Using social media networks to market a product, brand, or website has been occurring since the emergence and increase in popularity of the social media scene. Things quickly change, though, and techniques that may have worked even six months’ prior may not be as effective as time progresses . With that in mind, here’s a look at some of the current top social media sites and a few ideas on ways that they can be used to generate leads.

Myspace
MySpace is the ‘granddaddy’ of modern social media networks, as the largest and one of the oldest (and most successful) in the history of the Internet. This is good news for those trying to generate leads online. Since the site has been around so long, it has grown substantially, offering access to millions of consumers. However, because of its size, marketers have been “pitching” on MySpace since the beginning. As a result, it’s becoming more challenging to effectively generate leads on MySpace.

The primary methods still work, though. For one, the new MySpace Advertising feature is well developed, allowing advertisers to target MySpace users by demographic information. For example, an advertiser could run their ad only for Females 30 to 35 who like to knit or males 18 to 36 who like video games. Whatever group or groups a company is targeting most likely have a large presence on MySpace. This makes it easy and cost effective to target just those people that might be interested in a product or service and generate leads from them.

Beyond buying advertising on MySpace’s network, there are a few other options available as well. While it’s a lot harder to market on MySpace without seeming like a spammer, it is possible. Companies that built their MySpace profile slowly and smartly should have a list of “friends” that is highly targeted toward their topic, niche, product or idea. Some people have gone for quantity, amassing hundreds of thousands of “friends” – so the chances are higher that a bulletin or message sent to that many people may generate more complaints. As a result, it makes more sense to keep your friend list small but highly targeted toward a certain segment of the population. This way, any bulletins sent out will be relevant to those people and less likely to be flagged as spam.

Facebook
Facebook once required a university email account for sign-ups. They eventually opened their gates to the rest of the world, though, allowing anyone to subscribe. This led to Facebook being seen as a valid competitor for MySpace. A lot of people consider that they have “graduated” up to Facebook from MySpace. The thing to realize is that while the audiences are similar, there are big differences in the type of people who use MySpace and the type of people who use Facebook. This isn’t to say one audience is better or worse than the other, but there are differences that need to be taken into account when trying to market to either group.

Like MySpace, Facebook offers “self-serve” advertising on their social media network. With similar demographic targeting and prices, Facebook advertising is a great way to get your product or service in front of a lot of people. The best way to generate leads with Facebook advertising is to run a handful of campaigns with slightly different creatives. After finding out which one runs the best after a week or more, discontinue the other ads and only run one ad for that campaign. Changing the look of an ad too much after determining which one is generating the most leads can be costly.

Aside from advertising, using Facebook to generate leads is similar to MySpace, although it could be said that it’s a little more difficult. For one, the traffic and members are both smaller than MySpace. Beyond that, though, there are slight differences in the types of people who use each social network. Knowing this difference is an important part of marketing to either of them. When it comes to Facebook, keeping your list of friends small and highly targeted to your Facebook account will help generate more leads when posting or sending a message to friends.

Digg
Digg has had many ups and downs in its history, but it’s still a viable way to generate leads. The idea that old techniques can become obsolete quickly, is even more relevant when it comes to Digg. The social media network has been utilized by marketers and spammers so heavily that they’ve become rather hardened to overt marketing attempts on the site. Companies that are careful, though, can still use the power of Digg effectively, to generate leads.

Because Digg loves great content, the web site attracts many visitors. This seems like common sense, but when you’re trying to generate leads on Digg, it’s something you need to carefully consider in order to generate any sort of return on marketing time spent on the site. Knowing they love content and are very wary about overt marketing on their network, it’s best to approach Digg with genuinely interesting content. While that may sound like a simple concept, many people fail to realize this, and can wind up getting banned from the Digg web site.

The more your Digg account helps the community (voting and commenting – not only posting or submitting) the more the community is going to value things posted by the account. After building up a good reputation on Digg, it’s possible to begin to learn what type of content advances quickly on the site. Knowing that, it’s easy to fashion good content that will make people want to link to or Digg the content. Companies should remember, though, that it’s frowned on to submit content that one has created. It’s best to have a network of friends (who are respected in the Digg community) submit your content for you.

When it works, this method can deliver a lot of great content to a website. From there, it’s up to the site owner to capitalize on the traffic and generate leads. This is more generalized traffic, so companies shouldn’t expect too high of a conversion rate for this type of traffic. There is beauty in the power of numbers, though, and Digg, when done right, can really deliver the numbers in the form of a flood of traffic.

Twitter
Twitter has been all over the media lately. It’s not being monetized yet, really, but it’s a great tool that will be a game changer in the years ahead. A cross between RSS and SMS text messages and Email, Twitter is an exciting new social network media solution. As with any other social media network, building a “Follow” list and attracting ‘followers’ is the key to making Twitter successful as a marketing tool that can generate leads.

The more time spent on carefully making sure quality people become followers moreso than quantity, can go a long way toward making marketing efforts on Twitter successful. It’s also important to make sure the ‘tweets’ sent out are relevant and aren’t sent out too often. There’s a fine line between effectively using Twitter and over using it. Looking at other people who Twitter (especially when it comes to a certain niche or industry) can go a long way in determining the best amount of posts to make per day.

Making the tweets a mix between offers and content is a good idea that should help generate effective leads for those that follow the tweet offers to a website. As with the other socia media networks, the less something sounds or seems like a pitch, the more effective it’s going to be at generating a lead, which is the end goal. Taking this into consideration can go a long way in making attempts more successful.

Niche Sites
There are many topics and social media sites that cater to one small niche, too many to list entirely here. However the following are a few of the bigger ones from various different industries. Once you’ve gotten experience with the bigger social media and blog networks, you should be able to figure out at a glance whether or not a website can be trusted with your information.

If not, pay attention to the details and carefully read any information available about the social network. Even if it’s really small, there should be someone else out there talking about it. If not, it’s wise to shop around for another social media site. The thing to remember is that none of them were made to generate leads, but each of them can be studied and used to generate them.

Squidoo
This social media website is geared primarily toward those interested in online marketing. While it’s sometimes harder to pitch people who make pitches themselves, it’s a good place to generate leads for companies who offer a product or service targeted toward online marketers. As with Twitter, Digg and some of the other social media networks, people who use Squidoo are generally really savvy when it comes to the Internet and dubious methods of marketing on social media networks.

YouTube
Targeted toward people of all stripes who like video, YouTube is one of the biggest social media networks available today. It is very vigilant against spam; however, there are still ways good marketers can use YouTube to generate traffic and, as a result, leads. From instructional how-to videos that include or mention a website, product or service, to viral videos that make people laugh or cringe – YouTube offers a lot of opportunities for people wanting to leverage social media to generate leads.

LinkedIn
LinkedIn is a relatively closed professional social media network, but it’s one that is highly targeted toward people in the business world. This social network is used more for generating contacts and acquaintances rather than sales leads, but building a business network is important for companies that want to grow. This is an example of a social media network that can be used to generate leads indirectly rather than directly, while maintaining and expanding a professional business presence.
The above describes just a few of the larger social networks that may be used to leverage and expand any business presence. Based upon the success of the social networking web sites themselves, it is more than apparent that online social networking should be an integral part of any company’s marketing plan for the best chance of success possible.

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