Advertising to Social Networks: Be Genuine in Your Networking

When a website needs to gain traffic, one of the first strategies we hear about these days is utilizing social networking and the various social media advertising networks that go with them. We already know that the more we socialize on these networks, the more traffic we tend to see visiting our respective websites, and the better conversions we see as well. Nevertheless, some business owners see the exact opposite happening, they are receiving fewer visitors when using a social network as an advertising and promotional platform.

Why is this?

Simply stated, those business owners who use the networks as a promotional tool only, without engaging with the community in a genuine, “I want to talk to you as a person” mentality, is putting him or herself out there as a spammer. When business owners began using the social networks for promoting and advertising websites and products and other services, without using them for genuine socializing, those business owners and their websites became spammers.

Throwing links, videos, photos and other advertisements up as a post would garner attention at first, but these posts are ignored eventually because those reading them begin to recognize who they are from and they automatically know it will be spam, so why should they bother reading or clicking anymore? In the worst cases, when the posts began to be ignored, some site owners started losing “friends” and “followers.” This has happened to many advertisers because the only things the “friends” and “followers” were seeing were those link posts, without any effort from the poster to say “hello.”

The community sees this type of promotional link or Tweet or Like as someone who simply wants to make a buck from their friends and the audience – no matter what your target audience is. Eventually, they tend to shun these types of social networkers and the promotional ads that go with them.

So what can you do about it?

Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Orkut, Buzz, and all of the other social networks were developed for one reason and one reason only. When you join a social network, you must be genuine in your interactions with the community and your audience and you must have joined it to do just that at first. Simply posting a link here and promoting a website there is not what the social networks were made to do.

There is a time and a place for everything and that includes social networks and using them for promotion. It is fine to post a link or two to a blog post or a new product, but the bulk of what business owners and advertisers should be doing is genuine socializing. Only then will you start to see increased traffic and conversions, not to mention an increased following – the cycle begins.