Whilst online dating is becoming more socially acceptable amongst the masses, there are still people out there that would rather seek friendship in the hope that it turns into more. It’s therefore great to see a number of our partners taking advantage of this opportunity and tailoring their offering to reflect this.

Friendsormates.com, friendsofyours.com and ukfriendsdating.co.uk are great examples of sites that approach dating in a much more subtle way - focusing on the friendship aspect, trying to match you with people who have similar interests and hobbies. Specializing in a friendship niche makes it that little bit less daunting for potential members to sign up to a site. The thought of finding a new friend is a lot less scary then searching for “the one”. Friendsormates states that “you don’t have to be looking for a romantic relationship to join”, this definitely takes off that immediate pressure and allows people to make those first initial connections.

FriendsofYours.com, is part of Yours.co.uk, which is an online community for Yours Magazine readers, traditionally for the over 50s. The site claims that you can be looking for love, friendship or just an online chat, there are potential friends for everyone. The site has a very warm and welcoming feel to it which adds that softer touch to the dating world.

If you’re looking to diversify your portfolio of dating sites, there’s plenty of potential with setting up a friendship site. After all, it’s a friendship that keeps sailing on forever.

Welcome to issue 4 of more content = more cash. Last week we introduced you to the in depth world of multimedia and what you need to create a social media fire. This week its time to look into starting the fire and how to crate your social media accounts and setting them up for your campaign. WLD really hope that these blog posts are coming in handy for you and are helping you to build up your SEO.

Issue 4: Starting Your Social Media Fire

In this issue, we look at setting up the various social media channels to make best use of them. I’ll be referring to a case study that will help you understand the effects in context. This case study recently won an NMA award for ‘best use of social media’ and involves a certain ‘Meerkat‘. If you haven’t guessed it, it’s the ‘Compare the Meerkat‘ campaign run by ‘CompareTheMarket.com’ (CTM.com).

Before I start, I just want to make a point of ‘He Who Dares Wins’. Imagine the faces of some who first heard the idea ‘I know, let’s do a pun with meerkats?’. Ideas can sound very bizarre but it’s the bizarre ideas that capture the public so be brave with them!

Facebook

What’s it good for? Well, apart from allowing you to shame your friends by tagging photos, it is a colossal community of people connected in a number of ways. It is a place to share interests, to talk about what you’re doing, to join groups or notify others of an event. The core of facebook is both the established community and the tools it has for users to generate content. Facebook will help you build a fan base who you can send messages and be a great discussion forum around your campaign. Take a look at Aleksandr Orlov’s page (the name of the meerkat!)

Facebook allows you to create a number of interactive features within the page including discussion boards, photo gallery’s, video clips, fan lists and even custom features via the Facebook API and markup language (FBML). It is generally a great hub for a campaign allow you to send messages and announcements to all the fans you work hard to collect.

Flickr

What’s it good for? Flickr is a great community based around the love for photos, art and generally anything visually appealing. There are a few large image aggregate sites but none with the community and fluidity of Flickr.

CTM.com’s Flickr page is a collection of meerkat imagery which makes sense! A moderator for the page has conducted searches around Flickr and requested for other users to add their photos to the group, thus building its importance. You’ll notice a link back to their site ‘comparethemarket.com’ which not only helps drive direct referral traffic but increases the site’s SEO benefit.

Twitter

Twitter is a micro-blogging phenomenon. Micro-blogging is simply a blog on a tiny scale. A ‘tweet’ is a name given to an update cast via twitter. Twitter is great for building a character or a business profile but like a blog, needs an interesting or amusing topic to become popular. Twitter popularity is based on the amount of ‘followers’ you have who are other users with twitter accounts who have subscribed to listen to your ‘tweets’. Twitter is a great place to build a profile for your campaign and attract a following. You can route this traffic back to your brand and site by posting links within your tweets. If you haven’t already check out twitter. You can even follow WhiteLabelDating.com on there,  ‘wld‘.

CTM.com use twitter really well with a profile of their meerkat ‘Aleksandr’ which has, at last count, 17,718 followers! That’s 17,718 people who are tuned in to whatever he chooses to broadcast. Could be new product offerings or special offerings. You start to get the idea that a good marketing campaign can leave a long lingering tail of free broadcasting.

