Recently I sent out an article in which I disparaged social media and its potential for marketing to anyone other than 16 year old girls talking about their boyfriends. I have since come across some eBooks and videos on the subject that have shown a lot of marketing potential there, and have changed my mind completely.



I'm going to talk about Facebook (www.facebook.com) first because it is one of the largest social media sites, and it has some unique advantages. First of all, a recent report showed that 29% of all people on the Internet currently go to Facebook. It's a site similar to MySpace, where you start up an account and can connect up with friends, put things up on your home page (even promotional things, list your web sites, etc.), join groups and clubs, email people within the system, even play games with others.

Secondly, Facebook has a pay-per-click program. The way this works is that you can create a pay-per-click ad, small, with text and a small picture, and this will appear on people's home page when they log in.

I have tried this for a lead generation campaign for a high ticket item with one company I work with, and the results so far are pretty impressive. The cost per lead so far is $28, far less than one usually gets on Google or Yahoo. That's the cost of someone actually filling out the lead form and giving you their name and information, not the cost per click. The cost per click for this particular campaign is ranging around 50 cents.

When you set up a new pay-per-click campaign, you can select who will see it by selecting various demographic information, including:

?Geographical location, including by city, state or country

?Male or female

?Age, including over and under

?Educational status

?Relationship status, i.e. married, single, etc.

?Political views, conservative, liberal, moderate

?You can select keywords that indicate specific areas of interest such as hobbies, favorite music, etc.

This information is taken from the member's profile when they sign up, so you have a good idea that it's pretty accurate.

As an example, the recent campaign I set up for people over 35 living in Los Angeles included 14,000 members.

If you're in the business of marketing to people, you can probably envision how you can use that list of qualifiers above to narrow the focus just to people who are prospects for your type of product or service.

In addition to the pay-per-click program, you can join groups and clubs that are related to a specific topic, ask those people to become your friends, and then send communication back and forth to them. There are groups related to specific schools and colleges too, where you have to be actually going to that school to join.

My thoughts on Facebook at this point are that, minimally, the pay-per-click program works. It's cheaper than Google AdWords or Yahoo Search Marketing, it allows you to use a picture in your ad, and it allows you to demographically target who will see the ad. If you use the Facebook pay-per-click program, make sure you set it up so that you can track Facebook leads results separately from your other PPC programs.

Beyond that, the idea is that people who come across you within the confines of one of these social media sites will be more receptive to your message. Of course you have to tread somewhat carefully, because there are definite accepted practices in each of these media. But my initial results here look promising.

Stay tuned for more news from the social media front.