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.