MyCast: Podcasts and MySpace

[michel]

This is a tangent idea I had while reading through the thread Promoting Podcasts: The Next Step (http://www.podcastalley.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=5532). Many people talk about utilizing MySpace to increase your audience, promote your show, and expand your reach... but nobody's really going into detail. And very few of the people that said they are using MySpace are linking it from their show site.

A few questions:
Do you think, when the subject is a podcast, MySpace pages are better as a "regular" page or as a "musician's" page.

Do you prefer for your MySpace audience to stay withing MySpace or do you encourage them to visit the website as well.

How about the other way around, do you encourage your regular audience to check out your MySpace page, or would you prefer that you only have listeners coming into one central site, not going out to satellite pages.

How aggressively have you befriended people in order to make your own audience grow.

Do you work exclusively in MySpace or do you also branch out into Facebook, Friendster, and similar sites.


Discuss.


Oh... and a question for my own edification... what link are you supposed to put in the podcast enclosure line on the MySpace blog page. Does anyone know, Does anyone use it?

[ElNacho]

the blogging in myspace supports rss 2.0. so basically, u can stik yer mp3 in the enclosure link, and in the blog area the shownotes. then yer blog rss can be used as de podcast rss. ye.

[rumorgirls]

We created a myspace not too long ago..we mainly drive traffic from there to our website.

http://www.myspace.com/rumorgirls

But we do run a video promo with myspace at the beginning of every episode, so viewers will join us there as well.

http://media.libsyn.com/media/maryandkarla/rg10.m4v

Karla

[michel]

the blogging in myspace supports rss 2.0. so basically, u can stik yer mp3 in the enclosure link, and in the blog area the shownotes. then yer blog rss can be used as de podcast rss. ye.

Ah, so basically what you're saying is that it's useless. Cool.


But we do run a video promo with myspace at the beginning of every episode, so viewers will join us there as well.

How is that working out for you so far? What type of feed back do you get from you audience, if any, regarding the myspace page plug.

[ElNacho]

useless? no...it's just an alternative to wordpress, blogger, moveable type, whatever

[michel]

True, as an alternative to those it is handy. However, I'm willing to bet that the majority of people here have their own site and are utilizing some pre-existing feed such as feedburner or something along those lines.

It's useless to people who already have a show.


We talk in this forum in a safe little bubble where everybody knows what podcasting is, but in the "real world" the majority of people don't know what it is... they don't have a clue. It's useless because the people that it's intended for don't know what it is, and the people who do don't need it.

[WyethDigital]

We created a myspace not too long ago..we mainly drive traffic from there to our website.

http://www.myspace.com/rumorgirls

But we do run a video promo with myspace at the beginning of every episode, so viewers will join us there as well.
Interesting idea, Karla. I'll have to look at how you do that. For this week's podcast, we're putting a one minute segment from the cutting room floor on our site, where visitors can come and check it out. But it's at our site, not MySpace.

My host has a place on MySpace, (http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=58916807) and since a couple other friends already have accounts, I joined to. Madeline (hostess) is heavilly promoting our podcast and site on Myspace. She has something like 60 friends now. I have 5, including "Tom." He's talkative, but not much of a listener! The skamp!

We link to Madeline's blog (http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.ListAll&friendID=58916807&MyToken=00cbc49e-c000-4ae2-92f6-ad1482dafcc5ML) at Myspace from the header of our page, but she also links back to our site. I personally hate MySpace's interface, performance, and patchwork of ads, so would never, ever, in a million years host a website and/or podcast exclusively from MySpace. Yuk!

(but we will promote it there... does that make me evil?)

Eric

[kinkysex]

I get a TON of traffic from MySpace. So, I blog there a little and embed a flash player on the page (i don't like the one myspace provides). I link to my site and cross traffic between 'em.

I befriend any non-musician and then weed out the spammers by hand. I wait for people to ask me, then I send the a nice little form greeting and place a comment on their page. The greeting is important because a lot of people add me without having any idea I'm a show. If you'd like to see the greeting I send, e-mail me or add me as your friend.

Why don't I add musicians? They are usually too busy promting themselves to be of use to me. And since most musicians are not good at promotion, they end up spamming you CONSTANTLY. Not their fault. It's a fine line between promotion and garbage.

Music shows, obviously have to ad musicians.