You may be surprised to hear this, but MySpace drives more traffic to online retail sites than the third largest search engine, Live Search (formerly MSN Search).
 
Actually, it makes a lot of sense that MySpace would be such a major traffic generator. It is, after all, the most popular website having exceeded Yahoo! in all of its properties, according to recent Hitwise data. It is bound to happen that MySpace users are going to comment about and mention in their profiles various online retailers, their products and their services. But we as online retailers are only scratching the surface of what is possible because we have not yet truly seized the marketing opportunity that MySpace represents.
 

A savvy retailer will have created a profile for themselves in MySpace, developed a large network of friends, developed bulletins to send out to those friends, posted comments on some of the more influential friends’ profiles and encouraged comment posting on their own profile. They would have incorporated links to top selling products but in a soft sell sort of way. They would have made their profile stand out from the crowd with a custom layout –yet not varying it too much to cause the MySpace visitors to become disoriented and unable to navigate.
 

If you think that MySpace is just a hangout for kids you would be wrong. More than half of MySpace users are over 35. The infiltration by adults has gotten “so bad” that all the kids are leaving MySpace in droves — switching to Bebo where the adults are few and far between. Yes, the income-earning, money-wielding adults have staged a coup and taken over MySpace! And that is great news for us online retailers!
 

In my recent MarketingProfs article I shared some examples of retailers who are marketing effectively in MySpace. This includes a client of my company Netconcepts — namely Pugster.com, an online jewelry retailer. Their MySpace profile boasts a network of over 8000 “Friends”! They use their mascot, Pinky the pug dog, as the profile owner. They spend time daily reaching out to build relationships with their friends on MySpace. They make sure that when they make contact, it is personal and not salesy. They give their visitors something interesting to read, do and listen to on their profile. It is not about over-the-top selling.
 

There are definitely tricks to this MySpace thing. For example, how do you get to 8000 friends? The answer, once you know it, is surprisingly simple… You start with bands! There are tons of bands on MySpace and what band would refuse a friend request? After all, you might be a rabid fan, despite what your profile says about you. It is very easy to have friend requests granted with bands.  Once you have the numbers (e.g. a thousand or more), it makes it a lot easier to develop friends with more desirable MySpace users — i.e those who are more in your target market.
 

Just remember, as in the real world, having no friends in MySpace makes you look like a loser.