buzz of social networking

MySpace Marketing: All the Cool Businesses Are Doing It
By Michelle Megna
March 6, 2007

If you think that MySpace is just a fad for the 20-something texting set, think again. Literally millions of members have set up a free MySpace page, so it's worth the effort to capitalize on the buzz of social networking, though advertising there naturally costs money. Luke J. Bodley, president of Colorado-based Vibrant Promotions, runs MySpace.com marketing campaigns on a daily basis for his clients. We tracked him down to get him to offer some tips and tricks to help you tap the power of the social networking craze. "Mom-and-pop shops are a perfect fit for MySpace," said Bodley. "It's basically permission marketing, like an e-mail list. You build a page, build a friend list, it's not complicated, you start talking, maybe spend a half-hour a day on it, give it a three-month test, just like any other type marketing, you see if it's working. And now that it's so popular, the age range is skewing older and older so it's not just high school and college kids anymore." Most Embarrassing Meeting Ever
Bodley relayed this anecdote to show just how easy it is to get exposure on the site:
"I was working on a marketing campaign with a client, and he was interested in getting his company on MySpace and using it as part of his marketing mix. We were both sitting down at his computer as I gave him a general tour of the site. He commented that his 16-year-old daughter was on MySpace but he had never seen her MySpace page. "On MySpace you can search for people as long as you know their first and last name. So I put in a search for his daughter, and about five girls from across the U.S. came up. At the bottom of the five results was a picture of a girl in a revealing Halloween costume. We both kind of laughed at it, and I made the regrettable comment, 'Gee, I hope that's not your daughter.' "Well…you guessed it. It was. This led to most deafening silence in a meeting I have ever witnessed. This CEO/Dad realized his daughter was into things he didn't know she was into. I couldn't wait to get out of that meeting. The point is that your daughters are on MySpace, your nieces, your neighbors..." And, did he lose the account? "Even though it was horrible, it was like in the Top 10 of the dumbest things I've done in my life," Bodley said, "he remained a client of mine, and one who still wants to use MySpace." Spam 2.0: Getting Vital Stats
Bodley says he loves MySpace as a marketing tool because you can easily gather lots of personal information about people, which naturally makes it easier to find those that might be interested in your products or services. In fact, the network is sometimes called "Spam 2.0" because of this, according to Bodley. "Its users give large amounts of personal details about themselves, and they do it willingly. When you go to MySpace, click on 'browse,' then on 'advanced.' You will find that you can browse people's profiles using an assortment of demographic categories: single, married, divorced, ethnicity, religion, body type, income, education, sexual orientation, drinker, smoker and more. You can also whittle down your search to a certain radius of a ZIP code. "I like to tell my clients that if you a looking for a five-foot-tall divorced mom with a drinking problem within five miles of your house, you can. I say that tongue and cheek, but the way you can zero in on your target market is amazing. That was originally why I got into MySpace marketing." Welcome to MySpace
To begin, you need to put up a Web page by filling out some basic information. The next step, says Bodley, is to fill out your personal information. Next you need to design your page to look how you want it. Finally, start building your friend list. There are many ways to do this, but Bodley says the most obvious is to buy advertising, discussed below, and to "squeeze every ounce of creative juice from your brain" to be creative in your approach and content. The Must-Have Checklist for Your MySpace Page
Here's a checklist to make sure that your MySpace page is optimized to generate leads for you. They all center around one huge rule: You must bring the business conversation away from MySpace, says Bodley, because ass long as you are on MySpace, you have to play by its members' rules. He offers this MySpace page as an example of someone "doing it right."

• The first thing you must have is a form to get your visitors e-mail addresses. You will increase your sign-up five-fold if you give them some sort of incentive to give their e-mail address. Promote this by posting bulletins. You can use your regular e-mail sign-up form, so when a user clicks "Submit," it goes to your Web site.
  
• Syndication code. MySpace users are Web savvy. They know how to edit basic HTML and add it to their MySpace page. You want to have a pre-made banner ad with a link to your Web site and supply the HTML code so that if one of your MySpace friends wants to post your ad on his/her page, doing so is very easy.
  
