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One of the objections I often hear from people is “I don’t have time to network online!” but do you have time to

* Professionally Network
* Find a new friend
* Share your ideas
* Build your business
* Market yourself
* De-stress?

What about:

* Elevate yourself as an industry expert
* Establish connections in other industries
* Increase the efficiency of your networking
* Offer introductions to your niche-experience on a daily basis?

While online networking is not the “end all, be all” of making personal connections, it has one valuable strengths that very few real world venues have- economy of scale.

If you have the time to introduce yourself to one new person a day, wouldn’t it make sense from a business perspective to take that same amount of time and be introduced to fifty?

When I write this article or post to a forum, my thoughts are communicated to dozens of potential contacts, perhaps even thousands. If I went into a coffee shop with the expectation that I would have to say the same phrase over and over again to a hundred different people as I look for a good connection, it would take me days of effort. I would spend the entire time trying to expand my network with little result. In my best real world opportunity, I would attend a networking event where I may have the chance to meet people in groups and who are willing to listen to my message.

Considering how much time I wasted in the real world trying to connect with a hundred people as I restated my statements and repeatedly asked for permission, the basis of networking online is that readers have given me permission to talk to them and they assemble in groups for me. If I am sharing thoughts of interest, they are actively engaged with what I am saying. I don’t have to approach them and get a cold shoulder, its more like I am talking to a group of people at a cocktail party and they come into the conversation by their own choice.

The beauty is, this cocktail party is happening 24/7, 365 days a year.

That has amazing relevancy. Readers choose to join the conversation. I don’t bend their arm to listen. If they find value, they start talking. If they don’t, they move on. For decades marketing has tried to force the idea of “opt-in mailing lists” for physical and electronic mail, as well as frustrating us with the need of “do not call” lists to maintain our sanity on our personal phones.

Case in point- Right now, I have no control over whether you are reading.

As an industry expert, imagine the power of sharing your ideas and thoughts. People who are interested find little bits and pieces of inspiration and insight, and they either join the conversation or move on. Blogging attracts people as it is one of the only true “opt in” medias. If you don’t like what I’m saying, go Google someone else!

If you are interested, join my conversation.

Take Biznik as an example of “economy of scale”. There are 10,000 members browsing through the site and pondering different ways to connect. If I had to assemble 10,000 people in real life, my first challenge would be to actually listen to all 10,000 people.

30 seconds per introduction X 10k members = 80+ hours of introductions.

When I think about that time, I realize that my elevator pitch needs to be refined to an exact art and that I need to remember to pack a few bottles of water.

Now compare that to writing on the community forum or blogging this article. It took me thirty minutes to write this. Over the next few weeks several hundred people will read it.

Every single person who actually strikes up a conversation with me after reading it is pre-screened and wants to have a more in-depth discussion. On top of that- they can look at my existing social media testimonials to discover even more about me, and when they do contact me they have taken the burden of responsibility to find out who I am, rather than me taking the responsibility to tell them.

By taking the time to put myself out there in the online world, every real life interaction coming from this conversation is pre-qualified and interested in what I do. As time goes on, every introduction I have online becomes a growing archive that adds to who I am. Unlike a conversation I had over dinner last night, this very article will attract interest from readers six months later. Even when I am sleeping peacefully, someone may be introducing themselves to who I am.

Whether or not you find me personally or professionally interesting, I have no control over. Yet I will never know until the introduction has occurred.

My question to you-

Will you take the time to give me the information I need to find an introduction to you?

Barry Hurd is President and voice of http://123SocialMedia.com – Business Social Media. He has a history of over fifteen years working on numerous innovative efforts with online business models: past projects included NIKE, REI, TMP Worldwide, Monster.com, Superpages, Intuit, and RIS Media.

It doesn’t matter what you sell. You can still leverage social media to attract more buyers to your site, build a customer list and sell more often.

