Although everyone has been amazed by the explosive power of social networks generally, many have been disappointed that their own foray hasn’t been successful. Moreover, even the most successful social networks with massive audiences have a hard time making money.

There are many reasons why this is so, but here are two:

The Problem of confirmation: While the successes are obvious, the failures are obscure. Everybody notices big successes like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc., but there is little documentation of the many failures. Classmates.com has been around since the ‘90’s, and Yahoo! 360 was also an early entrant, while neither ever gained any traction. How many others? Who knows?

Low value audience: An impression on a social network can be worth as little as 1/20th the value of an impression on a top branded content site. While this is confusing for many, there are some good reasons for it:

• Eyeballs aren’t consumers: There is a reason that drug dealers hang out at rock concerts but not university libraries. Consumer value is derived not just from identity, but even more so from intention. While a woman might be a loving mother of three as well as an avid Metallica fan and an enthusiastic snowboarder, at the PTA meeting she’s focused on her kids and not her other interests.
• Intrusion: On sites with branded content, consumers understand that marketers are paying the freight. However, social networks are consumer driven and they resent intrusion (just ask Facebook!). People will accept ads in their TV, but don’t want advertisers breaking into their homes.
• Engagement: A media brand is valuable because people believe in it. Part of what advertisers are paying for is an association with that brand.

So while social networks are enormously powerful, basing a business in social media is far from a sure thing. There are three ways you can improve your odds:

Cluster targeting: Social media’s biggest successes started out in small communities. Facebook was initially limited to one university; MySpace became popular first in the incestual LA music scene. For a social network to be successful it first has to saturate one community before it can effectively spread to others (there are good mathematical reasons, but I won’t discuss them here).

Aggregation: By adopting open architecture and allowing people to keep their friends when they use competing social networks, you not only do your consumers a service you actually increase the value on your own network (again, I won’t go into the math).

Integration: By integrating social components into branded content, you get the best of both worlds. Audiences become more engaged and can add to the discussion, ad inventory increases and, best of all, advertisers will let you keep those high rates!

Just like any other smart entrepreneurs, you should conserve your capital and use it wisely. Start small and grow bigger. Try our 30 days Free Trial Basic Plan with absolutely no obligation to pay a single cent. You get to see the potential of turning your dream into reality. We want to be honest with you – It is not going to be a walk in the park to market your Social Networking Website but we are here to walk the journey with you.

Investors are flocking to fund social networking startups. How can you identify a good investment? Here are five key characteristics, backed up with real-world examples.

1. Start with friends

While social networking offers a wide pool of potential contacts, talking to strangers or making new acquaintances isn’t the main draw. Users are attracted to these sites because they want to communicate with people they already know. Therefore, job one of a successful social networking company is to facilitate interaction among a close-knit, pre-existing circle of companions. There’s no doubt that users will make new connections, but a good site will be built on a foundation of existing relationships*(see below for an exception).

Facebook and Twitter are great examples. Users are drawn to these networks by the promise of enhanced communication with friends.

2. Enable users’ narcissism and vanity
Many people, especially 18 to 25 year olds, entertain the conceit that they are unique and interesting. A compelling social network lets users construct an idealized self out of random thoughts, iPod playlists, lip-synching videos or drunken party photos, and then invites others (especially their friends) to endorse this conceit.

Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube exemplify the narcissism/vanity characteristic. Facebook lets users construct paeans to their own good taste. Twitter provides a public billboard for users’ interior monologues. And Google spends millions of dollars on data storage to preserve a flood of home-made comedy sketches, skateboarding tricks, and confessionals.

3. Enable users’ voyeurism
The flip side of the human compulsion to gaze into the mirror is the desire to peek into windows. A successful social networking sites remove the physical barriers and social conventions that otherwise discourage our ability to sift through other people’s lives.

It’s telling that neither Twitter nor YouTube require visitors to register — the unfettered ability to troll through posts keeps users coming back. Facebook, while providing some control over who is allowed to join your network, lets you see who is in your friends’ network.

4. Enable user judgments
Following closely on points 2 and 3, people love to evaluate, criticize, and pass judgment on others. In addition to satisfying this urge, social networking sites also can classify and tally judgments to help direct others to the most popular — or most reviled — content on the site.

