An enormous number of marketers online attempt to do niche website promotion by using social networking platforms like MySpace or Facebook to generate website traffic. If you listen closely, you will hear the vast majority talk about how it just doesn’t work. They make friends and they get followers, but they cannot convert those contacts to paying customers. And yet many “experts” counsel them to just continue the campaign.

Let’s go a different direction. Some thoughts:

1. People in social networking groups are there to network socially. They didn’t come to hear about your infoproduct or eBook or podcast or video or software tools or your great new money-making system. They didn’t come to be advertised to, and they resent it.
2. What direct advertisers learned a long time ago is that you will get far more profitable results when you understand and know your market, and then target that specific audience.
3. Targeting your market on social networks is tough. Joining relevant groups in a network can work, but most people join a group and then never go back. It’s not very profitable to try to make a buyer or even just build a relationship with someone who is no longer there.

Analyze the back end of the process for a moment. The audience who will convert the best for you is people who have searched for a keyword phrase that your website specializes in. THAT gets the attention of targeted visitors.

So here is a plan that works: make an offer to people on social networking sites. Offer some valuable freebie that will make their mouth water. Your goal is not to make them your customers, because they seem to not convert very well. Instead, your goal is to get them to click through, then bookmark or link to your page for your real target market to see.

The more 1-way natural links you build to your quality content, the sooner Google will see you as a consistent, relevant authority resource. You’ll rise in search rankings, and your perfect market – people who search your targeted keyword phrases – will find you. THAT is how to make the social websites pay off.