Managing Your MySpace Strategy
Once you are confident your MySpace conveys a message and image consistent with your business networking objectives, it’s time to work it. The most important component of this will be to build your network of Friends by driving traffic to your MySpace page. You can do this in a few specific ways. 

            • You can search for Friends, targeting specific characteristics through the Browse and Search features, inviting those who meet your criteria as you find them.
            • You can include your MySpace URL in the signature of your email, and include it in your printed mailings and other promotional materials.
            • You can cross link your MySpace URL with your other Internet marketing tools like web sites, Yahoo Groups and other web-based forums.

Once your network of friends begins to grow, you can increase the number of your “Top Friends” from four to as many as twenty-four. This is the group of Friends that will be visible to anyone who visits your home page. Being in someone’s Tops carries prestige. Users frequently jockey Friends through their Tops to stroke them and to use them as bait. For instance, if you put someone in your Tops who represents your core target demographic, you can browse through their Friends, inviting anyone you think meets those same networking criteria. When new users receive your invitation, they will visit your MySpace page, see their Friend in your Tops, and likely accept your invitation.

Choose sixteen Top Friends and rotate them about every week or two. This will give new invitees time to find their Friend in your Tops and accept your invitation. This strategy provides a steady stream of new Friends from which to choose, as well as a thread of consistency, since you’re harvesting Friends from networks based on the criteria you set forth at the beginning of your strategy. Equally important, this method adheres to MySpace’s Terms of Service, which prohibit the use of automated friend-finding software.

If your business has a local demographic, as in the case of Kenny’s, concentrate your efforts on developing a group of friends within a reasonable geographic radius by setting that parameter in the Browse function.

A warning: MySpace’s Terms of Service document discourages its outright use “in connection with any commercial endeavors.” You’ll find it easy to promote yourself and your business within acceptable guidelines, however, as long as you remain respectful of the culture of community on which MySpace was founded. They provide clear content guidelines and reserve the right to enforce them at their discretion. 

The jury is out regarding the impact MySpace’s recent acquisition by News Corp will have on the enforcement of acceptable usage, but for now, as long as no other MySpace community member complains, you’ll be okay. It would seem a user has to have some extremely unacceptable content or behavior to arouse the attention of MySpace’s administrators.”