Managing Information Overload? Make Your Learning Easier With A Mentor

If you are new to online marketing and internet business, it’s possible that you finding it hard managing information overload that is around these days. If you look around in your particular niche, you can find many experts who can mentor you and help you to learn more quickly and help you to get the most valuable information relevant to you and save you a bundle of time and effort. Learn as much as you can from them and tell them what you are doing, not what are going to do. That way you will get the best advice and be able to shorten your learning curve and get success faster. My mentor always wants to know what I’m doing so that it’s possible help to correct any mistakes or help me to tweak things to make them better.

Develop A Daily Routine

Get your marketing and daily schedule properly organized so that you can drive the traffic to your site and be able to make money regularly and build you email lists to help you to develop relationships and market to your new prospects. Organizing your time will help you to avoid being lost in the “super highway” that is the internet and enable you to get the proper branding you need. If you are in network marketing, the most important branding is YOU, otherwise it’s branding of your particular product. Don’t think that by just putting up a website you can get more leads, you need to learn from your mentor what is required to get the traffic to be able to nurture your success to greater levels. In order to develop leads / customers you need to be consistent and adopt your daily routine. If you have a low budget and need to save money, make sure you get your mentor to go through the procedures to market online for free. When you start making some money, it’s important that you put together an advertising budget to help you develop further and more quickly.

Track Your Results

Whatever your advertising method, free or paid, the most important thing you need to do is to track your ads. That way you can find out what works and what doesn’t. Then you can change the ads that don’t work, keep the ones that do and tweak the ones that work a little so that nothing is wasted. Your mentor should be able to point you in the right direction with all of this.

Take Notes

Make sure that you always take notes and take action to adopt what you are taught by your mentor. This will help you to improve as a marketer and also improve your skill to mentor your team members. You will be able to provide the same great training that you have received that helped you to succeed and therefore attract more people to you. Sharing what you know and providing value will increase your popularity and make people want to know more about you. Help everyone to prosper and develop just like you have done and your business will be the cornerstone of a wonderful future.

Effective mentoring will help you to gain in confidence and develop into a great leader in your organisation. This will then enable you to be able to mentor others by adopting what you have learned and sharing it with your team members so that their business can grow, which helps your business to grow.

Share Your Results Openly

Don’t be afraid to tell others that you are doing well. What you have learned from you mentor that has led to your success will encourage others to come to you to help them to succeed. Show your results and PROVE that you can help those around you who have the problems you have now got the solutions for. Having been mentored by an expert and then prospering from that, become a mentor yourself and share your new skills and help others around you.

Be Confident In Your Ability

Present yourself with confidence and be positive. The right mindset will boost your success too. Share what you know and share your success. Show others that you have been successful in building your business from scratch with little or no money, but remember to do this honestly and show proof. People don’t like hype and lies. Be truthful and share success, however small. That way you will enhance your credibility and get more business.

 

You can promote your business both online and offline. Offline you can distribute business cards, send out flyers and generally advertise your skill to anybody, anywhere you want. Let everyone know you started on a small budget and have made a success and that you can help those who are interested to do the same. Your mentor can help you develop the online skill to do the same bu adoping all the methods available to you. Develop social networking skills and building relationships. Provide value in the marketplace and prepare to be successful.

Your mentor can help you to sow the seeds, but you need to cultivate the crop.

I have always been told these three powerful words that you need to do in this order:

Read, Learn, DO

Barrie Evans

Attraction Marketing And Leadership In MLM

I have a short video for you today to discuss a method of attracting prospects to you and developing leadership in MLM and being an authority in your subject. Positioning yourself as a leader and attracting new prospects / leads to you is the lifeblood of your business and when your "warm market" has run out, what do you do next? Here is a simple strategy that can help you to get where you want to go and develop more leads, using attraction marketing principles that you can use both offline and online.

Go here to see Attraction Marketing and Leadership in MLM

I hope this is useful to you.

