Leverage social networks such as Facebook, MySpace and LinkedIn to reach nearly 300 million of your closest friends.

By Marty M. Fahncke

Social media. Everyone is talking about it, but very few know what to do with it.

Think it’s all about kids exchanging party pictures? Think there is no way to make money using social media? Think it’s too difficult? A moving target? Think again!

The social media landscape is changing fast, but–as you’ll see–that’s good news for you. Here is a quick primer on where it stands today, and where the opportunities are for a smart e-tailer.

First, a quick glance at the “Big Three” of social media sites: MySpace, Facebook and LinkedIn. If these websites were nations, the population of each would rank among the 100 largest countries in the world. If MySpace alone were a country, its 200 million members would rank it the fifth largest country in the world. Facebook’s 63 million members put it at No. 19, between France and Thailand. LinkedIn, with 17 million members, would rank in between Angola and Chile. Add it up, and you’ve got 280 million potential customers on those three websites alone.

Members of social networking sites are highly engaged, they’re influencers and they’re active. Think about it–280 million people who have actively created profiles, who upload pictures of their kids and dogs, share minute-by-minute status updates and recruit all of their friends and family to join them on the site. Now that’s engagement!

Active members of these sites are likely to be powerful influencers for your business. They are “early adopters” who tend to share their opinions about the things they purchase with a lot of people. Plus, active participants in social media also tend to be very active in offline circles of influence.

The Power of the Network
One’s “network” is the core of all social media, and it demonstrates why marketing through this medium can be so powerful. Just a few key connections give you leverage to reach millions of people. For example, on LinkedIn, I have 429 connections–people who are directly connected to me. (By the way, that’s not an exceptionally large network. There are many people and businesses with thousands of connections.) If I am looking to reach someone, these 429 people can connect me directly with 217,800 others. Or they can ask those connections to put me in touch with 5,988,900 people. That’s impressive reach.

Facebook
Facebook is the fastest growing social network. As a marketer, I think Facebook is a fantastic platform. Facebook has 57 million users, with 56 percent of them female. Fifty-eight percent of Facebook users have some college education, 34 percent are professionals and 12 percent have children under 16. As you can see, Facebook isn’t just for college kids any more. In fact, 45 percent of users are 35-plus.

Facebook has several different tiers of advertising. You can start out really cheap, and do a self-service targeted ad campaign for a mere $5. Provide a credit card number and you’re off and running with a pay-per-click campaign. You can do some targeting by age, gender and location. It’s on a CPC or CPM basis. You’re not going to get a ton of traffic with this channel, but it can be surprisingly profitable, and it’s not bad revenue for a few minutes of work.

Facebook also has a variety of “sponsorship” options. One of the most intriguing strategies involves “homepage sponsored stories.” When users log into Facebook, they see a “stories” page which tells them what all of their friends are up to– who got married, who’s going to events, who’s buying stuff, who has posted pictures or video–and much more. With sponsored stories, you can drop an ad right in the middle of this page. These can be very effective, because they blend well with the compelling social content, and are less likely to be ignored. Costs are $10 CPM with a $50,000 minimum investment.
Facebook also provides a myriad of opportunities for guerrilla marketing–you’re really limited only by your imagination. Most obvious, you can create a page for your company. Facebook allows both people and businesses to have profiles. Your company page can feature content about your products, services, all the campaigns you have going–whatever you want–and it’s free.

You can also join groups related to your business interests, or start your own. There are thousands of groups on Facebook. It doesn’t matter what you’re interested in, there’s a group for you. Once in a group, offer information that’s useful to the membership and be transparent about your affiliation. Use the language of the group, not your marketing department.
Aaron Kahlow, founder of the Online Marketing Summit, manages a Facebook group. He posted an announcement about his live event to this group and generated 50 registrations. At well over $1,000 per registrant, you can see the huge profit potential from this free marketing tool.

Starting a group is simple, free and powerful. If you have a diet and weight loss product, you could create a group of customers who could share their success stories and ideas on weight loss, etc. Or, if you have a kitchen product, you could have a group that shares recipes and other ways to use your product. You name it, if you sell a product or service, there’s potential to create a group. Groups can easily grow to tens of thousands of members.