YouTube and Twitter exemplify the judgment characteristic. YouTube members don’t hesitate to write “You suck” in the comments section. Twitter’s “Followers” tally serves as a crude indicator of a person’s status within the community.

5. Enable expansion
Once your friends are in your network, it’s time to branch out and meet new people. Users will broaden their connections around common points such as shared interests or geographic proximity.

Facebook and Twitter exemplify the expansion characteristic. Facebook makes it easy to add friends, while Twitter continuously exposes users to new posters and lets users follow each other.

Source: http://www.informationweek.com/blog/main/archives/2007/08 5_keys_to_socia.html;jsessionid=AHR4UKITMOZIZQE1GHPCKHWATMY32JVN

The key behind social network marketing is to consistently generate fresh leads day in and day out. If you have a consistent flow of leads coming in, you will have success in the long run. While it’s certainly not easy to generate leads, it’s not impossible either. The power of social networks has proven that anyone with tenacity and a thick skin can make it successful.

Every entrepreneur faces the challenge of funneling new leads into their network. Unfortunately, there is not one right—or easy—way to gather quality leads although there are a few essential things you can to do make it happen.

There are several ways you can bring in new leads using social network marketing, which are free leads. Even though the leads are free, they don’t come without a time cost. Putting in the time and effort required is what will set you apart from the other, less than willing, marketers. Below are two steps to help you get started in social network marketing.

The first step is branding yourself with specific long term traffic generation methods. What this means is becoming an expert in your niche by writing articles, e-books, press releases, or blogs. You then turn around and submit your best piece to a social networking site. If you content is good, your traffic will be good. If you content is bad, you’ll get buried. The continued submission process helps you to determine what’s popular or not.

By submitting new content on a consistent basis, you’ll be slowing building your brand. In other words, people can identify you by the type of content you produce. If you write a fresh and enticing article or e-book, people will view you as an expert in that field.

The second step to successful social network marketing is creating an effective conversion process. Generating traffic to your site is great, but traffic alone doesn’t increase your earnings. Instead of interrupting—demanding—that visitors give you their email address, you simply let your content do its job, which is to make visitors come back. Over time, your visitors will want to know how you can help them. Once that happens, you know your business model is effective.

Social network marketing is more than marketing. You have to show users that you are a willing participant and that what you have to say is important. Your dollar investment will be minimal. But your time investment will be great. Be willing to invest the time and you will be successful.

Just like with any website, you should market social networking websites after developing your goals for site traffic and customer usage. There are several ways that you can advertise your website, so follow these steps to bring traffic your way.

Instructions

1. Sign up for advertising where you pay a fixed amount for each time someone clicks on your ad, which is located on other sites across the Internet. One of the benefits of cost-per-click advertising is that you can set the price you wish to pay for advertising.
2. Pay for cost-per-action advertising. This means that you only pay if the person who clicked on your ad actually signs up with your website or purchases something. This may be more expensive than pay-per-click advertising, but you know that every time you pay, you get a new registration or other desired action.
3. Optimize your website’s search engine placement. You can either pay someone to optimize your website for you, or learn how to do it yourself. In addition, get backlinks from other sites that are similar to yours. You can exchange links, but XML and RSS feeds to your partners may be more effective.
4. Know that you can get a lot of traffic if you build a blog on your website. If you can brand yourself as an authority in the subject around which you built your site and add valuable content to it, you will boost your popularity and search engine rankings. Expert articles are a good example of valuable content.
5. Write a press release. You should research press releases and find out what you should include in one and to whom you should submit it. This will help boost the popularity of your social networking website also.

Source: http://www.ehow.com/how_2317681_market-social-networking-website.html

Social Networks (e.g. Facebook, MySpace) have become increasingly popular amongst internet marketers. That’s because they work! These sites are free and very easy to use. If you know how you can market your website or business with them, the benefits are ten-fold. This article is here to help you do just that. Harness the power of social networks. Let’s begin.

