another one), so take the time to choose wisely. Play with the drop-down lists to see the variety of options. Note that you can make a Facebook Page for a single product and there is no limit to the number of Facebook pages you can set up.
3. Type in your business or product or brand name and click “Create Page.”
4. Enter a short description of your business and a Website URL in the “Add Information To This Page” area. If possible, upload your logo as a photo/image.
5. Click on the hyperlink for your business name in the top left corner and click “publish this page.” This step is necessary so that others can see your business profile.
ONE IMPORTANT STEP TO MAKE on your new profile page, click “Add to my products” so that you become the first “fan” of your own business. From this, your other “friends” on Facebook will see something on their site like “Andrew Wang is a fan of your business name.” If any of your friends decide to become a friend to your business, then THEIR friends will see a similar message and the “good virus” begins to spread the word about your business, name or brand.
One powerful feature I love about Facebook Pages is the ability of the Page Administrator (Yes, that’s YOU) to monetize the Page on Facebook. This can be done through applications (including third party applications), but if you already have the ability to carry out sales transactions on your own Website, simply use a link to send Facebook Page visitors to your sales site.
Facebook suggests that you can leverage the effectiveness and viral distribution of your Facebook Page by adding Facebook Social Ads. “Create an ad creative and attach it to stories in News Feed or in the left-hand Ad Space. Social Ads increase the number of friends who will see the story when they visit Facebook, and you can also target the ads to specific demographics.” For more about this, visit this page.
You can school yourself more about how to set up and use Facebook Pages by going to the HELP area and see all the most frequently asked questions. Of particular interest if you already have started a Facebook Group, it can be converted into a Facebook Page. See more about this in the FAQ link just mentioned.
So, start investing some time out now to learn about the powerful features and potential add-ons to make a Facebook Page an effective piece of your overall marketing plan.
Respect,
Allurre
CEO/Artist/Producer/Designer
LUXLIVIN ENTERTAINMENT
P.S For more golden exclusive marketing and money-making tips, come visit
http://www.luxlivinonline.com
How To Use Facebook To Build Up Your Business
Facebook is one of the most popular social networking mediums, and their membership numbers are increasing quickly. It is a great tool for networking; but like many tools available for networking on the web, promotional or marketing activities are frowned upon.
So be careful when using Facebook and do your online marketing activities under the radar, or you might miss out on a powerful tool to boost your business.
In this article, I’ll give you some vital pointers to maximize the power of Facebook.
1) Just like any other social site, be careful what you put in your profile.
You don’t want to be seen as a link spammer. And you don’t want to give away too much personal information either (unless you don’t care that thousands of people may see your profile).
Just be careful with any personal details you put out there for others to see, such as where you live and pictures of your children. You do not want to pick up a stalker, especially when you are networking with strangers.
2) Don’t make the mistake of using your business name as your profile name, as this is against Facebook’s terms of service.
You are allowed to create other Facebook pages to brand your company, products or websites.
3) Respond to any friend requests and carefully send your own invitations. Make them personal and interesting.
Developing a great network is your long-term goal to generate a slow, but steady traffic stream to your websites. Use this tool to your advantage without being pushy or overbearing. Facebooks members hate spamming (who doesn’t?) and will carefully watch out for anything that violates their Terms of Service (TOS).
If you want to see profiles of those from another network, add them as your friends using the “Add to Friends” button. Follow the steps in the Edit tool to fill out any information you want others in your network, or others you accept as friends, to view.
4) Use various applications of Facebook.
Facebook has many applications which would make your networking experience easier or more enjoyable. Examples are applications for adding footage or photograph albums to your profile for others to see.
I’ll discuss two other powerful Facebook applications in a moment.
5) Use Facebook’s “My Questions” application to find out what people are exactly looking for concerning your niche
This is where posters answer certain questions about themselves and what they are looking for on Facebook. They will also list their interests. Use this in your networking activities.
Unless they have expressed an interest in your field, do not invite them to join your friends list. Of course, you can still ask them if you genuinely want to be their friend.
But if you are there to network for your website business, then choose your friends wisely. This is how you are building your list and getting traffic to your website. So you have to manage your time well and eliminate non-productive activities.
