Blog Targeting Social Networking Sites Review - Social Network Marketing

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I am going to begin the social network review with the most useful blog targeting social networks that I have found so far. I am part of a number networks but not all are useful for marketing. What I usually look for in a network is the option for finding friends/contacts, sending friends/contacts messages and the option to create groups/communities and send messages within those groups/communities.

I have always felt that BlogCatalog was on of the most useful social networks for bloggers. After I first discovered BlogCatalog I decided to help promoted the Mass Buzz Experiment. When comparing MyBlogLog and BlogCatalog, I still think BlogCatalog is more useful. I have listed the reasons why I like to use BlogCatalog.

1. It’s easy to friend people.
2. You can send all your friends a shout out.
3. It’s easy to join communities.
4. You can create groups.
5. You can opt to have group members sent email messages when you create a post in your group.
6. You can place a most recent visitor widget on your blog.
7. You can add a News Feed Widget on your blog.
8. You can join in on the BlogCatalog Discussions.
9. You can add your blog and Twitter feeds (other feeds coming soon).
10. The staff of BlogCatalog are accessible through the Discussion page and Twitter.

So far I have created two groups on BlogCatalog, Women Bloggers and Becoming a ProBlogger. The Women Bloggers group grew fairly quickly and current has 289 members. The great part about this group is that if need be I can send all my group members a message. This mass messaging option has been very helpful to the HerProBlog.COM project. The members can opt out of receiving emails responders if they wish but I am careful not to abuse this privilege to avoid opt outs.

MyBlogLog has never really been my favorite social network but is becoming more useful as time passes. I do like the option of being able to send all your community members messages. The mass messaging does not seem to be as effective as BlogCatalog though. I suppose if I had a larger amount of members I might feel differently. If MyBlogLog would offer members to start groups the site would be much more useful.

Bumpzee is currently tied with MyBlogLog as far as it’s usefulness. I have always felt that Bumpzee was just a little too complicated to figure out. Personally, I am more fond of the ‘easy as pie’ setup option. With Bumpzee I had to think to hard when setting up communities and such . I am still not sure if I can send mass messages to my community members.

Two of the most populuar communities I have created on this network are the Women Bloggers and Make Money Online communities.The Make Money Online community is currently the 6th most popular with 450 members and 310 blogs. The Women Bloggers community is growing much slower but continues to gain about 3-5 bloggers a week (106 members, 104 blogs).

Spicypage

For some reason I could never really get into Spicypage. Something about the sight doesn’t flow right for me but maybe I just haven’t given this network a chance. The hot chili pepper logo always irritates me but thats not a valid enough reason to avoid the site . Spicypage does allow you to create groups but they have to be related to a website. So you can’t just start a group about a topic, it has to be a website. You don’t have to be the owner of the site to start a group around it either.

Way back when I first discovered the site I created a few groups. The largest group to date is the Wordpress group with 131 members. Unfortunately, I can not send mass messages to all of my members or to my friends. Due to spam activities they had to remove the messaging to multiple friends option.

So there you have it. These four blogger social networks are the most useful I have found so far. If you know of any other network targeting bloggers that was not mentioned please leave a comment with a link.

Tomorrow Monday, I will be posting a review of the most useful micro blogging social networks sites such as Twitter, Jaiku, etc.