Wired has published David L. Sifry’s (founder and CEO of Technorati) top five tips for getting onto Technorati’s top 100.
They include:
Everyone wants to be MySpace, or more precisely, everyone wants to reach MySpace’s young and hip demographic.
Expected to launch on September 6, MTV’s new social networking service will be called MTV Flux, and will first be trailed in the UK to see how well it performs. It will target a 16 to 25-year-old audience.
MTV Flux will allow its members to exchange music and video clips via computer and mobile phone (similar to the way in which existing social networking sites work). The key difference is that members will also be able to influence what videos are shown on the corresponding TV channel.
There will be no traditional schedule, though it will be overseen by a controller to ensure programming does not breach broadcasting regulations.
MTV Flux will carry advertising, and there will be no charge to members.
A company selling nutritional and natural food products emailed me recently wanting to know how to market its products using MySpace. It’s a topic that a number of companies and individuals are probably thinking about, so I thought it would be useful to put some key points down in a blog.
First, you need to have a marketing strategy in place, so that means covering off the old 4Ps – product, price, place and promotion. You need a product that meets the needs of your customers, at a price the intended customers a willing to pay, available at the right place, at the right time, in the right quantities. And of course you need some way of informing your intended customers about what you have to offer.
Second, MySpace is not a marketing silver bullet. It won’t solve all your marketing woes, though you may choose to use it as part of your integrated marketing toolkit, ie alongside your other marketing activity.
Third, you need to ask yourself what do you want from MySpace? If you simply want to develop an online advertising campaign than you are probably better off contacting MySpace’s advertising department. Make sure you have reasonable advertising budget.
However, I suspect that many people wanting to use MySpace for marketing purposes actually don’t want to go through the official channel (ie they don’t want to spend money directly with MySpace), and in fact they want to use MySpace for guerilla marketing. That’s OK, though it does mean you need to do a lot of the hard work yourself.
Probably the best way to use MySpace for guerilla marketing is to first set up a profile about the product or service you want to sell. It needs to be a cool profile; preferably one that is more than just the standard template — though I have seen some standard templates used quite well.
The second step is to segment your market, and then identify profiles that match the profile of your target market. Luckily, MySpace’s browse function makes this quite straight forward, though it will take time to develop a list of suitable prospects.
The third step is to make “friends” with your list of prospects; ie selecting “add to friends” from each prospect’s profile. Because all each prospect will see when they get your friends invitation is a photo of you with a link back to your profile, you need to be very thoughtful about how you set up your profile in the first place. There’s already a lot of Spam on MySpace, and most MySpace members will refuse to be your friend if you come across as yet another peddler of questionable merchandise (and there are many of these on MySpace).
Once you have created a list of “friends” who are interested in your products, there are a number of ways that you can than communicate with them — such as through bulletins, messages, or comments.
There are a number of online services that automate this process, and I’ll talk about them in a future post, but be aware that there are some issues you need to consider before signing up. In future posts I’ll also provide further advice on social marketing, and how to do it in an ethical way. I’ll also look at the official marketing services offered by MySpace.
If you have any experiences you’d like to share, or have an opinion, please go ahead and leave a comment.
John Pospisil
While we don’t need any more proof that social networking sites can be used to start what Malcolm Gladwell calls social epidemics in his book The Tipping Point, here’s an interesting news item on sohh.com about Hip-Hop artist Grafh, who uses MySpace to promote his music.
Two days after posting his “MySpace Jumpoff”, a song for his MySpace fans, music stations around the US started playing the song.
Sure, Grafh is a known talent, but it is interesting how he’s used MySpace to generate interest in his music in the “real world” - without even intending to.
Steve Rubel made an interesting point about how the blogosphere, and its cousins vod casting and pod casting, are changing the talent marketplace in a post about Amanda Congdon, though most of his readers (at least according to their comments) seemed to miss this salient point.
Steve’s contention was that the talent marketplace is being flattened.
What I think is even more exciting is that the blogosphere and its cousins will not only make the talent market flatter, but also much larger. We are talking about a global market after all.
What’s stopping the creative industries from picking and choosing “talent” from anywhere in the world?
Really it’s just a continuation of what’s already happened in international trade and business. I think everyone would agree that the world wide web and email made doing international business much easier.
Now individuals working in creative industries are able to promote and demonstrate their talents on a global areana.
And it’s not just television or movie stars. In my case I’m just about to have a book published in the US by Wiley (I’m based in Australia) – not that I class myself in the same league as some of the real talents out there.
Sure, it woud have been possible to write a book for a US publisher 15 years ago, but boy, the Internet has made the process so much easier.
Yahoo is treating the blogosphere seriously enough to email anyone who has blogged about MySpace becoming the number one site in the US (see my blog post at www.myspaceismyplace.com).
Today I received an email from Yahoo’s PR agency, Outcast Communications, stating that the Hitwise report was misleading because it compared hits to myspace.com with hits to just Yahoo’s email gateway, rather than all of Yahoo’s online properties.
Outcast Communications has very cleverly, and in a very targetted way, used the blogosphere to counter a story that was damaging to Yahoo.
Blogs about Yahoo’s counter statement are already appearing on Digg, which seems to indicate that bloggers will use material they receive from PR agenenies if it’s pertinent to their area of interest.
It appears that at least some PR agencies are starting understand what the blogoshere is all about, and how to use it to help their clients.
The age range of MySpace members may be more broad than commonly thought, if a report by TheStreet.com is to be believed.
According to data from comScore Networks, MySpace is experiencing declines in the numbers of younger members (under 21), while at the same time experiencing increases in the numbers of older members (those between 21 and 54).
Given that 30-something gamers are quite common, it’s not too ridiculous to think that people in their 30s, 40s and 50s might also be interested in being involved in social networking sites like MySpace.
The only question is, with a more diverse membership, will MySpace still be cool?
How many times have you said ”I’ll google it”? Well you’re not the only one, with the expression now becoming so common that “google” is now officially a real word.
Two of the world’s leading English language dictionaries, the American Merriam-Webster and the UK Oxford English Dictary, have added “google” as en entry.
The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines google (and yes it is lower case) as a transitive verb that means “”to use the Google search engine to obtain information about (as a person) on the World Wide Web.”
The Oxford English Dictionary defines Google (yes, it’s still capitalized in the UK) as: “intr. To use the Google search engine to find information on the Internet.
trans. To search for information about (a person or thing) using the Google search engine.”
With the release of “Hacking MySpace” in August, I’ve started setting up a companion blog/web site for the book at www.myspaceismyplace.com.
The companion web site will provide links to all the software used in the book (which is all freeware or opensource), and links to layouts and other MySpace resources. It was also contain all the code examples in the book.
I’m also planning on running MySpace-related news, and a series of articles about the “Masters of MySpace”, where I will be intereviewing the owners of outstanding profiles.