Again, be very careful about Facebook’s TOS. Do not go against it because breaking the rules will get you banned.
6) Use “Facebook Discuss.”
It is Facebook’s answer to instant messaging. Chatting, or IM’ing, on Facebook is truly quite easy when you use Facebook Discuss .
Just go to your Facebook page and you can start using Facebook Discuss immediately. At the base of each Facebook page, you may see your Facebook Discuss tools.
The first of the 3 Facebook Discuss tools is the online friends tool. This simply tells you which of your Facebook buddies is online at this time. The next Facebook Discuss tool is notifications that may let you know if you have any new Facebook notifications right from the tool. The 3rd tool in Facebook Discuss is the real discuss tool.
7) Create and join Facebook groups.
Just as they have subscribed to your blog, they’re going to join your Facebook group. So people looking on Facebook for related groups would feel welcome to join.
Facebook groups are viral selling mechanisms. Search Facebook for groups on your topic and related ones. In each of these groups, you can post a message on the group Wall or debate board, or you may use the Post a Link feature to inform the group’s members of your group and your blog.
By promoting your Facebook group at first, rather than promoting your blog, you decrease the chance the group director will remove your message. Any Facebook member can make a group and invite users on their pals list to join.
A form prompts you to give the group a name, passing outline and class. At the following stage, you can customize your group’s available applications, upload a profile photograph and set privacy levels.
A secret group is fascinating for work-related activity, but it will not show up in search results. Choosing a closed group might be the best idea for you to protect your privacy. You will be inspired to choose members from your friends list to join the group.
When you start a group on Facebook, you can invite members to join the group and share their thoughts, viewpoints and consultations about your product, idea or start-up. Invitations to join a Facebook group can be through your Facebook buddies, your Yahoo contacts, etc.
Integrate your application into specific areas of the Facebook profile
A Facebook application can take on a lot of forms; but in order to entirely implement the selection of integration points and deliver a full user experience, it is advised that you integrate your application into specific areas of the Facebook profile.
This permits millions of viewers to see your business everywhere on Facebook and attract potential patrons, who would naturally visit your start-up Internet site.
Remember to follow all Facebooks rules; otherwise, you’ll risk getting banned and your account deleted. This is not what you are looking for. Instead you want to use the group feature to promote your website within Facebooks rules. Do not overstep by thinking you can get around the rules. Use Facebook features to your advantage and you will see an increase in your website traffic.
Why Facebook Is Worth Over $10 Billion
Yahoo! have been in talks with Facebook for over a year now and apparently recently got shy at Facebook’s $1 billion asking price but as I will explain here Yahoo! have missed out on an absolute bargain.
Facebook have 18 million users, plenty. However MySpace has 100 million + and sold for a mere $580 million to News Corp’s in 2005. YouTube sold to Google for a reported $1.65 billion in 2006 but it serves over 100 million video’s a day and has over 25 million visitors a month. So what makes Facebook so valuable? It gets relatively huge traffic levels but not on par with YouTube or MySpace. Despite now being available to anyone it began life as an exclusive network for students (you needed an educational email to register) and this is still its primary user group.
So where’s the money?
Currently Facebook displays conventional banner advertising on users’ homepages and selected pages through the site. Adverts are unobtrusive and random in so much as they’re not targeted at any particular user- they’re just served to the entire site on a random basis. Facebook are doing ok out of this arrangement on the basis of the number of page impressions they receive, although in reality they’re keeping advertising at a minimum in order to build up the value of the site for its eventual sale which will almost certainly happen in 2007/8. Smart guys!
The power of information
Register with Facebook and quickly you can find yourself giving away huge volumes of valuable personal information. Think about it… Facebook know your name, they know how old you are (actually your D.O.B which is infinitely more valuable as I’ll go on to explain), they know if you’re male or female, they know your hometown, your postcode if you choose to give it away (although I doubt many users choose this), they know if you’re single, in a relationship (and who with), married, divorced etc, they know your sexual orientation. Ok so you can answer all these questions as honestly, dishonestly or vaguely as you like but from what I’ve seen people happily give accurate information about themselves as it’s their friends and potential friends who are going to see it- and no one else right?
