Myspace.com is the world's largest social networking website. It is the cool place to be if you are in your teens, 20s and 30s. I have also found that it can be an outstanding free marketing tool for social business and websites.

So what is Myspace.com? Myspace is a website where anybody in the world can create a free "personal" web page (i.e., my space). Once you have created your personal web page on myspace, then you can connect your page to other people's myspace pages by clicking on a link to request to be a person's friend. Once that person agrees to be your friend, then you and that person can email each other, chat with each other, leave comments on each other's myspace pages, and read each other's blogs. There is no limit to the number of friends you can have and some of the more popular people on myspace have millions of myspace friends and have actually become Internet celebrities and have been featured on talk shows.

Over the past year I have been conducting test marketing on myspace for a couple of my clients and I have discovered that myspace can be a very good free marketing tool for businesses. However, myspace is not for all businesses. The types of business that will do well having a myspace page are the "cool" types of businesses that want to market to people in their 20s and 30s. Businesses that will have luck marketing on myspace include bars, clubs, "hip" clothing stores, and cool Internet websites.

Here is how to market your business on myspace.com:

1. Go to myspace.com and create a free profile. Make sure to talk first about yourself and then about your business. However, you must consider your myspace page a personal page where you talk mostly about you and a little about your business. Do not just talk about your business because if you do, people will not want to be your friend. You need to focus on the personal aspect such as, "hey this is me and my life. And by the way I run this Internet website that sells cool t-shirts." If you think of myspace as a place to network and meet friends FIRST and market your business SECOND, then you will do well on myspace.

2. Once you have created your myspace page, click the browse link to find the type of people you want to market to. You can search by gender, age, location, ethnicity, etc.

3. Go to each person's page and click their "Add to friends" link. The person will either approve you or deny you. If they approve you, your myspace page and their myspace page will be connected as being friends.

4. To market your business, post friendly personalized bulletins. When you post a bulletin, a link to your bulletin will be posted on each of your friend's myspace pages. If you have 5,000 myspace friends, than you can literally have a message sent to all 5,000 of these people for free. However, remember that you must be personal with your messages. Talk like you are talking to your best friend. Do NOT talk to people like customers. Myspace is a place for friends and you must respect that.

5. Post friendly comments on your myspace friends' pages and include a link to your website. Then, everybody who goes to your friend's myspace page will see your comment and your link. Some will click on your picture to become your friend and some will click on the link to go to your website.