THE SECRETS OF MARKETING VIA SOCIAL NETWORKING SITES - Part 4

THE BENEFITS OF BEING SUBTLE

Marketing on social networking sites is almost like using reverse psychology. Your end goal is to sell your products. But the social networking sites don’t generally like you to be that blatant about it.

So what do you do instead? Simple – you sell your subject. Or rather, you promote it. But you don’t promote it by telling people how fabulous your book is. You promote it by getting them interested in the subject and making it clear that you know what you are talking about.

You might think there’s no difference in this at all, but here’s where people go wrong. Let’s say you want to sell a book you’ve written about saving money by shopping online. The last thing you would do is to go on MySpace, Facebook, or any other social networking site and try to sell it directly.

Quite apart from the fact that people just wouldn’t be interested and would see it for what it is – an out and out advert – you might get problems from the networking sites themselves. The majority of them aren’t there for you to take advantage of like this.

So instead you have to think about your subject and find a way to connect with your audience – the very people who ARE going to be interested in a book on saving money.

What you can do here is to dangle a carrot in front of them. Tell them about some of the more unusual ways you have managed to save money recently. If you know of any great deals going on, share them with your readers and followers. They’ll be grateful for it, and they’ll be glad that they’re getting something for nothing as well.

And of course, if you got some useful information from someone you found on a social networking site, you’d bookmark them or start following them, wouldn’t you? After all, they might have more of the same to share.

Now most of these social networking sites will let you add a link direct to your own website – even if that website happens to offer a wide range of goods for people to buy.

So if you are giving away all this free information on a specific subject as part of your input into a particular social networking site, you will find that more and more people will click through to your website. Keep an eye on your website stats as you start to make inroads into this type of marketing. I can almost guarantee that after a while you will see a regular stream of traffic coming from your social networking efforts. And the more you put into them, the more you get out in the end.

THINK SEO –BUT NOT TOO MUCH

Very few people think of putting keywords into their profiles at various social networking sites. But keywords can bring you traffic on these sites just as they can all across the web.

Most if not all social networking sites give you the opportunity to search for other members. Now think about how you would do this. If you knew the screen name of a specific member you’d type that in. But if you wanted to find other people who were as interested in your hobby or favorite subject as you are, you’d type in the name of your hobby, right?

So if you have written a book on cars, type the word ‘cars’ into the search box and see what you get back. The same applies to whatever subject you might be promoting.

So what you need to do is to make a list of the most popular keywords that are connected to your subject. Think about what people will look for and make sure those keywords are carefully peppered through your profile and your description.

For example, you might describe yourself as an eBook writer who specializes in books about saving money. You can then add that in your spare time you focus on scouring the internet for new ways to save money on your household bills and so on. Do you get the idea? You’re presenting that professional face to people, but integrating it into your profile in a way that doesn’t feel like a sales pitch.

If you overdo it, you will certainly get the opposite effect that you are after. People know when they are being sold to, so you should always ensure that your writing comes across naturally. That should come before anything else.

The same goes for any comments, you add to your profile, or entries you add to your blog in the case of MySpace, or tweets you make in the case of Twitter. Don’t overdo it, but the odd keyword slipped in here and there won’t do anyone any harm – least of all you.