There’s no doubt that social media can help you get more traffic and consequently more sales when you’re selling something online.
While spamming won’t get you far at all, there are some techniques you can use that enable you to be helpful and promote your product at the same time.
Using Social Answer Sites
There are answer-based websites by companies like Yahoo Answers that you can utilise to get more traffic to your website. You need to do this the right way, otherwise you won’t get very far and you will probably get banned by those sites.
Social Answer Sites let members ask questions and other members can make helpful suggestions. Some of these sites are very active. By answering questions related to your product niche, you could sell more products. At the very least, you could get some more traffic to your website.
Answer Site Tips
1. Build a reputation on the site by answering plenty of questions without being self serving. You might answer several questions without self promotion before you slip in a self promotional link.
2. Follow the terms of service to avoid getting banned. Don’t put affiliate links into answers, etc. Some of these sites allow a resource section and it would be perfectly acceptable for you to point the inquirer to a helpful link. This link might be a pre-selling article, blog post, or web page as an example.
3. Don’t engage in flame wars. Flame wars happen in public places when people argue over a subject. When you’re trying to do self-promotion and establish yourself as a helpful expert, avoid conflict like the plague!
4. Be creative! Some sites allow you to open several profiles. This can help you ask and answer questions strategically but be careful not to get banned. Overdoing this practice could be dangerous for your credibility on a site. You could also work with a group of friends to ask and answer one another’s questions.
Community forums and special interest lists are constantly joined by people that need and want help. If you were promoting a technical product online, you might want to join (or even start) a forum that helps people with their technical issues.
Your helpful answers could help you build a reputation and most of these sites let you put a clickable link into your signature. Those clickable links will give you search engine optimisation results because every post you submit will show that link and each link will count as a backlink to your site. Many of these sites also allow RSS feeds into your profile that you can use to link to blogs and articles as well.
Some Social Answer Sites, groups, and forums actually index the questions and answers in search engines so optimising your questions and answers for good keyword use can be very helpful. Someone could type a question about a product or problem covered by your specialty in Google and an answer marked as a ‘Best’ answer could pop up with a direct link to a page that sells a product you’ll receive a commission on.
Building an online presence can do a lot for your marketing efforts. Once you’ve built a rapport with some online friends you can also ask them to bookmark a site for you on occasion and comment on blog posts if they find them interesting.
If you are a helpful online citizen and point someone to a helpful web post or website when you answer their question they might also vote for you on a social bookmarking site, or leave a tip in a donation jar to thank you for your help.
Have a most outstanding day.
Sean RasmussenAussie Internet Marketing
www.SeanSEO.com © 2008 - 2010
