It’s late, but I don’t want you to think that’s what has me slightly grumpy, it’s not. What got me was a short piece written in the Webpronews.

Writer David Utter, in his featured article Beware Social Networking Ad Buzz does another one of his quick looks (without much fact) and provides a sweeping opinion (without declaring it is opinion) on whether or not social media sites like Facebook and Myspace are really designed to help online businesses grow. He (continues) to insist that these sites are filled with college-types not much interested in anything business related. This isn’t the first time I’ve seen him say this very same thing… and it drives me nuts. Every time I read his absolute-sounding statements I wonder what he’s basing these statements on? Statistical fact or personal opinion? Because statistically he’s wrong.

I’m not about to disclose my age but suffice to say college has been several years in my past, yet I frequent social media hot spots and I’m aware of numerous individuals my age and older doing the same.

Social media communities are filled with all kinds of people, of all ages. A trip around any of them, checking profiles and seeing who’s who, can show you that much. Facebook even provides demographics for heavens sake…!

After reading his article, it became apparent to me that the person most “in the know” was the first commenter to his article, Lyn Mettler. Lyn wrote:

“I personally think that the way to go online is not to pay to have a presence but to actively get involved, such as by setting up a page for your business on MySpace or Facebook and using that as a tool to reach out to your target audience.

I’ve never been convinced that paid advertising online fares much better than paid advertising in traditional media. It’s much better (more credible and authentic) to get a story about your business published in the newspaper than to pay for an ad, and similarly it’s better to have a page on MySpace than to pay for placement there (excluding pay per click).

One other point, these social networks are definitely not just for the 20-something, college-age crowd. All age groups are getting on in huge numbers. A couple stats I found:

More than 50 percent of all MySpace users are now over the age of 35, according to comScore Media Metrix.

Between May 2006 and May 2007 the number of unique users on Facebook over the age of 35 grew 98% to 10,412. — comScore Media Metrix”

Hats off to Lyn for stating so clearly the reason for any internet marketer to venture into the social media arena. “To actively get involved” is the key phrase there. Clearly social websites are not the place to go barging in and spamming the living daylights out of all and sundry. Common sense, a sense of community and fair play, and above all an understanding of these communities can and will take any online entrepreneur far.

Seems like David needs a wake up call – and a research partner. Give it a rest David

(I did weigh in, couldn’t leave Lyn just hanging there alone lol)

Everyone is buzzing about it – the magic “Web 2.0″ word is drawing people like bees to honey. But there’s one slight catch to the whole thing… there are so many of them, what to choose? Where to start? How to work them effectively so you get what you need without ticking a bunch of people off (which you really want to avoid!).

That’s where our suggestions come in handy. We’re actively using the resources we talk about on this blog. You’ll see down below (or off to the side) coverage we are giving to Facebook. Well here’s our next suggestions – Hubpages.com

BUT… before you rush off please finish reading this post. It will save you hours of work and, more importantly, your reputation online if you approach this (or any) social media website with the right mindset.

If you’re reading this blog (and we sincerely hope you are and telling others all about us, hint, hint), you’ll notice that versus posting an entire article here, we present a summary of what to expect and then send you out to hubpages to read the rest. It’s not laziness on our part, lol, but a really good marketing strategy that you, too, can benefit by using.

The really great part is that you don’t even need your own website to get started. If you do, great! If you don’t, don’t worry about it (though down the line you should plan to have at least a blog of your own).

You’ll first signup for a Hubpages account. From this one account, you create multiple “hubs” which are nothing more than a fancier way of saying “individual pages” under your one account. Yes, you can post numerous “hubs” from just one username login area. It’s great!

Which means you can write about ANYTHING that you’re imagination, and research, can dream up.

Each new hub gets a new name – typically it pulls from whatever title you’ve given your initial page. For instance, if we did an article about:

“How to Benefit From Using Hubpages”

the url would look like this (this is fictious)

/hubs/How-to-Benefit-From-Using-Hubpages

So you see hopefully right off the bat that placing your keyword into your title is a primary objective, right?

The idea with Hubpages is, after posting many (this will not work as a “do it once” strategy and should be avoided if you don’t plan to build multiple “hubs”), the search engines will pick up your hubs and create even more valuable backlinks to your hubpages and (ultimate) your website or blog.

Now versus reinventing the wheel, we’ve downloaded the nifty pdf that Hubpages provides to its users. You can:

Download the HubPages User Guide Here
Download and Read First!
It is highly recommended that you get this download first.
Read it through, it’s a clear step-by-step process guide, and then start
your own Hubpages hubs.
WORD OF CAUTION: This, nor any social media, is NOT the place to do blatant advertising! If you do, you will ruin your reputation in a heartbeat! Our suggestion is get the guide, read the guide, and then go travel around within Hubpages before doing anything. Get a feel for what’s what, who’s doing what, how they are doing it. Look for “high score” pages. You can bet these people understand the process and are working it properly.