With over 500 million punters now registered on Facebook there are many companies large and small who believe that this is an untapped market for their wares. Really? Given the slightly anarchic and sometimes anti-establishment culture of FB, it may be counter productive to advertise certain services within the FB arena. Unless, that is you can take a slightly off-beat slant to your marketing that can build a cult following.

Steve Richardson has recently posted an interesting article on social media strategy which make interesting reading.

Like having a website, you cannot leave it to work on its own.

Viral marketing through the right social media is a very powerful tool – the Jay-Z spoof on Youtube is a prime example, with hundreds of thousands of hits in a very short time.

Top brands like Cadbury have previewed some of their more creative adverts on Youtube. Who could forget the Gorilla drummer or the Eyebrows.

For businesses that are do not have the huge budgets of the big brand companies, it is still possible to get the message across with a well positioned video on Youtube which has carefully crafted meta descriptions. This can give a company an enormous lift in what may be a highly competitive sector in Google.

Branding your pages in Twitter and Youtube makes a big impact and, of course linking WordPress blogs to Twitter gives you double the coverage.
We do not have a Facebook page for the business as we do not believe that is the best place to focus our marketing efforts.

Really when push comes to shove, online marketing is no different from any other. You need to identify your market place and devise a strategy to target your audience. That will determine where best to place your social media efforts.

There is an old adage that half of all advertising fails – problem is identifying whihc half. Social media is no different.