This is using groups. You see this tab here called Groups? You click on Groups and it takes you here to every type of group that exists.

Now groups, as the word suggests, are just a collection of individuals on My Space that share an interest. It's another great way to find people in your market. So in this case let's just go through to recreation and sports, because remember we're looking for people interested in golf.

Here we are in recreation and sports. You'll see down the left-hand side we've got various different groups, and for each one it shows you how many members. So if you join this group, this is the number of members that are going to be in this group.

Now when you're a member of a group, there's various benefits. The first one is there's a lot of people all with the same interests all in the same place. It also gives you a certain level of authority. If people see that you're in a group, they associate you with that particular theme.

You can also join in with topics and posts and comments within that group, to people in that joint interest area.

So let us just say that we've got to try to find a golf group, so we just do a search here. Just put in the word 'golf' and we'll hit search and let's just see what comes back. So you can see there are a few groups here related to golf. This one's got 4,000 members, this one's got 1,200 members, this one's got 900 members.

Let's just go into this one. What you should really do is try and join multiple groups based on your interests. This one's got 900 members, and all you do to join the group is just click on 'join group.' Click on 'join,' and as it says 'You are now a member.'

As a member of this group you can now invite other people, upload your image to the group, you can post a topic to the group, which means the whole group is going to be able to read the topic that you post.

So you can see the value of joining groups, but it also opens you up to other people who are interested in your area. You can click on here, go to 'view all members,' and that's going to show you everyone in the group.

So you can see here that these are some of the members of this golf group. So in theory all these guys should be interested in golf, because they've joined a golf group. So you can go through and start adding some of these people to your friends as well.

Another way you can find people for your market to add to your friends list is by searching forums. Click on 'Forum' on the top there and that takes you to the forum area of My Space.

Now this is very under-utilized. A lot of people don't even know this exists. But you can go in here and find people related to your particular interest or your market and engage with them. Maybe add them to your friend list, make comments, etc.

Now as I've said, there are automated tools that will do some of this stuff for you, but the basic fact of it is that you're trying to build a relationship here. You're trying to build your own mini-community within a community and you can't really do that using software. You've got to get out there and put in the leg work.

Now you could outsource it. You could get someone to do it on your behalf, but initially it's probably best that you know a little bit about how to do this.

So as I've said, you can just search. Find people in your market and just search. Type in the words or phrases. You can go off and you can do a search for groups and join relevant groups. You can also use the forums to try to find people who are interested in your particular marketplace.

Now let me just go back to this profile. When this person approves me, I'll then be able to go on and make a post on his comments board.

'Hello.'

Now some people need approval for this to actually post on here. It would be posted and it would go to an approvals area. Other people just let you post straight away.

Now you don't want to be posting straight adverts on there, but over time you can start introducing some messages, either to get people back to your My Space page or to get people directly to your website and get traffic to your website.

Like I said, if you're using a great banner, something that's going to catch their eye and is helpful, it's got the human story, it's got humor in there, and it's heartfelt. If it does all those things and it's a little image there, then chances are people are going to click on it and either go to your My Space page or your home page, depending on where it is you want to send people.

That is really the heart of My Space. So let me just go on now, let me just go and join and become friends with more people just to show you the process.

Ok, so I'm now on another person's page, another profile, and that obviously leads me to more people that are interested in golf. So I'm going to add this guy to my friends, 'add to friends.' Again you get this confirmation message, 'add to friends?' This person's now been sent an email saying I want to become their friend.

It's just a case of repeating this process. So if we come back to this page again, this is the very first profile I found, I've already added this particular profile, this page I've added to my friends. I've added this guy. Let me go now and add this guy, and you just work through.

I'm not saying you do all of them. Some of them you might not like the look of or they might not be relevant for your particular profile, but you just work through adding people to your friends list.

So we go and add this guy, and now I've come back to our profile. So this is our control panel for our profile. What will happen, when people add you and they want you to become their friend, you'll see 'new friend requests' in here. Let me just show you in here.

Now at the moment it says there are 0 requests. It's a new account, nobody's actually added me as their friend or requested to, but you can also see there are here 'pending requests.' So click on that. These are requests that we made to other people to become their friends.

So you can see here, these are the three people that I've requested to become friends with. You can either cancel requests or you can send them a message and say, "Look, I really like your profile. I like this particular thing," if you wanted to go to that extent. You don't have to do that, but these are awaiting approval.

Once they get approved, we've then got three new friends. We're going to be on their profile. Other people will click on our link and so on, so you can see how this is going to actually build.

Ok, two final things I want to show you back on the profile page. The first is this, post bulletin. You can actually send or post a bulletin, which is like a mass mail, to all your friends at the same time. So whoever's friends with you, you can actually send them a message on here.

Now you need to use this with caution. You don't want to be doing this every day or even every week. You certainly don't want to be using it for outwardly commercial stuff. You've got to be giving helpful information away, something that's of value.

When you start to develop your network of friends, this is a useful tool to actually get out there and tell people about new developments that you've got, maybe new things on a site, whatever. But try to balance it always between valuable helpful information and something that's slightly commercial.

If you actually go and set up your own groups. Let's just go into Groups as I'm speaking here while this loads up. If you go and actually set up your own group, then you're going to have people beneath you, which you can also email and that gives you a greater sense of authority and respect from people that are beneath you because you can actually then broadcast to them. They look at you as an authority figure for that particular area.

So it is also a good idea to try to set up your own group, particularly if it's a particular niche that you're looking for. This is a very highly-themed type topic.

So I will say when you come to create a group is that you have to have your account for 7 days. Now that's to protect My Space so people don't just go on there and start setting up all these groups. You've got have your My Space account for 7 days, but once you've done that spend those first 7 days going through adding friends, finding people in your network, joining other groups, posting on other people's comment boards, ideally with a graphic or a banner, keeping it not too commercial, always offering value and helpful information, building up your network like that so that people actually start to add you as a friend.

After that 7-day period you can actually go and create your own group and start to get people beneath you.

Ok, so that is how to get traffic on My Space. As I've said, this has been a kind of super-quick overview. I've tried to give you the most powerful ways to actually build your network and build traffic from My Space.

There's a whole bunch more stuff you can do with My Space, but that will really give you the kind of nitro boost to get started.

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