Money Secrets

I don’t often read the news, it’s too full of doom and gloom for my liking. But when I read that the Archbishop of Westminster was linking social networking sites such as Facebook with teenage suicides, I was kind of intrigued to know why.

You can read the full story here, but let’s get something straight. If the only friendships your kids have are those taking place online in whatever social network they’re associated with, then regardless of whether they are more likely to commit suicide or not, they have a real problem, and as a parent, you should be taking some action.

Now of course, the news service has over dramatised the whole thing. And if you read what he’s really saying, you’ll probably agree.

He’s not wrong. Nobody should be living their life based solely on interacting online. Do you really want to live your life tied to a computer? Crikey, what will you do if your Internet connection goes down?

But there’s a real lesson here for those in the marketing game who also think that the life of their business is linked to the number of ‘friends’ they can add to their social networking profiles. The number of your so called ‘friends’ doesn’t count for diddly squat! Go check out some Social Networking Advice if you think that it does.

I’m not convinced that socialising online is going to lead to an increase in teenage suicides, but I’m pretty damn certain it will lead to the demise of more home businesses if you think it comes down to the number of folks on your ‘friend list’.

With all the hype lately surrounding “The Power of Social Networking", you’d think there must be some deep, dark secret locked away that, once uncovered will allow you to suddenly and instantly make massive profits. It seems as though the Internet Marketing community has abandoned everything else in favour of building your business from within the pages of Facebook or the updated ‘tweets’ on Twitter.

Forget about PPC, forget about advertising anywhere, who needs SEO, why bother with keyword research, article writing is an unnecessary chore, you no longer need to worry about the look of your website, who cares if your copywriting stinks…

Apparently, all that matters is that you put up a profile on as many social networks as possible, make sure that profile contains links to your sales pages/affiliate sites/business opps, add as many friends as you can, make a few comments on their profile, which will expose you to yet more of their friends, and ‘voila’ instant riches because, (of course ), they will click your links and sign up and/or hand over their cash immediately!

Talk about ‘dumb’ and ‘dumber’.

It doesn’t exactly take a genius to figure out that adding a perfect stranger to your ‘friends list’ does not make them a prospect for your business. All it does is make them a potential ‘friend’. Before you can convert them to a business prospect, you first have to convert them to a friend.

And that doesn’t happen by posting up a few crappy comments on their wall, or making a blatant sales pitch in their guestbook. It certainly doesn’t happen by offering them a ‘free’ (once they’ve subscribed to your list of course ) e-book that will change their lives.

Social networking is actually the same as any other form of networking. It requires that you form a relationship with people. A relationship that is based on two-way communication, and provides value to both parties.

It really is that simple folks. Pardon me if I’m stepping on anyone’s toes by pointing out that there is no secret to making friends. We do it everyday in the ‘real’ world.

So here’s the lesson you need to get imprinted on your brain -

You need to give people a reason to like you before you give them a reason to buy from you.

Now that reason to like you depends on whether what you are offering matches with what they are looking for. As the saying goes, ” You can’t please all of the people all of the time".

Which brings me to another point and that is that you need to limit the number of social networks you join. Apart from the fact that you can’t possibly keep up with more than 2 or 3 in any meaningful way, you won’t find like minded people if you hang around the wrong neighbourhood. Or to use yet another quote (OK, so I’m feeling lazy today ) “Birds of a feather flock together".

If you don’t have any likeable qualities, then social networking probably isn’t going to work for you. If you’re not the sociable type and really can’t be bothered with ‘relationship building‘, then social networking definitely isn’t going to work for you.

To Your Success
Susan Coils