You may have heard before that you want to use your social advertising platforms as an avenue to demonstrate your expertise, and give your customers an incentive to buy from you. It's important that you are growing relationships with people, and nothing will hurt you more in the long run than having your social networking sites look like long sales letters. But I have a confession to make...

You do want to give away free content, BUT you want to make sure it's always content that is giving people the idea that they need your product or service. I see a lot of mistakes made in selling on social networking platforms, so I developed a little tool that will help you promote your business online. Let me explain to you the underlying principles to this, you'll want to do what I call, the Four Sparks:

• Spark their Attention - Figure out what your client desires, and then give that to them in free content.

• Spark their Interest - that means being relevant to your niche, and interesting your client in the types of services you offer.

• Spark their Desire - Using the same rules as getting their attention, your content should be painting a picture of what life is like when the desire for what you offer (your product or service) fills a need in their life.

• Spark their Action - You have sparked everything you need to make them think they actually need to use your service, and slid under their "sales radar." You'll have available links and sales pages set up for when they're ready.

Make sure you incorporate all four of the sparks. It doesn't matter if it's done in one post, or multiple posts, as long as you have all of the elements in place. Make sure that people understand that your expertises are the best solution to their problem.

So... We're still giving away free content... Just doing it in a way that can "spark" social advertising. Try and figure out how you can implement the Four Sparks for your company, and then get to work on your social advertising! Remember, subtlety is key here, people hate to only read sales related posts on a social networking page, and will quickly move on to someone else. Your goal is to slide under someone’s "sales radar" with social advertising. Unlike direct advertising, social networking websites are designed for indirect sales.

• Jerry Nihen