Viral marketing agency Pandemic Labs has a great outline of the problems faced by those wanting to use cutting-edge online social tools to promote their products and services. They’re rightly hyper-conscious about being perceived as spammers: users are fantastically intolerant of unwanted ads, and since a social platform is essentially run by the users, it’s not always the most hospitable marketing environment.

In general, the solution they find is to build trust and online character through actual good-faith participations in the chosen platforms; that is, comment on YouTube videos that aren’t your own, and find MySpace friends who aren’t necessarily clients. This may seem like a frivolous use of time and the online advertising budget — after all, someone has to be manning the keyboard since those wall posts won’t magically appear on their own — but in the long run it creates a better and more interesting market for everyone. And who knows, you might have some fun while you’re at it.

This entry was posted on Monday, August 4th, 2008 at 2:29 pm and is filed under media culture, archaeology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.