Barrie Evans

Blind, Autistic Pianist - Absolutely Brilliant!!

Would like to recommend a video on YouTube based on the talented blind, autistic pianist and mindset for business.

The Blind, Autistic Pianist.. Brilliant

Have you heard about the young, extremely talented blind and autistic pianist?

I was watching the TV news and there was a piece about him and the new especially composed concerto that he is about to perform. I was amazed to see his wonderful talent and his fantastic ability to play any piece of music after only hearing it ONCE!

What does this say to me?

I remember when I was young and learning to play piano that I thought it was nearly impossible to learn the music to play without the score in front of me. I was even more convinced when the piece was long and complicated. I also remember being completely in awe of those brilliantly talented concert pianists who had remembered the music and played it perfectly. It wasn’t because I couldn’t learn to do this, it was because my mindset was not right and I didn’t train myself to do without the score. The score was something I depended on and I didn’t have belief in my ability to throw it off the piano and play the piece without it and use my own memory and power of the mind.

As I moved on and later joined the band, I learned to play without music because it was more professional. All of a sudden the blockage had gone and I could learn music quicker and do without it. I was even more able to “play by ear”. Yes, the more difficult the piece of music, the harder it was to learn by heart, but setting aside my previous mindset and adopting my new belief in my ability to do this I succeeded. Even now after not playing regularly for several years, I can still remember things.

What can we all learn from this?....

That the human mind is the most powerful tool we have. If you get yourself into the right frame of mind and adopt the right attitude and mindset you can achieve whatever you want to achieve.

The young blind and autistic chap has an advantage because in his own mind, he didn’t have the barriers in his life that can stop his talent and amazing ability in coming to the fore and enable him to have such enjoyment from his talent and give so much pleasure to others by entertaining us with his brilliance. Unlike him, a lot of us have so many things to stop is from achieving what we want because we believe we can’t do it!

The mind is powerful and belief in our own ability is key. Putting the correct mindset and the right training all together it is very possible for us to succeed and achieve what we want to achieve. Yes, some people take to things like “ducks to water” and others take a little longer, but we can all achieve our goals if we adopt the right mindset, be consistent and have belief.

If you can consider these things in your business and look forward to better things in the future as long as you take action on what you learn. There is nothing better than generating your own leads. The first one is the first milestone, then adopting the techniques I have learned (and still learning) you can achieve greater things.

Remember – the only people who truly fail are those that QUIT!

To the future

Barrie Evans

The Benefits Of Social Networking For Business

What are the benefits of social networking for business? As we all know, the main function of social networking is to allow members who have similar interests to communicate with each other. Because of the popularity of this particular resource these days, you can take advantage of this valuable tool to promote your business.

Business Promotion

With social networking sites having so many ways for you to promote your business for free, with fan pages on Facebook for example, this resource is a potential gold mine if you can use them properly. The opportunities to promote your business for free are limitless provided that you add value and build relationships and don’t “pitch” your business straight to your new found friends. Most people dislike being bombarded with business offers and sales jargon. If you build relationships and ask questions of your new found friend, find out what they need and then offer a solution to their problem, you will be successful and get them to join you or buy from you. Studies show that people who know and trust you are more receptive to a familiar face rather than saying yes to a stranger.

Join More Than One Social Network Site

You should get onto several social networking sites as possible. To start with you will need to sign up to become a member, and then create a profile page to let people know all about you. Keep your profile as personal as you can because people buy from people, but also show people you are in business. A personal photo of you smiling or enjoying something with your family is good because it shows you are a real person. Put a company logo onto your page by all means, but keep things simple and focused on you.

Using Information to Your Advantage

Use the info section to tell others more about you and your business. Put links to your website in there and promote yourself and your business by offering VALUE to your potential new friend. Tell everyone what you have that could solve the problems them may have, but don’t overdo things. Position yourself as an expert and offer advice to those who ASK you for it. That way your popularity will grow and you will start to obtain leads for your business and get sales.