• There must be an obvious link to your Web site.
  
• A reason to come back. Have fun on that one.

Advertising on MySpace
MySpace sells advertising mainly through banner impressions, not clicks, and Bodley says customer service is helpful and prompt should you need assistance. The costs vary, but it's in the area of $5 per 1,000 impressions. "Depending on which sales rep you talk to, the minimum buy for an advertising campaign is $5,000 to $10,000," says Bodley. Remember those different ways you can search for people? When you buy banner ad space on MySpace, you can target your banners so they show up only to the exact demographic you want. This includes all those specific demographics like religion, body type, sexual orientation and so on. This way, all your allotted banner impressions don't go to waste on people who would never buy your product. If you are advertising your local business on MySpace, make sure you include your city name on the banner. Your returns will be a lot higher, because people don't expect to see their own city name on an international Web site, and they will click just out of curiosity. Random Wisdom
Here's a little wisdom from Bodley so you don't have to learn the hard way:

1. The most important advice I can give you is to never send unsolicited messages to other MySpace users. Not only are they ineffective because MySpace users are some of the most spam-immune people on the planet, but most will flag your message as spam. It only takes a couple of these before your account will either be deleted or its functionality severely limited. All your previous work goes down the drain.
   
2. Stay away from corporate-speak on your page. Talk like you're talking to a friend, not like a business.
   
3. Adobe Flash works great as eye-candy, but MySpace has limited a lot of the action script, such as being able to click links.
   
4. Your MySpace page needs to look clean and must be very easy to read. You can make your own layouts, or use pre-made ones at a lot of Web sites, such as MySpaceSupport. (not affiliated with MySpace.com)
   
5. You have the option to disable HTML in your comments. I do this on all my accounts because people not only spam with lots of advertisements but also place huge images on your page that take a long time to load.>br>
6. Post bulletins consistently. On average, only about 20 percent will see the bulletin you've posted. So, if you have time, post at least one bulletin a day about your product. Also, make sure that you delete your previous bulletin.
   
7. B2B businesses, in Bodley's experience, don't do well on MySpace, and he advises against pursuing this avenue if your customers aren't ordinary shoppers.
   
8. One quick way to add friends is to start sending out friend requests to people. Use the browse function to narrow in on whom you want. On average, one-third will accept your request. You can do this manually, but make sure not to do more than 200 a day. The CAPTCHA codes will probably make you want to quit sooner than that.

Try It, You'll Like It: A Sample Campaign
Bodley says he's used this approach successfully many times, but advises that you don't start until your page is set up and you have collected a good base of friends. "Wait until you have a good base of people, maybe a thousand friends, because it needs to be at a certain level to grow virally or it will go too slow," he said. "And use synergy. If you have a separate e-mail list, promote your contest on that as well as your other Web sites." He suggests, creating a banner ad using the "code syndication" method mentioned in the "Must-Have Checklist" above. Make it around 400 x 500 pixels. The banner ad should advertise your product and have a link to your Web site and a link so that the viewers can enter a contest as well. "This is what makes the idea go viral and really work," says Bodley. Then hold a contest and offer something of value that MySpace users would really want (stay away from common online prizes like iPods). Set up the contest so all people have to do to enter is post your pre-made banner on their MySpace pages, then send you an e-mail with a link to those pages. The more people who post your online flyer, the more who enter the contest, and the more people who will see your banner ad and view your Web site. One small client of Bodley's did this for a music concert and saw his unique Web site visitors go from 200 to 9,000 a day. Needless to say, that client was thrilled, and the concert was extremely successful. Is The Future Now?
As far as MySpace and so-called social-commerce, Bodley says he's not sure how much longer social networking communities can sustain their immense popularity, though he will remain an avid supporter. "Trends change quickly, so you can't be lazy. You have to constantly be tracking what's hot and what's not to get in while it lasts," he says. "I'd like to see where the whole MySpace thing goes, if it will start to decline. But I do think if you embrace these things that come along, even if it means going through the pain of learning how to do something new, those things pay off." Michelle Megna is managing editor of ECommerce-Guide.com.