Using social media sites correctly can be a powerful asset to network marketers.

These sites include MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, and Linkedin, and others.

A very important social media strategy is to brand yourself first and not your business.

When you go onto a social media site, your intent should not be to promote your business or your products and services. Instead, your purpose should be to provide value - to provide the reader with answers to their questions. Nothing more than that.

In doing this, you’re not pushing what you have to offer. By providing educational information, you are standing out above all the other network marketers who are trying to promote their products and opportunities.

You are building a relationship with the prospect. They respect you for thinking about them and not just yourself. They appreciate the information you are giving them.

I will never forget the saying, “People love to buy, but they hate to be sold.” You should keep this in mind as you market on social media sites.

Using social media sites has made it much easier for the average network marketer to compete with the “heavy hitters” on the internet.

Sending out hundreds of friend requests on MySpace every day is not necessarily the best way to use this social media site. You may collect a lot of friends, but most of them have absolutely no interest in what you have to offer.

I get emails every day from people asking me to follow them on Twitter. Sometimes, I go to their profile and find they have 50,000 followers but are following 75,000 people. They’re only following people in order to accumulate followers.

I look further and see that their tweets have absolutely no substance. They are only trying to promote their “opportunity.” I delete their request and go to the next person.

Target market selection is critical in setting up your social media platform.

Your objective should be to find people who are looking for what you have to offer.

By joining a group or participating in a forum on a social media site, you can find people with interests similar to yours. If you represent a business that sells health products, you can find a group or a forum that has an interest in health products. The key thing here is to hang out where your target market hangs out.

Find a group of people in a social media site that may have an interest in what you have to offer. But that doesn’t mean that you should start promoting your products to them. You should do just the opposite.

Your approach should be one of helping people. If you have a value-based comment to make on a forum, then make it in a polite manner. Show them you are an expert without telling them that you are.

The purpose of the comment is, not to show how much knowledge you have, but to address the reader’s specific question. I hope that makes sense, because it is so important.

By doing this, you are building a relationship with the prospect before you even talk with them. This greatly improves your chance of selling your products or opportunity to the person in the future.

Scott Hubbard has retired from 25 years as a Chief Financial Officer in Corporate America. He now teaches corporate professionals and network marketers how to start a successful internet marketing business.

You can learn more about Scott by visiting his blog at http://YourGuideToRetirement.com. You can reach him toll-free at 877-878-4036 or by email at Scott@ScottHubbard-Consulting.com.