Welcome to MySpace?
Begin by filling out some basic information, filling out your personal information, and design your page to meet your goals. Start building your friend list. There are many ways to do this, including the most obvious: be creative in your approach and content.

Here's a checklist to ensure that your MySpace page is optimized to generate leads - centered, of course, around one huge rule: Get the business conversation away from MySpace, where you have to play by its members' rules.

• Be sure to include a form to retrieve your visitors' e-mail addresses. You will increase your sign-up five-fold if you give them some sort of incentive to give their e-mail address. Promote this by posting bulletins. You can use your regular e-mail sign-up form, so when a user clicks SUBMIT it redirects them to your Web site.
• Syndication code. MySpace users are Web savvy. They know how to edit basic HTML and add it to their MySpace page. You want to have a pre-made banner ad with a link to your Web site and supply the HTML code so that if one of your MySpace friends wants to post your ad on his/her page, doing so is very easy.
• There must be an obvious link to your Web site.
• A reason to come back. Have fun on that one.

Advertising on MySpace
MySpace sells advertising mainly through banner impressions, not clicks, and Ben says customer service is helpful and prompt should you need assistance. The costs vary, but it's in the area of $5 per 1,000 impressions. "Depending on which sales rep you talk to, the minimum buy for an advertising campaign is $5,000 to $10,000," says Ben. Remember those different ways you can search for people? When you buy banner ad space on MySpace, you can target your banners so they show up only to the exact demographic you want. This includes all those specific demographics like religion, body type, sexual orientation and so on. This way, all your allotted banner impressions don't go to waste on people who would never buy your product. If you are advertising your local business on MySpace, make sure you include your city name on the banner. Your returns will be a lot higher, because people don't expect to see their own city name on an international Web site, and they will click just out of curiosity.

Random Wisdom
Here's a little wisdom from Ben so you don't have to learn the hard way:

1. The most important advice I can give you is to never (repeat - NEVER !!!!!) send unsolicited messages to other MySpace users. Not only are they ineffective because MySpace users are some of the most spam-immune people on the planet, but most will flag your message as spam. It only takes a couple of these before your account will either be deleted or its functionality severely limited. All your previous work goes down the drain.
   
2. Stay away from corporate-speak on your page. Talk like you're talking to a friend, not like a business.
   
3. Adobe Flash works great as eye-candy, but MySpace has limited a lot of the action script, such as being able to click links.
   
4. Your MySpace page needs to look clean and must be very easy to read. You can make your own layouts, or use pre-made ones at a lot of Web sites, such as MySpaceSupport. (not affiliated with MySpace.com)
   
5. You have the option to disable HTML in your comments. I do this on all my accounts because people not only spam with lots of advertisements but also place huge images on your page that take a long time to load.
   
6. Post bulletins consistently. On average, only about 20 percent will see the bulletin you've posted. So, if you have time, post at least one bulletin a day about your product. Also, make sure that you delete your previous bulletin.
   
7. B2B businesses, in Ben's experience, don't do well on MySpace, and he advises against pursuing this avenue if your customers aren't ordinary shoppers.
   
8. One quick way to add friends is to start sending out friend requests to people. Use the browse function to narrow in on whom you want. On average, one-third will accept your request. You can do this manually, but make sure not to do more than 200 a day. The CAPTCHA codes will probably make you want to quit sooner than that.

Try It, You'll Like It: A Sample Campaign
Ben says he's used this approach successfully many times, but advises that you don't start until your page is set up and you have collected a good base of friends. "Wait until you have a good base of people, maybe a thousand friends, because it needs to be at a certain level to grow virally or it will go too slow," he said. "And use synergy. If you have a separate e-mail list, promote your contest on that as well as your other Web sites." He suggests, creating a banner ad using the "code syndication" method mentioned in the "Must-Have Checklist" above. Make it around 400 x 500 pixels. The banner ad should advertise your product and have a link to your Web site and a link so that the viewers can enter a contest as well. "This is what makes the idea go viral and really work, " says Ben. Then hold a contest and offer something of value that MySpace users would really want (stay away from common online prizes like iPods). Set up the contest so all people have to do to enter is post your pre-made banner on their MySpace pages, then send you an e-mail with a link to those pages. The more people who post your online flyer, the more who enter the contest, and the more people who will see your banner ad and view your Web site. One small client of Ben's did this for a music concert and saw his unique Web site visitors go from 200 to 9,000 a day. Needless to say, that client was thrilled, and the concert was extremely successful.