Social Network Advertising Tips: Should You Smile Online?

Should You Smile Online?

Wherever you look online these days you cannot move for smiling people. There they are in social media profiles, in headshots on websites and in images shared on the likes of Pinterest or Flickr. All around you people are smiling. But is that a good thing? Should you smile online as much as you do? Could a smile cause a problem for your website?

When people smile they increase their positive brain hormones, the endorphins. And when we see someone smile, we find it hard to avoid smiling ourselves. Smiling is infectious. So if you smile on your website, the chances are the visitors to your site will also smile. You could then trigger their mirror neurons to come into action and feel as happy as you are. All positive stuff; why wouldn't you want to smile on your website?

Well, according to new research, you might not want to smile if you need people to think you are older than you are. Psychologists from Germany have discovered that we underestimate the age of people who are smiling. When we look at a picture of someone smiling we tend to say they are younger than turns out to be the case. Overall, it seems we are pretty poor at estimating the age of people, unless their facial expression is neutral - when we tend to get it right.

So, why might you want people to estimate your age from your profile picture? Imagine you are a young software developer - smile and in the instant people land on your website they could think you are too young to have done the things you claim. Or what about the older person who is using LinkedIn to try and get a new job? Have a neutral picture and people could say "oh, she's too old for us". But smile, and they' will underestimate your age, making the chances of the job a little bit higher.

It therefore means that one picture for your all your social media profiles and your web pages is simply not enough. You need to think about the impact you are trying to create and whether or not you want people to get your age right, or think you are younger.

Once more, this research shows that we really need to focus on the fine detail of what we present on our websites if we are to have the desired impact.

Graham Jones is a psychologist who investigates the way people use the Internet and how people shop online. His research can help you make the most of the Internet, particularly if you are hoping to make money online.

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What Is Social Networking?

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Social networking is the grouping of individuals into specific groups, like small rural communities or a neighborhood subdivision, if you will. Although social networking is possible in person, especially in the workplace, universities, and high schools, it is most popular online.

This is because unlike most high schools, colleges, or workplaces, the internet is filled with millions of individuals who are looking to meet other people, to gather and share first-hand information and experiences about cooking, golfing, gardening, developing friendships professional alliances, finding employment, business-to-business marketing and even groups sharing information about baking cookies to the Thrive Movement. The topics and interests are as varied and rich as the story of our universe.

As I'm sure you're aware, there are dangers associated with social networking including data theft and viruses, which are on the rise. The most prevalent danger though often involves online predators or individuals who claim to be someone that they are not. Although danger does exist with networking online, it also exists in the real world, too. Just like you're advised when meeting strangers at clubs and bars, school, or work -- you are also advised to proceed with caution online.

Once you are well informed and comfortable with your findings, you can begin your search from hundreds of networking communities to join. This can easily be done by performing a standard internet search. Your search will likely return a number of results, including MySpace, FriendWise, FriendFinder, Yahoo! 360, Facebook, Orkut, and Classmates.

Social network advertising is a term that is used to describe a form of Online advertising that focuses on social networking sites. One of the major benefits of advertising on a social networking site (facebook, myspace, friendster, bebo, orkut...and many others) is that advertisers can take advantage of the users demographic information and target their ads appropriately.

There are three major classifications of Social Network Advertising:

Direct Advertising that is based on your network of friends - This can be the most effective format but also causes the most controversy. An example is the Facebook beacon project.[5] Based on an action your friend has taken, you might see a message in your news feed saying 'Bob has just bought a 'RadioHead CD from MusicWorld'. This can be an extremely effective mode as often people make decisions to purchase something or do something based on their close group of friends. However, there is also a lot of controversy surrounding this as it can be considered exploiting the personal relationships you have with your friends and also raises privacy concerns.

Direct Advertising placed on your social networking site - This is a more traditional form of web advertising that is minimally effective. Just like you see banner ads on many other sites, this is a similar concept, except on a social networking site. You can see these - for example - as a brick in the top right of MySpace pages, or as a banner on the right of Facebook profiles and so on. There are two differences however - One is that these social networks can take advantage of demographic data on your profile and hence target the ad directly to you. Secondly, these types of ads can also be placed by individual developers on their application pages through ad networks. They have access to the same data and can generate income for application developers giving them further motivation to create apps and giving advertisers a more engaging way to reach out to these social networking users.

Indirect Advertising by creating 'groups' or 'pages' - This is an innovative marketing technique in which a company will create a 'page' or 'group' that users can choose to join. They will use this to build up 'subscribers' or 'fans' and use this to market a contest, a new product, or simply just to increase brand awareness. These groups can quickly grow in numbers of subscribers which can become a very effective marketing tool.

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