The Brunlea-Web - serving internet-based small businesses

With the advent of the much-vaunted, and frequently exaggerated, "Web 2.0" more and more sites are being developed claiming to give marketing access to an immense number of "Friends" - most of whom haven't slightest idea who they're becoming "friendly" with.

If the above seems rather doubtful of the value of these developments then I want to stress that it shouldn't be taken that way. I firmly believe that "social marketing", as it is very often called, is a powerful and totally valid means of reaching a wider, and frequently different, audience than might be reached through more conventional advertising channels. It is also unambiguously an implementation of permission-based marketing. Having said that, there are as in every field of activity, "the good, the bad, and the ugly".

Facebook is, of course, not primarily an advertising site but is increasingly becoming commercialised. As an enthusiastic user of Facebook, mostly for keeping in touch with the younger (and some not-so-young) members and friends of my local church. I hope that it can continue without becoming merely another MySpace. I continue to hope (maybe vainly) that people advertising on it will learn about its specific character before bombarding everyone with the latest get-rich-quick schemes. On another page I have made available a very useful paper on Facebook advertising which I hope will be a helpful guide (although I do not advocate all of the methods suggested in its final pages). As for MySpace, I'm told that it can be a useful marketing forum but at present I'm restricting myself to starting a blog there and am not pushing the building of a big "friends" list. My experience of MySpace "friend" invitations so far has been mostly of ladies young enough to be my grandchildren claiming to have read my profile and found me attractive - although if they'd actually read it I suspect they might not have wasted their time on me!

Here on this page I want to focus chiefly on sites which have a more specifically advertising mission, and are much more business-focused. At present I am working with three, as follows:

GibLink - GibLink is a highly-promoted site launched in late-2007 with three main strands: a networking community, the opportunity to sell web-hosting and related services from one's personal page, and a revenue-earning programme based substantially on the building of an MLM-type downline of referred members. Paid advertising on the site is available, although this is not cheap. I am optimistic about it although the site can be very slow, and 'Support' even slower; but I'm prepared at this stage to put these things down to teething troubles and my evaluation continues. At $50 for three months (which is the level I'm in at) GibLink is not over-expensive, but if you want to earn significantly from it you'll have to cough up $150 a quarter which some may find rather too much to risk.
AdlandPro - AdlandPro has been offering free and paid advertising services to small businesses since 1996. It is primarily an advertising site with an excellent mix of free and paid advertising options, but built into it is a very active networking system. I've made some useful contacts here. Also, when I created a new blog on here, within two days it was linking through Google to several of my sites; as a link builder it is excellent. When you load classified ads onto AdlandPro you can choose to use them also in their traffic exchange - a system with a format reminiscent of Traffic Swarm.
Direct Matches - Direct Matches provides a comprehensive package of social advertising methods, and from my experience so far it has a highly active international but mainly American membership, mostly (but not entirely) working to build home-based businesses. You can join for f ree, and the mix of networking and advertising services at that level is well worth the effort of setting up one's membership, but for the full benefits there are paid upgrades which also give access to recruitment-based revenue earning.

Of the above, I find the AdlandPro package most comprehensive in terms of pure advertising, but warm to the Direct Matches approach for community building and revenue earning; I also like latter's somewhat more businesslike approach of referring to "Contacts" rather than "Friends". Of course, a contact can become a true friend over time and I can imagine this happening with people on both of these systems - although possibly not in the case of those who try to sell me their latest get-rich snake-oil in their very first email, but that's something one has to put up with almost everywhere these days!

At this stage I would recommend that if you're wanting to move gently and exploratively into social marketing you should try these two, test them out, use the free (plus maybe some paid) advertising, and practise the community processes involved. There are some very helpful training materials available there.

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