Using MySpace as a Promotional Tool

This article was submitted by Clark Bjorke from Clark's Picks, I'll Never Forget the Day I Read a Book! and ROTUS.

I'd like to thank Raivyn for inviting me to guest blog here on Idiot's Guide to Blogging. I knew it was my kind of place the moment I saw the title.

You may have heard that social networking sites, like Facebook and MySpace can be used to bring readers to your blog. I would like to tell you about my experiment in using MySpace as a traffic source and filter.

I created a MySpace profile for my music blog Clark's Picks. My goal was to attract readers who had specific interests in the kinds of music that I post about on the blog. I chose MySpace because I was already familiar with it. I am sure that other social networking sites could be used in similar ways.

MySpace allows HTML to be used within the various fields that they provide and external links can be used. I created a table inside the "Who I would like to meet" field and put pictures of several artists I had written posts about in the table. Each picture is linked to it's own specific post on the blog. I then put a title over the pictures asking MySpace readers to click on a picture and read a blog post. My hope was that people would recognize someone they were interested in and click through on that picture.

To bring in the kind of readers that I am looking for I searched for fan pages about jazz, blues, folk and country artists from past decades. By "friending" these pages, I hoped to bring fans of their music to visit mine. As each page added me to it's friends list I sent a "Thanks for the add" comment, in the form of a graphic. The graphic also has an underlying link directly to my blog.

The results: The first thing that I noticed is that Google and Technorati seem to ignore all links coming out of MySpace. I got no ranking or authority from the many links that I planted on the site, although I have more than 1,400 "friends" on MySpace, the majority of whom have a direct link to Clark's Picks in their comments section.

Secondly, many MySpace users will "friend" you without even looking at your page, if you send them a request. I have more "friends" than to total of page views on MySpace. Often they are quite cordial and want to be sure that I am taking an interest in their projects. MySpace is about self promotion, after all.

Third, happily, those MySpace users who have clicked through to my blog have been good, solid blog readers, or music video viewers. According to Google Analytics, msplinks.com, which is a site that MySpace funnels outgoing links through, is the number 4 source of traffic for my blog, after Google (organic), direct (no referring site), and Technorati. Those readers visit an amazing average of 4.61 pages and spend an average of 4.17 minutes on the site. 73.91% of them are new visitors and the bounce rate is only 8.7%. Bounces are visitors who only look at one page.

Creating a MySpace profile as a promotional tool can be effective, within limits. I avoid spending time participating in MySpace groups and instead read and comment on relevant blogs daily, because of the Google rank/Technorati authority issue. A profile, once it is built, takes a little bit of time to maintain, but is not burdensome. I am getting six to ten new friend requests, comments to moderate, group or event invitations a day, which need to be answered in order to keep the profile current. It continues to bring my blog new, qualified, interested readers every day, some of whom become regulars - part of my direct traffic. Like any other source, MySpace is not a magic bullet and needs to be part of a wider strategy.

You can look at my profile, and I would be happy to answer any questions you might have. Just leave a comment on the blog, or the MySpace page.

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Comments

[kylekeeton]

How come you never write an article this big on Rotus? My most favorite blog in the world.

:)

Kyle

[Will]

Thanks for this. I need to re-evaluate my idea of MySpace after reading this.

-Will

[Clark]

Kyle,

I'm trying to write to your reading level on your favorite blog in the whole world.

Or I have less to say there at any given time.

[Jeremy Neal]

Nice post, and good idea. I have a personal MySpace page just to keep track of what my daughter is doing, so I'll add this to my list of future projects to potentially work on to build traffic. Thanks for sharing!

[blogengage]

I created a myspace account but I still haven’t had time to promote myself using it! I kind of created it and never went back lol.

Seems I missed the big bubble and I would need to concentrate too much effort at this point to see the same results as maybe 5 months ago!

[Jeff McCord]

Great post... and it's great to hear your success with MySpace. My #4 source to my blog (www.jeffmccord.org) is the exact same as yours... MySpace.

Over all, it's a workable and doable Social Site that brings people to my blog that may not have found it in their RSS or search fields.

Ditto!

[Sarah]

I recently came across your blog and have been reading along. I thought I would leave my first comment. I don't know what to say except that I have enjoyed reading. Nice blog. I will keep visiting this blog very often.

Sarah

http://www.craigslistdecoded.info