One of the biggest issues most marketers face is knowing how to attract the right type of traffic for their products, services and affiliate programs. Social marketing and Web 2.0 are here to stay for they have impacted more lives, and reached many times more people than tools such as search engines and web pages. Social networking sites are based on getting likeminded people to do good and it is possible to use the platforms to just talk to people and in the process “sell goods without selling”.

I am giving you some basic “Social Networking” tips that you can tap into them which I find work pretty well. With any marketing, it’s important to stay on top of it as much as possible. However with social networking, it’s almost a job in of itself as you have to maintain so many sites. Don’t get me wrong, the work you put in to some social networking sites can be worth your time to gain friends, followers and etc if you apply what you’re doing appropriately.

You know that what you offer is spectacular, but if other people don’t know that, you’re going to have a really difficult time growing your business. Social networking platforms such as MySpace, Facebook and HubPages allow you to form relationships with people instantaneously. In social networking your connection with people is permission based and you establish your global presence. This is just another form of advertising you and your business and for free. The advantage you have with social media marketing over the traditional marketing is that your potential customer gets to know who you are and you begin to build trust. People buy from those they trust. Thus if they do buy, it is because of you, not the company you represent nor the products they don’t desire.

Here are some basic tips to help you get started to position yourself as an expert within your business niche.

1. You would want to consider choosing a few social networks you enjoy and/or who rank the highest and stick to those. Don’t try to do them all. Otherwise you have another full time job! MySpace is number one at the moment and falling in second place is Facebook. Hubpages, Linkedin and StumbleUpon are other ones high up there to consider. A few of my friends recommend Twitter. Apparently it is rated high in the U.S. Twitter is a micro-blogging platform where you can send out short messages to your readers. You can get flashy with Squidoo where you can create fantastic looking photos or videos on your lens.

2. Don’t just sign up without planning to participate to some degree. It is your participation that gets people to know you and build trust.

3. Make sure to fill out your profile information, the real personal you so that your potential customer gets to know who you are and you begin to build trust. Photo and web links are very important.

4. Once you have set yourself up, now it is time to socialize. You may post an article that is factual, relevant and helpful to your readers on some sites.

5. Surf around for others in the same field as you and make some friendships.

6. Give positive comments or shout about their blogs or sites.

7. Post a few ’shouts’ a week and keep them public.

8. When someone follows you and asks for friendship, use your best judgment to do it back to them.

9. Keep your social networks fresh and don’t leave them outdated. I confess I fail to do this sometimes.

10. When you ’shout’ or post updates don’t make them about “come buy or view my products or business”. Instead give some relevant free tips or advice that are helpful for others to participate.

11. Set up a blog and post articles (best to write your own articles) so that others are aware of your websites. You can use Wordpress or Blogger (both are free) to shine your expertise. A blog allows you to write short articles on topics pertinent to your customer base. Just make sure you write articles that have useful content to the readers so that they will keep coming back for more.

12. Participate in community forums that you enjoy. This will drive you some traffic.

Hope this helps.

Jackie Khor is a leader in Network Marketing.Get your FREE 10-Day email Boot Camp on Home Business at http://www.resultmakemoney.com/home-business-4.html

http://www.resultmakemoney.com/blog

http://leadtraffic.resultmakemoney.com on how to set up business on the Internet

Social bookmarking is optimized for documenting and sharing lists of links to useful information. In contrast, blogs are optimized for creating and sharing content, allowing for commentary while keeping the original content intact.

It is an all-out phenomena and is growing at a sonic boom clip. Understanding social bookmarking gives you the ability to reach millions of users you might otherwise miss. Social bookmarking is the sharing of websites within an online community. Here is how I like to think of it.

This is the process of moving your “favorites” or “bookmarks” (links to web sites you visit on the web) to a web-based service like del.icio.us , magnolia , or Yahoo or Google . These services allow you to capture these links or (URLs) to their service and provide you with settings to keep the link private or to share it with others (make it public). Social bookmarking is a way for Internet users to store, share, classify, and search Internet bookmarks.

