Recently, I have noticed that the more the economy has changed the more people are selecting the Internet as a way to supplement their income. In this article, I wanted to discuss a few steps that are key for beginners to the internet business. One of the biggest issues, is how to use social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, and My Space and many other networking sites to market their businesses online.

One of the biggest complaints is that these sites aren’t bringing them enough real traffic to their business for them to make sales. In essence, these sites were a waste of time to market on because they didn’t produce any immediate marketing results. I know this to be true because I was once in their shoes with the same results.

As someone who uses Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn, as well as several other networking sites to market my business, I believe that these marketers missed the point. Blatant marketing on these sites won’t work. Your approach has to be far more subtle.

Your goal should be something different; building an internet presence, building backlinks from major traffic sites and blogs, and building your brand so that your potential customers find you.

1. Building an Internet Presence

This is especially important if you are new to marketing your products and services on the internet. You have to build a big presence if you want to be found by your market. Building an internet site and just letting it sit doesn’t work! You have to put your egos aside and get out there and promote yourself if you want to sell your products and services. The Successful marketers know this to be true because social networking sites are a source for high traffic; and you have a better chance of being found if you take the time to build a presence.

2. Building Backlinks

I mentioned briefly in my previous articles on how backlinking to other blogs is important. Well a similar principle applies with backlinking from a social media site. The search engines are constantly spidering these sites. Getting your site spidered is what you want? Then building a profile on these sites will help the search engines find you and then ultimately, your customers can find you.

Remember not to sell your products directly to the customers on these sites. Believe me I’ve tried and I received lousy results. Therefore, create a profile that tells everyone about you and your products or services. Include links to your website, or if you have more than one site to all of your sites. Make your profile keyword rich with keywords from your topic.

3. Branding Yourself as a Leader

When you use the social media sites branding is key to your success. Whether you are a writer, or you are simply selling your own products and services, you will need to resort to shameless promotion if you want to make the sale. When branding yourself, like I mentioned in earlier videos, you have to decide what is going to be your area of focus and then become an expert in that area. Writing articles and making videos and then posting them on your own personal blog or on the social networking sites can help others become aware of your products and services.

It has been well documented that if you follow the steps mentioned above, this will help you in building value; In other words, by contributing to these sites, you are not only building value for them, you are building value for yourself. This will go a long way in establishing your credibility and expertise. If you get others to trust you and believe in your products, you just have made the sell! Congratulations!

targeted traffic

No matter how bad your conversion rate is on your site, more traffic will get you more sales.extra!  This is the most important reason that you have to focus on driving more traffic to any website you have.

The best part about getting more traffic is that there are hundreds of ways to do it and many of them are free.

Writing up an article is the easiest way to get more visitors.  A 400 – 500 word article should take you between 15 and 30 minutes to write.Know where you want to take your prospective customer before you spend any time actually writing.Get them to click on your links by treating your resorce box as an ad for your products.

Now, you can take that article and turn it into a blog post.  Your blog should be the cornerstone of your online marketing, anyways, so posting your articles there is a great way to make the work you’ve done in creating the article do even more for your business.  Edit your article to encourage a reader to interact with you.  Ask a question or give a reason for them to provide their thoughts.  It gives you an ability to build a relationship with your audience and will keep them coming back for more.

Video has come a long way on the web.Connect with your audience by giving them the ability to see your passion, video makes it really easy.  Your videos can be made up of anything.How you do your video isn’t as important as getting one done. Be creative and use slide shows, presentations, or sit in front of a camera.  Then post it to your blog!

Social Networks allow you to meet people interested in your products and interact with them.  FaceBook and MySpace are a great place to start.Setup your profile to draw in your audience by using words they search for when trying to find your products.  Be sure to show who you are as a person and people will flock to you.

Twitter has turned into the internet’s newest hot spot.  Join up, tweet a few times, then go searching for big names in your market.If someone is following them, they should be interested in you, too.  Start a conversation with them in public and be sure their followers can see it.

Your customer comes first and remember to always focus on what they need.  You need more free traffic today, so do what it takes to get it!