Social Media Advertising and Website Revenues

Lookery is an interesting service with an interesting business model. The service is offering web analytics and audience analytics to publishers for free. These stats include relevant keywords and demographic data. The data becomes available by aggregated data of web usage and visits to third party sites, where anonymized registration data is shared. If the website of a publisher has a login area, too, the registration data may become used to generate revenues by being shared anonymously.

The business of Lookery is to offer advertising opportunities based on the data across the social web and to share the anonymized data with advertising networks. It is one of the biggest social media advertising networks displaying about 3 billion ad impressions every month. To publishers it is a monetization opportunity without displaying ads.

Advertising and Money with Twitter

Business Thursday: Twitter is the fastest growing social network as reported in September. Figures in September have been 400 % growth rate. Meanwhile I read that about 6 million users have been reached and found an interesting article lately about upcoming features and strategies to monetize the service. Advertising will not be an issue told Evan Williams, one of the founders. Monetization probably will happen by charging companies, who want to reach twitter users at the platform.

But one nice thing about Twitter is the openness of the services by its api and the possibility for third parties to develop services relying on the platform. By this at least two advertising services have become developed to earn money and to reach users by advertising, which are most different.

The newer advertising network is be a magpie. This ad network matches advertisers with users based on interests. At the adverts keywords are used within tweets to reach interested parties. Keywords may be found by the various Twitter services like search engines. Additionally tweets containing ad messages are marked with a #magpie hashtag. The earning is calculated by the general popularity of a topic and the numbers of followers. To join the be a magpie network one must submit the Twitter member name at the homepage at first. Then the amount of possible earnings becomes calculated and a sign up form appears.

The second advertising service network relying on Twitter is Twittad, which has already been mentioned at a former article about Twitter tools. Twittad offers advertising by uploading background graphics.

Free Social Media Webinars at HubSpot

HubSpot is a webbased internet marketing suite. The service supplies some interesting social media marketing information at marketing ressources. There white papers and webinars beside others. HubSpot hosts live webinars and makes archived versions available. Especially at marketing tips and webinars there are a couple of interesting social media marketing papers and presentations. The following links to a comprehensive and free Social Media Marketing Kit download with a video and an ebook.

The HubSpot service is an interesting up to date internet marketing suite. The webbased service contains several publishing tools, a search engine optimized content management system and a publishing tool for business blogs. Furthermore there are optimization tools for search engine marketing and social media marketing. For both there are analytical tools integrated like keyword intelligence and link management, automated buzz monitoring and lead management. There are two versions, one for business owners and one for marketing agencies.

The Need for Social Media Engagement

Business Thursday: Social media sites and activities for social networking are now reported as mainstream according to the latest social media stats according to up to social media statistics Twitter is the fastest growing social media network and if Twitter itself has already become mainstream is the issue of a discussion. However, being in the tv news and being subject of a an article of the Wallstreet Journal is something significant and indicates the importance. This is a real and nice success story for a service, especially as mostly everyone who visited it for the first time has been wondering what it is about. It has been a place, where people are telling what and where they will eat.

The conclusion for marketers now is that social media has become the place to be. Whereas up for now the discussion was on how to become evolved and where, now the need to be represented is emphasized at marketing publications. This trend is a business opportunity for all participants. Up to date business opportunities have always been a part of the emediablogger weblog. Some recommendations to find relevant services are the tags business, social shopping and widgets.

Researching Popularity for Social Media Campaigns

Business Thursday: A successful campaign does always need a basic research where to start. For social media campaigns this means to find relevant publications or buzz at the live web and for shopping it might be recommendations. The second step will be to find the most popular places to be most effective. At the same being represented at popular services is a proven mean to publishers to become noticed.

To find relevant places there are two basic strategies. One may either research a topic at a vertical directory like blog directories or choose to start at the big social media sites by looking for opinion leaders based on their activity or the amount of followers and the like. The decision where to start depends on the issue of the campaign. Blog directories are an ideal way to research a topic. Particular topics may also be represented at large social media sites, but in general these do already target the mass market. Exemplary for the latter are new features offered lately like offering music to broad audiences. To start at large social media sites the motto is to become involved by making interesting offers e.g. by widgets.

Even while new social media technologies like lifestreaming and live applications become popular, weblogs do remain a basic mean. This is due e.g. for the popular lifestreaming service FriendFeed as I have found that there is no way to add a particular newsfeed to own lifestream profile. The newsfeed must either be collected from within a blog or become added by a third party service like Twitter.

So blogs are really a good way to start researching sources for a social media campaign and to find relevant sources. Furthermore opinion leading blogs do mostly refer to other important sources that may become a starting point for a campaign. blog directories as well as popularity indexes for social media research are available at FOLDEN.INFO.

User generated Advertising, Social Media and Viral Marketing

Business Thursday: User generated advertising is a special kind of user generated content. It is an opportunity to a lot of market participants, creatives, enterprises and users at all. There are several aspects related to user generated advertising beside the general availability of platforms and possible interaction by the internet at all. The idea of the platforms is to connect people with enterprises giving an opportunity to communicate, to users a way to be heard, getting feedback from customers as well as to get authentic statements for marketing. As advertising and marketing are business issues to enterprises there are also business opportunities to all participants. Usually this happens either by contests or even getting paid for creative work. Furthermore to media professionals or selfmade creatives it is a chance to become noticed and get a reputation by media showcases. In the following there is an introduction to a couple of platforms for user generated advertising.

