In this third and final post of the series, we look at relationship marketing and sum up all valid points

Internet Marketing has always had very little human interaction involved – with everything prewritten, prearranged and published without really truly connecting with the end user. At last, bloggers now have an awesome opportunity to correct this anomaly. We can generate traffic via our blog’s unique content that is best of all free.

If you are a blogger and are not too into social media using Twitter, Facebook and even Youtube, when will it be the right time?

We had the advantage of starting out with personal blogs so majority of us are comfortable with being human online unlike so many internet marketers who are not into social networking.

Somehow, I think Internet Marketing is the last of the Web 1.0 dinosaurs to become extinct. You can count the number of internet marketers who put out free content. They are too few. They only have huge lists they pitch to and do not much thereafter in terms of human relationship building. What better proof of this fact than the competition to bid for traffic using Google Adwords etc?

Internet Marketing is so Methuselah and PPC advertising, while it is effective bears the stamp of “Strictly Business; No Relationship”

A new era has dawned.

Gone are the days of reading an attractive sales page loaded with carefully crafted long sales pitches and testimonials designed to alleviate your doubts and objections until you buy because who you don’t know, you don’t trust – and these guys want to get you to buy at all cost.

Welcome the days when people buy based on the credibility a blogger has built and the resulting trust that readers have in him or her.  Bloggers gladly talk about an area of interest for free. The readers feel as if they know the blogger once they resonate with him.

Besides, the reader has invested time reading the blogger?s posts and free reports. He is also signed up to his mailing list. He’s seen the blogger on different social networking platforms and might even know about his personal life. So, it is only natural to want to buy when such a blogger recommends a product. He does this armed with an arsenal of trust and the blogger gets rewarded for being a real person adding real value to real people.

Relationships are the future. So do testimonials not matter anymore?

Not really, testimonials still do – a lot. It is just that now, by building relationships, your social network gets to give spontaneous testimonials about you to others in their social network naturally and there is nothing plastic or shady about that.

This is the Federal Trade Commission’s biggest marketing tip to discerning bloggers about how to earn from their blogs. Web 1.0 internet marketers on the other hand are either pulling out of the game or reprogramming their minds to fit into the new order.

We bloggers have the advantage of time and relationship building experience. We just need to keep doing things right and incorporate earning money into what we do without being on the wrong side of the law.

One thing is certain. Not all bloggers will take action and only those who do will be able to survive and thrive.

Group Reflection

In rounding up, here is the summary of the Blogger Awareness Series:

1. Invest your time and expertise in building a quality relationship with your blog’s readers and investing in their emotional and intellectual bank accounts by doing the following:

• Adding value for free;
• Leveraging on a mailing list;
• Using social media (networking and bookmarking) to promote your blog;
• Commenting on various blogs;
• Building your personal brand.

2. Develop a relationship with bloggers, within and without your niche. Of course, do a lot of guest posting with them to increase your traffic.

3. Form what Napoleon Hill said Andrew Carnegie did – Form a mastermind group to help each other succeed now and in the future.

4. Earn from your blogs you are not Santa Claus and do it on the right side of the law. Ignorance is not an excuse