Myspace Do's and Don'ts

Many people join myspace to promote their band, website, or product, but at what point is it too far? I, myself, have found that as time goes on, that i get more and more "friend" requests, but when I check out the profile, its just a big add for a dating site, or somebody trying to get you to download "free" ring tones or get a “free” PS3. Though I’m sure that these people do make some money from this sort of myspace spamming, in the long run it just becomes a bigger pain in the ass to keep up with the measure that myspace goes through to block these people.

Another thing to keep away from is myspace adder bots. These will go around adding random "friends" most of which will never even visit your profile and only add you to increase their own traffic. If you’re looking to promote anything on myspace, then you’re better off with one quality friend than 1000 random friends. The best thing to do would be to go and search yourself for people that might be interested in what you’re trying to promote. Another thing that will help gather some friends would be to stay active in the myspace forums. Posting advice and giving good quality comments to other people will allow you to draw people to your profile over a longer period.

What do you do with the friends that you do have? Some less credible people will constantly invade the profiles of the helpless with comments that are nothing more then advertisements that lead people to their site or worse. The thing that most people need to remember is that myspace cannot be half-assed. You need to keep commenting on your friend’s profiles with actual comments that will let them know that you still care about them. Another annoyance is the constant spamming of bulletins. If you want people to care about what you put up there, then you need to post prominent information. One idea would be to post an article about something that supports your company or band, or any news that might interest the people that might read it.

The most powerful tool on myspace is the blog. As long as you make sure to adjust the settings so that anyone can read it, it is a good way to let your readers know what you’re up to and plug your project. It’s always a good idea to run, at the very least, a good spell check through your posts, and maybe even get somebody else to read it over. You also have to remember that your myspace profile is your image, so it might not be a good place to start ranting about politics or get too far into your personal problems. If you want to start a personal myspace account that is fine, just keep it separate and don’t just try to sell yourself, but your product as well.