Once you have updated your status a few times and get the hang of the site and it’s terms and conditions, you may be able to include some useful links to your blog posts or website that offer valuable information to your friends. Keep this information to your own personal page. Don’t go and post to your friend’s pages directly marketing your business because that is unethical and can be considered downright rude. Remember that whatever you post on your page is usually shared with people who want to hear from you because they are your friends and have given you permission to contact them.

Join Relevant Groups

If possible look for relevant groups based on the subject of your particular niche. This will enable you to find out what others are taking about and what the other member’s problems are. You never know, you could have the perfect solution they are looking for. It is also possible that the information contained in the group will give you ideas so you can develop and add new products.

To grow your client base or prospect list according to the type of business you are promoting, keep adding value and quality content. This will help get your stuff shared more and your popularity will grow and so will your business.

As well as the most well known social networking sites, do a search for other sites that are relevant to your niche. That way you don’t have to search for the people who may require your services, but you will find more people who are already looking for your type of service on networks that are relevant to your niche.

Because you add value and show you have solutions to problems people may have, your reputation will grow and your authority in your subject will be recognised, giving you every opportunity to build your business successfully.

Social Networking is a great tool to promote your business. The best thing is that it is usually free because the owners of the social networking sites know that they can obtain revenue from advertisers so they don’t have to charge for membership. You can take advantage of paid advertising within the social networking sites, but you can also benefit from social networking for your business free if you keep to providing value and quality to your friends and followers.

To be seen as a successful and an expert in your niche, make sure you put in the time and effort to get noticed. Social network is not the “be all and end all” to promote your business online, but is a useful tool in your effort to grow your business and get leads and customers.

Here’s to your future success

Barrie Evans

How to grow in business online - be disciplined

If you wonder how to grow in business online, it’s important that you are disciplined in your approach and most of all consistent.

Daily Routine

One of the first things you need to do is to plan a daily routine and stick to it. Write down your plan, put it front of you and take action every day. It doesn’t matter what marketing system you want to adopt to generate leads, whether you use paid marketing techniques or free or a mixture of both, a daily plan is vital to progress.

This is where self discipline comes to the forefront of the strategy and the mindset you need to adopt to work towards your success. If you are disciplined in your approach and are consistent in your actions, you are more likely to see success because your content will be noticed and you will get people to want to know you more.

Social Networking

You can use social networking, such as Twitter and Facebook, but remember that you still need this discipline and consistency to progress and generate targeted leads for you to build a relationship with. One thing to remember in these cases is to lead with value and provide valuable information. Don’t just wade in with a pitch to join you in your business. A lot of the time you will be ignored and blocked. It’s much better to provide value and get to know the person you want to connect with by asking questions and building rapport with them on a personal level and build trust. You can ask pertinent questions that lead to you finding out what type of help they may need or what solution you have for their problems. This will generally lead to a better relationship and a better chance of them joining you in your business or becoming your customer.

Discipline and Consistency = Growth

If you carry out your daily routine no matter where you are, how you feel or whatever you have to do then your success will be quicker. Don’t think that there is not hard work required – nothing comes to those who wait. Every business, on or offline requires effort to be successful. The main difference between offline business to online is that you can put in anything from 30 minutes to 2 hours daily concentrated effort into your online business based on your plan to create a growing online presence. Traditional offline business takes a lot more time and concentrated effort over a longer period to achieve what is possible online.

Discipline and consistency will help you to succeed. Don’t expect to get rich quickly, but you can expect riches over time. It’s wholly possible to replace your income and earn a full time income online without being “rich” as you may perceive the meaning of rich. Where you are rich in this instance is that you have more freedom. You have freedom to spend more time with your family and do things that others in a regular job never have time to do.

