How can marketers make the most out of social media platforms?

So we are now living in an age where everyone is talking about the recession. How will the recession affect you? How will you affect the recession? How will we get through this recession? It seems that there is only one criteria for a PR agency these days to get their word out. Stick the 'R' word in your sell and you will be reading about your company in the following day's news!

With this is mind and marketers jobs' on the line, a new era of marketing thought is beginning to emerge with vigor. Its all about marketing your offering cheaply and effectively throughout what has been the print media's love child of the last 24 months - social media networks. There is no doubt that Social media platforms are the future of marketing your brand online but at this stage of the social media prodcut life cycle marketers are still scratching their heads and waiting for someone to take the lead.

At this stage MySpace is clearly the leader of brand integration whilst the others are still searchng for a unique advertising offering. For two years now MySpace have been penetrating the lives of their users via display media and page sponsorships. And now as pioneers of the industry they are giving brands the opportunity to integrate themselves in online video content. This ladies and gentlemen is the new frontier. With 2008's MySpace Road Tour already under their belts MySpace have now just launched the latest video series, Kiss or Miss (www.myspace.com/kissormiss) where brands can cheaply indulge in the quirky, flirtacious and fun environment of the dating series in a way never seen before. With the ability of product placement and further branded content pieces housed on the home page of the series, brands can now effortlessly and subliminally insert their brands into the subconsciousness of their target market.

The beauty with these integrations is that the brands are helping to create engaging and entertaining content which is the one of the key reasons why users log on to a social network in the first place. Another advantage of alliging with content such as this is that the content piece ingrains itself into the world wide web and will never be deleted, thus it has potential to be passed on virally until the day the internet is superceded by something with far greater reach. Dear God.

Internet users are driven to social networks as they provide an online world which is now becoming very realistic one to those who are addicted users. As this trend continues marketers have to find themself playing in this environment in a way that will encourage viral interaction and thus encouragement of further social networking. It ticks all the boxes for a marketer during these times. Its cheap, it's innovative and best of all - it's 100% measurable. These 3 criterion just may keep more marketers in the job in the troubled times ahead.