MySpace marketing techniques
MySpace is #1 website in traffic in the USA. It is not a secret that the website gets millions and millions of hits. This fact draws thousands and thousands of webmasters hungry for traffic. Search engines progress fast and now it is very difficult to manipulate the top player of the market – Google.
So, webmasters look around for alternatives and attack MySpace. It is hard to say now if the website has more authentic users or webmasters who have created numerous fake profiles to promote their websites and affiliate programs they are signed with. The techniques will be described below.
MySpace is not the place to promote any kind of the website – it is crowded with the younger generation (aged 14-24), they are not likely to be interested in retirement programs and similar stuff. But despite this fact, MySpace is great for marketing other websites.
What most ‘authentic’ MySpace users do with their favorite social network website? They simply hang out, browse forums, send messages, and communicate.
What most online marketers do with MySpace? They try to spread their adv message among a large portion of authentic users asking them either visit their or affiliate websites.
Below comes the list of the most popular techniques used at this time. I am sure that some will become inefficient shortly and some will be invented within the same period of time:
- add friends automatically (auto adder/ trains and similar software)
- add friends manually (yes, it is possible with MySpace)
- send out bulletins to your entire list of automatically generated friends
- send out bulletins to your entire list of manually generated friends
And these are just a few obvious ways to use MySpace for marketing. Now webmasters as really creative people invent new techniques. Examples:
1. If you go to any of pages on videojunkyard.com and look below the video, there is a button that allows the user to post a MySpace bulletin with just 1 click. It was a little challenging to program the button to be fully functional within the php template, but it was definitely worth the work. Smart.
2. Send bulletins or messages with embedded affiliate links. It is a good idea to be an affiliate of some performance incentive programs: subscribe to the newsletter, answer some questions and have a chance to get something for free. It works much better than affiliate links with the offer to by something.
3. Use a script that will automatically repost your message to all friends of the member who clicked on the link. I wonder what results one can achieve using this method. It is said the guy has made “$X,XXX.XX” within 24 hours
If you do not have a MySpace account with a large database of friends you can easily find those who have and will (for a moderate fee) send out your bulletin. I think it is a wise way to test the water before you will spend time on friends’ generation. Other services of those who do business on MySpace:
- they will create profiles with thousands of friends for you;
- they run MySpace layout websites that offer free codes for MySpace accounts
Once you have read about all these marketing techniques, the question is: are there any opportunities for promoting websites more or less legally without spamming users? Yes, thousands of respectful websites have closely integrated their MySpace profiles with websites and at the moment they are one whole thing. The website news and updates are displayed on MySpace profile and it helps them as an extra traffic source of targeted visitors.
Summary: My personal experience with MySpace is not a great success. Probably, the website topic is not appropriate; probably I need to apply more efforts and time. I did not generate a large database of friends and the bulletins I issued did not bring much traffic to the website.
But it works for thousands of other people, so I recommend just trying and probably you will find ‘a magic formula’ that will help you to promote your website via MySpace.
[tags]myspace, seo, internet marketing, affiliate marketing, blogs, content generation, news aggregator, ebay, google, make money online, work from home, home based job, wikipedia, del.icio.us, technorati, bloglines, duplicate content, links, earn your living online[/tags]