A Word About MySpace
and Other Social Media Tools
A few years ago, MySpace was one of the three leading social media sites. It still offers a social advertising platform, but not many marketers post ads on MySpace anymore. In the battle for social media users, MySpace has been eclipsed by Facebook. It’s possible, but somewhat unlikely, that MySpace will stage a comeback in a few years. Unless MySpace can reinvent itself as something better than Facebook Lite, it will probably never have the high number of users it once had. (Yes, I know. Apple was once declared “dead” and came back, but Apple came back because it developed new and innovative products to sell. As far as I know, MySpace currently has no products in development.)
But you shouldn’t dismiss MySpace as a social advertising option just because it doesn’t have as large a community of social media users as it once did. If you follow the indirect marketing theory (see Chapter 13), you should try to extend your marketing efforts into places where your competitors are not marketing. If all your competitors are marketing on Facebook, you may have success marketing to social media users who are still on MySpace. You will face less competition for ad placement than you would on Facebook, and you’ll be able to pick up potential customers on MySpace that your competitors are ignoring.
MySpace is proof that, like lead-generation tactics, the social media business is in a constant state of flux. Currently, social media sites like Tumblr, Foursquare, and Pinterest are still trying to work out their social advertising platforms. If these sites develop innovative ways for companies to reach out to potential customers—or if some new social media phenomenon comes along—who’s to say that Facebook, LinkedIn, or Twitter won’t be eclipsed as one of the top three social media sites, the way MySpace has been eclipsed?
But even if new forms of social media and social advertising come along, the tactics provided in this chapter and in this book will continue to be useful for you. Even if a social media site comes up with a slightly different model for social advertising—as Twitter has done—you will be able to adapt the three steps of social advertising campaigns that I mention earlier in this chapter to work with the new model.
› › › What You Should Know ‹ ‹ ‹
To review, here is what you should know about social advertising on Facebook and LinkedIn:
Social media advertising involves using social media sites to generate leads by posting PPC ads on the sites that target potential customers in specific demographics.
Social media sites provide valuable insight on the demographics and buying behavior of your target customer. The customers themselves supply most of the information.
In planning a social media ad campaign, you should first familiarize yourself with the social media sites, with their ad campaign setup tools, and with the parameters and policies for advertising on each site. You should also research your target customers thoroughly on each site.
In general, Web-based social media ads must have (1) a title, (2) a limited amount of body text, (3) an image, and (4) a destination URL to take people who click on the ad to a landing page.
All social media sites will ask you to bid an amount that you are willing to pay (e.g., $2 per click). On Web-based sites, the ads with the top bids have the best chance of being posted to the intended target audience.
You will be asked to set a daily budget for the amount you are willing to pay every day (e.g., $1,000). Your ad will run until it receives enough clicks at that bid rate to meet that budget (e.g., 500 clicks at $2 per click).
You will be asked to set a general schedule, including start and end dates for when your ad will run. Currently, social media sites do not offer dayparting tools, but on Web-based sites, you can manually pause and restart your ad during periods when you know you will get a low CTR.
Test your social media campaign for a week. The Web-based social media sites allow you to run variations on your ads to see which ad or offer will get the best response. You can also test ads to different target audiences on Web-based sites.