A friend of mine runs a children’s theatre company and wanted to build a site to promote herself. I recommended she use MySpace instead and gave her a rough strategy for marketing through MySpace.

1. Get set up

Set up a MySpace, customise it so it stands out a bit, but keep it tidy and good looking (no animated stuff, crazy bits and pieces). There are some quite good Pimp Your MySpace type sites out there or even spend a few hundred quid on a designer to do a great job.

Add content. Write a description of you that’s useful for readers and search engines alike (i.e. it explains what you do in clear sensible language, “children’s theatre” vs “young persons dramatic experience” etc). Put details of shows in the events section so people can see when you’re playing. If you have photos or even video definitely put that up (use YouTube for video). Quotes from previous audience members or organisers are also great. MySpace lets you do a blog too which you can use to talk about how you work, what you think and feel which is a) interesting and b) good for search engines to make you findable.

2. Grow your audience

Put the url (myspace.com/blah) on everything you do: email footer, flyers, posters, tickets, business cards, costumes, everything.

Make friends with people who are doing similar things, people you admire, anyone. Encourage members of your audience to add you as a friend.

3. Keep your audience in the loop

Once you have lots of friends, you have people to communicate with. Every time you do anything you can then send out a message to everybody you’ve been in touch with via MySpace. Announce new shows, tell people about workshops or prizes. You can also post comments on other people’s profiles. It’s quite common to add a flyer for a show in a comment post. It’s a little cheeky maybe, but a lot of people are doing it and it will generate attention.

Some general marketing hints

Decide who your audience is, what they will be looking for and what actions you want them to take. If your audience is school teachers and you want them to book your show, then you need to convince them that the show will be entertaining and you will be professional and easy to work with. Think about your message in every communication.

Building an audience gives you an opportunity to dispense success stories and wisdom. When people search around or come straight to your site because they want to work with someone like you, they’ll see that you’re super popular and won’t have a second thought.