But what else do Facebook know? Well they know where you went to school, where you work, more sinisterly your religious and political views. From this we can start to build up a pretty valuable market profile. As I’m telling Facebook I may as well tell you I’m Male, 22 (born in August), Straight, in a relationship, conservative, atheist from Brighton, England. Went to school at Blatchington Mill Secondary, college at a place called BHASVIC, University at Bournemouth. From this information we can draw further assumptions- I live in Brighton and based on the location of my schools catchment area we could pretty accurately map places in Brighton I know about, visit, and live in (think Google maps API). I’m a straight; conservative from a reasonably wealthy area in full time employment therefore I’m probably white, middle class with a decent disposable income.
So what else? Facebook know what you look like, they probably know what you used to look like a few years ago as well. Probably most significantly they know who your friends are, they know how you know them, they know when you talk to them, what they look like and ultimately they know exactly the same information about them as they know about you- you’re interests, likes and dislikes and your friends tastes as well.
They know your email address, so they know if you use Hotmail, Yahoo! Mail etc. They know your phone number so they could pretty easily work out your phone provider. They have your IP address so they could work out your ISP. They know where you’ve arrived at the site from so they know what search engine you use (enter Yahoo! And Google to the bidding war), what browser you’re on, they know if you’re visually impaired or have learning disabilities from the settings on your browser.
Facebook know when I’m logging in and from where so they know the hours I work, if I’m using the internet at work, the pages I leave Facebook to go to or the pages I come from so they know what other sites I look at. I can set my current status and tell Facebook exactly what I’m doing or feeling right this second.
Ok so you get the picture by now, one last thing though, is your Facebook password the same as your email account password, your internet and telephone banking password, every other password you use in your daily life (because until I wrote this post mine was!) how much more information do you want to give away?
What’s the risk here?
Realistically it’s pretty slim. Facebook are a nice bunch of guys and a great site, I love using it and despite knowing what I know about information security and the like I choose to give away a big chunk of the information I’ve talked about here.
Yahoo! And Facebook
So if Yahoo!, Google or god forbid Microsoft successfully purchase Facebook (as I say I’m reasonably confident this will happen this year) the Orwellian lucid dream proposed by this post becomes a perpetual nightmare. Imagine a company who have made billions and dominated the fastest growing market in the world by developing algorithms which crawl hundreds of millions of pages of random information (the internet) and categorize that information with the ultimate goal of matching it to businesses and selling advertising.
The search algorithm let loose on Facebook
Imagine the search engines let loose on Facebook. An algorithm tuned to pick out profile information (John, born 13.08.84). Map it to keywords in personal interests i.e. football, Manchester United. Plot your location on a map i.e. Brighton, England. Follow links to your closest friends with similar interests i.e. Bob and Dave who live round the corner and serve me an advert something like:
Happy birthday for next week John.
Did you know its Dave’s birthday the week after?
Why not book tickets for Brighton and Hove Albion vs. Manchester united on 12.08.07
Click here to book now and get 3 tickets for the price of 2 (why not ask bob to come along- he supports Brighton and you haven’t spoken in a while).
Book today and we’ll give you a half price limo from your house to the game with trashy-limo’s.com.
Now that’s powerful advertising and it’s just around the corner. If Facebook has 25 million registered users by the time it’s sold, half of whom visit every day that’s a minimum 12.5 million page impressions a day. Serve the advert above at $1 a click (which is far less than its worth based on the current AdWords CPC model) expect a click through rate of up to 10% based on the precise nature of the advertising and that’s $1.2 million minimum a day- almost $½ a billion a year. Grow that user group to 50 million (realistic if Google or Yahoo! can tap into their existing user database) and sell ad space on an affiliate basis say the football tickets at $300 with a 10% affiliate kickback and a 10% conversion rate =$3 per user x 25 million users =$75 million a day or $2737500000 in year 1! OK lets not get carried away people aren’t going to spend $300 every other day but the logics there and so the cash.
Will the audience except it?
Better quality advertising means less advertising- less websites rammed with banners so you can’t find what you’re looking for, less popups, less low quality products. This is the main driving force behind the success of search marketing programs and profile based advertising is already in place with Google’s personalized search returning more targeted AdWords ads than previously possible. If it falls into the hands of Microsoft then people may be more wary but with the image of Google or Yahoo! and Facebook profile information is seen as soft information as the company doesn’t sell you products directly and he service is free. It’s the way the internet is going and I believe it’s where we’ll be in 5 years.
