I agree, I would always recommend a custom approach. online marketing will never be a ‘one size fits all’ industry, that’s why I find it so interesting. MySpace, YouTube, Facebook and the like have proved to be very successful for some businesses, the informal interactive characteristics lead to greater user involvement, setup costs are lower than standard web development, and targeting can be very accurate because users offer detailed profile pages. But it would be totally unsuitable for certain business models.

Even blogging, which I think is extremely important for online marketing, should only be done if it fits in with the organisational culture, provides value for readers and can be owned and maintained.

I enjoyed your article on social media, you raise some good points, but you’re underestimating the number of social media sites out there, I’d say they were well into the thousands, and growing by the day.

Thanks for the info. Don’t you think that myspace is not the best option to promote some business? There is a big push in the online community for using social media to promote business, however I think a business needs to evaluate which of the social networking sites is best suited for their needs.

They definitely frown on it, at the moment, they’re trying to shut the site down.

But companies generally use MySpace, adding people at will – so until MySpace develop an ‘opt in’ type system, this permission based marketing tool should be a benefit rather than a pest to users.