First of all you must decide which sites will you choose to market your business. You can select local sites or global ones or both. But you must know that it takes time to create profiles, answer to messages and take active part in discussions. Time is always an issue so be very selective when picking platforms. It’s not easy to choose from thousands of online communities and hundreds of social networking sites. The easy way would be to follow the flow and go where most people go (to the large social networks like Facebook) but, be aware that your goal is to market your business to people who are actually interested in what you have to offer.

When you are online don’t make the biggest mistake most business make. They just sell their products. They put all their effort on the “selling” part. That’s wrong because people will know if you are on a social network just because you want to market your business or if you are really interested in how to become more social. One way to overcome this problem is to become an active part of the online community. Try to engage users instead of selling. Try to show that there’s great value within your website. Then gather that value and be prepared to give to others instead of just selling. Of course, you should be balanced with what you give and how you give it. Don’t forget your main goal which is to market your business. This method of giving will help you in the long-run.

With social networks you can start building awareness for your business by promoting your personal profile locally or globally. That way you can expand your customer base by creating a database of people “connected” with each other and interested in your business. Be careful though, in social networks people will connect with you first and then with your products. Promote your excellent, professional personality first. As I said earlier “Try to engage users instead of selling”.

Now you can learn how to market your website on social networks. If you are not using Facebook marketing to drive traffic and sales to your websites you are missing out on a huge opportunity. Most people don’t even know how easy (and free!) it is to start making money from Facebook marketing today.

By: Maria Markella
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Maria_Markella

“Build it and they will come?” Not anymore (if that was ever really true).

Just building a feature-filled social networking site with a sound infrastructure is only the start of your website journey. Don’t fret, though, because it’s an exciting journey: social networking sites are the most visited area of the Internet. According to recent statistics from Hitwise.com, social networking actually accounts for 11% of all web visits.

As expected, this popularity begets competition: competition to keep your site from resembling an online ghost town and competition to find and convert the right people for your particular niche.

1. Identify your target audience
Who are you targeting — specifically? To help answer this question, think about the target age, gender, interest, and geographic location of who you want to use your new site.

Remember, social networkers are already busy on sites like Facebook, MySpace, Digg, and others, so the average person probably won’t add a “general” social networking site to their agenda. So, choose a niche and identify the relevant audience so you can stand out.

Once you know who you are targeting, figure out how many people are in your target audience and might be interested in your site. To do this, think about keyword searches this audience might do to find sites like yours, and then check out keyword search volume on Google and research data on sites like compete.com and hitwise.com. You should also visit Stumbleupon, go to groups, and find out how many people subscribe to the group or groups related to your topic.

2. Beta test – thoroughly
Social networkers have choices, and they definitely don’t have the time or willingness to deal with problems. So before you launch, you need a really strong beta site that’s been tested and tested and tested. And tested one more time for good measure. If you have the budget, consider private or third-party testing – not only will they do a thorough job, but they may notice problems that over time you’ve come to ignore. The easiest way to turn off a potential customer is to deliver a sub-par experience.

In addition testing the user experience, be sure to include server and load testing: When sites go down, visitors are turned off and leave, most likely for good.

Remember that social media users as a group tend to be more technically savvy, and as a result, more likely to bail on you if they’re unsatisfied. The bottom line is that you’ll want to have your site in top shape before driving traffic to it.

3. Seed your site
Say you’re creating a site for interior designers and your goal is for thousands of designers to upload photos for the community to comment on. At launch, make sure you have tons of photos in place.

A common mistake is assuming visitors will load your content for you, but in reality almost no visitor will commit to making that jump unless they see other people have already done so. Think about it — would you as a visitor upload photos, add descriptions, and comment on other photos when it is unlikely people will see what you’ve done?

The basic principle is that visiting a social networking site is a lot like using a forum – if there’s no activity, you’ll leave. So seed your site with the kind of content you want users to generate and interact with.

How can you do this? Get a beta group to help you seed your site – even if it’s just your friends and family. Not only will you be seeding, you’ll also be performing additional beta tests in the process.

4. Network to generate traffic
The key message here is that social networking requires online, not offline, buzz generation. Get in touch with online influencers during your website’s pre-launch phase and more general blogs and PR sites post-launch.