Identity theft
The point I’ve been making tediously through this post is that we should be more careful about what information we give up and to whom. If the internet was a county it would be Nazi Germany and Facebook would be the Gestapo! Social utilities like Facebook are afforded the sort of privileged information fascist governments the world over would and have killed for. We moan about identity cards being introduced in the UK (ironically there’s several Facebook groups dedicated to the cause) but we happily give up personal details to a bunch of college geeks in the states who are ultimately planning on selling our details to the highest bidder (the value of any site is based on the volume, quality and amount of information they have about their traffic- but best of luck to them) possibly to the company who already control the majority of world business systems through the windows platform.
This post is not meant to scare- it’s simply a recognition of the power of new internet technologies, their possibly applications and to pose the question- if your Facebook friends are your real friends shouldn’t they know your birthday? Are Facebook really going to buy you a present?!
Vanilla Digital for pure search marketing. A Search marketing blog. Read the full article at Vanilla digital
Adwords Marketing: Is It The Best, Or Is There A New King?
In this article I will discuss whether or not Google Adwords is still the best or if the new and upcoming ways of advertising are taking over the way internet marketers show their products, services, and offers to the general public.
People have been using Google Adwords now for years. There are many people who have reported making six figure incomes or higher by simply using Adwords to drive traffic to their website. On the other hand, there are those people who complain on a daily basis that the price of Google Adwords keywords have gone up substantially since they were first offered and it’s now getting very difficult to become profitable using Google Adwords. It really takes a marketer examining his offer, marketing funnel, and advertising costs of Adwords to determine whether or not they are not making any profit at all, turning a small profit, or banking huge returns using Adwords.
Since the birth of Adwords there has been many other avenues of advertising that social networks and search engines have tried to create using Adwords model.
In this article, I will specifically look into Facebook. The huge social network of high school students, college students, and many other individuals has grown by leaps and bounds since it was first created. Now that Facebook has a considerable amount of traffic they have decided to try and turn a large profit by offering advertisers the chance to advertise their offers on their network.
At first, they used a platform called Facebook Fliers. The platform boasted to be able to show your offer per thousand impressions. The rates were very cheap and on first looked it seemed as if it was going to be a very promising program. Well, as months went by, Facebook Fliers proved to be very ineffective for marketers. The main complaint now was that Facebook was charging only for impressions, and instead they should switch to clicks. The reason being is if a user “clicks” an offer it shows definite and genuine interest in the marketers offer.
With the advice of internet marketers all over the world Facebook switched to its newest program, “Facebook Ads.” Facebook Ads now charges each marketer per click instead of per impressions. With the birth of this program, marketers all over the world are boasting huge returns now using Facebook Ads. The CPC (cost per click) is low due to their not being much competition in niches and it seems as if this is the best model Facebook could have switched to.
The internet and advertising is constantly evolving, and it seems as if Facebook is right on top of the trends and how quickly things can change. I suspect that this social network will be around for decades to come and will be able to monetize itself very well by showing advertisements to its audience of close to 100 million people.
Now, it’s time for YOU to cash in on the huge returns of Facebook Ads. My tip to you is to find an uncovered niche and take full advantage of it before someone else does!
Dirk Wagner is a programmer who has been able to uncover all the secrets of programs such as Adwords Marketing and making money using Facebook Online. He has created a comprehensive guide called “Facebook Secrets Exposed” which is available by visiting http://www.facebooksecretsexposed.com
Profit Wildly with Starting a Business on Facebook
You probably heard of Facebook as a social bookmarking site, but did you know you could also start a business there? In fact, it is ideal. Think about that for a minute. Literally millions of users come to the site every day, and each of those users belongs to various groups and networks. They also use different side applications. With this type of social bookmarking site, they share their lives and interests with you, so that you can turn around and provide a service that will help benefit them.
Social bookmarking or networking absolutely requires that ethics be followed when you use the site to give your business exposure. First, you need to make sure that your actions do not violate any terms of service. If they do, change your approach so that you are not violating terms of service. This is your responsibility.