Content Aggregators

(Digg.com, Delicious.com, Reddit.com, StumbleUpon.com…)

Content aggregate sites like the above mentioned work hard for you if the content is well received. All you need to do is make it easy for your users to add your content to these sites (mentioned in the previous article). A good example of this is on the BBC site (http://www.bbc.co.uk). If you read any article, you’ll see the various options at the bottom to submit the content to a social network site. As you produce your content, make sure you make use of these in the same way.

That’s it for this week, hope you found the tips useful. Next week we’ll be looking at sustaining the viral reaction created by your campaigns and stoking the fire further…

Follow the series so far:

• Issue 1
• Issue 2
• Issue 3
• Issue 4

Your local book and DVD store has launched a brand new online dating site! The official press release for the site from www.borders.co.uk is below:

“BORDERS UK GIVES LOVE A HELPING HAND WITH NEW ONLINE DATING SERVICE

Borders UK today announced it has launched an online dating service called ‘Happily Ever After’ on its website www.borders.co.uk The new site offers its members the chance to find like-minded people who share similar interests and hobbies, and of course a love of books, CDs and DVDs.

Visitors to the Borders website can sign up to the new service over the next few weeks for a mere £1 per month. After that period the subscription will be £9.99 per month. The site also showcases a wide range of books for all the latest advice on dating.

So next time Borders fans log onto the website, they may come away with more than just a new book in their basket!”

WhiteLabelDating.com wish Borders all the best for their new site and fingers crossed those fairy tales will all end happily ever after.

Check out the new site at borders.co.uk/borders-dating.

WhiteLabelDating.com were joined by some of our highly successful partners last night as we attended the very grand New Media Age Effectiveness Awards at Grosvenor House Hotel in London.

The night was a great success, and with Dara O’Briain hosting it was a laugh a minute! There were 27 awards giving out over the duration of the evening. Whitelabeldating.com were an official sponsor of the evening, and were very proud when our very own Steve Pammenter went up to join Dara O’Briain on stage to present the award we were sponsoring, ‘Best Use of Social Media’ which was won by the hugely popular, ‘Compare the Meerkat‘ advertising campaign.

It was great to have attended the awards and be associated with such a huge event. Big thank you goes out to our partners who joined us for the evening, we hope you enjoyed the evening as much as the WhiteLabelDating.com team.

WhiteLabelDating.com are really excited to welcome Mr Frank Dethridge into the growing team of dedicated staff at WLD! Frank has had three years experience in the dating industry, joining us from World Dating Partners where he held the position of CEO. We are really excited for Frank to get his teeth into his new position of Affiliate Manager for WhiteLabelDating.com where he will be launching an affiliate system and growing affiliates for the company. This is what Frank had to say about his new role within the team:

“I am very excited to be joining the market leader in white label dating and being a part of a dedicated team that strives to make their partners successful. It is clear that WLD are forward thinkers and are constantly looking for ways to increase their partner’s capabilities to generate substantial incomes. The new affiliate system will offer partners a chance to attract their own affiliates to promote their brand. It will be feature rich and even offer partners the chance to set their own affiliate commissions and bonuses.”

WhiteLabelDating.com CEO Ross Williams comments:

“I’m delighted to welcome Frank to the team here - he brings with him a wealth of knowledge that will help us make our new affiliate system the best option for dating affiliates worldwide. Frank will be working closely with our partners to help them make the most from the affiliate channel, allowing partners to reduce their reliance on PPC marketing and enjoy a much higher return on their marketing investment. It’s also a great acknowledgment that the competition realise we’re the best in the industry and want to join the winning team here at WhiteLabelDating.com”

So watch this space and i am sure you will be hearing much more from Frank and the new affiliate system!

Outdoor-dating.co.uk is a site set up by a group of outdoor enthusiasts all who have different hobbies and interests in outdoor adventures. The aim of the site is to help people who enjoy the outdoor sporting life find partners to enjoy these activities with, whether it’s to find a friend to go climbing with or to meet that special person, outdoor-dating.co.uk is there to help!

The site is open to all outdoor sports but its main focus’s are, walking and hiking, rock climbing, horse riding, biking, skiing and snowboarding, canoeing and kayaking and running. Each of the sections allows members to write their own classified and personal adds in the hope to find someone who they can share this enjoying experience with, whether it be hiking up a mountain or exploring new caves and rivers!

