Category Archives: Myspace

Social Media begs the following 50 questions:

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Below are 50 questions that prior to the creation of social networks, had no home. But now, all of these questions have a relavent place in the hiearchy that is “social networking” and thus needed to be answered. Because, though there are millions upon millions of people out there that know about social networks, there are millions that are clueless. Before we start answering these questions, are there any that I might have neglected or forgot to ask? Let’s get to it then.

  • What is a social network? For this answer we head to Youtube. You can watch it now, or come back to it.

 

  • Is it like MySpace? Well maybe we should qualify what MySpace is!
  • What’s Facebook?
  • Is it like blogging? Hmmmm…first, let’s explain what blogging is!
  • How does it work? Social networks are  networks of relationships that we have formed that tie us to others that may have a something in common with us. Think the 6 degrees of separation game. Think about what happens when you meet someone new. You ask where they work, where they grew up, where they went to school etc etc. Eventually, you realize that this person knows the girl that you work with and is a relative of your best friends boss.  Even though you’ve never met before, you’re both part of the same social network — a friend of a friend if you will. So, Social-networking sites “make off-line relationships more transparent” by allowing us to see (with pictures, videos and links) who our friends are, who our friends’ friends are, and who our friends’ friends’ friends are — all in a supposed easy-to-use format. Like a MySpace or Facebook. When you create a profile on a social-networking site, you are putting yourself out there and saying, “Hey world here I am, who knows me? and who wants to be my friend? and who do you know?” You can use the social site to:
    • look up old friends; make new ones
    • share music, photos and videos
    • join groups based on interests such as politics, hobbies, sports, religion or pets.
    • find jobs or love; or network with other professionals.
  • Are you on MySpace or Facebook? If you are 18-34, This might be one of the key face to face questions you may ask of someone within the first 5 minutes of meeting them.
  • What do I do with it? Here is an interesting response from Marcel de Ruiter and his blog Shaping Thoughts
  • How many social networks can I join? According to Mashable, last year there were 350 that they thought were worth mentioning, but I imagine that that number has grown exponentially. Pick your niche and I bet you can find a social network for it!
  • How many hours should I spend in social networks? Although Jennifer Laycock has some thoughts on this, I’d say this depends on what you want to get out of your social network. Depending on the number of social networks you join, you really should pick just a few and develop those. It really should amount to time spent once you are home from work or school. But not to the extent that your school work or your job performance starts to suffer.
  • How can I grow my business with social networks? Entrepreneur.com has a great piece on how to grow your business using social media. But make sure you have a firm foundation and understanding of what you are getting into before setting out. This also will allow you to ask better questions, should you choose to have someone grow your business with the help of social media.
  • What is the value proposition of being in a social network? According to Jill Konrath “A value proposition is a clear statement of the tangible results a customer gets from using your products or services. The more specific your value proposition is, the better. ”  However Jim Long seems to have nailed by saying that “At the end of the day, isn’t the value proposition that it connects people on a deeply personal level across time and geography? I think so, Jim…
  • What do I get? It all depends on what you want. Just like anything else, what you get out of it is in direct proportion to what you put into it.
  • Am I spending my time properly by being in or on a social network? A great post on this sits here, titled “Avoiding information and conversational overload from social media” My thanks again to Jennifer Laycock
  • Am I using it right? There is no right way or wrong way, though if you do nothing with a page that you have created, then chances are, not much will happen with it. Remember, the essence of social networking is to find your voice and find others who have the same voice. Finding others just like you is one of the primal instincts of mankind and animals alike. We like to run with our packs. Find your pack and the experience will be golden.
  • Am I using it wrong? See the above answer.
  • How do I know the difference between Facebook and MySpace?. Chris Salazar has an excellent post on this exact question, so for those who truly do not know the difference between the two check it out.
  • Do the developers really know what I want and care about on a social network? Of course they do… to a certain extent. Social networking sites are not successful unless they know or have an idea what people want. And ever since Facebook opened up their development platforms, the widgets are flying in. Widgets expand the things that you can do with your page and actually help you network with others.
  • Do I care what they do with my information? You should, so watch this:

 