No matter what you want to accomplish, of course, make sure that you are not spamming anyone. You are not going to be successful this way and will just be an annoyance for people. In addition, you are probably going to be kicked off, which is exactly what you do not want.
However, if you use Facebook ethically and follow its terms of service, you should not have any difficulties.
Philosophy of Facebook in a Nutshell
To use Facebook properly to promote your business, you need to build your own community around your product, service, or profile. It is not going to work to simply slap together a bunch of links or a sales pitch, because people are going to go away in droves. Instead, what you want to do is to open your brand or company up and let people really see it; they want to have a good time there.
As an example, if your site is based around fantasy football, focus your profile on how much you love the game. You might also start a group utilizing -fantasy football- as its focus. Post your link to your fantasy football service in the group, and if someones interested, he or she is going to click on it.
If people learn to trust you and your voice, and they understand that you are on the site to get to know them, they will respond and will decide to use your service or buy your product.
If you want to further enhance your participation there, make a group more attractive, and encourage participation, you can add or create serious applications, hold meetings, post a poll, etc., and let group members discuss things amongst themselves so that they feel like they have a vested used in what is happening.
Facebook Can Give Your Service or Product Exposure
Most likely, what you are going to want to do is to use Facebook to get more exposure for your service or product. Use your site so that people become familiar with you and with what you are selling. One of the most important aspects of this is to use the site to help you -brand- yourself. Even if your product is a little bit mainstream and dull to the general population (such as if you run a bookeeping site or do something else with regard to finances), you need to do what you can to make sure that you have made your site (and your product or service) interesting to potential customers who will then want to go have a look.
Facebook works when you keep people interested and engaged in what you have to offer. You can do this with groups, applications, or by attracting customers who may be interested in you, based upon what you have in your profile.
Community Matters
If you want your online business to succeed with Facebook, think community. People want to belong, and this is true anywhere. It is a basic part of human nature to want to belong. Therefore, if you want your business to be successful, you cant sell your community a product. Instead, make your community understand that you want to belong, that you want to create something where people can go and participate in which are often.
People like new ideas, and want to know about them. They also want to find people who share similar interests with them. They want to establish a connection with others and form friendships on the site. If you use the site for business purposes, keep this in the forefront of your mind, because it is going to be what makes your business successful and will set it apart from others.
Using Facebook for Your Business
How, then, can you use Facebook for your business? There are several things you can do with your account, any of which could make you successful. If you decide to run a business from your Facebook account, choose activities that will dovetail with the goals you want to set.
Here are some things you can do with your account:
- Use your site for some affiliate marketing, as long as you do not violate the terms of use for Facebook when you do so.
- You can beta-test product there to see that will sell. Use feedback from friends on the site to make needed changes to the product so that it will actually sell.
- Use the groups, applications, networks and general site trends to figure out some new ideas for yourself.
- You can use your profile to get clients, if your business is something that needs to regularly attract new clients (such as if you have a housecleaning business or something similar).
- Promote your service or business.
- Test a product on a niche to make sure that it will sell well in that particular niche, and make changes if you can.
- Create a customer and user base
These are just some examples of what you can do to use Facebook to enhance or start your business.
Take a look at some companies that are currently using Facebook to promote their products or services. You will see that if they are successful, each is doing a few basic things. Use each of these ideas even as you keep the idea of building a community in the forefront of your consciousness.
Links
Of course, you can use Facebook to do affiliate marketing. What is affiliate marketing? You sell products other people have created and get a certain percentage of sales and commissions.
However, if you use Facebook to do affiliate marketing, you cannot post an affiliate link directly in your profile. Instead, put affiliate links in your blog and then put the link to your blog in the profile itself.
Facebook Is Expanding
Facebook is one of the fastest growing social networking and Web 2.0 sites out there. Primarily, it began as a site for college students, but it’s grown into an amazing Web 2.0 phenomenon.
Unlike some social bookmarking sites, Facebook actually encourages the idea that people can use their sites to build businesses. Developers and founders of Facebook primarily want to provide a positive user experience for everyone in the site, including business owners.
