The Power of Social Networking . . . 193 be anything—get creative! Many of your colleagues will cheerfully give you enticing electronic gifts for you to dis- tribute to your clients and customers, because it expands their own bases. As you get busy with social networking, I recom- mend an outer- planet strategy. 吀栀at means giving away tons of free useful information on your topic. Just keep giving. In fact, you might give away 80 percent of your information up front. I know that sounds high, but here’s how people think: “Wow, if this is the free information, the information I have to pay for must be incredible.” 吀栀ey see you’re the real deal. 吀栀ey get hooked on your free advice and get excited to participate in what you are doing. 吀栀is is monetizing the social network. On one hand, we’re dealing with a new technology, but on the other hand, many of the things that have always been true of business are still true here, such as the importance of building relationships with your customers. Coming onto a social networking site with guns blar- ing, pasting your Amazon URL into every post so that people will buy your book, is a strategy for burning out your friends. Just a note: if you can get word of mouth (a buzz) going about you and your book and message, you won’t have to depend solely on the customer who has just purchased from you. You want to keep building and expanding your