  • If I am not on a social network, will I be scorned? Absolutely not. One of the biggest constraints to SN is the allocation of time that one has to set aside to “do this”. If you don’t have time, then thats fine. That would generally mean that you have your days and evenings filled with work, school and family obligations, in which case, there is nothing you can do about it and bridges will not be burned if you are not part of a social network.
  • Should I worry about social media and its effect on children? If you are a parent, if you do not do anything, then it’s like swimming in an undertow, you swim at your own risk. To not monitor what your children are doing online, not only in a social network setting, but in general, is foolish and ignorant. For more information on this subject try Connect Safely
  • What about predators in social networks? All you need to know on this subject can be found on the link, but if you are a parent you need to be vigilant and if you are a kid, just be smart.
  • Is social media measurable? According to Jeremiah Owyang “For many marketers who want to deploy a campaign on a social network, access to server metrics isn’t always available. As a result, they have to often visually monitor the interaction on the site, or measure click throughs to their site. In some of the more sophisticated platforms, a crude dashboard is provided.”
  • Is there a niche site out there for me? If so what can I do with a social networking site that is geared especially to my interests? There are tons of niche sites, in fact, in this blog, if you do a search and just title it top social sites, you should find something, better yet, here are the latest numbers for February of the top 25 social networking sites.
  • Isn’t it the same thing as chat and online forums and bbs’s? Yes and no. That is more Web 1.0 and social networking sites are more Web 2.0. Bbs’s are and were more static and had zero real time applications to them. Chat is and was real time but did not have the other tools attached to make the chat expereince more interactive and fullfilling. Social networks are more about sharing and creating and communicating. Its more about user generated content. Chat is just what it is, it’s talking and nothing more, to a certain extent.
  • It’s difficult for me to use, isn’t there a simpler way of doing it? Its going to get easier. As each iteration of social media evolves it will become more user friendly, more intuitive, and easier to set up. Remember, we are talking about something that is still really in its infancy.
  • Are there social networks for minorities? There are, though social networks are not, for the most part, geared towards any specific race, creed or color. There are some social networks, however.  that are geared more towards people of color. A primary example of this would be Black planet
  • If social networks are so cool, then shouldn’t they be available to the disadvantaged? That’s a great question and one that needs to be thrown out there for more discussion. Stanford University, touches on it here, but not to the level that it really deserves.
  • Will society eventually look down upon people who are not associated with a particular social network? I hope not, but if were to look into my crystal ball, it would seem to be heading towards a society where each person has a social network that he or she is a part of. To the degree that eventually your ID and who you are is also supported by your social network. Similar to Second Life, your social network will define you as much as your offline persona.
  • Why do I need it? You don’t. It’s a choice that you will come to on your own, once you get done reading the news, answering your email, doing a search, paying your bills and looking for flights.
  • What should I do with it? Again, it’s entirely up to you. Do nothing or you can do a little, or you can jump in with both feet. It’s your choice.
  • How is it going to improve my quality of life? The quality of your life is often defined by your friends and family and your job. Taking those 3 into the context of a social networking setting you could: Connect with friends you have not seen in a long time. Improve your relationships with existing friends.  You can connect with relatives that do not live close by. and lastly you can connect and use the power of social networks to either network with colleagues, find a new job, or improve the job or career you have now. How’s that?
  • How far can I take it? The possibilites are really quite endless.
  • What is the shelf-life for a social network? As of this writing, the big boys have no reason to believe that things will not get even better. However for the niche sites, because the business model is often supported by ad revenues, it will be tough. Though niche sites have a great value proposition, the numbers in regards to people will have to be somewhat strong for them to survive. And that remains to be seen.
  • Should I wait before I jump into a social network? You can take baby steps. You can try out some smaller sites or niche sites or even a shopping site for instance to just get a feel for what types of information is required, how much of yourself you want to put “out there” and what to expect in return. You will find that the larger sites are much more active, but in some cases, might be overwhelming. Take your time. Poke around.
  • If I was to use a social network, what would be the best one to use and why? A good question, Obviously the top 2 are always referenced but start with this top 25 and see if in the list, there is one that might catch your eye.
  • What separates a good social network from a bad one? Users, tools, content, and the technology. Is it always down? aAe there many users to begin with? What are some of the tools, widgets and applications they are offering that make a social network so fun to use? do they have a lot, a little? Ask yourself if this is the right group for you and go from there. Do some sleuthing, sign up and see, if not, just walk away.
  • Whats a widget and why do I care? You should. It’s what makes a social media experience that much richer. To quote Wikipedia just once, “A widget adds some content to that page that is not static. Other terms used to describe web widgets including: gadget, badge, module, capsule, snippet, mini and flake. Web widgets often but not always use DHTML, JavaScript, or Adobe Flash
  • Whats a mashup? Almost to the tee, a mashup is a way of combining more than one type of app with another to create a completely unique application.  It combines data from more than one source into a single integrated tool;  thereby creating a new and distinct web service that was not originally provided by either source. A classic example of a mashup is the combining of peanut butter and chocolate.. what did we get?   Fill in the blank____________
  • Does that matter to me? Yes and know, eventually all that you will want may be the result of a mashup.
  • How do I even attempt to create my own “page”? Thats the beauty of CMS and user generated content. No offense, but developers have really dumbed it down so that it really is quite simple to create and make your own page. And if you make a mistake, you can always go back and start over. Nothing is rarely etched in stone.
  • What kinds of time does it take to devote to social networking? Your time management skills will be tested, especially if you find your voice and your peeps. Eventually you may find yourself doing nothing but rushing home and jumping on your machine to check out your page and any action that might be associated with it. If it starts to hinder work and school, then you need to chill. Plain and simple.
  • Will corporate America take over social networks? It has to a certain degree With Newscorp buying MySpace and Microsoft sinking millions into an ad deal with Facebook, it’s inevitable that it is to happen. There is a lot of money at stake to be made and to lose, and corporate America isn’t about losing propositions. Can you say Murdoch and Gates?
  • Is there a place for social networks in society? Or is it a fad? They are here to stay. Though the social networks that you see now, may not be the social networks you see in 5 years. A lot can and will alter and change the look and feel and especially the technology running these networks, so stay tuned.
  • Don’t web developers just use it for driving traffic to websites? Some do. Social Media and Search engines have a major love-fest going on and it did not take search marketers long to figure that out.
  • Aren’t social media sites like just for collecting names so that I get hit on by advertisers? Yes and no. But right now that is the revenue model for most highly trafficed sites. Don’t forget, all of the sites we are talking about are free, so how else are they supposed to make money? Advertising and having access to the user information drives that train.
  • Will it help me get a job? There is a nice niche group of business related social networking sites. So the answer is yes.
  • Can I get famous? Maybe for the wrong reasons, though some seem to have carved out a niche for themselves say for example on You Tube.
  • Can I get a date? It’s possible, there are some social sites geared towards dating. Facebook actually has that potential, so we’ll go ahead and say yes.
  • Can I make lots of money? Again it’s possible. The potential lies within you, to leverage it the way you see fit.
  • It’s used to build brands right? Absolutely. Marketers are starting to realize that using social networks to build, promote and grow brands is and can be a very effective way to reach a sometimes unapproachable and skeptical audience.
  • Social networks are set up to influence purchasing decisions right? They can be. They can be used to support and promote products that ultimately you the consumer may buy. More and more marketers are setting up product-centric social networks in which the users are consumers and buyers of that product.
  • Why should I join one? Because everyone else seems to be talking about it and to not at least experience the power of it wouldn’t be any fun.