However, if you want to use the site in this way, you need to take a few precautions. You need to follow Web 2.0 and social bookmarkings rules, or you wont be successful.
Rumors About Financial Situations of Facebook
Does Facebook need cash badly? Has its growth caused to far outpace the revenue Facebook generates? All these any many more questions and rumors regarding the financial dire of Facebook are in the air these days. Although it’s against the policy of Facebook to comment on any sort of market speculations or rumors regarding its financial position.
But as there have been many miss conceptions recently about the financial status of Facebook so a few comments were passed about what Facebook had to say about the entire story. It was stated that Facebook is quite well stabled and very firmly positioned in the market. Resources have told that the revenue brought in by the company which was $150 million last year is expected to be much greater this year. A marketing research firm has given an estimate that Facebook will bring in about $265 million this year. Another close source to the company reveals that the revenue brought inn by the famous company would be at last $300 million which was earlier estimated by Facebook. The company has updates the market that its marketing business has a great depth and breadth and just like any advertising business expecting 100% recession proof business isn’t possible, Avery close and proper management of the entire business is made sure to expand the number of hiring’s and the scale. The company says that a big number of our goals have been achieved and we are ready to set new targets new goals and achieve new milestones and they are desperate only to get greater success in business. The fact of Facebook’s extensive gain in popularity can not in any case be denied. But the problem occurs when its popularity in the US isn’t up to the mark. Only if the US market could be better for Facebook things can be much better because the international market for Facebook is pretty well already, But keeping in mind and consideration the present situations of the US market which seems to be tapped at this point in time gaining market share would definitely be quite difficult.
http://wwwfacebookster.com
How To Build A Highly Targeted Friend List on Facebook
Most internet marketers realize that social networking sites are an important part of the online business strategy. However many times if you ask these same people what their exactly strategies are for using these sites, they don’t really have much to say.
If you will be using Facebook to promote your online business, you need to understand that you absolutely have to have a clearly defined strategy in place.
Using social networking websites to promote your online business puts the reputation of your business on the line. You want other social networking sites to have a good image of your business and the only way to do this is to use these websites in the correct way.
Spamming the websites with your advertisements is definitely NOT the right way to go about this. People who are spammers and also come across to users as insincere are quickly exposed on these websites.
Many times people seem to forget that the primary purpose of social networking sites is to be social and not to directly sell! The members of these social networking communities respect new members that have something worthwhile to say and will add value to the community.
This doesn’t mean that you can not promote your products on these websites. Yes, they can become a good source of sales revenue. However the only way that you will get to this point is to first focus on building relationships.
The Facebook Strategies Guide will show you how to apply very specific strategies that will help you to create a winning Facebook Page or Facebook Group that can help you to take advantage of the viral effects of Facebook in order to grow your business.
This guide also explains why different types of businesses need to use somewhat different strategies on Facebook to become successful.
Aside from using Facebook to create new customers, you will also learn how to use Facebook to develop relationships with the top leaders of your industry. This is probably the most important secret to using Facebook because it is nearly impossible to achieve exponential growth if you do not have the industry leaders as your colleagues.
By following this guide to the unwritten rules of Facebook you will avoid all of the mistakes that Facebook newbies make while trying to become popular on Facebook. Not only can using Facebook the wrong way put your business’s reputation on the line, it can also result in you getting banned from Facebook!
The Facebook Strategies Guide is a six book series that was developed by internet marketing experts to guide you through the difficulties of learning to use this site to your advantage. Stop wasting time trying to figure things out on your own by guessing and get ahead of your competition by reading this guide.
Investors, please do not try building another Facebook!
During the Worldwide recession the lotteries jackpots are still huge therefore people winning them still need to invest few million of dollars or euros or any other currency to some business Internet business is still one of the most attractive directions of investment. Now it is very difficult to create a competitive and successful e-shop, web design studio, online project management service or any other affiliation site because of huge competition. Some entrepreneurs still try to create social networks like Facebook, MySpace, Bebo, but majority fails. Does that mean that no one can repeat the success of Twitter or Facebook which started with very little budgets? Probably not, but only 1 of 100 attempts may succeed.
