Myspace is still one of the best ways to get targeted traffic to your website or blog. You don't need to know a lot of Myspace html codes or have fancy Myspace widgets. Myspace lays it all out for you! Profile: Plain or Pimped Out? - Your audience determines if you need a
pimped out Myspace background or the default.
Are you trying to attract business types, and yes they have Myspace profiles, or a younger crowd of more artist types? If you don't know much about Myspace widgets or free myspace layouts, either hire someone to pimp out your Myspace page or keep it simple.
Your user name should be in relation to your business. Use your first and last name if you are trying to be recognized as an individual business owner. Use your business or domain name as you would want it to be picked up by search engines. On my profile I have my first and last pen name and my Myspace URL set to my domain. That way either keyword will bring up my profile.
Promote Your Site - Be blatant and post your RSS feed or email subscriptions on your Myspace profile.
Do you have any banners? Make some and add your URL. Myspace is a visual medium and even if you opt for the simple Myspace background, you still need some eye candy to get readers poking around your profile.
If your a social networker like me, and you should be if you are marketing your blog or site online, post any relevant badges or links from Digg, Stumble Upon, links to any discussions that you may moderate or if done correctly links to affiliate programs you may be offering.
Excessive ads and spam will chase your readers away. You want direct traffic to your site so save the sales pitches.
Adding Friends
Groups - Join all groups that interest you and are applicable to your business genre. Start your own group and invite others to join. Groups are specific discussions. Don't be discouraged if no one joins in. Groups can have thousands of members and the forum is at a crawl.
If you are new to Myspace you are not able to group post for the first 7 days. Use that time well for developing your Myspace campaign.
Bulletins - This is where your marketing kicks in. Send bulletins often. One a day is suffice. More than that and people will become suspicious and un-friend you. You can use HTML in your bulletins and send banners or full page ads or a simple live link: "check us out at http://blah...
Your my space page is to attract visitors to your site and not a point of sale. The job of your site is to make the sale and the purpose of Myspace is to attract potential clients or have your site go viral.
Myspace Blog - Use the blog for some quick blurbs or to announce contests or upcoming news about you, your profile or business. You can post pictures and HTML as well to attract subscribers.
The blog is a good tool because it will come up in relevant searches and if people like your blog they will subscribe or will add you as a friend.
Plays Well With Others
Invite - If your wondering how to get lots of Myspace friends in a short amount of time the answer is Myspace Robots. The use of bots is highly discouraged as you can have limited Myspace capabilities or be be banned.
Take some time if you really want to market on Myspace and individually invite people. Time consuming yes and legal on Myspace terms.
The beauty of Myspace is that you can target your market using the search capabilities. Myspace users are free with their information if you want to single out a certain age group and gender in a specific zip code you can in the advanced search.
Another way to look for friends which is more time consuming is to go through the groups list. Or pick one of your existing friends and search through their friends list and pick out the active and interesting users who stand out. I try to only add the users who are active at the moment or those who have at least checked out their own page on the same day. That means they are true Myspace users and not just a parked profile.
About a third of the people you invite will respond so don't go all out and expect to get 80 friends out of 100. You may only get 20.
What I've done is ramped up my friends in the first three days of my campaign and then add about 5 to 10 friends a day after that. That would be 1000 friends by the end of the year so depending on how ambitious you are you can add more friends per day. You may add up to 400 in a 24 hour period. If you are working with a team a good job for an intern would be to scour Myspace for 20-30 minutes a day tweaking out your company Myspace page.
If you're really serious about your web presence hire someone to add friends for you. A webmaster who will creates your page usually includes adding friends as part of the package.
It's nice to have lots of friends but the best tool is to have targeted friends that are active Myspace. Users who promote your site for you and who are not there only to collect friends but are there to collaborate . That can be accomplished with 10 friends or less.
If you want to look like you have a lot of friends and this doesn't hurt, add celebrities and bands to your friends list. You will almost always get the friends add because they want to be promoted.
This works well if you have a media inspired website because people judge others by the music they listen to and who they think is cool on Myspace. Choose well!
Comment - Leave comments on other peoples profile either thanking them for the add or to wish them a happy Monday or holiday. Some users add picturesque banners in your comments directing users to their sites.
You may choose to disable HTML in your comments This prevents people from leaving websites and other spam and doesn't mess with your template.
I encourage the crazy comments because I'm on Myspace for the same reason to advertise my sites or services.
Have fun with Myspace and start up extra profiles to test Myspace layouts, backgrounds and marketing tools.
