Millions of people have MySpace and Facebook accounts, but is it helping or hurting them? I’ve had a MySpace account now for over a year (http://profile.myspace.com/rohit_rohila). Not only was it a great way to keep in touch with friends, but it was an incredible opportunity to get in touch with friends from my past. Although I was having a blast, it was slowly becoming very addictive. Comments, Adds, Top 8, and of course, the famous Tom became a part of my regular routine.

However, I made a decision to use MySpace for good instead of evil With a great number of employees turning to the Internet to research perspective employees, it has become very important to be very careful about how you portray yourself online. A quick Google search can be a lot more revealing than you may wish. Here are some of the changes that I made to my MySpace account. Many of these changes can be made to Facebook and other Social Networking sites as well.

1. What’s My Name?: My name went from “Rohit” to “RohitRohila.com”. That way, whenever anyone sees my name, they know my website address as well.
2. Hide The Evidence: I took off any pictures that might be “inappropriate,” including that picture of me dressed up like a Playboy Bunny for Halloween… ah… I mean the picture of me dressed up like Darth Vader.
3. Brand Yourself: My main picture was changed to a more professional picture. It is the same picture that I now use for all of my avatars, including AIM, MSN, Google, Yahoo, MySpace, MyBlogLog, Facebook, etc. I want people to instantly see that picture and associate it with me.
4. Join Groups: MySpace presents great opportunities to start networking. I joined many groups that were related to my interests of personal development, growth, and entrepreneurship. I can now make bulletin’s to those groups about my posts.
5. Blogs: I started posting the articles from this website as Blogs on my MySpace. However, instead of posting the entire article, I posted an excerpt and then told the reader that the entire article can be found on my website.
6. Bulletins: Bulletins can also be an effective way to communicate your messages. I started to send bulletins with entire articles and saw an increase of traffic flow.
7. Your Profile: Although customizing your profile is an excellent way to express yourself, many people can get a bit carried away. Bright flashing stars, pink backgrounds with yellow letters, videos, music, pictures, it’s enough to drive anyone insane. I changed my profile to be very simple, and to look very similar to my website. There isn’t any flash to it, but it’s also not annoying.
8. Famous Friends: There are many personal development speakers and authors who are also using MySpace to promote their business. I began to add them as friends. Now I can post comments on their MySpace profiles for others to read. I tell about an interesting article that I just posted, with a link to that post.
9. Leave Comments: I started to post comments on my friend’s pages who might be interested in one of my posts. For example if I had a post about Customer Service, I could leave a comment about that article on a friend’s page who works in Fast Food.

By making these changes, 8% of my websites traffic is now through MySpace. I would love to hear how some of you have promoted yourself through Social Network sites like MySpace and Facebook.

WARNING: Be careful not to overdue it with the comments or the references to your website. Over advertising can be annoying and cause people to not visit your site at all.