Web Business Resource

by Taz Martin

I will let you into a secret, one that will allow you to directly advertise to thousands of people. This isn’t another “rent an email list”-esque technique. If done right this could give you 100% targeted, interested visitors.

The secret lies in Social Networking.

WAIT!!! I hear your groans of discontentment, but please hear me out. Social networking sites and services hold the key to free, and much more importantly, targeted advertising. This is such a powerful medium that when done right it can get you valuable and recurring traffic.

Take the largest Social Networking site, at the time of writing, myspace. According to various sources myspace, as of March 2006, has over 61 million users, and 21 million unique visitors, with 220,000 new members joining daily. These statistics are amazing, and also, at time of writing, about 6 months old, meaning that the current day statistics are liable to be much higher. It is one of the fastest growing, and most popular websites out there on the internet. Many people have been quoted as boasting 1000s of “friends” within the first week of registration, with many more people visiting their space.

Now that is said, you can see my point. This is a fantastic, and lucrative, promotional technique, for any website, although it is usually more useful to owners of “hobby” based websites.

The technique is basically, sign up to myspace, create a profile - based around your site and collect a list of friends. It is almost like building an opt in email list, except the members are all there, and are out to be your friend, rather than you having to coax people into joining your mailing list.

Take a car forum for instance. If you were to go onto myspace and register, you would want to base your profile around cars. In fact, you really want to write your profile from the perspective of your target audience, that way you are more likely to attract more targeted traffic.

With the help of the various myspace profile builders and generators out there on the internet, it has never been easier to set up a myspace profile. Now all you need to do is start getting “friends”.

A “friend” is someone who has seen your profile, and likes you as a person, and wants to join your “friends” list. Usually a myspace user will choose people with the same or similar interests as them to be their friends.

Friends have the access to post messages on other user’s profile pages, ie: leave them a comment. This is one place you want to advertise. Do not make your advert too blatant, or formal. Be informal and friendly. Remember, this message will not only be seen by your friend, but also my everyone who visit’s your friend’s myspace profile.

There are hundreds of other ways of advertising to potential users and customers using myspace, that is just one. You can send out messages to people, and even include your link on your profile itself. You just need to take time to browse the plethora of different features myspace, and other such social networking websites, have to offer.