Jill Whalen started a great conversation the other day on Sphinn titled “Have we run out of things to write about?” This same thought has gone through my head a few times as inspiration for great posts comes and goes. Every time I feel this way I remember one thing: I love everything SEO and could talk about it forever.

What happens in a community like Sphinn, or really any niche social networking group, writers and readers get hooked on a specific topic and then write everything about it. People write their opinions on other author’s stories or simply rewrite what someone else has written. Weeks can go by and only one topic has been the center of attention.

This is the nature of a social network – a group of like-minded people all talking about the same things. Naturally, when a topic is so interesting everyone wants to keep reading about it people will keep writing about it. They do this because they are actually interested in continuing and adding their thoughts to the conversation or, and I fear this is what perpetuates being stuck on a topic longer - when a topic is hot, writing about it will make their stories hot and send them traffic.

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!

As I mentioned in my previous post about marketing on MySpace, one of the critical factors of success is having "Friends".

Here are a couple of success stories I thought I'd point out. First, consider the various flavors of Apple's iPod Nano that are on MySpace, such as the Pink Nano, which is enjoying a meteoric rise in Friendship status. I started tracking Pink Nano on October 15, when it had 1,500 MySpace friends. A week later, on October 22, it had climbed to 7,449 friends. Now, on October 27, I see it's up to 37,070 friends! Not a bad marketing job, Apple!

Now consider the 'comeback king' of musical parody -- "Weird Al" Yankovic. I remember "Weird Al" from when I was a kid; he's been around for decades! Now he's using social media quite successful to help breathe new life into his 27-year-long music career -- thanks, in no small part, to YouTube and MySpace. Yankovic told Reuters/Billboard in a recent interview that he had accumulated 155,000 MySpace friends since he joined the site in July -- all of which he had personally added. He stated, "I used to be a little pickier. Now I just kind of click as fast as I can." (I can only imagine the RSI from that much clicking!) Here's the kicker: it's now just a week after this article came out, and he's already up to 219,033 friends!

Clearly, Apple and Weird Al are making it on MySpace. Any other MySpace success stories you'd like to contribute? Talk back!

I had an article published last week on marketing on MySpace in last week's issue of DM News. It hasn't been posted to DMNews.com yet (hopefully shouldn't be too much longer), but if you're desperate to read it, you can download the 20 megabyte PDF of last week's issue. Or, you can just wait and I'll post a notice to my blog when my article makes into into DM News' online article library.

As part of my research for this article, I interviewed Michael Boldin at Pugster, which is an online retailer of Italian charms and other jewelry that's had great success using MySpace to generate traffic and sales. Michael is a member of the online marketing team at Pugster. They chose their mascot, a pug dog, as the subject of their MySpace profile, which I think is really clever. They built up their MySpace page to a very respectable 8,053 friends. Here's what Michael had to say about marketing on MySpace:

• It's easy to get overwhelmed with the sheer numbers on MySpace -- and important to try to focus on marketing to the "right" group for your product or service -- otherwise you'll be spending a LOT of time on people who will never be interested in you.
• But, on the other hand, when starting off, you need to get friends. It's kind of a bragging right on MySpace. If you have too few friends, it'll be tough to get the good ones -- you know, the ones that will end up buying from you. So, before you go after those, get a few hundred "bad" friends -- bands are the easiest. They'll give you a respectable number on your friend list, and will leave comments on your page -- giving a little realism boost to your profile – making friend adding of the "good" ones that much easier.
• Where else could we find a place to actually build relationships with people -- who may or may not have heard of us before. We spend time daily emailing people, and guess what, they email back. It becomes the ultimate soft-sell tool.
• Patience. Without a huge brand presence, don't expect to turn profits. The only investment is your time. As long as you regularly give people something interesting -- blogs, music, and other tidbits that AREN'T related to your business -- then you'll develop enough trust for them to be interested in what you DO sell.
• Keep it personal -- talk with the people as if you'd email a new friend. Say hi, get to know them, and they'll want to get to know you. If you try to sell, sell, sell, you’ll have a hard time earning respect on MySpace.
• As far as layouts, there's a few "schools of thought" -- one says make it fancy and high end, but the other, and seemingly more successful one, says simplicity is best. Since people are browsing through so many profiles with the same layout, they look for certain features in certain places. If you move too many things around, you'll frustrate your visitors and they'll leave. Period. Just like a good e-commerce site.
• Also, if there’s anything a "seasoned" MySpace user hates is a slow page; and the site has loads of slow loaders. You may get friends with a lot of stuff on your page, but they won’t actually spend the time to interact with you.