 

Well there you have it. Some answers are better than others. Some require more elaboration than I was willing to give and ultimately, I  may have left out a few that did not come to mind. That’s why you people are here. To help me out, to grow a powerful KB for those who do not know enough about the power of the social network.

Cheers

The top 25 websites for February 2008

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According to comScore here are the top 25 websites/properties that received the most traffic in February. Some of these should not surprise you. But it does give you a glimpse of what people’s surfing patterns consist of. The number next to it is uniques, as in millions. Yahoo! Sites continued to lead as the top property with 137 million visitors, followed by Google Sites with nearly 136 million visitors and Microsoft Sites with more than 118 million visitors. Wikipedia Sites and  The Ask Network each moved up one position in the top 10 to spots seven and nine, respectively. Glam Media jumped 10 spots to reach position 18 with more than 29 million visitors during the month. Since Tax season is upon us,  the IRS.gov site moved into the Top 50 ranking, capturing position 45.

Yahoo! Sites 136,767

Google Sites 135,970

Microsoft Sites 118,355

AOL LLC 108,911

Fox Interactive Media 83,638

eBay 77,864

Wikipedia Sites 55,906

Amazon Sites 55,172

Ask Network 54,120

Time Warner – Excluding AOL 52,661

New York Times Digital 47,632

Apple Inc 47,048

Viacom Digital 41,216

Weather Channel, The 41,057

CNET Networks 33,320

Facebook.com 32,436

Adobe Sites 30,620

Glam Media 29,136

Wal-Mart 27,651

Superpages.com Network 27,526

Verizon Communications Corporation 27,101

Disney Online 27,094

Craigslist, Inc 26,822

Gorilla Nation 26,710

Target Corporation 26,631

Social media and baby boomers, Who is ignoring this demographic?