There is some debate over how important social bookmarking is in SEO, but the consensus seems to be leaning toward the idea that social bookmarking, along with many other social media optimization (SMO) strategies, is quickly becoming a serious consideration for SEO. Social bookmarking is a great way to make your posts public. There are various places to go for you to post your articles.

Social bookmarking is all about the collective voice. Most of the social bookmarking networks increase the profile of items that receive numerous bookmarks. Social Bookmarking is the flagship of the web 2.0 movement. The basic concept behind social bookmarking is similar to Add to Favorites or Bookmarks that you are most familiar with using your web browsers like Firefox or Explorer.

It is a term for allowing people to publish, categorise and share their bookmarks. Del.ici.ous uses a non-hierarchical keyword categorisation system, know as folksonomy, where user tag their links with one or more freely chosen keyword.

Social Bookmarking is definitely getting a lot easier lately, but there seems to be too many of them. Sometimes social bookmarking sites can get boring if there are not enough of good links. Social bookmarking is becoming the newest and most effective way of producing quality traffic. Social bookmarking is all about the collective voice. Most of the social bookmarking networks increase the profile of items that receive numerous bookmarks.

This is all about labeling the web, making it easier to find the content that you’re looking for by passing on what you’ve found. The labels applied to web sites are commonly known as tags, and over time a kind of taxonomy grows, whereby persistent tags help information to be aggregated and mined for information.

Social bookmarking is a free and easy way to get loads of traffic to your website. It is a new trend in search engine optimization, which has gained recognition as part of a new type of website optimization, termed social media optimization (SMO).? Social Bookmarking, also referred to sometimes as social bookmarketing, is the term used for bookmarking sites on the web and sharing them with friends.

This is certainly the wave of the future. Maybe another video on which sites to use and which sites to avoid. Social bookmarking is an emerging type of a Web service that helps users share, classify, and discover interesting resources.

The concept of an enhanced search, in which data from social bookmarking systems is exploited for enhancing search in the Web. Social bookmarking is a new fashion developed by webmaster today in search engine optimization which has brought up a new type of optimization trend called social media optimization. The idea of marketing your website through social bookmarking is also called social bookmarketing.

Todd Ash Is An Entrepreneur and A Master Of Network Marketing.To Find Out More About Succeeding Online Visit http://www.ToddAsh.com or send an email to:
toddash@getresponse.com

Social bookmarking is done by definition by amateurs. If these amateurs do not understand the importance of right tags the whole system may fail. Social bookmarking is a way for you to save your favorite bookmarks and pass them on to others. The more people in who bookmark a particular URL in a certain period of time, the more popular that bookmark becomes and the more people who will visit that URL. Social bookmarking is fine, if everyone follows the rules.

It is rocking big time these days! If you are not aware of it by any chance, read this . Social bookmarking is just one of the “newest things” sweeping the Internet. In essence, social bookmarking lets you maintain a personal collection of links online, similar to the bookmarks or favorites in your browser, but they are also accessible to others on your own personal archive page.

It is a great way to save pages you like and help others find articles, blog posts, lenses and sites you create. But what sites should you use?

Share your favorites with friends and get access to community public views. Works better than anything I have found, and compared to a normal linear list is a very easy system of drag and drop menus. Share This plugin also allows you to email the article to your friends. Below every post you will find a Share This link. Share it on a social news site. Not every article you write is going to get on the front page.

Share, discover, bookmark, and promote stuff thats important to you! Using bookmarklets, you can add bookmarks to your list and categorize them Reddit: Reddit is a source for whats new and popular online.

Tag and full text search with filter tags! User tag list and cloud. Tagging allows you to share the benefit of your research and favorite sites by allowing others to find them. However, if you wish, you can also choose to keep your bookmarks private.

