Avalon Sewing Company is expanding. Owner Lhay Thriffiley is building upon what used to be her home-based business, adding staff and moving into renovated space in a revitalized area of downtown Hattiesburg, Mississippi. While Thriffiley has a web site for Avalon, MySpace is her only Internet presence today. Nevertheless, the network she’s established through her MySpace has been effective in helping her connect with suppliers, potential customers and employees.

And she’s managed to do all this for free.

Business owners and entrepreneurs are finally starting to grasp the “viral marketing” power of this social networking web site. With over 100 million registered users on board and thirty-five million unique visitors daily, MySpace is a direct link to demographics representing billions of revenue dollars in numerous markets.

In a business environment where having a web site and using email have become basic building blocks in a company’s daily sales and marketing effort, having a MySpace page is quickly gaining momentum as a standard component of many marketing strategies. For startups and home-based businesses, MySpace has increasingly become the jumping off point into Internet marketing.

 “I had no idea there were so many women out there just like me,” Thriffiley said, “using the things they’d learned from their grandmothers to earn a living. When I started connecting with people through MySpace, it helped me to believe in myself and my vision.”

MySpace is the largest, most widely recognized name in the growing field of online social networking web sites. While MySpace first caught on with younger Internet surfers, some 87% of users today are 18 or older and more than 50% are over the age of 35, according to the research firm, comScore Media Metrix. These demographics represent the Gen X, Gen Y and Young Boomers, who together account for half of all spending in the United States. Registering up to 230,000 new users on an average day, MySpace’s popularity doesn’t appear to be losing momentum.

Effective Marketing at No Cost
Joining MySpace is free and easy to do. (See sidebar, “Setting up Your MySpace” on page 82.) Visit www.myspace.com, and follow the simple signup instructions. Once signed up, a user has the option to post photos, interesting links, slide shows and videos, as well as a description of who they are and why they’ve joined the community. Additional sections in a MySpace profile allow the user to provide as much detailed information as necessary to convey the “digital personality” he is trying to achieve.

Once a profile is established, the user builds a community of “Friends” who become members of each other’s immediate network. This is the aspect of MySpace that has grabbed the attention of savvy marketers everywhere. The “Browse” function of a MySpace page enables the user to define a search for “Friends” by gender, age, income, education, geography, and a number of other filters. Once a search is complete, the user simply invites the MySpace community members who fit his target networking profile. When that community member accepts your invitation, he becomes your friend and you become his, each growing your immediate network by one Friend.

A MySpace user will typically visit the page of the community member who is befriending him to see if he really has an interest in adding that member to his network. At this critical moment, your MySpace page has about ten seconds to make a good impression. If the newcomer likes what he sees, he’ll accept your invitation.

You and your new Friend are now able to “Comment” and “Bulletin” each other —features only available within a network of friends. The more friends you have, the more MySpace users you can reach out and touch with one click of your computer’s mouse.