Social networks are huge right now in internet marketing. They’re hugely popular, have loyal user bases and all in all can be loads of fun and very informative for members. In many ways it’s a marketer’s dream.
Of course, any time you get something that appeals to marketers you get people trying to game the system. That’s the way these things go. And as soon as a method becomes popular the networks find a way to limit its effectiveness or ban those using it.
It can be a difficult decision deciding how much to game the system for a particular marketing target. There are a lot of advantages to doing so, and the temptation can be too much to resist for many marketers.
The problem with this is that the efforts you make are lost every time you get banned. You risk your good name by cheating. You may not only lose the accounts you’ve created but you can lose access to the social marketing sites if they ban your IP.
Cautious use of some tools does apparently work. I’ve heard of people using programs such as Badder Adder with caution to build up their My Space Friends list. Overuse, however, leads to the account being deactivated.
Sites such as Digg have been known to ban people for asking on forums for an article to be Dugg. In one case they even banned a bunch of DigitalPoint members, even those who hadn’t been involved in asking for Diggs or fulfilling such requests.
The big thing about social networks is that you need something to get real attention. For sites such as Digg that’s quality, informative content. For My Space you need to get a lot of friends, yet you still need to be able to market without offending, as strictly speaking My Space is not for marketing your business.
Making the most of social websites means you need to balance your marketing message with the social purposes of these websites. You have to appeal to a lot of people. You can ruin your reputation and lose the ability to use these sites if you do it the wrong way. But done right these are highly profitable ways to bring attention to your business.
Technorati Tags: social networks, digg, my space, marketing on social networks
