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Unless you have been hiding under a rock lately, you have heard of MySpace. However, like many “serious” marketers, you may have dismissed it as a bunch of kids with loud flashy sites and music on their profiles… It is certainly no place for a “serious” marketer, right?

Well, what started as a site where friends could talk and swap comments and pictures has now become big business, with Fox News owner Rupert Murdoch plopping down 580 million dollars two years ago for the social networking giant. Does Rupert know something you don’t about MySpace and its marketing potential?

Absolutely.

There are several big reasons why MySpace is a “must add” to the marketing arsenal of any serious Internet marketer. The first is pure numbers: MySpace is currently the sixth most popular website in the world (topping all other social networking sites). As of September of 2007, they were reported having over 200 million separate accounts. That is 200 million users: most of them chatting back and forth, sending messages and visiting each other’s profiles often, sometimes multiple times a day.

That brings us to our second big reason to market on MySpace: Connectivity. Those 200 million accounts are not static web pages, but interacting people. Some profiles receive thousands of page views each day, and many companies have experienced the “MySpace effect”, where a user will display a widget or plugin on their profile (such as a music player, a rotating banner with neat pictures, a ribbon celebrating a cause, etc) and it goes viral, with hundreds or even thousands of users adding the widget to their profile.

In addition, users can email each other, send “bulletins” (like mass emails) to all their friends and with the ability to select whether everyone sees their profile or just their “friends”, it is like having a free private mailing list. The fact that the MySpace community is so interactive is a huge advantage.

A third large advantage to MySpace is that it is very customizable. This is where it is better than many free publishing platforms. You can change the layout on your profile pretty much any way you want provided you use no JavaScript and do not cover the ads. For a marketer this means you can adjust the layout and color scheme to match your unique business identity.

In fact, profile customization has become big business, with both paid and free profile sites showing up everywhere. Of course, the real winner with free profiles are the companies who give them away, as the free profiles (and many paid ones) have back links to their site. This is similar to what is done with WordPress themes.

Ok, so now you are convinced that MySpace is something you should pay attention to. What do you do now? Well, it really is as simple (and as complex) as opening a MySpace profile, modifying your profile to suit your personal taste and business identity, and finding “friends” for your profile.

In doing this, some things to watch out for are to make sure that your profile is clean and not flashy (after all, it does represent your business) and that you do not spam. While MySpace is fairly lenient compared to many social networking sites, no one appreciates unsolicited email or messages and if you are reported, you will lose your membership quickly.

Now you have the knowledge that MySpace should be part of your marketing tool chest. The next question is what are you going to do with it?

by Sutocu | October 30, 2007