Are you guilty of constantly pitching your biz-op or advertising your product or service in your social network? Do you do this on someone’s profile wall, or  in your initial contact or most of your posts?

Do you barely get past an introduction with someone you have just connected with on a social network when you launch into a pitch of your product or opportunity? Do you send spam emails to recipients of groups you belong to?

If so, you are wasting your exposure and turning off your contacts with this tactic. You are killing your traffic exposure before it even has a chance to grow.

If you understand attraction marketing, or what social media could potentially mean to your SEO,  you would avoid this kind of marketing.

This type of approach has been referred to as Hit and Run Marketing. Utilizing social networks to blatantly advertise your product or opportunity has people turning away as quickly as they would otherwise hit the fast forward button on their remote when TV commercials come on.

Is This Type of Marketing Really Working for Anyone?

It is well known that when someone who may be in need of your product or service lays eyes on your ad, they almost NEVER take immediate action.

Whether it is a product purchase or someone joining your MLM opportunity, this is preceded by a complex social exchange in which you have build a know, like, and trust factor with your prospect. It is not going to happen just because you have access to someone within the social media context.

When someone Tweets their product 5 or even more times in the same second, filling the page with their ads, I can’t un-follow them fast enough! Especially if I go to their profile and see that this is all they do.

Or even worse, when someone whom I have never seen on Twitter sends me an @ reply with a link to their product or service, and I go to their profile and see that not only am I not even following them, but they follow no one and have no followers, I block them immediately.

And when someone I barely know puts a post about their opportunity or service on my Facebook wall (which is viewed by all of my personal friends and people I may want to offer my service to), that is a bit of personal space invasion! In this case I immediately delete that post.

So What Works?

Social Media is people centric; it is fueled by what interests them and has some type of emotional trigger.  No one likes to be sold! Only content that provides some type of Entertainment, Education and/or Enlightenment will be awarded their attention.

To be successful in internet marketing you must first evaluate your target market and know what content will be meaningful and valuable to them. Then you need to provide that content in an engaging way, otherwise they will not stay on your page after just clicking on your link (if they even do), once they see you are simply there to sell them.

Google is keenly aware of the amount of time someone stays on your page, and either punishes you in the rankings or rewards you with higher rankings accordingly.

Your Perpetual Internet Traffic Machine runs on two things – content, and syndication. If your approach in getting them TO your content is not one which engages and interests them, and/or if your content is not meaningful to them, then you are wasting your traffic exposure.

To make the best of that exposure you need to over deliver on what they need, in order to build a relationship of trust with them. Only then will they consider taking advantage of your product or service. And just as importantly is their willingness to pass along your content, to foster its syndication.

So What is a Content Syndication Network?

If you provide valuable content; good enough that someone wants to come back and better yet, pass it along to their contacts, bookmark it on social bookmarking sites, and ultimately link back to it from their content, then you are building a Content Syndication Network.

Content Syndication is when your content is propagated through networks beyond your own, whether by social bookmarking, back-links from other sites, or simply by it being propagated through email or other means by people in your network to people in their networks. This extends the reach of your own network, and becomes your Content Syndication Network.

There is an amazing social bookmarking community platform, the Unified Tribe , which was created for just the purpose of syndicating content of its members. If you want to have your content go viral with a few clicks of the mouse, this is a must have if you want to avoid the pain of waiting years for organic results.  When you join be sure to look me up and we’ll syndicate one another’s content!

BackLinks and RSS feeds

When others elect to receive RSS feeds from your blog, this enhances your SEO and Google visibility even further. When someone posts a link to your article or blog on their web site, your search engine rankings are increased.

Other people linking to or voting on your site on Social Bookmarking sites is far more appealing to search engines (and therefore productive for increasing your SEO) than when you post your own content on these sites.

This is why your use of social networking can have such a powerful impact on your SEO. So don’t ruin your potential chances by sounding like a commercial, or saying ‘buy from me!’ or ‘join my business, I’m looking for leaders!’. This will not build you a content syndication network.

Social media is a very powerful thing in extending your reach but the reach will not go beyond the first glance of your network’s users if you are only pitching your product or opportunity!

Wishing You Brilliant Success!

This entry was posted on Sunday, June 21st, 2009 at 10:21 PM and is filed under Social Media Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.