No doubt you already belong to one of the social network sites the likes such as Myspace, Yuwie, Facebook, Direct Matches, or one of the dozen others that have sprung up like mushrooms. You will probably have received some sort of e-mail from a buddy or someone telling you to join one right away because it is the next big thing in marketing. Some savvy webmasters are also jumping on the bandwagon and starting new social networks and it can be rather disconcerting to be told to join a new one almost every day by some well meaning friend because they promise you it is going to be the next best thing. The every same people tell you that as a marketing tactic social networking is going to be huge and you believe them.

Social network and blogging overload is coming.

You will discover that almost all these social network sites have a blog that you can keep up as well. The majority of people only have enough time to efficiently manage two or maybe three social networking sites. This is even truer if they all have blogs that should be kept updated to some sort of regularity. From a marketing point of view, if you have any experience in internet marketing then you will know that the only real advantage a blog has as a marketing tool is when you keep it updated with fresh content all the time. If you are trying to manage 4 or 5 of these blogs or social network sites it is going to become more of a chore than a pleasure which is what these social network sites were originally all about.

The fine line between being a social networking site and a marketing tool

Already the well known social network sites are starting to restrict the amount of promotion and linking you can do on your blog or website. This is sensible otherwise a social network site will become no more than a classified advertising site and which was not the original plan. The most effective way of marketing your business is certainly through networking on social network sites but if you have joined one to tell your life story or for fun to share your thoughts with the World Wide Web, then you may want to be choosy to find one that is right for you. Otherwise your opinions will be lost amongst a bunch of adverts.

Social network blogs

As previously mentioned the majority of social network sites have blogs where you can add occasional but more preferable regular posts. These blogs may be monetized in such a way that 50% of the takings go to the webmaster/owner. I have noticed that this type of social network site is one of the better ones for personal pages because you will see that terms and conditions allow minimal promotion of websites. One such example is hub-pages and Squidoo. For people that prefer getting their business into the market place then blogs like Blogger from Google is perhaps a better choice; and social networks like Adlander Pro and Direct Matches which have become extremely commercialized are also more sensible options.

Advertising your business with social networks.

You can definitely get good exposure from social network sites and there are even paid options of increasing this advertising exposure. Problem is that many other members may be looking at doing the same and once again your marketing may not be as efficient as you would have liked for the investment. At the end of the day it would be better to leave advertising and marketing to the classifieds sites and search engines rather than what is happening with social network sites that are not really as social as what they are labeled. When you want to read something interesting and social no doubt you are going to hate having a ton of ads in your face. Rather look for top advertising packages on the internet or make use of PPc sites like Google and yahoo which are the two main ones