Brickfish encourages to create various forms of media like blogs, photos, videos and other creative work. It is a platform that connects people with enterprises and brands. Enterprises may introduce a campaign and ask for a desired form of media. There is a list of campaigns available to browse by the menu at the homepage, which are assorted by campaigns open for participation, most popular and most shared. To share own campaigns or those of others there are social networking facilities to share media at other social networks. To users the participation at Brickfish is a chance to enhance the reputation and to win prizes.

GeniusRocket has a more professional approach with job listings and by offering a platform for business networking and professional collaboration. Nevertheless there is no restriction to join the community for independents, selfmade creatives or the like. It is a platform to get real contracts and to list real orders, to be seen and to earn cash.

XNLTads and the new introduced Poptent service are associated platforms dedicated to connect brands with independent film makers and semi professional talents to work on commercials. At the same time XNLTads is a platform for collaboration. The services do focus on internet video and its chances to be authentic and a more cost effective way for distribution and production. This is especially due to the new launched Poptent, which is equipped with online tools for video creation. Both platforms are offering real business opportunities to earn cash.

Zooppa.com again is a platform for everyone that connects people and brands to get into a creative relationship. It is a platform for various kinds of media, even concepts are requested. The idea is to connect the participants and to promote the work by viral marketing. Incentives for creatives to participate are reputation and cash prizes.

Blogvertising and Social Media Marketing

Two new blog advertising networks and social media marketing services have been introduced within the last couple of weeks. Those might be most interesting to bloggers and advertisers as they are part of important and established social media services and do serve niche markets.

At first there is the Conversation Ad Network by BuzzLogic. BuzzLogic offers marketing services targeting the social sphere and especially influencers. Their key product is BuzzLogic Insights, a service for marketers and pr professionals to reach influencers at the social web. The idea behind this product is to indentify influencers at the social web to be able to start conversations and to reach a better visibility for a product or service. The ad network is based on the same principle by using adverts. As BuzzLogic is specialized is targeting niches the ad network might be an important mean to monetize qualified blog project with low traffic and an important mean to advertisers to promote niche products.

The second ad network is Technorati Media by Technorati, an authority for the blogosphere (See the latest study of the study of blogosphere.). The advertising network is dedicated to the blogosphere and the social web.

The Social Shopping Business

Business Thursday: Social shopping enriches the shopping experience of consumers and offers some business opportunities. The opportunities to users are another way to find products and especially product recommendations and product reviews made by others. Depending of the features of a social shopping site members can take notes about desired products to bookmark and reseach items, discuss product features with others or share experiences. At some services there are product ratings and ratings for deals.

There are a couple of business opportunitis offered by social shopping sites. Some do share advertising revenue, some pay for reviews like it happens with paid posting at blogging and others do supply commerce widgets or even whole shops.

Favorite Thingz enables everyone to put a widget on a page with personal favorites. The items may be promoted at the web and social media services. Revenue becomes generated by selling a featured item.

Rate it all, Rasba and SharedReviews.com are shopping communities that do not require an own homepage to earn money. Rate it all is about reviews and does share the advertising revenue generated by activities. Rasba and SharedReviews.com both are social networking sites to discover new products and share them. Rasba pays, if an item is sold by the profile page, SharedReviews.com again shares the advertising revenue as well as possible commissions with the community.

The most comfortable solutions to participate in social shopping are own shops. Shop It and uSuggest are supplying customizable shopping sites or stores. Both are offering widgets to spread the products across the social web.

Social shopping sites are as social as the social web is. A strategy to get involved with own products is to encourage users to write reviews or to place a product widget at an own page or blog to facilitate a viral marketing effect. A solution to sell own products and to participate in social commerce is offered by Terapad.com. It is a shop solution equipped with blogging and social media marketing tools.

Click the following to find further social shopping pages.

Social Media and Widget Advertising Networks

Widget advertising has already been mentioned as one business opportunity with widgets for marketers and publishers at the introduction of doing business with widgets at the post Widgets, Advertising, eCommerce and Widget Development. This article is introducing several social media and widget advertising networks, which reaches the social media sphere and do offer social media advertising and monetizing opportunities to developpers of rich web applications, publishers or owners of pages at social networks.

At first there is Ad Chap calling themselve an ad network for social networks. They are specialized in facebook and offering various advertising formats for facebook applications. Advertisers may target this group of publishers within Facebook. which is one of the largest and most popular social networks. The ad network relies on a self service for advertisers and delivers real time statistics. Another advertising network targeting Facebook is the fbExchange. On the publishers side they are offering opportunities to developpers of applications.

Clearspring is a whole widget network offering various services. They got a platform for the distribution and viral seeding, management and tracking of widgets. By their Widget Media Page advertising and monetizing opportunities are accessible.