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Ok so I admit it. Social media is cool. I love everything it stands for and the endless possibilities that it has. But my question to my educated audience is this. Is social media for the 15-34 age group? Does social media care about the baby boomer set? Sure I gave you the top 30 social networks for baby boomers awhile back, but what kind of play are they getting? Do they get the same kind of action that Facebook and Myspace get? Or are they glorified email holders with cute colors? Does the 50+ demo know the power of the social networks available to them?

I recently came across a site called Growing Bolder, great title and the premise was the promise. To boldly provide for the boomers a place to…where they can…while doing…in which…etc. etc… I’m not really bashing Growing Bolder, in fact I give them credit, along with the other 30 I have mentioned, for seeing a niche that can be catered to, marketed to and sold to. That’s right, sold to. What? you thought the reasons for creating this site and all the others, were purely altruisitc? Umm…ok…

Riddle me this, do we still have to call someone that’s 50+, an individual who is in pursuit of an active lifestyle? I don’t get that. Do boomers become sedentary? Do they just shut it down? I would imagine that most people don’t stop living or spending once they exceed 50, so maybe we should do away with the assumptions that accompany that age? To that end, shouldn’t we embrace the boomers that have taken Facebook for example, and made it an integral part of their lives? People run in the packs or the cliques that they most indentify with, but that doesn’t mean that the cool club or bar or restaurant that they want to go to, is going to deny them access. The same holds true for social networks. You stay over there and we’ll stay over here and there is plenty of room for all of us to enjoy what this place has to offer.

Check the stats, one of Facebooks biggest chunks of users are boomers or boomers on the cusp of being boomers. This does not mean that the advent and growth of boomer social networks should go away, it just means that boomers can go to any social network they want, and provided that their is a collection of their peeps there, more power to you.

Social media has not ignored the boomers but do boomers ignore social networks? Would boomers rather talk face to face or use a social networking app to do it? How do boomers relationships? How do they value social media relationships? I bet it has opened up a world of new possibilities for the person in pursuit of the active lifestyle! Sorry, I felt like saying active lifestyle again.

Here is the quick caveat though. Just because you the boomer is in Facebook, doesn’t mean that you have quickly transported back 30 years in time. Leave the 20 somethings alone and hang with your own people. I’m just sayin…

Are social networks good for society?

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Some claim that being in a social network closes us off from the rest of society. To a certain degreee that might be true. In this freakonomics blog post find out what 6 distinguished social media observers feel are the pros, the cons, the good the bad and the ugly of what social networks bring to the table.

The top searches for the week? Obsessing over hot women.

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In a tribute to the female form, apprently all anyone wants to search on anymore is female actresses and models. So does this mean that the majority of all searches done this week were done by males? Possibly. Does this mean that all they care about is hot women? Perhaps. Does this mean that the war in Iraq and the presidential elections don’t matter to them? Probablly. Of the top 20 searches according to the Lycos 50, 9 of them were the usual suspects when it comes to women in the news. Hillary notwithstanding.

Oh and the obsession with Clay Aiken continues, as he slides in with the number 2 ranking this week. Interestingly enough, if you are to look at the big picture of what is getting press right now, 2 of the entries were Facebook and MySpace, which I thought were curious searches in that one merely needs to type the addresses into the browser. So perhaps it might have been parents who were doing research on, “what this Facebook, Myspace stuff was all about”.

At #1, is there any real surprise?

Lindsay Lohan

Clay Aiken

Britney Spears

Paris Hilton

Angelina Jolie

Pamela Anderson

Disney

Pokemon

Naruto

Easter

Juno

Facebook

MySpace

Jessica Alba

Apple

WWE

Jessica Simpson

Poker

BitTorrent

Carmen Electra

Golf

NBA

Salma Hayek

Sailor Moon

How important is uptime in Social networks?

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Apparently not too important to the folks at Bebo According to Royal Pingdom (great name by the way) which measures downtime using Pingdom’s uptime monitoring service.

Bebo’s downtime has increased significantly lately and has had by far the most downtime of the 14 social networks monitored for the survey. More than 12 hours of downtime in less than two months is a lot, and it could possibly be caused by the new open application platform that Bebo launched in December, allowing third-party developers access to its platform, Facebook style. It could be putting more strain on Bebo’s systems than they anticipated.

