While it seems like Facebook has been around forever, social media sites have come and gone for years now. Remember sites like Friendster? Open Diary? Xanga? Most seem to just fade away into non-existence, while others try to reinvent themselves and focus on a particular audience. That seems like what’s happened with Myspace – it’s become more of a social media site dedicated to music, but it’s trying, a little bit too much, to get its old users, which once numbered over 300 million, back.
Myspace Emails Old Users
Myspace email sent to @anterobot on Twitter
Since 2008, Myspace has largely faded off the radar of most people. To remind its old users that their profiles still exist, along with their “top 8” friends and a plethora of old photos, the social media site emailed many of their old users with the tagline, “Your photos, redelivered.” The Myspace email, naturally, also featured a few old photos, some dating back to 2005. The goal of course was to get users to visit Myspace again, and hopefully keep using their site. But did this marketing tactic work?
Nostalgia Marketing
In terms of nostalgia marketing, yes and no. Yes, in the sense that it got people talking about Myspace again – even if it was to bemoan the fact their old photos are horrible. And therein lies the problem, and why it also didn’t work. Myspace’s email boasted every user’s profile features, “The good, the rad and the what were you thinking…”
But according to most people who took to a different social media site, Twitter, to talk about Myspace’s email, they don’t like what they see, and it’s more like, the good, the bad, and the ugly… and yes, a lot of “what were we thinking.” As such, according to what’s been tweeted, some people simply put the email into trash and never logged into Myspace to take a look at what other “horrible” photos they have on their profile.
While nostalgia is often triggered by a negative emotion, like loneliness, nostalgia marketing typically works best when it makes someone feel good – not embarrassed, as most people seem to be when they see their old photos that Myspace chose to send them. Nostalgia marketing also works best when it’s both meaningful in a personal way and involves people important to your target audience, like significant others, family and friends. While the photos may have featured people and things important to users, it largely failed in getting users to start using the social media site again.
After all, what are embarrassing photos encouraging people to do? Go back and clean up their profiles, or even delete them entirely? Myspace would have been better served by focusing on their current target audience – musicians, bands and lovers of music – and tailoring their marketing to that group.
Reminder: Clean Up Your Online Presence
The biggest lesson in Myspace’s creeptastic faux pas? That it’s time to clean up your online presence. Sure, some of your photos may seem innocent enough, whether it’s you about to ride your motorcycle or a shot of the beach you’re visiting, but others can be downright embarrassing.
While Myspace reportedly – according to Mashable – houses 15 billion photos, a pittance compared to Facebook’s 250 billion photos, that’s still a ton of photos from a whole plethora of users. And in those photos there might be some embarrassing shots that you wouldn’t want a prospective boss, or even a prospective date, to see. So whether you start using Myspace again – or not – it just might be time to revisit that Myspace profile.
Is it a marketing win for the social media site though? Sure, people are talking about Myspace for the first time in years, but it’s still not a win if people start deleting the photos that have brought about this latest buzz – or their profiles entirely.
Images: | @anterobot | @BigLewyB
from Darlene Milligan http://ift.tt/1LXp2Hg via transformational marketing
from Tumblr http://ift.tt/1KF5uKM
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