So um, is there any kind of social media marketing besides Digg bait? Does craigslist spam count as social media marketing? ;P
What ever happened to rolling up your sleeves for some good old fashioned forum participation that builds links, brand and relationships?
Well, if that’s a little too Web 1.0 for you and you’re still planning out your social media budget I wanted to share a couple of readership building I… STUMBLED UPON heheh this morning.
First up – Conde Nast Courts Brides on MySpace. Conde Nast recently launched brides.com, and built the brides.com MySpace profile.
Currently they have 2,245 friends. Google Analytics has shown me that bulletins sent out to a MySpace friends list can drive serious traffic and get good return if you’re a trusted source of information.
One enterprising MySpace marketer added a comment to the brides.com profile page saying: “If anyone is from MD. I am a new Make up artist and will give free Make overs. Let me know.”
This is an example of a highly-branded MySpace profile. I’ve been party to efforts (turbo kits, roller derby site) that use MySpace to keep up with community members much the way one would with an email newsletter.
And, speaking of email lists, this post – To Boost Email List, Teen Site Uses Social Networking says that one media site grew its email list the quickest through bulletins on various social networks.
“The site has 10,000 names in its email database, but it has a combined 50,000 friends in social networks such as Facebook, MySpace and Sponsorhouse. It sends out daily bulletins to its social networking “friends,” encouraging them to sign up for the email list.
The company’s largest growth has come from the social networks. Interestingly, emails to the social networks result in the highest conversion rates, as well.”
As a marketer I haven’t had enough Digg experience to be a valid skeptic regarding its effort to value ratio, much less to give advice on who Digg DOES work for.
My gut tells me that Digg’s only useful to those who sell cpm advertising or who have identified key conversions that a surge of Digg traffic is likely to drive. Or for folks who sell Digg bait services 😉
But then again, those are the ramblings of a marketer who leans more towards the community engagement and development side of things than working the Digg… so tell me what your experience has been… and do you know of anyone who’s tried both?
Oh, and check out some other interesting social media headlines:
The “Dumbness of Crowds” (great counter intuitive thinking on Web 2.0)
Second Life frees source code under GPL (yes, this is a HUGE deal and will result in MySpace 2.0)
Yahoo buys MyBlogLog… for real! (no surprise – this is MySpace for bloggers 🙂
Yes I’ve griped in ignorance about Digg before. It was great!
