The huge popularity of social networks has not surprisingly attracted marketers, and there is now an enormous amount of money being made on these sites. Done correctly social network marketing can be an excellent way to sell a product, however done improperly you will just anger people and end up looking like an idiot. The key to success is to understand why people go to these sites, it isn't to be sold products. They go their to meet people, and to get information and to generally socialize, if you understand that and work your marketing plan accordingly there is a very good chance that you will be a successful social network marketer.
The original purpose of social networking was to give people a way of staying in touch with friends and of making new friends with similar interests. This of course of resulted in large groups of people with similar interests being in the same place, it didn't take the marketers long to see the potential in that. Any place that you a have people with a common interest you can bet there will be people with a product to sell them and this is where social network marketing came from.
The key to being a successful social network marketer is not to appear to be a marketer. People don't go to those sites to be sold to and they usually resent it when people try to overtly sell. In order to be successful in Social Media Marketing, you will need to be much more subtle and become an active member of the community. You want to develop a reputation as a positive and trusted member who contributes and then you can subtly weave in your offers. If you don't provide value to the group people will quickly realize that you are the sole purpose of selling products and you will have no chance of success.
There are many different social networks out there, literally thousands of them so it isn't possible to target all of them. One of the keys to success is to find the networks that are related to the product that you are trying to sell. For example if you are selling a dog training video you would want to find a group that is aimed a dog owners. One of the great advantages of social network marketing is that gives you a ready made targeted market all you have to do is find the right one. Oddly many social network marketers fail to do this and simply join as many groups as they can and try to sell their product with no consideration for the type of group it is, this is a mistake. You absolutely have to tailor your product to the interests of the group, this can't be stressed enough.