There's been a lot of talk about MySpace as of late, especially now that is the most popular site on the Internet, having overtaken Yahoo!. You might have seen my article on MarketingProfs from earlier this month about marketing on MySpace and some of my previous posts on the topic on my blog here and here.

I want to point out that there is a new social networking site in town -- not really new, but possibly new to you. The site is important to know about because it could very well become the next MySpace. That site is Bebo.

Now that MySpace has become a hangout for adults (indeed over half of MySpace users are 35 and older), for kids and teens MySpace has lost some of its cachet. After all, what teenager would want to hang out with "a bunch of oldies"? So many of them have migrated... over to Bebo.

Bebo's rise in popularity is also evidenced in the 2006 Year-end Google Zeitgeist published last month listing Bebo as their top mover, above MySpace. It doesn't mean that Bebo was the most popular search on Google because, of course, they eliminated all the sex-related searches as well as the ones that show the level of rampant ignorance of the average Google user who searches for things such as "yahoo.com", "google.com" and "" (in other words clicking on the search button without typing in a keyword). Those would certainly exceed the popularity of "bebo" searches in Google by a wide margin. But that doesn't make for exciting reading in Google's Zeitgeist. ;-) But anyways, I digress...

The point of this post is to alert you to this very important social network that you should begin infiltrating now with your online marketing. All hands on deck!

Your advertising and marketing should add value. It should help your target audience make their life (or business) a little easier, a little more productive, etc. This is exactly the sort of thing I preach to our (Netconcepts') clients: deliver something useful to your target audience through your web site, your search ads, your email campaigns, your blog, your RSS feeds, and so on.

Here's an example of value-added advertising that I stumbled across last week. State Insurance, an insurance company in New Zealand, has an ad campaign called "That's helpful." They're running TV commercials and have print materials, like posters at their offices, supporting the campaign. Each poster offers a very practical and useful tip, like...

• Chewing gum while cutting onions will stop you from crying.
• Remove scuff marks from wooden floors with an eraser.
• Dangle a tennis ball from your garage ceiling. It will show you where to stop.
• When on holiday, get your neighbor to clear your letterbox.
• Instead of washing your paintbrush, wrap it up in a plastic bag and put it in the freezer.
• If you want visitors to take their shoes off, leave extra pairs at the door.

I quite like that campaign. They could do a lot more with it though. They haven't used their website to support the campaign at all. The phrase "That's helpful" doesn't even appear anywhere on the site. What a missed opportunity! They should have compiled a big pile of helpful tips into a free e-book and made it available for download on the site and then promoted the e-book in their print materials, commercials, email campaigns, and of course on the website itself.