The two giants in the field, MySpace (with 25 minutes of downtime) and Facebook (with one hour and 35 minutes of downtime), can both be considered to be within acceptable limits, especially MySpace.

Social networks, just like any other websites, will occasionally suffer from downtime, either planned or unplanned. However, social networks have a different type of usage than most websites, with frequent visits from the same user and many page views per visit. Therefore downtime can often be even more noticeable and frustrating to social network users.

Below are the results of the survey.

Social Network Home page (monitored) Downtime in 2008 (until Feb 25)
Bebo www.bebo.com 12h 28m
Windows Live Spaces spaces.live.com 7h 25m
Friendster www.friendster.com 6h 0m
hi5 www.hi5.com 5h 5m
Reunion.com www.reunion.com 2h 55m
LinkedIn www.linkedin.com 4h 0m
Classmates.com www.classmates.com 2h 5m
Facebook www.facebook.com 1h 35m
Orkut www.orkut.com 1h 10m
Last.fm www.last.fm 1h 10m
Xanga www.xanga.com 45m
MySpace www.myspace.com 25m
LiveJournal www.livejournal.com 10m
Yahoo! 360 360.yahoo.com 5m

* According to Royal Pingdom: If a web page is not reachable, returns an error, or takes longer than 30 seconds to load, it is considered as down. Downtime is always confirmed from two geographically separate locations.

Business Social networking experiment part 2.

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Well ecademy was certainly interesting. Priding itself with the tag line; “Successful business people join ecademy to do more business”. After the relatively pain free login, I was taken to this page that had sooo much information for me to read and soo much information that they wanted, that I became somewhat discouraged and I’ve decided to move onto the next site on the list. Not a good start for a business social networking site. It shouldn’t be so hard! One note, I keep getting lots of unsolicted emails from users welcoming me etc etc.. The only difference is their names aren’t Mandy, Ashley, and Monique…

Next on the list entremate and I have just clicked on the darkest, most illegible eula/t&c I have ever encountered. God knows what I just agreed to. Time to edit the profile. Not much here to be honest, and it seems to be essentially a bbs. Now how far is that going to get me?

Next up was Friendly Favors, I’m going to give them a second chance on a first impression since I was getting database errors for the better part of yesterday.

Konnects, I liked, it was fairly intuitive and easy to set up and the influx of emails wasn’t too bad. That’s one bad aspect of Ecademy, they like to spam with people essentially “there” to help you. But we’ll see. Here is Konnects pitch: Do more with Konnects Get your own professional space online:

  • Grow your business
  • Find a Job
  • Access 1000’s of communities
  • Centralize your network
  • Join discussions
  • Let others find you
  • and much more.

    • Something to remember is that with all social networks, it doesnt happen overnight and with each network that you are in, you have to get your bearings and contribute and share and grow your page and your presence. With that being said, When I logged in to Networking for Pros, they essentially said, screw the advertiser model, we want your money to use our site. So I said to Networking for Pros. screw you, I want free. And Off I went.

    Real contacts touted itself as a social networking site but really its the old Monster jobs site model. Its employers connecting with job seekers and nothing more, so I was outta there. And on to Ryze I went. I signed up and was fully expecting quite the expereince given all of the back slapping it gave itself. But to be honest, I didn’t think there was much under the hood. You know one of the things that a lot of social networks assume is that you are able to or want to,”invite your friends”. Has it dawned on anyone that maybe you don’t have any friends or maybe you don’t wanna invite anyone within your circle? That might be why Facebook has a leg on all of these. They allow you to look for your group and just join. Then it’s up to you to connect within the group.

    So I came away from Ryze with a shrug of the shoulders and a “oh well” attitude with zero expectations. I liked Spoke, it had a nice interface and essentially asked for the same ole same ole in regards to the information it was looking for, but it might be worth going back and building on the intial info that I have provided them. The last one in the group is Teng which is is a professional community of selected Chief Information Officers, Chief Technology Officers, vice presidents and directors of technology with organizations ranging from startups to the global Fortune 100, from non-profits to government agencies. The interface sucked so I’m not sure if it’s just a source site for someone to collect names. I went through the initial steps, so I’ll let you know.