Outdoor-dating.co.uk offers safety tips and ideas for a first date. This section is great as it offers simple tips on how to stay safe while tyring out online dating and has ideas of what to do on adventurers first dates. The ideas offered are great fun and fit really well into the targeted audience the site is marketed at.

Outdoor-dating.co.uk is affiliated with Amazon and has useful links to selected products related to outdoor activities. The products range from books based on the best national walks to handheld GPS systems.

The site is a great starting point for any outdoor enthusiast. They can find friends with similar interests, find products that may relate to them and hopefully find love in the process.

Prime50plus is fast becoming the UK’s No.1 lifestyle site offering great tips and advice specifically designed and marketed for an older generation. The site offers a unique customer experience and its aim is to help add that little something extra to someones life, Prime50plus quotes:

“We’ve designed this exciting new Website specifically for you and your generation. Baby Boomers who are approaching or over 50, who are already leading successful, fulfilling lives but are now looking for something more.”

Site users arrive onto the home page which gives a brief overview of what the site offers its members. There are seven different tabs you can choose from including Travel and Leisure, Wealth, Health, Shop Window, Career, Friendship and Dating and Property. All the pages link in with the same appealing continuous theme and each tab offers tips, useful website links and relevant products.

The site has a real friendly and welcoming feel to it, and the launch of the Prime50plus dating service adds that extra bit of spice to an already successful site. The Friendship and Dating option has a soft and playful approach, making it more appealing to sign up. There is an option to search for locals in the area so straight away the customer can get a feel as to whether or not the site is right for them.

Paul Kern, director of Prime50plus had this to say about the site and his partnership with White Label Dating:

“We are delighted to be working with White Label Dating as this exciting new dating service ideally compliments the other premium services being offered to our customers. From the research we have carried out, Social Networking and Dating are key growth areas for the 50 plus market. I would like to compliment you and your organisation in the way you have acted so quickly to create the Prime50plus Dating White Label site. From what we have seen, we are impressed with the quality of the site, the T&C and the way it is set out. I was also very impressed by the friendly feel and usability of the customer pages once someone has completed a free sign in. I can see why people who sign in for free then go on to purchase a service. We look forward to promoting Prime50plus Dating.”

Feedback like this is a really great incentive for WhiteLabelDating.com to keep working closely with our partners and helping them improve their sites as much as possible! So remember if you ever fancy adding that little bit extra to your site, our dedicated team are always willing to help.

Well hello again and welcome to issue 3 of More Content = More Cash. This weeks blog is all about the wonderful world of multimedia! The subject is so vast that we can’t possibly fit in all the information we want to tell you into one blog so we are going to introduce you to new topics of multimedia over the space of three weeks. This week, the main focus is to demonstrate the importance of multimedia, the best delivery methods to use and the potential it could bring to your sites.
The next blog will focus on what you need to start your social media fire, we will be giving you some great tips on setting up your social playground.

So dig into issue 3, and fingers crossed it will keep you glued to your screen for next weeks installment!

Issue 3: Creating Fuel for Your Social Media Fire

Importance of multimedia

Multimedia is simply a name given to the collection of text, audio, still imagery, animation and video. This hasn’t changed much in many years but the delivery of this content has been through rapid and radical development. Notably, developments have mainly occurred through digital delivery methods such as the Internet and Digital TV. These delivery methods have transcended into the mobile market bringing content-to-us in a convenient way. Not only does this make it easier to escape into the multimedia you’re interested in but also makes it a lot more accessible. Apple’s iPhone and Amazon’s Kindle are two good examples of this.

Why is this important? Simply entertainment. We are people, we like to be entertained and feel part of something and the only way we know how is for our senses to be triggered through visual or audio means. Of course, touch, taste and smell are our other sense but we’re not quite advanced enough to engage in these digitally (although a lot of research is being conducted in these areas).

Why is this relevant? It is probably a good time to mention social media and the impact it has on the masses. Social media is a means to share multimedia with the community and when I say share, potentially exposure to millions and millions of people. You need good fuel, very good fuel and you also need to be strategic in the way it is created and burned.

