Facebook / Myspace / Bebo - Are there really business benefits??

[MarkTaylor68]

Hi Guys,

I've been advised to create profiles on facebook, myspace, bebo and similar social networking sites for SEO purposes. Are there really business benefits to this? If so, could somebody please show me a good example? To be honest, I find these sites quite student orientated, and, whilst I can pass for someone in their early twenties , I feel a bit like a fish out of water.

Many thanks,

Mark.
www.eriskay-associates.co.uk

[Scott-CopyandDesign]

As far as I'm aware you won't any back-link benefits from these websites. Not sure though.

For your type of business I recommend utilising your time with other marketing methods. Percentage wise the target market for your type of service is very small and I can't see you making any positive ROI in relation to the time you would spend using these social networking websites.

Just my 2p.

[notgoingtouni]

As said before, it depends entirely on your target market. For example, for my business (notgoingtouni) marketing through social networking is great as my target market (16-19 year olds) use such sites a lot.

For you I would recommend trying business networking sites e.g Ecademy and LinkedIn for better ROI.

[sm1]

I use Ecademy - it's quite good and you may be worth networking on there.

Cheers

[spacekadet]

Wow, I just had a duh moment reading this post. I have a facebook account and my partner has actually programmed facebook apps in the past. And yet, I had to read this thread to realize that a large chunk of our product's market is college kids who use facebook and blogs and such. Thanks for sharing. I have a lot of work to do. :-)

[coe114c]

Although there are a lot of young people on Facebook there are a lot of not so young ones too! A couple of my friends' parents are on there who are in their 70s (and so is Ray!!) It works for my business because I joined all the relevant groups and posted links to my site and it is number 3 in my referring sites now.

I guess it depends what your business is, if it's mostly b2b then I guess ecadamy is better but I find their website awful and not at all user friendly! I still haven't worked out how to add people to my network on there!

[notgoingtouni]

Yes Facebook is for a more older age group. Bebo is definitely more of a school-kids thing though.

[PI Guy]

I don't know if its useful but its fun. my facebook profile http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1304796377