Social marketing seems to be on everyone’s lips these days although at times I wonder if people are confusing social bookmarking with social networking and social marketing.

Myspace has made it fairly easy to combine social networking with social marketing. After opening a Myspace account, you will need to complete a profile. Make sure your profile is written to attract those from your target groups. For example, if you are targeting 25 to 20 year old males, create a profile that is likely to appeal that age group.

Once you have established your profile, you can do a search to bring forward those who match your target profile. Once you have this list you can start to add these individuals. First invite them to be friends.

From that point on, communicate, socialize, network with who are on your list. Over time you will become accepted as a part of their online Myspace area. This way you have broadened your circle of online ‘friends’ and have which can be used to direct any marketing materials at in the future.

Social marketing can be a hit and miss affair at the best of times so for many businesses, trying to market their products and services through the various social sites had often met with failure. This is perhaps because they are trying the wrong approach.

Most people will not buy based on a marketing campaign. Social marketing campaigns should be about brand or product awareness rather than selling. If your approach is to inform rather than sell, then your message is more likely to get through. After all, if I am not trying to get you to buy, your natural defenses will not spring up automatically.

Where your social marketing can be effective and overtime convert quite well is by developing opt-in lists. Rather than selling products, sell information. Offer free newsletters with updates on products, how to use them and any other useful information. Once you have an opt-in list of subscribers, you can either use your newsletter to sell the products or use your newsletter to bring traffic to well designed landing pages.

If your social marketing campaign is designed to attract potential customers through opt-in lists, you will find you have far more success than by trying to sell direct. Offer them something of value and they will respond – give them the hard (or soft) sell and they will shut you out.

Yahoo! Mash. Nothing really sparkling springs to mind. If you haven’t heard of it, you haven’t missed anything. A day doesn’t go by where I don’t hear about a new social site opening its doors. This time, I read where one is closing its doors – before they opened.

Mash was supposed to be Yahoo!’s answer to all the other large social sites. The problem was, Yahoo! forgot to tell the rest of the world about, or at least, to keep promoting it. It seems that Yahoo! perhaps only played around with it to see what they could achieve. They didn’t like what they saw so they canned it.

Only those who had accounts with Mash received any notification about its demise. The email was brief and to the point. As of September 29, Mash will be closed down.

There is a simple lesson to Mash’s demise. If you intend starting a social site, you need to come up with a brandable name. Let’s face it, Mash? The second lesson is to promote. If you don’t promote, no one will pay any attention and you will fail to get the user stats required to make it popular. Yahoo! Mash – now Mush – for anyone who cared anyway!

Welcome to Facebook they say when you get to their website, more like welcome to jail. I have been building a Facebook account for a good year now, actively engaging in discussions, networking with individuals local to me, joining groups that pertain to my interests and Facebook has decided to shut my account down. I thought this was extremely strange since it is a “networking” website and it is a little difficult to network if you are not allowed to request people you don’t know. Facebook asks you to only requests people that you know. Yeah ok most people couldn’t even name off twenty people they know but they are supposed to only link to people they know on a website that unlocks them to thousands of people with just a few clicks away. Barack Obama’s Facebook account currently at this very moment 1,450,617 friends, wow he has a lot of real life friends because you can only connect with people you know in real life. I don’t’ see his account getting shut off.

Facebook has fallen and bumped their head if they think they can control this. I think they have commissioned the secret service to monitor everyone’s behavior because I read the other day that someone had gotten kicked off because they used the search function too many times in one day!! The search feature?? What’s next getting your profile booted for thinking about sending someone a friend request? How is using the search feature too many times in one day bothering anybody? I have spent an entire year networking on Facebook with many other young adults promoting their website and this is how they repay you. When you try to log into your account they say they can’t tell you specifically what you did wrong for “security reasons”. What security? Am I going to hire a lawyer because my Facebook account got shut off, probably not. You have to send 17 emails to Facebook in the hopes of prying a reason out of someone. Why they hiding it?

I don’t think Facebook is going anywhere but they are quickly infuriating many people with these new rules and regulations and I don’t think Facebook wants to face another class action lawsuit. Maybe they are doing it to get a buzz going? If you send a friend request to someone they have the option to deny it. Easy and simple, click no thank you, go about your day and the problem is solved. Did it ever occur to Facebook that for every ten people that might actually enjoy receiving that friend request that the one person that triggers an abuse flag might just be ruining a good thing for everyone else? I think the whole point that Facebook is missing here is that if you want to call it a social networking site but you are not allowed to meet people you don’t know than it is useless. The whole point of networking is so that you meet people you don’t already know! Isn’t the whole point of networking to meet other individuals whom you can communicate with and feed off each other’s knowledge and strengths?

I am not promoting spamming social networking websites but Facebook needs put in place some much more tasteful strategies for monitoring its members. Sending friend requests is not spam, accepting a friend and having them nonstop slander your wall with ads is and should not be tolerated. It is time for Facebook to rethink their ink or they might just be shopping around for a reputation management firm!

Do you socialize much? By socialize I mean go to dinners or parties or similar events where a large group of people meet to socialize. Social networking can often be a very similar experience.

I can remember where, in past years, a doctor would never reveal his/her occupation. If they did, they would spend the evening doing on the spot diagnosis of sore backs and aching legs and so on. Social networking can be a similar experience. If you were to reveal that you were a doctor, you know that someone is going to pop one of those questions at you.

It’s the different characters you find at parties that I find interesting and I find that with social networking, those same characters exist. You know the types. There are the quiet ones who sit back and watch. They don’t offer much unless you ask them, yet if you engage them in conversation they can generally be quite entertaining. They are the mixed bag. You just never know what to expect.

On the other end of the spectrum are the life of the party type people. You can’t keep them quiet. They come as a mixed bag as well. You have those that have been there, done that, expert on everything, qualified at nothing. They are just as likely to push a business card into your hand while passing a drink. The other talkers include the gossipers. If you want to know what’s going on in the world, go and listen to them.

In the middle of all this are your every day individuals who try and do the right thing by circulating, chatting and listening to everyone before moving on to the next little group. I have oversimplified things a little, but you get the idea. Which group do you fit into? Social networking on line is no different.

On line, you have the braggart who can answer all your questions, always has an opinion, and is always trying to get you to visit their website. The gossiper can tell you what is going on everywhere. Who is not talking to who, which products are out of flavor (and which are ones are in). And you have the quiet ones who sit in the corner and watch everything. Pick their brains and you often find pearls of wisdom.

Recognizing some of these traits in the social networking world can be invaluable. Who do you ask for advice? Not the braggart – 90% of the time they are wrong. No, you seek out the quiet ones and get in line to ask them. They don’t need to promote themselves, their actions speak for themselves.

Likewise, if you want to quickly get a message out, go to the loud gossipers and let them in on the ‘secret’. As soon as it gets that confidential tone, you know the whole network will have heard about in with ten minutes. I must say, social networking reminds me of being at a party – there are just no drinks to consume – often the best part of any party.