Tagging, clipping, and saving are all great ways to save a group of select webpages. However, what good is all that great information if you cannot effectively showcase your findings in a concise and organized structure? Tags are simply keywords that you include when you bookmark a site. The secret to tags is that they can be searched/filtered and then filtered again and again in a hierarchical fashion as needed.

Tags may be used to organize bookmarks.

Web sites usually appreciate unexpected spikes in traffic. But if your server isn’t prepared, it can cause the site to go down. Web-based social bookmarking sites have already taken hold, especially in the consumer space with sites such as del.icio.us (pronounced delicious,) a service that was acquired by Yahoo last year. Other online social bookmarking sites offer more specialized services. Websites are marked by users of specific (bookmark) service. Some services give you access to tiny icons or buttons that can be integrated into your browser.

Web sites focusing on topics explored during the semester could be shared. Using social bookmarking to label, categorize and organize Web sites is a beneficial tool that goes beyond search engines and Web indexes for browsing the Internet and retaining important information.

Todd Ash Is An Entrepreneur and A Master Of Network Marketing.To Find Out More About Succeeding Online Visit http://www.ToddAsh.com or send an email to:
toddash@getresponse.com

Do you track the referrals you give to find customer satisfaction?

We each strive for a referral-based business, but at times it becomes a two-edged sword. Are you aware that the person you recommend is a reflection on how you believe business should be conducted? For this very reason, it is wise to follow-up with the person to whom you gave the referral.

Ask your associate the following questions:

1. Were they contacted promptly
2. Was the initial contact friendly and professional
3. Did the referral listen, add extra insight to the conversation, and take time to understand their challenges, strengths and goals to the point of being able to help?

The implication of being the referring party is the people you refer meet your standards of professionalism. Your associates will continue to look to you for leadership and advice. In return, they will refer your services to their associates. The better the referrals you provide, the stronger the likelihood of you being referred.

However the referral system is not always the picture of perfection. Sometimes the person you trusted to be an excellent resource proves to be not so.

Compounding the bad news, the person you were trying to help may become upset with your referral. If you are not active on follow-up, it will reflect badly on you. The end result will make you wish you never volunteered to help.

Do not treat the gesture of referral lightly. Following up with both parties is highly recommended. You can correct a glitch in a timely manner by asking for feedback on your referral. Your associate will be glad you checked in and care about the treatment they received.

You will quickly learn whether to keep the referral for future requests and whether or not you personally wish to continue doing business with the person you referred.

My Story
In the past several years, I was given two poor referrals. In both cases, the referring parties were contacted to let them know what transpired. The service was so inadequate I did not want anyone else to suffer the same. My feedback was greeted at opposite ends of the spectrum by each referring party.

Knowing I am a woman owned and certified business, I was referred to a consultant as being able to help me secure government and corporate contracts. The consultant spoke with me, offered to review my website and make recommendation for attracting large contracts along with a proposal.

When the proposal arrived, I was dismayed. The recommendations were based upon incorrect assumptions. Although the consultant asked for thousands of dollars for his service, he could not find the time to research my website. I viewed his deliverables as unprofessional.

I called the referring party to give my feedback on the situation. Undaunted by our conversation, he proceeded to sign a joint venture agreement with the consultant in question.

The second referral was that of our accountant who referred another service provider some years ago. Our experience was abysmal and we relayed our incident. What is most interesting is the accountant referred the same person to a mutual friend prior to us. The friend had a similar miserable experience but was too embarrassed to say anything. If this friend had provided feedback, we would not have similarly suffered.

The good news was our accountant, without any hesitancy, assured all of us he would never recommend that person again. To this day, we are loyal clients and good friends with our accountant.

Make a commitment to begin following-up on the referrals you provide, take the feedback seriously, and you may see a jump in the referrals you receive!

Elinor Stutz, CEO of SmoothSale, LLC and author of Nice Girls DO Get the Sale: Relationship building that gets results sells worldwide. She trains on her proven relationship selling techniques, speaking and her products.

Visit http://www.smoothsale.net or call 800-704-1499