Following the auctionbytes articles on promoting eBay auctions through MySpace this post investigates the benefits for eBay sellers and businesses in general in having a presence on MySpace.

eBay businesses are businesses like any other and should be marketing their products through all appropriate channels. Nothing which I have to say on MySpace is eBay specific: it is a free source of promotion which could really benefit both smaller and larger sellers.

What is MySpace?

It is an extremely popular social friendship site mainly frequented by under 30s, particularly the USA. Users set up profiles and invite friends to connect to them forming a social network. From then on they can post messages, blog and share music and ideas.

MySpace has a high value to businesses because of it’s massive userbase, which in turn provides a potential to promote your brand and drive traffic to your website. Teens are notoriously hard to reach because they constantly change opinion and their tastes fluctuate frequently. MySpace can help you reach this audience

In the UK, bands such as the Artic monkeys and Lily Allen have got famous partly on the back of their MySpace profiles. However, this may also have something to do with them being really, really good!

Here are some MySpace stats (thanks for Steve Rubel)

• It is the largest online social networking portal on the web
• It has 61 + million registered users with 21+ million unique visitors (media metrix)
• It’s the second largest destination on the web, by page views
• It splits 50.2% male, 49.8% female
• The primary age demo is 16-34
• They have 1.4 million registered bands, 350,000 band blogs
• The site attracts 220,000 new registrants daily
• There are 50,000 groups including fashion, health, wellness & fitness, sports and recreation, music, film, TV, etc.

Businesses on MySpace

Businesses are beginning to cotton on the benefits of a MySpace presence. If you are not represented on this hugely popular channel then someone else is controlling your brand on MySpace.

Not every business is going to suit the MySpace demographics, but if yours does then take a few seconds to think about the potential if you can pull off a successful campaign. If you can become popular within MySpace that also promotes your business, the publicity payoff could be monumental.

Blog marketing is popular because it’s cheap, has broad scope and is effective as an awareness builder without being obtrusive like “blast” advertising. Web communities like MySpace may provide similar marketing benefits if you can make it work for your business. There is no secret formula, and just like any viral marketing campaign it can be quite a hit and miss process and certainly not an exact science.

Here are some examples of companies who are present on MySpace already

• energy drink Red Bull
• Aquafina.
  
• Wendy’s
• Adidas

The examples given on the auctionbytes article were really disappointing and do not represent the really exciting opportunity available for businesses through MySpace.

Benefits of a MySpace Presence

MySpace is where the cool crowd hang out in great numbers. It therefore offers great opportunity to promote your brand and drive traffic to your website where they can make purchases. Other benefits are as follows:

• Cost Effective. There is no charge to set up a space, join groups, make “friends,” and exchange messages with other members through MySpace’s messaging system.
• Customisable. Your MySpace profile can customised to the look and feel of your business.
• Reach new customers. MySpace users are young and have disposable income to spend.
• Easy. It doesn’t take more than a few minutes to create a basic profile.
• SEO. MySpace is a hugely popular site and so can help with SEO. This can be in two ways. Firstly a link from your MySpace page can add to your Pagerank. Secondly, your MySpace profile can be picked up by the search engines.
• Marketing. Once you have built up a network of friends, you can advertise your products to them.

Customising MySpace

You can customise your MySpace profile like any website (with some restrictions) using a CSS, images etc.

Here is a good list of MySpace tools

Getting Friends

Friend are the currency of MySpace, like links are on the web. Try to find other members with interests similar to yours, or who are interested in your products and ask them to network with you. There is a growing amount of software to help with bulk messageing. The google search “MySpace friend adder” will return a huge number of results.

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