What about bigger chance of success? Let’s see what big social networks offer to people:
* Lots of contacts to choose from different countries, speaking different languages;
* Lots of interests to discuss using social networking tools such as micro-blogging, groups, forums, social bookmarking, file share etc.
* Unified communication features for all members;
* Generic forms of marketing and ads;
* Possibilities of using third parties applications (widgets) to satisfy specific needs.
When people have general interests in communication with people worldwide in own and general language huge social networks are the best solution. No one can beat Facebook or MySpace in traffic as they satisfy this communication thirst. However still remains the need for communication in local circle. Example is Hyves.nl social network in the Netherlands, which is more popular than Facebook or MySpace. There is a short presentation illustrating the local networks versus Facebook and MySpace usage.
The newest hype of WWW is Twitter – the simple micro-blogging platform with lots of the additional services around. Twitter is huge, but that is not going to last forever because of Twitter clones. Someone counted more than 200 of Twitter-like sites in different countries. That shows the power of the locally based similar services to giant social networks. If someone has a spare million of dollars, he/she should think about creating a local social network in some country or region (example of regional social networking success is Netlog.com – one of the most popular Social networks in Europe). Of course there is almost no market without competition (I doubt there is big market in Zimbabwe where people do not have electricity, not speaking about computers and internet), so it is good to analyze the market first.
If we look at the social networks list we can clearly see another interesting criteria – the interest based social networking. That’s the main competitor of big social networks, as they cannot provide the interface for every interest. All they can do is allowing third party widgets to be installed making the profile and management of the personal space messy and troublesome (look at the MySpace profiles). The interest based social network can be international; therefore it can be easily tested on some local markets first and then launched internationally. That makes management of investment easier and more effective.
What can be the main interests of people to be transferred to virtual space in the shape of social network with friends ties, status updates, blogging, picture, video exchange, bookmarking features, groups and chats etc.? Classmates, dating, blogging, job search are the main ones attracting huge amount of people, but still there are some other areas.
Let’s review it personally. I have a Russian Blue cat so I participate in such social network for cat lovers as UnitedCats.com (by local country, of course). If I would like to leave this network I would choose a brand new CuteAsHell social network for pets in general. Why I like this social network instead of Facebook Russian Blue Cats Group with almost 300 members? Because it has very nice features for cat lovers such as virtual gifts (all kinds of kitty toys and equipment what makes this gift feature unique), photo voting is called “Pat the cat”, blog can be written on behalf a cat or owner which make really interesting to read. Also I know that some of the participants of this community are professional cat breeders which can really give me help if my cat gets sick or I do not understand her character. Neither Facebook or MySpace cannot give me that.
I travel a little, therefore I participate in travelers social network WYAN.com where people share their reviews about countries, tours, day trips and of course shares pictures of the places of interest. I can easily make decision where to go and what to see. I always can share my plans and can even make some friends in that country to meet them once I arrive and hear another story about the country rather than tour guides tell. Probably I will have lots of troubles looking for similar information in Facebook and Myspace.
As a professional I have my profile in LinkedIn and participate in local professionals discussions as well as global ones. Here I can share my professionalism, participate in discussions about specific work related issues. Here I can find another job, or find the entrepreneurs for my business plan. Have you ever seen people who are hosting their resumes and CV in Facebook or MySpace? I have not.
As you can see the interest social networks are very good for sharing the personal interests and setting the communication among people with similar interest. In Facebook I always see my friends speaking about the things I am not interested or even do not understand (hear programmers speaking – if you are not in IT market their language will be like gibberish). In the interest social network I will always understand what my peers are talking about.
Investor should think if there are any interests which are covered quite poorly. For example pet social network market is quite saturated as some serious people made some investment. But maybe bikers’ social network still would make a nice ROI? There are always some profitable markets uniting golfers, cooking lovers, photographs, poker players etc. which must be investigated and some competitive social networks with unique tools created. Technologically it is not very difficult as there are so many open source systems with huge social networking add-ons collections.
