How to Promote your Niche Affiliate Blog with Social Networking Sites

We’ve got another guest post lined up today from this week’s guest blogger Mary Lutz. Today, she’s going to continue on with the topic she’s been talking about the last few days – niche affiliate blogging. Today’s focus is going to be on how to use social networking to promote your blog.

In my last post, Content, Article Marketing and Social Networking for your Niche Affiliate Blog, I mentioned that I would be talking about social networking for your niche affiliate site. If you’re alive and breathing, you’ve most likely heard of Facebook and Twitter. You have probably even heard someone on one of your favorite television shows say they were going to “tweet” this or “post it on Facebook”.

Social networking is huge and continues to grow more and more every day. But, how do you go about getting yourself and your niche blog noticed if there are already over 5 million users on Facebook?

Build Relationships

When I first joined Twitter, one of the best pieces of advice I received was to build relationships with fellow Tweeters. I made a few mistakes along the way, one of which was using an auto reply direct message whenever someone new followed me. This never got me anywhere and I decided it was best to take it off. Most people don’t want to be spammed with your “Click here” “Try this”, or “Check out my blog” messages. They want to create somewhat of a personal relationship with you first and then see if you’ve got something they want or need. And if you do, then they will be more compelled to click on your link.

Facebook is a little bit different than Twitter because Facebook started out as a network for college students only. There was already the personal aspect built into it and it still exists today. As a matter of fact, most people still join Facebook because one of their relatives or friends talked them into it so they could keep up to date with them better and share pictures and other things easier. Some people have yet to begin using Facebook for business purposes and refuse to promote their business on Facebook.

On the other hand, many have found Facebook to be the perfect place to promote their business because of the personal touch Facebook offers. Many of my personal and local friends wouldn’t know about my online business and what I do if it weren’t for Facebook. Most of my personal friends and family aren’t on Twitter either. Now do my personal friends and family purchase my services? Not necessarily, but the business connections I’ve made through Facebook have been beneficial to my business. I’ve gotten more traffic to each of my blogs through the “Like” pages I’ve created for them and through posting links on my personal profile.

Once you have some relationships established with other business owners, you can begin promoting your products and services through recommendations. When someone feels like they can trust you, they will more likely click on links you recommend and subsequently make a purchase. However, if all you ever do is send spammy links to try to get someone to click on something, the less likely you’re going to get any response.

Let the True Expert in You Show Through

The other way to promote your business or brand through social networking is to show yourself as the expert you truly are. An expert is someone who knows more about their topic than the rest of the people. You are practically guaranteed to know more about something in your niche than thousands of people on Twitter and Facebook. Through status updates and tweets teach and educate them about your product or service and how it can really benefit them then link to a specific blog post that gives them the information they need and or are looking for.

Reaching your Target Market

Of course you will also need to reach people in your niche in order to do this, so just how do you go about finding your target market? Using a Twitter application such as Seesmic or Tweetdeck, you can set up various searches based on your niche market. For example, if you want to reach people who have an interest in making dolls by hand, you might search for stay at home moms, moms who sew, and homeschooling moms, etc. You can also search for those who sew, those who make things by hand and crafty people.

Social networking is fun and can be a great way to promote your niche affiliate blog to the right people…the people that want what you have to offer. With a little time and focused effort you will be driving your target market to your niche affiliate blog and watching your revenue increase as well.

Mary Lutz is the owner of Full Blog Support. She can set up your Twitter, Facebook and other social networking accounts and have you tweeting and updating your status in no time. Click here to see the many other ways Full Blog Support can meet all your blogging needs!