Social networking has now come to be the new face of the contemporary concept of relationship marketing. While growing your online business using social networking it is good to remember that hard-selling your product or service can often backfire! People who know that someone is desperately trying to sell them a product may tend to distance themselves from that person for fear of being exploited! They want to be treated as more than just a prospective customer. They want to be treated as more than a sales figure. They wanted to be treated as who they are! And only social networking has been able satisfy that want, making it your medium of choice to get to your customers!

What you need to do first is to identify the product or service you wish to sell and meditate on it so as to identify what aspect of your product would make your customers want it badly. Next, come up with a blog that would contain information about your product. Now comes the most important part, pepper your blog with free advice, user reviews and product specifications apart from other things like coupon codes, free downloads, useful links etc that would make people want to bookmark your blog (even if it is just because they know you). Make sure that you subscribe to Google feeds so that you can ensure that your blog comes up in search results. Also keep track of your competitors Google feeds so that you can find out how they are using social networks to grow their business! Once you have this in place, it’s time for you to take on your Facebook or Twitter network! Place your link in your profile so that people may check it when they see your profile. Keep yourself busy with the various applications on Facebook so that you keep appearing in the Facebook notifications, which would increase the likelihood of people visiting your profile. Make informal mentions about your business so that people know of you as a businessman. Have as many followers as you can on Twitter and keep in touch with them regularly. But not even once are you to make any reference to them as a prospective customer! You don’t want them running away!

The next step is viral marketing! Once you make your presence acknowledged by your tweets or Facebook friends, encourage them, through your blog, to spread the word through their networks. With the advice you give on your blog, people will look at you as an expert and will be head-over-heels to get to you (we all know of the awesome power of the grapevine!). Next, you want all those who have discovered your blog to make some money!

Create a battalion of affiliates who will make sales and find more affiliates who will make even more sales thus generating huge revenue for you! But ensure that none of your Facebook friends or Tweets at any point in time feels that he or she is a mere instrument to grow your online business. You must recognize them as your ‘friends who you found through Facebook or Twitter’!