Relationship Marketing And Cagora
Author: Ric Raftis

Cagora is a new social networking revolution based around Web
2.0 and sooner or later there will be thousands of businesses
joining this site in order to promote themselves. The most
obvious reason will be that it costs them nothing to do so which
is consistent with other social networking sites. The difference
with Cagora however is that it provides the ability to have a
business profile, upload photos, upload articles, upload videos
and soon to come will be audio as well.

Because Cagora is divided up into Local Worlds, such as the
area you live, and Worlds of Interest, such as music and
business opportunities, Cagora will provide enormous power for
users to drill down to local and specific interests for search
purposes. This is something that Google cannot offer.

That is just an introduction to Cagora as a site, but what I
really want to talk about here is marketing on Cagora and how to
go about it.

Cagora, like most Web 2.0 sites, attracts users who are not
very receptive to the advertising flog. Those days are over,
gone and finished. If you want to build your business online,
then you need to look at the power that only relationship
marketing can offer.

Articles are a great way of marketing, there's no question
about that, but you must provide quality content and not a sales
pitch. Internet users are looking for information. If they want
advertising pages they can generally find plenty in the
letterbox every day.

So what do I mean by relationship marketing?

Relationship marketing is simply building relationships with
prospective customers and clients through the provision of
quality information and content. Writing articles that surround
the thrust of your business establish you as an expert in your
field. Writing ten or so such articles that can be easily found
with you as the author provides you with such a profile and
prospective clients develop respect for your knowledge and
expertise. Then when they do want to buy, who do you think they
are going to call? Are they going to call you, a person they
have come to "know" as an expert in the field they are seeking,
or are they going to ring the biggest ad in the Yellow Pages? I
certainly know who I would be calling.

My business is web design. I could write an article on "How To
Select A Quality Web Designer", or perhaps "Why World Wide Web
Consortium Validation Is So Important". Quite frankly I could
think of a myriad of articles I could write establishing my
expertise, but they still don't tell people how to do it
themselves. As a mate of mine put it yesterday, "It doesn't hurt
to give people the ingredients, just don't give them the
recipe". Effectively, the more ingredients you can write about
and promote, the more you establish your reputation.

So, to summarize, forget the old ways of trying to shove your
product down people's throats. Use articles and content to build
your reputation as an expert in your field and you will
establish lasting relationships and long term customers.


About The Author: Ric Raftis runs his own web design business
at Bushsong Web Design at http://www.bushsong.com.au. Ric is
also an active Cagora contributor on his Local World at
http://bendigo.cagora.com