How Can You Promote Yourself Without Spamming?

How Can You Promote Yourself Without Spamming?

As soon as you promote yourself or your products, you’re labelled a 'Spammer' and people run away from you as if you had a contagious disease. So, what to do?

Here’s a simple process that will draw self-qualified leads and eliminate the useless chase of people who don’t need or want your products and services.

I’ve learned this method of winning people without being pushy from my Mother.

As a child, whenever I was introduced to female family friends or relatives, I was greeted with a forceful hug and kisses that would leave a sticky red lipstick imprint on my cheeks. Yuk! I hated those unwelcome cuddles from those tall strangers.

On the other hand, my Mother when meeting with young children would start a friendly chat and would give a helping hand when possible. In no time, children would develop a real bond with her, ready to follow her and volunteering genuine cuddles.

Here’s how the same process works on the web:

Step 1: Give and build a sought-after reputation.

Contribute to the online community: To demonstrate your expertise, answer questions on Yahoo!Answers and actively participate in discussions of relevant forums and social media groups e.g. LinkedIn.

Blog: Cover issues relevant to your target market’s needs, adding your view and insightful comments.

Write content-rich articles: Share your information with your niche market. If you run out of new ideas, simply become a reporter; aggregate and sieve information, capture the essential and share your results.

At this stage, don’t try to sell. Give away your knowledge to gain credibility and trustworthiness.

Step 2: Stand back and let your audience take action.

As you build your reputation and develop relationships, people become inquisitive. At their own pace, they’ll click on your signature to uncover the Expert and on your promo links to discover how they could benefit from your knowledge and experience.

Step 3: Offer paid information to self-qualified leads.

By now, you’ve earned the rights to promote your products and services. The readers have initiated all the moves, reading your information and clicking on your links. They’ve become followers and self-qualified leads, receptive to your offerings.

Offer products and services as an advanced continuation of your free information sharing. Supporters will welcome the opportunity to step up their learning with ‘Insider Secrets’, ‘Exclusive Reports’ and ‘Proven Fast-track Programs’.

Suggestions to save time and make your efforts long lasting:

Write ‘evergreen’ content. Avoid jargon that will restrict the size of your audience and trendy or seasonal topics that will shorten the life expectancy of your content.

Systemize with Viral Marketing: Let word-of-mouse propagate your information through existing networks e.g. friends and colleagues. When possible, add ‘Email to your Friend’ and ‘Tweet’ buttons.

Use Article Marketing: Let web publishers reproduce your articles in their article directories, blogs and websites. This way, you can gain exposure to markets normally too difficult or expensive to reach.

Forget proactive strategies such as spamming, bragging and cold calling and let people come to you. Walk the red carpet instead of being rejected as a pestering hawker promoting its products and services.

Henriette Martel is a website strategist, consultant and Director of the Australian Training Guide. She is also the author of 200 Marketing Ideas for Your Website and Speed Article Marketing.

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