I've been hearing a lot about social marketing these days. Too much in fact, it's starting to become a bit annoying. But like any good marketer, I do try to at least keep one finger on the pulse of what's happening online, so I decided it was time to try a couple of these new social marketing sites myself.

Now I set up a MySpace account only because my kids were on there, and I wanted to see what their friends were saying about their pictures. Once I got signed up and figured out how it worked, I then decided I should probably at least research some of the marketing ideas that seem to be all the rage lately. Thus I went looking at groups, other people's MySpace pages, and misc other pieces of the overall puzzle.

I was not impressed. That place is downright noisy and seems to be filled with everybody screaming as loud as they can about how to get rich overnight.

With that said, yes I can see the potential of using it to create a loyal fan base among other things, but I don't like the spammy feel I get where "Online Business" related profiles and groups are concerned.

Another social networking craze I've been seeing talked about a lot lately is Squidoo. So I decided to start checking into this one deeper as well. This one appears to be much more business oriented, and the bulk of the "lenses" I've looked at so far are much more professional and useful.

It seems a bit odd to me though. In Squidoo, you create a one page "lens". This is supposed to be a collection of resources, links and information relating to a specific topic. If you want to write about another topic, you create a new lens. There is not a way to add pages to an existing lens, but you can add plenty of content. I'd guess some of those might get super long if they're not focused enough.

So based on what I've seen so far, I'd guess the best way to use Squidoo is for creating micro niche topic pages. I first created a lens that was going to be about Stock Photography for instance, but once I started learning about the various modules and functionality of the system I quickly realized that is too large of a topic for just one page. To do a good job of it, I'd have to break it down into much tinier pieces and create individual lenses.

Once that became apparent to me, I then created a second lens with the micro approach in mind. This lens ended up being quite small for my test. I simply put one of my pictures on it, then selected related products from the various modules in the system. Take a

look at it here: http://www.squidoo.com/footballphotos/

Now if you look at that lens, you might realize I've only added one thing of my own. The rest is affiliate related products and advertising links. Because of the way this page is created though, it could be a great money maker given time and traffic. The ads are targeted, and the links are monetized.

And it made me realize something: This could be an excellent approach to creating one page websites - aka Landing Pages - designed to simply generate affiliate or advertising revenue.

Many people buy new or expired domain names and park them at places like Sedo. They then earn money from clicks on the ads Sedo displays for them. Other people however, prefer to direct their unused domains to affiliate programs, or create one page websites which have either brief product reviews and comparisons, AdSense and an article, or a Detailed presell of specific products.

Using the concepts I learned this morning at Squidoo though - especially considering what's actually on that Football photo page - I think this could be an excellent way to create custom landing pages for your domain names.

Set up just one page, and put a relevant picture on that page. Give the page a proper title, meta tags, h1 tags and so on, then write a short description of the photo you're displaying. Then simply select 3-5 related affiliate products and list them on the page too. Link to them using your affiliate links, and if you're able to: Add product pictures and descriptions too. Then put AdSense blocks into the page whereever you'd like and you're done. You have a working, targeted topic page that is fully monetized.

To take this further, and also put into action some of the "social" concepts, put 1-5 links on each page to other related pages. Let's say you create one short page about canned dog food, then you could create another about dry dog food, then another about dog toys, etc.

Yes this is a very similar concept to create niche websites and networks. It is in fact, the exact same thing - just on a much smaller scale. A tiny one actually. But it just might work nicely if given a decent try. And if it does work, you've increased your income streams :)

© 2006, Kathy Burns-Millyard. Do you need custom, high quality content for your websites, ebooks or other publications? Check out Kathy's excellent niche topic article packages here. New and completely free: The Domain Name Handbook

I predict that the Chicago Bears will win the Super Bowl this year. Their defense will eat Manning for lunch.

Take that to the bank.