Creating your multimedia assets

Before we look at the practical resource issues of creating multimedia, lets go back and recap on our branding. In our first issue, we discussed the messaging behind your brand and the brand values. You’ll need to dig these out as these provide the catalyst to your creative ideas. Lets use some case studies to help understand this:

Mini Cooper (http://aveaword.glueserv.com/)

A great use of filming that adapts depending on user input and upholds the ‘mini adventure’ campaign. A brand value behind the new mini is ‘adventure’.

Honda (http://www.vimeo.com/4281939)

An innovative usage of the video player that begins to take over the whole screen! Again, this upholds the brand value of ‘innovation’.

Compare the Market (http://www.comparethemeerkat.com/)

This is a brilliant campaign to help gain an edge in a competitive marketplace. A brand message here is ‘the ability to compare many’. A clever play on words and the creation of a funny character helped reinforce this in the audiences mind and provided fuel for a hugely successful viral campaign involving a whole site dedicated to comparing meerkats!

StumbleUpon (http://www.stumbleupon.com)

StumbleUpon is a social media site which aggregates sites that have appeal from an entertainment and informative perspective. This should give you a good idea of what other people have done.

So now you have a feel for how this all works and can see the logic behind branding. Not just a logo design but a whole exercise in messaging that is the essence behind all your marketing creativity. In context of the dating market, you should have plenty of scope for some quirky yet fun ideas to run with. We would be interested to hear from you about any campaigns you have run or about to run.

So how do you create this fuel? It certainly helps to understand everything in context and once you’ve been through the process you’ll really start to appreciate the consequences a targeted campaign have on SEO and brand awareness. The point is that you’ll get better and better at creating campaigns as you experience their side effects.

Later on in this blog series, we will look at how to get the best out of freelance work, what is involved in developing a brief and how to manage the projects effectively. For now, I’ll point you in the right direction for finding the skills you need for the job.

• 99designs.com is an excellent place to get a good logo design from many different graphic designers. You put down how much you’re willing to pay and then designers effectively ‘bid’ with their designs for the prize pot
• Freelancers.net, Elance.com, Guru.com are all communities of freelancers covering a wide range of flash design and
• DeviantArt.com is a great place to source artists for illustration, specialist animation and 3D graphics

That’s it for this week, but next week we’ll be looking at setting up your social media playground to best make use of your multimedia assets.

Follow the series so far:

• Issue 1
• Issue 2
• Issue 3
• Issue 4

Keeping your members happy, giving them what they want, as easy and accessibly as possible -this is what it’s all about as your members are the ones that make your pocket feel that little bit heavier every month! We need to look after them and give them the best service possible. One of our partner’s sites, Dirtylikeus.com does just that. The motto on their website “our members always come first,” is used continuously throughout the sites pages and reassures members that their commitment to the site is not overlooked, (and yes the pun was intended)

Dirtylikeus.com is packed full of lots of great content and offers a great deal more then just a dating service. From the splash page, users navigate to the home page, which then has many different options for where members can head to next. Site users can get an overview of the members already on the site, ranging from the UK, America, Canada, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand.

The site has great social media links, including it’s own facebook page and twitter account. You can read up on their blog pages, and engage in online chats. This is a great way to get members more engaged with the site as they can relate and get more involved with these social media aspects, leaving comments and communicating with the Dirtylikeus.com team. It all helps to make the site more personal. You can even buy yourself a Dirtylikeus T-shirt!

The site has some great visual images, making their members experience fun but also user friendly.

Online dating continues to reach new levels of awareness. One of the top UK newspapers, The Guardian has featured some of WhiteLabelDating.com’s partners in a recent article, “Finding love in later life.” The article talks about the over 50’s market and how online dating is becoming increasingly popular with the older generation. Discussing divorce rates and increasing life expectancy, the article describes how the older generation don’t want to be alone in their later years, they want to start dating and having fun with others. Going out for dinner and arranging holidays is not just for the young kids!

The articles states that “30% of men over 65 and a whopping 60% of women don’t live as part of a couple.” So this just shows that marketing to an older demographic will definitely pay off! Within the article it lists four over 50 dating sites, three of which are WhiteLabelDating.com partners! The Senior Dating Agency and Senior Dating Group are discussed as being great over 50’s sites to join for free. The article also mentions Singlesover60.co.uk and describes how the site has successfully targeted a slightly higher age bracket.

Have a read of the article at: http://bit.ly/G1wiU.