Social Networking sites are basically community sites that you join and then search for people within the community with similar interests as you. Now, some social networking sites are very small and focused, so by definition the people who join such sites are already members of a tightly focused interest group.
Such a group might be brought together by their political or religious
beliefs, or it could be something such as their hobbies (they love Ford
Mustangs or making cheesecake) sports or basically anything else that
mankind has found it possible to be interested in!
So, in such a tightly focused group, almost all members without exception
will be interested in the one common thing.
However, there are many other community sites where the only real common
interest that most of the members could possibly ever have with one another
is that they are all, in fact, members of the same site!
This is simply a function of the size and therefore the diversity of the
sites in question, with websites like MySpace and FaceBook having literally
millions of members all over the globe. (107 and 73 million members
respectively)
Such sites generally have a totally open membership, meaning that anyone can
become a member, no matter what their hobbies, beliefs, or views are.
Thus, there is no general community wide commonality of beliefs or interests
either.
It is therefore only natural that once you are a member, inside this online
community, you can begin to create your own network of friends, those that
do have similar interest and/or beliefs to those of your own.
And this is where it gets interesting for you as an Internet marketer or
online business person.
Firstly, if we use MySpace as our example (simply because whatever works on
MySpace also works on almost every other social networking sit, albeit
sometimes after a degree of ‘finessing’), then you are looking at one of the
ten biggest websites in the world.
Whatever your interests, given so many millions of members, then there will
inevitably be others that have similar interests, people that you could
potentially ‘bond’ with immediately.
For example, a MySpace search using the phrase ‘traffic generation’ returned
5,650 results. So that is over five and a half thousand people who might be
interested in your traffic blog site from a direct ‘match’ of my search term
to the specific subject topic of my blog site.
However, run a search for a more generic (and broader) term like Internet
marketing, and you get 45,400 results.
Now, it is a very reasonable assumption that anyone who is interested in
Internet marketing is trying to sell something on the net, and that they
therefore need traffic to their website.
So, of course, these people would be legitimate ‘target prospects’ for what
I am trying to promote also.
Take it one stage further and use single word search ‘marketing’ and it
returns 549,000 results.
Again, it is reasonable to assume that all of these people are at least
interested in bringing their products or services to the marketplace, so,
once again, traffic generation could be of immense interest to them.
So, all I need to do is to tell them about the great resource that I have
available, and that will be the ‘deal done’ right?
Err, no, not really, unless the ‘deal’ that you are talking about is having
your MySpace ‘space’ and account closed down immediately!
The thing is that the folks who run MySpace really do not want their
‘community site’ turning into a commercial free-for-all, a sort of online
bazaar, and they will go to any lengths to protect their site.
So, you cannot just open your account one day and start bombarding people
with your commercial messages the next.
In the same way that, when you join any quality forum site, you have to
establish yourself as a valid contributing member before you can start
promoting your products or even adding a signature file with a redirect to a
sales site, you must establish yourself on community websites too.
So, the first thing that you must do is to take some time and make an effort
to create a proper profile, something that shows that there is a real person
behind the newly opened account.
Then, you must start looking for ‘friends’ in the MySpace community, but you
must do so gradually, as you are limited to so many friend invitations a day
and, even if you weren’t, inviting a thousand new friends a day hardly looks
natural or normal, does it?
Put it this way – if you saw that someone was inviting 1000 new friends a
day, would you perhaps thinks that there was something a little bit strange
or artificial about it?
Correct – of course you would.
So, start to become a real member of the community before you start
promoting, is the bottom line.
Sure, by all means begin to invite people to be your friends, but do try to
spend a little time getting to know them and building up a relationship
before trying to interest them in your business.
Now, the great thing about a blog site is that it is pretty natural that,
after you have been someone’s ‘friend’ for a while, that you might invite
them to take a look at your blog.
That is far less threatening and direct than asking them to look at a
‘full-on’ sales page, for example.
Nevertheless, it doesn’t matter what community site you are a member of, the
secret is go gently and slowly, build relationships and try to nurture
something at least vaguely like a ‘real’ friendship before trying to get
people to visit your business themed blog site.
You can sign up for “Secrets to Social Networking for Profits” and learn the
basics to business social networking online. The eCourse is free, and you will learn
how business social networking online can change your life too.
http://web2marketer.com/
Get this now and have a great day!
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