A bit of this and a bit of that

I was lucky enough to be one of the few selected for Alpha Testing on SocialSpark, the brand new social media marketing platform of Izea, the brains behind PayPerPost. The team who built it have taken all that they have learnt from PayPerPost and used it to make SocialSpark better, leaner and faster. They also have a new code of ethics that their bloggers need to abide by namely:

• 100% Audit-able In-Post Disclosure
• 100% Transparency
• 100% Real Opinions
• 100% Search Engine Friendly

Recently, SocialSpark has been opened up for everyone to come and give it a try. It’s still in beta, so there may still be issues that need to be ironed out, but it’s alive and kicking, advertisers are advertising, bloggers are blogging and everyone is connecting and having a great time. Here are some screenshots from the website.

Looks quite pretty doesn’t it. Well the killer features aren’t the looks, but the fact that you can set up a profile, befriend other people (bloggers or advertisers) and use the platform to promote your products or websites. Bloggers can advertise their products and advertisers can blog about different things too. It’s a great way to cross-fertilise ideas from different sources.

The other great feature that SocialSpark brings to play are the analytics behind bloggers and campaigns. It makes it extremely easy to see what sort of traffic a blog is getting, what the demographics of the viewers are and what sort of exposure your advert is likely to have. Couple this with the click through metrics on the adverts themselves and you have a powerful advertising and tracking engine that can help you identify the ROI of your campaign at the touch of a button.