MySpace, the most popular social network on the Web, has become a haven for Internet marketers over the past few years. From record labels marketing and promoting their artists, to Fox promoting their shows with Myspace full-length episodes, to webmasters promoting sites in any niche you can imagine.

How it Works:

As far as I’m concerned, there are two schools of Myspace marketers - The advertising / quality Myspace marketing bunch, and the “down and dirty” Myspace marketers.

Advertising / Quality Myspace Marketing - This is the group the record labels, Fox, and similar sites / companies fall into. They’re either paying Myspace to be able to advertise their products or services to their target market, or they’re making a legitimate attempt to build a community around something. With record labels, for example, they’re building fan communities for their artists (something Myspace was always intended for). This is also the group I tend to classify myself in. I run an indie music webzine which has a Myspace profile. I announce new features and CD reviews there, and I network with artists who are looking for a promotion vehicle. I also have a profile for the SixFigureWriters.com project, which serves as both a community for freelance writers as well as a tool for providing free resources such as writers’ markets. In neither case have I ever used an automated bot to mass-add “friends.” I look for people who would have a genuine interest, try to drop them a friendly personalized note, and then let newer members find me instead of actively recruiting them so I can bombard them with bulletins and messages (something I don’t do anyway).

Down & Dirty Myspace Marketing - Normally when you hear the term “Myspace marketing,” this is the group that comes to mind. These Myspace marketers are generally are promoting a website (wanting traffic) or trying to sell products. Very rarely does this group actually work at reaching a niche’s target market, because they instead focus on sheer numbers. These are the direct marketing types who don’t care about super-low conversions as long as they get something out of it. This is the group that will most likely create a false profile (using an image of either a hot chick to get guys to “friend” them, or the photo of someone looking “average” to make the profile seem legitimate). This is also the Myspace marketing group most likely to be looking for automated solutions like friend-adder bots to add hundreds of potential friends every day or automated posting solutions rather than doing the legwork themselves. Basically… these are the spammers of Myspace. They whore out their massive (albeit essentially worthless, b/c of lack of targeting, and the fact that many on the list are just other “friend whores” who don’t pay much, if any, attention to bulletins coming through anyway) friend counts by offering paid bulletin postings for other websites whose owners are too lazy to put any thought or effort into marketing. This is also the group that Myspace is always trying to crack down on, with profile deletions and the like.

Fad or Fab?

FAD - Here’s why - Even though the paid advertising model works, it’s nothing new. It has nothing to do with the social networking aspect of Myspace. Frankly, the site is one of the most popular (if not the most popular) website currently targeting a young demographic that media companies and others are after. It doesn’t matter what kind of site it is… if it’s able to claim that, there will always be advertising dollars, so it’s not enough to make Myspace marketing a fab find. Even smaller legitimate marketers probably won’t be sticking with Myspace permanently. The target demographics of the site just don’t work for a broad enough spectrum of businesses and websites, and frankly, there are other (often better) ways to build a community. There’s a strong “you post on my page, then I’ll post on your page” vibe with Myspace, which doesn’t lend itself to an active community (and even their group forums are far from fantastically set up).

Now to the spam-marketers on Myspace. This just isn’t a long-haul game, and there’s nothing anyone could say to make me think this will work long-term. Myspace has progressively “wised up” to the issues, and have been cracking down on these kinds of marketers as of late (and rightly so in this marketer’s opinion). Even though it’s taking a while, the simple fact that they’re trying to thwart these kinds of marketing efforts makes Myspace marketing, overall, a fad. You can’t keep a marketing tactic strong forever when the vehicle you’re using is trying to shut you down… simple as that.

Disagree with my “fad” or “fab” call? Good for you. Leave a comment, and tell me why.

Categories: Advertising / Marketing / PR
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