Whether or not you feel like Myspace, Facebook, Bebo, Orkut, Friendster are good ways to spend your time, someone else does and that someone else potentially falls into one of the following segments of an audience: Tweens, Gen Y, Gen X, Grups and so on. So why does this matter?

Everyday brands are trying to figure out how to best tap into their target audience. They've tried commercials, direct mail, radio, mobile and everywhere online they think you may be. One of the puzzling pieces to this equation is how much focus is put into online and then social networks? Some of these large networks are so horizontal that it's very difficult to ensure that your banners and rich media are being viewed by the right person. But with a little hard work and elbow grease, you can find the right people and here's how. Everyday people get together with their friends to go shopping, play pickup basketball in the park or go running. The common theme within this is groups and introducing new people into these groups. Let's look at how the groups principle applies to Myspace. People have similar interests so they do a search and find the most relevant group to serve their needs and start posting about their experience that adds value to that group. Let's start here. Creating a group within one of these large social networks is a great way to engage users that actually align with each other and may potentially have the same interests. It's simple, it's targeted. Take the time to welcome members, engage with them, provide them with valuable content. If you're a brand, you've got a budget to introduce some authenticity to these users and stay connected to create ambassadors; users who will begin to seed the group to others in their person network. It seems simple, because it truly is. It takes a little hard work, but the payoff is great. I've seen many campaigns introduce groups within larger communities to create micro-communities for brands or companies and do it successfully.

So groups is one way to leverage the 80% stronghold that Myspace and Facebook have on the social network market. How else can you ensure you're taking advantage of this touchpoint? I found this video on a talk I gave at an event in Intuit for San Diego iMarketers. It's got a lot of great info for beginners and without reciting all of the info here; the video is great way to kick back and learn about the basics.

Video: http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=10371593