How? Use Technorati and Google Blog Search to identify the popular blogs that focus on your demographic. Then, after you’ve conducted beta testing and you’re proud of your site, contact the major bloggers and influencers in your demographic and ask them to beta test your site prior to launch. By reaching out early, you’re showing you respect their knowledge and you really value their feedback.

That’s a much better approach than contacting them after the launch. Why? Most will be flattered you sought their opinion ahead of time, and not only will you get valuable feedback, you’re more likely to be reviewed when you do launch. Reviews and mentions by influencers help create buzz – and buzz creates traffic.

Then notify influential blogs like techcrunch.com, mashable.com, and killerstartups.com. Keep in mind they get tons of requests, so make sure your pitch is to the point.

5. Consider traditional online advertising
If you have the budget, contact the large sites and forums in your demographic that sell ad space and buy a few ads (federatedmedia.com could be a good source). But do not delude yourself into buying just any traffic, and don’t focus on general-interest sites even if they get huge amounts of traffic. In the early stages of your website, you want your ads in front of the right eyeballs – not just any eyeballs.

6. Don’t forget SEO
Getting traffic from search engines is key, right? And getting free traffic is even better. To do this, one of the first things you’ll want to do is identify keywords and continually optimize your site and pages and get ranked for those words.

For example, if your niche is interior design, you’ll definitely want to rank for terms like “interior design ideas,” interior design photos,” “interior design community,” etc. Look for keywords that describe the content you offer instead of products and integrate that content into your pages. (Unless your site is devoted to product reviews or discussions, of course.) And remember, it’s hard to rank highly for general terms; it’s much easier to rank highly for specific and focused keywords.

7. Participate on sites related to your niche
If there’s a huge forum or a thriving group in StumbleUpon in your demographic, set up an account, link back to your site, and interact and become well-known in that community and you’ll generate traffic to your site.

When you set up your account, make your username the name of your social site to help further brand you. Make a name for yourself – actually, for your site – in your demographic. Here’s a guide to help you set up a StumbleUpon account and, if you like, becoming a top Stumbler.

8. Create spokes for your hub
Set up Facebook and MySpace pages that are extensions of your site. Then search and network with people who share your interest. Aggregating content from your social site and placing it on your Facebook and MySpace pages will give potential visitors a sense of what is on your main site.

You can also set up a Twitter page, with the name of your site as your Twitter username, and tweet all day about what you’re working on and what’s new on your site. You can also perform searches on Twitter to find people interested in your niche. Many influential bloggers use Twitter to alert their readers about new content – you can too.

Make sure you also link to all your Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, and Stumbleupon profiles from your main site – basically, anywhere you’ve created an account related to your brand.

9. Analyze, analyze, analyze
The key to effectively marketing your social networking site is to understand conversions. A conversion in social networking terms is not a sale, it’s a sign-up. (Marketing is, after all, about spreading the word, getting the right visitors, and converting them.) A free tool on blvdstatus.com can help you understand where visitors came from before they signed up, whether based on a keyword, a site, or a blog.

Understanding where your conversions come from helps you determine where to focus your marketing efforts. If a mention on a particular blog resulted in a nice volume of sign-ups from the blog’s readers, you’re on to something. Analytics help you determine where it’s worth spending your marketing time.

10. Encourage your active community
Think of ways to get your community to interact with each other. The benefit is that ever elusive ‘network effect’ – when an active community creates buzz and word of mouth, yielding more users.

Things you should do to facilitate interaction: comment on user comments, create contests for things like adding content, allow users to vote, and let users submit questions.

Note: I’m sure you’ll be surprised by what can create interaction. We work with a best-selling author who, due to time constraints, isn’t easy for the average reader to contact. We asked site users to submit questions they’d like the author to answer, and then the community voted on the top ten questions. It’s so popular it’s become a monthly feature on the site and generates an incredible amount of participation and interaction.

11. When you reach critical mass, work on features to fine-tune the community experience
Once the buzz from the launch dies down, new features can build new excitement, both within your community and outside. So spend time adding features or tools. Then contact bloggers and influencers to let them know what you’ve done – not only will you maintain a vibrant community, but the buzz will help you generate more new users.

Written by: Chris Bennett
Source: http://www.elance.com/p/blog/market_your_social_networking_site.html