Persistence Marketing:

With all that we hear about Web 2.0, Social Media and the importance that it is now playing in the marketing of our businesses, I felt it was time to take a closer look.

First of all what exactly is Web 2.0. While you will still find some debate taking place over the exact definition of Web 2.0 one thing that most experts will agree upon is: Web 2.0 is the next generation of websites with a very strong emphasis placed on interconnectivity, community and collaboration. Enter social media. With some good examples of Web 2.0 being Social Networking sites, Blogs, Forums, Wikis, Video sharing sites (YouTube) and Micro-Blogging sites (Twitter), just to name a few.

For many, Social Networking is still for the young or at least young at heart. Yet, others think about all of the tech savvy people of the world  staying connected online, chatting, blogging, etc. Not so, today there are a number of people, small businesses and large corporations tapping into the power of Social media and most importantly driving profits to their bottom line. Additionally, many sites statistically show that a large majority of their members are over the age of 30. In many cases over half.

Make no mistake about it, the people, companies, and organizations that are making the most of Web 2.0 and Social Networking are those that have a detailed marketing plan in place. Social Networking is no place for a Hard Sell, Spamming or many of the other techniques that many may be tempted to try.

If you are a Network Marketer and have not had the success that you may have hoped when you first started out, listen closely. Social Networking can have a HUGE impact on your success. Will it be over night, no. Can you sell (pitch) everyone you meet? Sure, but you will soon find yourself without any contacts/friends.

Let’s start at square one and work into what to do once we are there. Square one: Where do I find Social Networking sites? Unless you have been living under a rock somewhere you know about MySpace, Facebook and YouTube. All great places to start, but the world (internet world) has much more to offer. Sure MySpace, YouTube and Facebook are the most well known or as some may say the 800 pound gorillas in the arena, but there are a lot of other sites that you can tap into based on a number of factors.

Just a quick list of some of what the Internet has to offer in terms of Social Networking:

-          MySpace

-          Facebook

-          YouTube

-          LinkedIn

-          Ning

-          Ecademy

-          Hi5

-          Orkut

-          Friendster

-          Flickr

-          Digg

-          StumbleUpon

-          BlackPlanet

The above list is just a partial list of those Social Media sites that are available and more importantly some of the most popular. As I mentioned you may or may not want to connect with any given site based on your goals and most importantly your social media marketing plan. Please keep in mind that I am looking at this subject purely from a business perspective. If you plan to connect on any or all of the sites for pleasure, go for it. No plans required, no strategy, etc, etc.

More about each of the sites list above to help you decide where you may want to start.

MySpace – MySpace is an online community that lets you meet your friends’ friends, share photos, journals and interests with your growing network of mutual friends. See who knows who, or how you are connected. MySpace is for:
* Friends who want to talk Online
* Single people who want to meet other Singles
* Matchmakers who want to connect their friends with other friends
* Families who want to keep in touch–map your Family Tree
* Business people and co-workers interested in networking
* Classmates and study partners
* Anyone looking for long lost friends!

Facebook – Facebook is a social utility that connects people with friends and others who work, study and live around them. People use Facebook to keep up with friends, upload an unlimited number of photos, post links and videos, and learn more about the people they meet.

YouTube – YouTube is a video sharing website where users can upload, view and share video clips. Three former PayPal employees created YouTube in February 2005. In November 2006, YouTube, LLC was bought by Google Inc. for US$1.65 billion, and is now operated as a subsidiary of Google. The company is based in San Bruno, California, and uses Adobe Flash Video technology to display a wide variety of user-generated video content, including movie clips, TV clips, and music videos, as well as amateur content such as video blogging and short original videos. Most of the content on YouTube has been uploaded by individuals, although media corporations including CBS and the BBC and other organizations offer some of their material via the site

LinkedIn – LinkedIn is a business-oriented social networking site founded in December 2002 and launched in May 2003 mainly used for professional networking. As of February 2009, it had more than 35 million registered users, spanning 170 industries.

Ning – Ning competes with large social sites like MySpace and Facebook by appealing to people who want to create their own social networks around specific interests with their own visual design, choice of features and member data.[7] The unique feature of Ning is that anyone can create their own social network for a particular topic or need, catering to specific membership bases. At its launch, Ning offered several simple base websites developed internally and by members of a closed beta. In late September 2006, Ning narrowed its focus to offering a group website, a photos website, and a videos website for people to copy and use for any purpose.

Ecademy – Ecademy is a Business Social Network founded in 1998 now with millions of users of the site each year worldwide. Ecademy enables business people to connect through online networking using social media tools, at business networking events and 1-2-1 meetings – a community that advocates, connects and helps one another.

hi5 – hi5 is a social networking website, which, throughout 2008, was one of the top 20 most visited sites on the Internet (among people who have the Alexa toolbar installed on their browser. The company was founded in 2003 by Ramu Yalamanchi who is also the current CEO. As of January 2009, hi5 claims to have over 60 million active members

Orkut – Orkut is a social networking service which is run by Google and named after its creator, an employee of Google – Orkut Büyükkökten. The service states that it was designed to help users meet new friends and maintain existing relationships. Orkut is similar to other networking sites. Since October 2006, Orkut has permitted users to create accounts without an invitation.

Orkut is the most visited website in Brazil and second most visited site in India. A large percentage of users in India are high school and college students. The initial target market for Orkut was the United States, but the majority of its users are in Brazil and India.

Friendster – Friendster is focused on helping people meet new friends, stay in touch with old ones and sharing online content and media. The website is also used for dating and discovering new events, bands, hobbies, and more. Users can share content including videos, photos, messages and comments with friends via their profile and their network.

Friendster has over 90 million registered users and over 61 million unique visitors a month globally. The website receives approximately 19 billion page views per month making it a top 20 global website based on web traffic. Over 90% of Friendster’s traffic comes from Asia

Flickr – Flickr is an image and video hosting website, web services suite, and online community platform. In addition to being a popular Web site for users to share personal photographs, the service is widely used by bloggers as a photo repository. As of November 2008, it claims to host more than 3 billion images

Digg – Digg is a social news website made for people to discover and share content from anywhere on the Internet, by submitting links and stories, and voting and commenting on submitted links and stories. Voting stories up and down is the site’s cornerstone function, respectively called digging and burying. Many stories get submitted every day, but only the most Dugg stories appear on the front page. –

StumbleUpon – StumbleUpon is an Internet community that allows its users to discover and rate Web pages, photos, and videos. It is a personalized recommendation engine which uses peer and social-networking principles. Web pages are presented when the user clicks the “Stumble!” button on the browser’s toolbar. StumbleUpon chooses which Web page to display based on the user’s ratings of previous pages, ratings by his/her friends, and by the ratings of users with similar interests.

BlackPlanet – Blackplanet.com is an online niche social-networking site targeted especially for the African American community. In December 2007 was the 4th highest trafficked social-networking site according to Hitwise, and the only niche social-networking site in the top 5, behind the likes of MySpace and Facebook. As of June 2007 there were 16.5 million members and 80 million page views.

Now that we have a better understanding of Web 2.0, Social Media, the importance that it now plays in the marketing of our businesses, and lastly what options the Internet offers us, I HIGHLY recommend that you start putting together a plan to succeed. As I mentioned above if consider yourself a Network Marketer, MLM Entrepreneur, Home Based Business or a Direct Sales Rep and you are not 100% satisfied with the accomplishments of yourself or your team it is time to tap into Social Networking.