Piaras Kelly PR – Public Relations in Ireland

Bill Balderaz has a good example of a practical marketing use of MySpace. If you’re anything like me, you’re probably a bit frustrated by people who are telling companies to set up a MySpace page and leaving them under the impression that kids will suddenly find their product or service “cool” and buy it in their droves.

Here’s what Bill is doing:

See we’re working with a site that sells cheap college textbooks. As part of the marketing for the site, we’re sending reps to a college campus to pass out discount code cards. And, to create some buzz around the card-passing-out promotion, we’re contacting students at this particular campus and telling them to be on the lookout for these free coupons.

MySpace is perhaps the best way to quickly identify potential evangelists. The search and sorting functions allow a user to quickly narrow down a search, so I can find members in the right geographic regions, who are in college, and active on MySpace. Or, I can use the handy “find school” function and reach MySpacers who identify with a specific school.

So instead of spamming the likes of Bebo and MySpace, should we be scouring social networking sites for people who are well connected? One drawback though is whether being popular online translates into real life.

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