Case Study: The “Killer App”
Entrepreneur Paul Allen launched a company called Familylink.com. They’ve created a Facebook application called “We’re Related,” which connects people to relatives around the world. Familylink launched it in October 2007. Four months later, they had 2.1 million users, and they’re adding 10,000 new users every day. They’re driving 7,000 clicks a day to their advertising partners and 1,000 clicks to their own website. It took them less than 30 days to build the application, which cost less than $20,000–and they haven’t spent a penny on marketing. There are companies out there now who specialize in building Facebook applications. Look them up–perhaps they can build a killer app for you.

LinkedIn
LinkedIn has 17 million members, with every Fortune 500 company represented. The average age of the LinkedIn member is 41, and the average household income is $106,000–not a bad demographic to market to.

If your budget is over $25,000, LinkedIn offers some extremely effective demographic targeting options. You can target by industry, seniority, job function, company size, geography, number of connections and gender. You can get as laser-focused as targeting CEOs of $100 million companies in California.

If your budget is under $25,000, you can use the Google Adwords “site targeting” feature to advertise on LinkedIn. Simply add LinkedIn to your Google Adwords campaign right now and target those high-income LinkedIn members.

Form or join a group. There are hundreds of groups on LinkedIn of people with similar business interests or associations. You can actually market to them when you’re inside the group–as mentioned above, it must be done carefully and transparently, but you can do it. And if there isn’t a group that fits your target demographic, start your own group.

The best guerrilla marketing tactic on LinkedIn is the “ask and answer questions” feature. This is a section of the website where you can ask a question of anybody and everybody in your network. In my case, I can ask a question of 5,988,000 people; I use it for market research and for subtle advertising. When you ask good questions and give good answers, people get curious: they click on your profile and read more about you. If your profile is compelling, they click on the link for your company website and see your products and services. It all ties together.

Case Study: The Power of LinkedIn Questions
One of my business associates is a company called 360Kid. They’re developers of children’s games, software and websites. The CEO has a complete profile on LinkedIn, but had never used the Q&A feature. One day, he posted a question seeking information about his target market. Within hours, the right person saw the posting, contacted the CEO, and a few weeks later 360Kid landed a $250,000 contract.

MySpace
MySpace is the “big boy” of social media, with 200 million total members. Of these, 110 million users are “active,” meaning they visit the site at least once per month.

As with LinkedIn, one of the most effective ways to advertise on MySpace is through Google Adwords’ site-targeting feature. And a new feature recently announced called “demographic bidding” shows great promise. If you are going to advertise on MySpace, this is the way to do it; you can target by a number of relevant demographic specifications.

MySpace is all about how many friends you can have–it’s almost a contest. The more friends you have, the more cross-promotional opportunities you have.

Posting content with viral potential is another key to MySpace success: videos, jokes, anything funny or unique–post it on MySpace. It will get passed around and people will come back to your company profile.

General Tips
Don’t spam. Spam doesn’t apply just to e-mail. It applies to any unsolicited commercial message sent through forums, blogs and, of course, social networking comments areas.

Give, then receive. Don’t start out saying, “Hey, buy my product.” Participate in the discussion. Be helpful. Provide useful, relevant information without pushing your products or services on the audience. When people ask questions on LinkedIn, give good quality answers. You don’t have to sell anything; they’ll find out who you are because you’re adding value. The same guideline applies to Facebook and MySpace: offer quality resources and information related to the groups you’re in. It doesn’t have to contain an overt sales message–users will appreciate the information and eventually explore your website.

Participation is key. You must participate actively to make this work. If you set up a profile then never touch it again, don’t bother. You need to commit at least 30 minutes a week. If you can’t, you’ll get little or no benefit from this marketing strategy.
Build your network as large as you can with as many quality contacts as possible. As you saw in the LinkedIn example above, even a few hundred connections can give you access to millions of potential customers.

Put links to your websites and blogs on every profile. People will come across your profile and click on them, and it may also help from a search engine optimization (SEO) standpoint to have links to your website from these highly ranked sites.

Every employee at your company should have a complete profile on LinkedIn, and at least one of the other two sites. Why? Social media optimization (SMO). Based on the familiar concept of SEO, SMO enables your profiles to be found using the search features built in to each social media website. When you’re in a social media network, you want people to be able to find your profiles, company blogs and websites, which all lead to your products, services and offer pages.

Marty M. Fahncke is an Internet and social media marketing consultant. His blog “My Perspective” was recently ranked as the 8th fastest-growing blog in the world. Fahncke can be reached at www.martyfahncke.com.