    Ok, so I have gone through all of the sites that were on the list and for now I’m going to focus on 3 of them for now. Those will be Spoke, Konnects and Ecademy. Those 3 seemed to be the best of the bunch and may have the most potential for something. I’ll try and go back and contribute and share and upload and do the things we do in social networks, but for now, you’ll just have to wait and see. One more thing, I did not include Linkedin and Plaxo, which were suggested, because one is clearly THE business social network at the moment and the other is more of a tool for sharing contacts.  So I wanted to look beyond those. especially the ones that I can get something from without shelling out any coin. Have I missed one, that we should evaluate?

    Customer Acquisition in Social Media Marketing

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    After reading this entry in Top Rank Blog about tips for marketing with social media, something crossed my mind. Though there were some great tips on things that people can do to use the power of social meda to bolster marketing, I was not seeing THE sure fire way. It was gray. I think it’s still gray, and I’ll tell you why.

    Lets take for example Client A. Client A wants to use social media, has heard about social media or at least has heard about blogs for example, and wants to use it to drive traffic to his or her sites, increase sales and or use it for branding purposes. That seems to be a safe assumption for most companies.

    Well those are all well and good, but first things first. Where does the client go? You have consultants running around out there claiming to know how to do it, but by the looks of the tips. I saw nothing that was a “business process”. I saw a here try this, or this works, or a you might want to try this or I have seen that…..Get the point? A client needs to know what are you going to do, how are you going to do it, how long is it going to take, and what will I get from your efforts, amongst other things.

    The problem is, with social media, though you can measure traffic to a certain degree, the “process” or the initiation of a social media campaign is not an overnight phenomenon. there are some instances of it occurring from a viral marketing standpoint but It’s a process that needs to be cultivated. The issue that most clients have with this business model is that they don’t have time to nurture their presence in social networks. Their businesses require immmediate results and returns.

    Businesses know this and need to know this: 1) Here is my customer I know what it takes to acquire this customer via this form of advertising, sales and marketing and channel. 2) Here is my customer, what is it going to cost me to acquire that customer through social media? And what are the steps that you are going to take and what are they going to cost me for you to achieve that? After you first explain to me what social media is…

    After they ask you “Is it like Myspace”? 

    If you the social media marketer come to me and say, “We’re going to create a Facebook group for you, A couple of blogs, maybe a bbs, a couple of microsites, and we’re also going to Twitter and use Stumbleupon as well as a handful of others.” I’m first going to say, “Huh?  and then “ok, what is that going to do”? And you’ll say, “We’re branding you, and we’re driving traffic to these sites and pages and they’re finding out more about you”!.  To which I will say, “Thats great, how many sales can I expect? What kind of conversion rates can I expect from social media???” At that point I better get a really good answer or another plan that perhaps uses a widget or two that is placed in strategic social media sites that can drive traffic and convert sales.

     That’s the real question, or rather one of the many questions. Here they are and you might want to use them as you are approached by social media marketers or companies who will claim to know what they are doing.

    • What is your social media plan?
    • Do I need sales, leads or traffic
    • What types of social media do you plan to use and why those? and why not these?
    • What will be the upfront costs? What ongoing costs can I expect?
    • What will be the costs of customer acquisition? A cost per acquisition model certainly applies here!
    • How long will it take to roll this plan out
    • What kinds of deliverables can I expect and when
    • What is your track record
    • Have you ever worked with this type of product or my type of company before?
    • How successful have you been
    • What will it take to manage it on my own
    • Lets focus on some deliverables
    • Lets set some benchmarks with incentives
    • What is your plan to integrate this social media plan with our other marketing plans
    • What if you fail
    • What guarantees do I have
    • References

    The key here is alot of agencies are starting to add social media as it’s own division within their companies. Though there are very few companies and agencies who have done it right over a sustained period of time, because of the “new-ness” of it all. It’s up to you to figure out who can deliver what, and in what time frame. The last thing you need is for someone or some company to experiment with your brand as they muddle their way through figuring out just what works and what doesn’t work with social media marketing.

    Lastly what companies and businesses and people need to realize is that social media marketing is a moving target. It’s changing and morphing into something different every day. The reason is, marketers are figuring out new and unique ways to leverage the media to the advantage of the client. Some are proven, some are loopholes, some are brainstorms and some are just plain strokes of genius. Though you still need a concrete strategy as you go forward. It doesn’t hurt to have someone who is willing to take a chance or try something different on your behalf. Keep that in mind as you work your way down the bulleted list. The first of many steps will be finding someone who knows social media marketing and actually has a business model wrapped around social media marketing. As it is a moving target, I’m sure that there are some differring opinons on this. What do you think?