Some great advice. Thanks, Michael!

UPDATE: It's been another 7 days, and Weird Al has gained another 24,000 MySpace friends (up to 243,221). Wow!

I had been on LinkedIn for quite a while but I never gave it much thought or attention. I had never bothered filling out a meaningful profile for myself. And I had never sought to add any contacts to my network.

This year I saw the light -- I saw how valuable LinkedIn can be if you know how to work it. I witnessed my colleague Brian Klais use LinkedIn to find some amazing candidates for SEO positions at our company Netconcepts. At the best of times it's hard to hire for SEO positions, as those who are the most qualified are undoubtedly already pulling in a very respectable paycheck. LinkedIn made it a breeze for Brian. Brian's success spurred me on to give LinkedIn a bit more of my attention.

So I completed a profile, worked to quadruple the size of my network, and obtained several endorsements from clients like SuperPages.com and Eurekster.com. (You can view my profile at www.linkedin.com/in/stephanspencer, if you're curious.) Lo and behold, simply the act of adding friends and acquaintances to my network had within days resulted in a number of them renewing their conversations with me -- including an SEO client from several years back who I hadn't spoken to in many months; out of that renewed conversation he agreed to become a reference for our firm. Sometimes all it takes is to reach out to old friends and acquaintances and things start to happen. LinkedIn helps faciliate that process.

Some folks remain unconvinced of the value of LinkedIn. Like David Heinemeier Hansson of 37Signals, who tried to pull the plug on his LinkedIn account but encountered difficulties doing so and very publicly riffed about it on their company's Signal vs. Noise blog. I was pleased to see LinkedIn staffer Konstantin Guericke chime in and defuse the issue with a very constructive comment. I also noticed buried in that post's comments several other excellent bits of commentary from LinkedIn users who have had similarly positive LinkedIn experiences to Brian's and mine.

For example, Gordon Strause, a Senior Product Manager at Yahoo, had this to say:

...I have found Linkedin useful. It's reconnected me with some former co-workers; I've used it to hire contractors and employees; I've even researched some competitive start-ups with it. I'm curious--is there anyone here claiming that Linkedin isn't valuable, did they try to do anything? Did you try to find someone you'd lost touch with? Did you try to find someone that might be helpful to you (contractor or employee or expert)? Or, is it, I signed up and I've been waiting for my cookie? Waiting around for more invitations is clearly not that useful, unless someone finds you interesting.

And Ted Shelton, Founder and CEO of Personal Bee had this to say:

I have been using Linked In for a long time and feel that I have gotten a lot of value from it. I also feel that, as with any tool, it is the amount of time and effort that I invest in the tool that has determined the value that I have derived.

I don't believe there is any magic bullet to having and making use of a social network -- no software tool is going to replace the need to meet people, provide value to those people, develop relationships with those people etc. A tool can make it easier though to keep track (or rediscover) those people and can make it easier to handle routine communications requests.

Here are my rules for using Linked In--

(1) I never invite anyone to join my network that I don’t have a good real world relationship with.

(2) I never agree to join a network of someone else that I don’t have a good real world relationship.

(3) I never ask anyone for assistance through Linked In if it isn’t the kind of request that I would respond positively to.

As a result, I have hired employees referred through Linked In, I have been reconnected to colleagues from the past, I have done reference checks on people through the people we know in common, and I have been able to refer jobs to people in my extended network, helping my friend who are in my immediate network.

Some great points made by Ted and Gordon! (Funny how the comments on a well-trafficked blog like Signal vs Noise can actually exceed the quality of the post itself!)

For those who want to become masters at using LinkedIn to recruit great talent, you might want to check out the book Happy About LinkedIn for Recruiting, which is co-authored by Bill Vick and Des Walsh. (Des is a smart guy, I know him as a fellow contributor to BusinessBlogConsulting.com).

Bottom line: you'll get out of LinkedIn what you put into it.

So all you social butterflies out there, put some effort into LinkedIn! Mark my words: it'll be worth it. :-)