Posted by Ann Bernard

I was on MySpace back in early 2005 when it was a little social network that nobody knew about.  As a matter of fact, I’ve never been able to delete my old profile since I lost my login information and Tom won’t give it back to me…bonus points to anyone who can find it!

MySpace and the web have drastically changed since then.  There’s no doubt that I and MySpace have matured since 2005.  We both figured out how to be better at doing business...for MySpace, things started to change after News Corp bought them for $580M.  However, I would say that what really changed MySpace was opening up their platform to third party developers.  An effort lead by Facebook, social networks opening up to third party developers to make applications for their users became the thing to do in late 2007.  Open social followed and now with widgets, it’s very easy to add applications to all and any social networks and blogging platforms. 

I’ve been spending a great deal more time on MySpace again.  I’m scared by some of the profile pages I see and impressed by some others. What I’ve been looking for are the applications that make business sense.  What qualifies as a good business application – an application that meets one or all of the following criteria: 

1. It sells something – You make money from it
2. It captures information about your visitors
3. It allows your visitors to provide feedback
4. It promotes you and your shows

Five Applications That Are a Must for Your MySpace Page

Lets have a look at my selection (and this is aside of the obvious ones like the MySpace Music Player) and why I picked them.

Video and Picture Applications for Quality Videos and Pictures…Emphasizing the word Quality

Whether you choose YouTube, Viddler, Vimeo or MySpace videos or on the picture side Slide, Flickr, Photobucket or MySpace picture share – it’s a good addition to your profile to add video(s) and pictures.  Don’t go overboard on the videos, but if you have a song video, a live performance, an interview or some other video that compliments finding out about you and what you do…add it. 

As for pictures…people are totally into voyeurism and love pictures, so give them plenty of what they want. Don’t expect them to go click on your pictures in your profile – Add an application that’s on the main page.

Using MySpace applications is good but using 3^rd party is better and we’ll talk about why in a later post. (This falls under #4 above)

The Eventful Demand It Application

Every entertainer that tours or intends to tour should have that application on their profile.  It’s a great way of knowing where your fans are located and figure out where to plan your next show(s).  (This falls under #2 and 3).

Selling Applications

No brainer on this one.  If you have a product and/or merchandise and you aren’t selling it on your MySpace page... you’re a fool.  You need to be selling, selling, selling.

Email Newsletter Application

Obviously is you don’t do a newsletter or monthly email to your fan base this application doesn’t make sense (but we probably need to discuss why you don’t contact your fan base on the monthly basis…) if you do, then you really need to have this application on your profile.  Having ways to contact your fans is pretty important – this falls under #2.

Mobile Fan Club

I didn’t see this application on too many profiles but I think it’s definitely a must add.  You can use it to capture your fans phone numbers so you can text them when you have a shows coming up in their area.  Hey, if your fans are going to give you their phone numbers – take it!!  You can’t have too many ways to contact your fans.

Filed in myspace

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