As I mentioned in my previous post about marketing on MySpace, one of the critical factors of success is having "Friends".

Here are a couple of success stories I thought I'd point out. First, consider the various flavors of Apple's iPod Nano that are on MySpace, such as the Pink Nano, which is enjoying a meteoric rise in Friendship status. I started tracking Pink Nano on October 15, when it had 1,500 MySpace friends. A week later, on October 22, it had climbed to 7,449 friends. Now, on October 27, I see it's up to 37,070 friends! Not a bad marketing job, Apple!

Now consider the 'comeback king' of musical parody -- "Weird Al" Yankovic. I remember "Weird Al" from when I was a kid; he's been around for decades! Now he's using social media quite successful to help breathe new life into his 27-year-long music career -- thanks, in no small part, to YouTube and MySpace. Yankovic told Reuters/Billboard in a recent interview that he had accumulated 155,000 MySpace friends since he joined the site in July -- all of which he had personally added. He stated, "I used to be a little pickier. Now I just kind of click as fast as I can." (I can only imagine the RSI from that much clicking!) Here's the kicker: it's now just a week after this article came out, and he's already up to 219,033 friends!

Clearly, Apple and Weird Al are making it on MySpace. Any other MySpace success stories you'd like to contribute? Talk back!

I had an article published last week on marketing on MySpace in last week's issue of DM News. It hasn't been posted to DMNews.com yet (hopefully shouldn't be too much longer), but if you're desperate to read it, you can download the 20 megabyte PDF of last week's issue. Or, you can just wait and I'll post a notice to my blog when my article makes into into DM News' online article library.

As part of my research for this article, I interviewed Michael Boldin at Pugster, which is an online retailer of Italian charms and other jewelry that's had great success using MySpace to generate traffic and sales. Michael is a member of the online marketing team at Pugster. They chose their mascot, a pug dog, as the subject of their MySpace profile, which I think is really clever. They built up their MySpace page to a very respectable 8,053 friends. Here's what Michael had to say about marketing on MySpace:

• It's easy to get overwhelmed with the sheer numbers on MySpace -- and important to try to focus on marketing to the "right" group for your product or service -- otherwise you'll be spending a LOT of time on people who will never be interested in you.
• But, on the other hand, when starting off, you need to get friends. It's kind of a bragging right on MySpace. If you have too few friends, it'll be tough to get the good ones -- you know, the ones that will end up buying from you. So, before you go after those, get a few hundred "bad" friends -- bands are the easiest. They'll give you a respectable number on your friend list, and will leave comments on your page -- giving a little realism boost to your profile – making friend adding of the "good" ones that much easier.
• Where else could we find a place to actually build relationships with people -- who may or may not have heard of us before. We spend time daily emailing people, and guess what, they email back. It becomes the ultimate soft-sell tool.
• Patience. Without a huge brand presence, don't expect to turn profits. The only investment is your time. As long as you regularly give people something interesting -- blogs, music, and other tidbits that AREN'T related to your business -- then you'll develop enough trust for them to be interested in what you DO sell.
• Keep it personal -- talk with the people as if you'd email a new friend. Say hi, get to know them, and they'll want to get to know you. If you try to sell, sell, sell, you’ll have a hard time earning respect on MySpace.
• As far as layouts, there's a few "schools of thought" -- one says make it fancy and high end, but the other, and seemingly more successful one, says simplicity is best. Since people are browsing through so many profiles with the same layout, they look for certain features in certain places. If you move too many things around, you'll frustrate your visitors and they'll leave. Period. Just like a good e-commerce site.
• Also, if there’s anything a "seasoned" MySpace user hates is a slow page; and the site has loads of slow loaders. You may get friends with a lot of stuff on your page, but they won’t actually spend the time to interact with you.

Some great advice. Thanks, Michael!

UPDATE: It's been another 7 days, and Weird Al has gained another 24,000 MySpace friends (up to 243,221). Wow!

With tens of millions of users (but probably not the purported 100 million though), MySpace.com is a force to be reckoned with. Especially when you consider that MySpace apparently drives more traffic to online retailers than MSN Search, according to some recent Hitwise data.

But MySpace is hard for us adults to get our heads around. It just doesn't seem logical: How does it hold the interest of so many -- young people, with short attention spans, in particular -- despite the facts that the design/usability is so atrocious, the web page creation platform is so frustratingly restrictive, and it's chock full of so many junk/spam/abandoned profiles?

Um, it's about looking cool, fitting in, and hanging out. Duh!

Then where do us adults feature in this? Besides offering a tempting place for stalkers and voyeurs to hang out (can you say "Creepy!"?), it's a promising venue for marketers to hawk their wares. But do you have what it takes to crack it? The most unlikely of marketers seem to have it -- bars, bands, and quirky dotcoms (disclaimer: these guys are a client) , whereas big brands like Blockbuster don't seem to have a clue.

MySpace is a real slice of humanity. Amongst the throngs of teenagers (many of which have their profiles set to private), the MySpace ecosystem is host to concerned parents trying to keep tabs on their kids, college students, obsessed sports fans, realtors. In other words, the Average Joe or Jane. And of course marketers. Clueless marketers. I'll readily admit I'm one of the clueless ones. Thankfully there is someone I can lean for guidance through this teen marketing minefield... my 15 year old daughter Chloe. You may recall she's the one with the Neopets blog whom I've blogged about before (BTW, she was featured recently on BloggerStories.com... I'm so proud of her!). Chloe has a MySpace page (a private one, so don't bother looking), and she gets MySpace. I plan to enlist Chloe's help in marketing within MySpace. At 15, she'll be the youngest marketing consultant I know!

Before you start marketing in MySpace, you'd better understand it. Because if you don't, the MySpace community can turn on you the moment you make your first misstep. Just like bloggers can. (Note: many MySpace users are bloggers too. MySpace supports blogging within its platform.) The cardinal rule in MySpace is the same one as in the blogosphere: 'Keep it real'.

You know who else gets MySpace? Site owners like this one who provide layouts, backgrounds, funny photos etc. to the MySpace community. Those folks are sitting back, sipping pina coladas and watching the moulah from Google AdSense roll in.

Sometime when I get a chance I'll write a follow-up post to this one and share some specifics about MySpace marketing, like getting large numbers of Friends, using photo animation, customizing your layout, etc. So stay tuned!