Guest Post By: Juli Monroe

A question I am asked frequently is “should I engage in face to face networking or social media?” I don’t see any reason why it needs to be an either/or question.

Networking is about building relationships with people you know, like and trust. It’s hard to build a relationship with someone you’ve never meet face to face (though it can be done), but social media is one of the easiest ways to maintain a relationship.

Let me give an example. A few weeks ago, I was meeting with a mortgage loan officer who has an interesting way of helping realtors fill their pipeline. Obviously, he wants to meet realtors.

So I started thinking. Who do I know who is a realtor? I have a client who is. Obviously he was the first one to come to mind. There was one who almost became a client last month. That contact was still pretty fresh, so I thought of her. Next I thought of the realtor who used to be in a networking group with me. We haven’t spoken in a while, but seeing someone every week for more than a year does make an impression. Then later in the day I remembered someone who was briefly a client early this year. We haven’t spoken since, but I thought of her because she recently friended me on Facebook.

See how it works? The person I see weekly was obviously first in mind. Someone I saw about a month and a half ago was next. Someone I saw weekly two years ago was next. And the person I only met with a few times might have been forgotten except that we recently had contact through social media.

This is a pretty good example of how you really do need multiple touches to build enough of a relationship that your name is triggered. And a mix of in-person and on-line can be effective to keep and build that relationship.

So how do you “network” through social media? Pretty much the same way you network face to face. Have a clear message. Communicate it effectively. Remember to give as much or more as you receive. Stay in touch with people. And do it consistently. For example:

1. Have a clear message and communicate it effectively.
This can accomplished through Twitter, a blog and/or an e-newsletter. It’s one thing to say “I am great at what I do.” It’s another to show it through becoming a thought leader in your industry or profession.

2. Give as much or more as you receive

This is commonly taught in face-to-face networking, but it holds true in social media as well. And social media gives you so many more ways to give. You can post an interesting link on your Facebook page. You can retweet an interesting article on Twitter. You can answer questions posed on social media sites, and you can respond to cries for help. One of my ex-clients was looking for a place to fix her bike. She posted the question on Facebook. I responded with a friend who could give her a referral. Think she’ll remember me when someone needs my services?

3. Stay in touch with people

Remember my example at the beginning? The people I remembered first were the ones with whom I had the most contact. But the person I am connected to on Facebook also came to mind. Watch the running feeds of your friends. Comment on their lives. Invite them to share in what’s happening to you. To be effective as networkers, we need to stay in touch with a lot of people. It’s hard to consistently do that in person. Social media can be a real time saver. But don’t fall into the trap of only interacting on-line. As human beings, we do need face-to-face or voice contact.

4. Do it consistently

Don’t sign up for Twitter and never tweet. And don’t set up a Facebook page and leave it blank. If you blog, decided on a schedule and stick to it. It’s frustrating to find a really cool blog, start reading and then have the author vanish. We’re not going to remember you if you friend us on Facebook and then never use it.

Really, face to face networking and social media follow the same principles. They just implement things a little differently. Someone probably mentored you when you started networking, right? Then find a mentor in social media as well. How? Find some people who seems to know what they are doing. Follow them and watch what they do.

Please Visit Juli Monroe’s sites
Juli Monroe, ACC
Networking Coach and Trainer

www.1to1Discovery.com/weblog

http://twitter.com/1to1Discovery 

P.S. If you would like to be a guest writer please contact me. http://Twitter.com/RichCurrie

Please tell me you’re not still trying to get op-ins with offering a free 7 day course!

Or for that matter a 3day course. I see so many other “so called” Internet marketers offering all sorts of course to attempt to get op-ins.

First off let me say you do need to build your list! It is very true that the money is in the list, but today it’s all how you go about it.

Let me just tell you why offering a 7 day course is not the hot setup anymore.

Today we live in an instance gratification world, where people want information now, not over time! So a course over time is not attractive anymore to most people.

Then there is the “I lost interest factor”. Let say you signed up for a 7-day course and you open up the first lesson. If it is a good course you may open the following days lesson too, but I can tell you that around day 3 or 4, you don’t even remember why the hell you ordered the damn thing in the first place.

For the most part this could have a negative result on your op-ins as many may just op –out.

So lets get to what will produce results!

You need to have a good “LEAD MAGNET” to attract people. If you don’t know what a lead magnet is, or the best way to use one, you may sign up below and I will send you some great info on what they are, and the most effective way to use them to build your list.

Okay, what you want to do is answer the big question that everyone has on his or her mind that is a hot button issue in your niche.

For example, say you are in the weight loss market, then you should write a report that offers good, and real information about how to lose weight or how to keep it off etc.

You get my point here right? Give them something of value that’s going to really help them and give it to them NOW right up Front!

Another way of doing this is to give them something for free that has value. This is the ultimate trust building tactic. For example, I heard Ryan Deiss tell a story about a weight loss site that he has. He used a FREE body mass index calculator for the lead magnet.

How cool is that! Think about that for a minute, if you were looking for info on weight loss and saw that offer, would you op-in? I know I would.

So now you need to take some action and develop a real good lead magnet for your op-ins.

Remember to always test what you’re doing! More on that in another post or email!

Wishing you all the best success!

~Rich

I have to tell you that many people are missing the boat when it comes to making some money on the Internet!

What if I could teach you a very simple way to make money without any hype, would you listen?

Well I would sure hope so! If you didn’t you would be a fool.