Another important feature of new social media should be a flexibility to adopt new trends in case some phenomena like Twitter emerges in next couple of years. Status updates are so popular (like SMS in Mobile world), that every social network must have this feature and in some cases it must be better developed to fit the needs of specific interest. For example poker players community enjoy the icons of cards speaking about their hands, however Twitter cannot have any icons. So maybe poker related Twitter clone FTsweat could provide such feature? Very big attention must be paid for internal messaging system as it may become very powerful communication and marketing tool. Look at the MySpace example. They have 125 million of active internal messaging system users and once they will build a webmail service they will automatically become 3rd largest email provider in the World. Interest based social network may never do better email service as Yahoo or Gmail, but some handy features can keep some members using internal mail outside the social network space.
Creating social network is not enough. Every social network should have additional applications for third party websites – widgets and apps for iPhones and G-phones and all the rest new type of mobile devices allowing not to use computer for communication. Without them every social network is doomed sooner or later. But let’s leave this topic for future.
Summing up. If you are an investor, please consider creating local or quite narrow interest based social network in order to kick Facebook’s and MySpace’s ass. That’s not impossible. That’s better than wasting money creating one more Facebook or MySpace.
Making Money Online Using Facebook Ads
So you wanna make money online? I don’t blame you, but how are you going to do it? Adwords? Maybe, but it’s getting harder to turn a profit. Yahoo Search Marketing? Sure, but they’ve been around for a long time and many of the niches are very saturated.
There is a brand new way of advertising your products and offers online called Facebook Ads. The program is brand new and has never been touched by marketers up until a couple of months ago. The program boasts paying the lowest CPC (cost per click) on the internet. With this said, my team investigated to see what type of results we received from promoting the same offers that we promote on Google and Yahoo. The results were amazing. It’s actually very possible to make money online using Facebook Ads.
Facebook did have a program called “Facebook Fliers” that was successful, but not well liked by internet marketers and promoters. The reason being was you had to pay per thousand impressions and not per click. Marketers decided that they would rather pay per qualified click rather than showing impressions to every bob, joe, and jane on the Facebook network.
Now, here comes Facebook Ads, where you pay per click. On top of paying per click, you are able to target your audience of viewers however you want to. You can target them based on age, gender, geographic area, school, hobby, anything! This option is great, because do you really want to be promoting a sports offer to a 16 year old female? Probably not. Facebook Ads has really changed how internet marketers are able to promote their offers and keep profit margins high.
Nobody knows what the future will bring for networks like Adwords, Yahoo PPC, and MSN Adcenter. The saturation of marketers, niches, and offers has become very high and the days of making thousands of dollars a day paying nearly nothing for your clicks are long gone. The internet is constantly changing and it seems that Facebook is doing their best to keep up with everything that is happening on the internet in relation to trends, marketers wants, and their users wants.
The main reason why Facebook is so successful is because of the popularity of their network. Close to 100 million high school students, college students, and other people are registered and log in every single day of the week. Facebook has become much of an addiction and a necessity across high schools and college campuses. By experts predictions, Facebook will continue to grow for decades to come. Their network includes every feature a teenager or college student could ever want to stay in contact with their friends. The evolution of Facebook Applications proved to be very successful by allowing developers to create their own applications and place them on Facebook.
If you can’t tell by my excitement towards Facebook, it’s really an amazing place to be right now if you are a marketer. The opportunities are abundant, all you need is a bit or originality to turn large profits.
Dirk Wagner is a programmer who has been able to uncover all the secrets of making money online and making money using Facebook Online.He has created a comprehensive guide called “Facebook Secrets Exposed” which is available by visiting http://www.facebooksecretsexposed.com
How to Build an Impressive Social Networking Presence, Beginning With Facebook
Professional and social networking sites like LinkedIn, MySpace, Facebook, and Squidoo are effective outlets for finding new readers, but it is easy to find your message spread thin if you don’t choose the right strategy. Many businesses settle for sparse profiles on various sites, never discovering the other powerful marketing tools many of these social networking platforms have to offer
Social Media Optimization, Facebook, Myspace, Linkedin, Squidoo, Social Media, Web 2.0″ />
How to Build an Impressive Social Networking Presence, Beginning With Facebook
Professional and social networking sites like LinkedIn, MySpace, Facebook, and Squidoo are effective outlets for finding new readers, but it is easy to find your message spread thin if you don’t choose the right strategy. Many businesses settle for sparse profiles on various sites, never discovering the other powerful marketing tools many of these social networking platforms have to offer
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