The overwhelmingly likely outcome is that eventually it will not be worth your while to use Myspace (even when one takes into account the various tools currently available to make managing accounts and updates quicker and easier) - so the question really becomes not whether or not to jump ship, but when and, more importantly, how?

The main challenge presented by the network's decline is not the lack of an alternative (Facebook, twitter, WordPress, duh...) but how to migrate users and activities seamlessly, without resulting in losing some of them - or in the nature of one's social media marketing campaigns being altered or affected (negatively) by the switch.

Many Myspace users of course already use at least one other network for their social media campaigns - but nonetheless, for a specific set of sectors and professions (bands especially, but also the likes of live venues, photographers, video and audio professionals and so on), Myspace has been the dominant and leading tool for upwards of four or five years.

So, with all this in mind, here's a few thoughts on the subject of migrating social media marketing away from Myspace and over to somewhere else:

1.) First of all; the question of migrating users. While the prospect of losing connections with Myspace friends does represent a challenge - it is also a fresh opportunity to 'refresh' or update one's fans/followers/customers and thus arrive at a more accurate image of who they are today (and not who they were in 2005), and how many of them are out there etc.

It's no secret that, since Myspace's predominant connection type was the 'friendship', it was possible (and far too often done) for one party to artificially expand user numbers by befriending anyone and everyone under the Myspace sun (most people would more often than not accept such requests, since Myspace was a little less 'personal' than Facebook and thus not so much of a privacy concern). Facebook's 'Like' relationship however is nicely differentiated from its 'friendships', and thus Likes represent a much more meaningful measure of how users are responding to your social media presence.

So, yes, while it might sound like a cliché to say that this (for many users, unwelcome) necessity to eventually ditch a tool, which has been used well for a number of years, represents an opportunity; in this case I really believe it to be the case. In summary - identify the network(s) you wish to direct most users to and start encouraging them to join you there. It's important to start this now (if you haven't already) so that in another three or four months (when Myspace's future will be even more uncertain) you'll be in a position to slowly wind down your activities there. And remember - it's actually quite useful to get an up-to-date idea of where you stand regarding user numbers and profiles...

2.) Secondly, while Myspace will slowly become increasingly useless regarding the impact you can make with it - it is nonetheless important to retain your domain and profile for a good while yet - even if, by this time next year, it simple resembles a re-direction point over to your Twitter and Facebook sites.

There's two important reasons for this:

• Never relinquish a formerly lucrative domain, even if it's now of little use to you (someone else might see some opportunity in it which might not go well with your wishes...) - especially when it's free to retain it as Myspace is.
• Myspace still ranks highly on search engines - so even though it hasn't as much influence as before, it is still useful as a static billboard type advert for keeping brand/band/whatever awareness high.

So, basically the answer of when to migrate is both now (start moving things as soon as possible if you haven't already done so) and never (don't reduce your Myspace presence to zero for a good while yet - obviously this becomes ever more important relative to your former weight and significance on the network).

3.) Thirdly, and perhaps most importantly, be aware that different networks operate slightly differently and that the nature of your social media marketing needs to be slightly adapted - even if you make use of various apps which attempt to make the transition easier (such as the Bandpage app for Facebook for example, which allows for some of the same features that made Myspace so successful - at a glance tour-dates and a music player for instance).

In any case, I expect those who face the trickiest time and most headaches regarding the move will be bands - especially those who rely exclusively on social media for their marketing (promoting releases, tours, news etc) and don't have mainstream press coverage to fall back on. Anyway, that's it for now - let me know if you have any further suggestions for businesses/professionals/artists/freelancers facing this dilemma.

The article nicely covers the four or five key aspects which need to be considered to construct an effective strategy, as well as offering practical tips on the technical side of things (championing WordPress as the optimal CMS option in most cases - with which it's hard to disagree). There's a little bit about the increasingly attractive option of incorporating video into posts, maximising 'sharing', and also the right amount of SEO to attempt (i.e. 1000 keywords in every post is overdoing it somewhat).

We've been running a blog here at etonDIGITAL for something like three or four years (like many mysterious relationships, it's hard to pinpoint when it officially began) and find it a great way to juggle various activities, from keeping people informed about the activities of the company, to participating in the wider discussions and debates of the blogosphere, a bit of SEO and so on. We do it all with WordPress and would recommend giving it a go to anyone - especially within a business context; it's highly rewarding and definitely doesn't involve a steep learning curve - especially with the help of a handy guide like the one over at Mashable right now. Go on - don't be shy, get blogging!

The concept is simple: register quickly (for free) and Postling provides you with a clean and simple interface for managing all of your various social media accounts under one roof so to speak. You can cross-post info from one network to another, monitor all of your feeds and update everything simultaneously. The whole concept is hardly radical, but it is executed very nicely indeed, particularly by way of a very attractive and functional user interface.

Now, for your average personal user, Postling is probably slightly unnecessary since it really requires you to be active on at least two or three fairly large networks to begin to represent a significant time-saver. However, for small business looking to utilise social media in order to run ad campaigns, build brand awareness, provide service updates or whatever else, Postling really comes into its own.