Cubics is a pure advertising network. They are specialized to serve developpers of social network applications and offer precise targeting to advertisers by demographic data.

gigya again is a widget network with a couple of services like viral seeding. They are offering advertising and business opportunities to site owners, developpers and the development of branded widgets to companies.

Google GadgetAds is the web application part of Googles AdSense and AdWords advertising networks. There is a lot of useful information at their introduction like case studies and success stories. Actually this program is limited to advanced users.

A couple of further widget advertising networks are offering more specialized options like affiliate programs for particular products, product or music recommendations and even own shops or shopping within widgets. If you are interested in this, please visit Commerce Widgets at FOLDEN.INFO and for further advertising and marketing opportunities at social networks Social Media Markertng.

Affiliate Marketing at the Social Web

Business Thursday: This is another "Business Thursday" edition dedicated to social media business. The issue is affiliate marketing, which might become described as a special kind of blogvertising. What makes affiliate marketing something unique is the media currency. Usually at affiliate marketing the media currencies are pay per lead or pay per sale opposite to pay per view and pay per click at internet advertising in general. This is why it is called performance marketing, too. Affiliate marketing is advantageous for both parties, if the advertising platform is targeting a niche or specific. This is due as by this advertisers may get sales without enormous expenses in advertising. Parts of these savings may went into the pockets of the blogger or website publisher. So affiliate marketing is most advantageous and might work better than advertising, if a topic meets the adverts. Advertisers might find relevant blogs or other social media pages by toplists as mentioned at Searching for the latest Blogger News and the Live Web.

Similar to blogvertising there are some affiliate networks specialized in weblogs because of the peculiarities like niches, low reach or special formats already described at the former article about blogvertising. One network specialized in affiliate marketing at weblogs is BlogKits. They are offering banner advertising for sidebars and text advertising to be placed below postings. The latter is similar to paid postings and indeed, too, BlogKits is offering something called paid reviews.

boo-box is another affiliate network specialized in social media. They are offering in text advertising and widgets. By in text advertising parts of a text automaticly become links. These links refer to advertised products and shops. Widgets are small but rich internet applications, which may display information or products. Both are used for performance marketing at boo-box.

Especially affiliate or commerce widgets are used on blogs and for social media marketing in general and might be used at social media homepages, too.

Social Networking, How to Start and How to Become Involved

Social Media is a big thing and social networking offers opportunities for personal research and business. This article is about basics, useful tips to become involved and first experiences with marketing the emediablogger weblog.

To start with something you probably look for the right service. For social networking at its best this does not mean a particular social media service but a social network aggregator. This is because one usually want or need to experience more than one of that great stuff. You may want social bookmarking and video sharing or a search engine for you bookmarks. Social network aggregators enable the management of the data in use to share bookmarks and other things across several networks and to connect to friends on several services all from one account. Personally I have choosen the Flock Browser which gives me something like a particular dashboard. Other services are located online, which allows to access all data from every internet connection. Second is a nice user name, which you can use across all networks you want to join and to become easily visible. It is also useful to get a particular email address, where the messages about new bookmarks, group activities and hints about new friends come in and a homepage or blog to be mentioned at profiles. Last but not least there is something particular, it is the OpenID Standard. This standard is supported by many but not all social media services. An OpenID replaces passwords and enables the usage of several personas. Personas means a synonym or profile so that one can manage several profiles by one OpenID Account, for example a private and a business persona. These are the basics to start.

Now it is time to choose some social media sites you like to use and to thing about the stuff you need or like to experience. There are great services for bookmarks and search, photo and video sharing of course and those hot things like twitter. At first you may consider personal or business usage. For business usage be sure to read the terms carefully as some services do not allow commercial use. If you are a trade professional you rather need to join specific business networking sites, where you can find real business contacts, discussions of business related issues and even trade leads.

To find the right network beside the purpose there are two basic strategies. One is the content you are interested in and the other is the reach. The reach is important for own visibility as you may want to become found and get new friends for discussions or sharing your stuff. To find the right network there are a lot of lists around with top ten or even top hundred social networking sites. Here is an older but comprehensive list with pages for most purposes: Best of the Best Web 2.0 Web Sites. You may find further and new services at FOLDEN.INFO by Social Networking.

If you are there it is time to start to share. You may wonder how easily and fast you will find great pages you probably never heard about. If you want to become recommendations you need to get friends or join groups. In most cases this is easily done by a click. To find the right people you may surf by tag clouds or groups. At groups you will find discussions, too. To seriously promote your own profile you may look for top users and become friend with them. To get the best results make relevant posts and get connected and be active. You should not do something irrelevant or even spam. It is really not useful and mostly there are anti spam policies. If you take care, you will easily be able to get worthful new sources and new contacts for networking. If you like to become a friend of emediablogger simply click on the links at the right.

Related to my own experiences with the emediablogger weblog there is another useful advice for professional users. What has been remarkable is that the profiles at the services I have joined new came up immediately at search engines, while the weblog itself has not. Whereas the new emediablogger weblog has not been marketed for itself joining social networking services might be useful for reputation management. One can easily get involved into a discussion and deliver related information about a person or service.