So here it is:

It’s called AdSense. Most people know what it is but for those of you that don’t I will tell you very briefly. If you have ever seen the little ads on sites when you have been looking around the web that says “ads by Google”? Those ads will link to an Adsence site, and you will get paid every time a person clicks on them! If you need more info on this just let me know and I can help you out!

Okay, so here’s the deal.

DO NOT throw your nose up at this idea! I know people personally that are making over $2000.00 a month with adSense site! (Imagine paying your mortgage or car payment)

I personally do very well myself!

I have even refined the process by creating a website template product that you just drop your content into and you’re ready to go! 

 http://www.prowebsitemaker.com/csssalespage.html

I have been teaching people how to build online business for a long time now, and most people need to see some success when they start out! Most people will fail because they just don’t understand the process. I can help you with all that good stuff if you like, but just get started with some AdSence sites and watch the money start to come in every month!

This will give you the encouragement you need to move on to greater riches.

Contact me if you would like more info on this, or any other marketing and SEO questions you may have!

See ya next time!

Rich Currie

Follow me: http://twitter.com/RichCurrie

 In order to be successful on the Internet you must fully understand how to pick niche.

For more info check out http://www.thewordofmouthforum.com
and http://www.prowebsitemaker.com

In order to be successful on the Internet you must fully understand how to pick niche.

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Remember Our Mastermind and One-On-One coaching can make the difference!

So many people today seem to be confused about what a site should look like. Should it dazzle its visitors with allsorts of JavaScript or fancy Gif’s and JPEG’s, or beautiful flash?

Well here’s the problem. You may think it looks cool, but the search engines could care less. You see, the content and the keywords and all the tags need to mach the criteria that the search engines are looking for. If you don’t your site runs the risk of being ignored.

What huge kick in the pants for you or the designer that built this beautiful website! Another one of life’s lessons I guess!

This is really a struggle between art and science. You see the person that builds your site (the web designer or you), will be looking at the way the site looks. But this will clash with the roll of the Search Engine Optimization person (SEO)

You really need to look at this as two separate jobs. The problem is that some folks are having the web developer fulfilling both roles. If you are the person wearing both hates here than there are some very important things you need to know.

Here are some tips that I hope will get you started on the right track of optimization before, after or during developing.

Content

How many times have we heard it’s all about the content? Or. Content is king. Well it is very true because optimization is all about the text. The search engine robots are text driven. That is to say they are looking at you text and content. But don’t over look the HTML. Search engines still want to see basic tags such as; h1, h2, meta tags, title tag, etc.

Remember SEO will help improve your search engine results but will not guarantee you top ratings.

Don’t get discouraged. You need to be patience when it comes to seeing your site rank well. Search engines need to find your site and then crawl it to determine what the site is about. This can take upwards of a month on average before all the major search engines complete the indexing of your site.

Before you start

Take some time to think about what your website is going to be about. Write down all of the stuff you think you want for your content. Then go back and edit it. It will help if you have someone else read it too. This will give you some good feedback.

Next. Start working on your keyword and keyword phrases. These will identify the unique quality of your website. This is an area where most beginners tend to skip or don’t fully understand just how important this step is. If you don’t choose the right keywords for your niche or product everything else is just a waste of time as you will never drive much traffic to your site from organic searches.

Keywords

Keywords are highly competitive in most cases depending on your field of choice. Using two-word or three-word, maybe even four-word, phrases makes optimization less frustrating. A keyword phrase (keyphrase) helps your website as being unique.

Keyword Density

The density formula is D = WC/KC (D = density; WC = word count; KC = keyword count)

For major keywords target 3-7% density
For minor keywords target 1-2% density

Keyword density measures how relevant keywords are in a page. The formula density = word count divided by keyword count will provide a general idea of the density percentage. For major keywords try to keep the density between three and seven percent. For minor keywords keep density between one and two percent. Try to optimize between five to ten keywords per web page.

Now that you armed with some knowledge here don’t get quite and stuff your keyword in your meta tags or in hidden text. These are old tactics and can get you banned from the search engines.

Meta Tags

The meta tags are important although some will disagree. Meta tags have fallen out of favor because these tags used to be the magic solution to optimization. Not anymore. Keywords and content are more beneficial in getting a web site in top rankings. However, meta tags are still important. Meta tags are a part of the HTML and are used by most search engines to find a description of your website.

Therefore, no question about it, use the meta tags for description and keywords. Place these meta tags below the title tag on your page.

<title>~</title>
<meta name =”description” content=”~” />
<meta name=”keywords” content=”~” />

The keyword meta tag helps you keep track of the keywords and having these meta tags give a small boost to search engine ranking. While it is true that meta tags do not perform the magic they once did it is better to have the tags than to have none. As far as we know now Google does not pay any attention to these but many other, not so popular search engines still do, and this can be another source of links back to your site. Look at it this way, they my not help you that much but if done correctly they will not hurt you.

Title Tag

Make sure the title tag is unique for every page because every page will or should have different information regarding your website. Therefore, some pages will have some but not all of your total keyword list. For example, let’s say that your web site provides information about fishing; one page has data about trout fishing and another discusses places for great trout fishing.

The name of pages should also have keywords like troutfishing.html or great_places_for_troutfishing.html.

Optimizing any website takes some knowledge. But it is not rocket science once you know some of the basic fundamentals. You must also understand that SEO is always changing so you need to stay up to date on the latest stuff.

For more info on SEO check out HOW TO USE SEO