In essence it offers a great solution to one of the main problems of utilising social media for such purposes - namely that it can sometimes be a little bit confusing to track the impact and reach of what you're doing, as well as being tricky to achieve more comprehensive target audience reach and so on. Well, Postling is nice since it means you don't have to worry about wasting time repeating actions for each network (Facebook, twitter, wordpress, Flickr etc), plus you can view your campaign as a whole from a sort of HQ, making things easier to manage and to spot trends and test impact. Effectively, this removes the 'artificial' barriers which divided pockets of your market/audience into different networks - but essentially made it harder to co-ordinate a cohesive campaign. This indeed is a very laudable achievement, and surely a big step in advancing the specific toolset which makes social media such a valuable business tool.

Below we share a list of the top five WordPress designs by Eton Digital:

• Eton Digital is built on WordPress
• StudentBox Corporate Website
• Ku Day Ta - San Francisco based tea lounge
• Kimind - Enterprise 2.0 consultancy
• SprintBio - Renewable energy heating systems

Feel free to add your own websites or any suggestions of your own via the comment section.

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A selection of more best WordPress driven websites by Eton Digital

Read our blog entry "WordPress goes from strength to strength with v2.6.2".

With such high profile users as Techcrunch, Reuters, The New York Times and CNN to name a few, WordPress is doing extremely well in what is a fairly crowded field (see Wikipedia for a full list of current CMS options). With a 'Wordpress for Dummies' book published last year and various 'Wordcamps' taking place all over the world on a regular basis, there has never been a better time to incorporate WordPress into your website or blog.

For those new to the idea here a brief overview of WP and a few reasons why we like it so much:

Started in 2003 as an open source project, WordPress is a free downloadable code which facilitates the publishing of a blog or even the running of a whole website. It is now a mature personal publishing solution, built on PHP and MySQL and licensed under GPL.

With WP user levels hitting over 3 million in 2007, it is expected that figures for the end of 2008 could see this rise towards the 10m mark (the rate of growth between 2006 and 07 was a 15-fold increase in uptake).

WordPress has a range of impressive features, including:

• the latest cross-blogging technologies such as trackbacks and pingbacks - allow you to achieve high levels of connectivity with the blogosphere
• WordPress pages - allows you to create static pages (such as an 'About' page for example) with ease, and to edit them in an instant from any internet connection in the world
• WordPress themes - a great tool which makes creating whole websites with a cohesive look and feel very straightforward
• Full user registration - allow users to leave authenticated comments and register profile details.
• Spam protection - the integrated blacklist and open proxy checker helps ensure your blog stays free from spam and junk without needing constant attention
• XML-RPC interface - WP currently supports Blogger API, MetaWeblog API and MoveableType API, PLatforms designed for other clients (like Zempt for example) can also be incorporated
• Multiple authors - WP supports multiple authors who can have varying degrees of access to site editing from 1 to 10, allowing for a clear definition of duties and responsibilities among staff
• Ping-O-Matic support - Guarantees maximum exposure to search engines.
• Bookmarklets - Add links to your blogroll with no hassle
• Password protected posts - can be made viewable to staff only (or author only if required)
• Full W3C standards compliance

(This is just a few of the current major WP features - for a comprehensive list visit wordpress.org/about)

With the WP development team now committed to a regular release schedule (updates are delivered every 3-4 months), businesses can confidently adopt WP into their operations without worry over stability and lack of support. Bug fixes and security issue resolution now have a lower than ever turnaround time, making long term planning with WP a whole lot easier.

Alternatives to WordPress do exist, but here at EtonDigital we have been happily using it for some time; once again this latest version gets another definite thumbs up from us.

A selection of our best WordPress powered websites.

Dejan Levi

The first design - for PMW LTD, features a WordPress Content Management System, and has already attracted praise from several online CSS galleries (including CSS Mania). Since its launch, average daily user numbers have increased from 20 to 600 when compared with the previous design. (PMW is an Essex-based, BMW and Mercedes service and repair specialist).

Secondly, we are delighted to announce the addition of a new feature to Sprintbio.com, for whom we recently provided a new homepage. We have now added a WordPress e-commerce solution in the form of Sprinbio Retail, which offers an easily manageable financial transaction facility, with fully integrated PayPal services. Sprintbio is a leader in environmentally friendly and efficient home heating and power solutions - now complete with an online web-store.

Finally, we can also announce the launch of Air-Valid - for whom we provided Web 2.0 design and CSS/HTML programming. Air-Valid is a leading analyst of the aviation industry with operations across the world.

We would like to thank both the ED team and all our clients for their hard work on making these projects a success.

EtonDigital

We used WordPress to create a Content Management System that will manage this growing project and provide an easy-to-navigate user experience.

We always welcome feedback on our ongoing web projects and would appreciate hearing any thoughts, comments or suggestions. Please feel free to leave a comment or contact us directly.