Discipline and consistency carrying out your daily plan will lead to such rewards for you. Yes, some do achieve wonderful success and riches quickly, but these people are driven and have been lucky in some ways to have been “in the right place at the right time” to quote the old cliché. They have one thing in common with the theme of this article though, they are all disciplined in their approach and consistent in their work towards the success they now enjoy.

To the future

Barrie Evans

Want To Go Blogging For Profit? Great Tips To Get You Started.

If you want to go blogging for profit, there are a few things you need to know before you start on this venture. In this article there are some very useful tips to get you on the right road to create a money making blog.

Blogs in general are like the search engine’s best friend. Why? Because they offer valuable, fresh content on a regular basis and therefore more relevance to the subject each blog is based around. When you have decided on your particular niche and the content theme of your new blog, you need to research your market to see if the competition is strong and whether or not you can compete in that niche. As soon as you have completed your basic research, then be sure to take everything discussed here into consideration to ensure your success.

Blogging for Profit Tip #1

You need to have a professional and businesslike attitude so treat it like you would any other type of business. If you want your blog to be profitable you need to be consistent and post new content every day so that you can share this around many social media sources and get traffic to your site. This doesn’t mean you have to hire employees or outsource work to get this content to your site if you can’t afford it. That is more relevant to you when you are earning some money. The most important thing to remember is to provide VALUE and useful information for free that will entice your readership to become leads. You can generate leads for free from your blog, but be prepared to invest some money on order to advertise and promote your new site to help you achieve the success you want.

Blogging for Profit Tip #2

Put together a business plan. This is important because you can hold yourself to account and make sure you carry out the necessary things to progress. Be specific and write down your goals for each day. A daily strategy is important for your success. Ask yourself some questions first though, such as:

·         How will you generate income?

·         Who are your visitors?

·         What percentage of visitors are likely to click on ads or buy something?

·         How will you get traffic to your blog?

·         What is your marketing plan?

When you know the answers to these questions, act on them. If you don’t know the right way to do this, go out and find a course to help you. You may find it useful to invest something in your education and get yourself a mentor who can help you through the best ways to progress your marketing to be successful.

Blogging for Profit Tip #3

Don’t just rely on FREE, because it isn’t always the best way. Blogger.com and WordPress.com have made it easy for anybody to start a blog for free and each provide a great service. There is nothing wrong with using free blog services to learn about blogging, but use them to help drive traffic to a site that you have control of with your own domain name and hosting.

You can still use a platform such as Wordpress because the system is free, but you get the coding and freedom to develop and brand yourself without potential restriction. Getting a domain name and hosting these days is not a great expense if you shop around and are willing to invest a little into your business. In fact the benefits far outweigh the disadvantages and cost much less than starting a traditional business

Using the free services you will have less control over your blog if you host it on those sites. If you stray from the terms and conditions it’s possible they will remove your blog without any warning, leaving you high and dry without your source of income.

Blogging for Profit Tip #4

Monetize Your blog. There are several ways people use to generate income from their site. One of the main ways is by selling affiliate products. This is where you get a percentage of each sale for selling someone else's product. You will get a special link that identifies you as the seller, so they know you made the sale.

Another good way of monetization is using Google AdSense. You sign up for their program, then add a snippet of code to your blog. They will then add targeted ads, and you get money every time one of your visitors clicks on an ad.

I hope that you find these tips useful and I wish you good luck in your future business.

Barrie Evans

The Importance of Lead Generation in Network and Internet Marketing

Lead Generation in Network and Internet Marketing.

It doesn’t matter what your business is, Lead generation is vital to build your business. If you are in internet marketing or part of a network marketing company, you need leads to be able to grow and prosper.

I have found a very useful resource that helps internet and network marketers to generate more leads by offering some of the most valuable training I have seen.

Check out this short video.

Useful Things To Look For Before Joining A Network Marketing / MLM Company

There is still some doubt around that is shown by people when offered the opportunity to join a Network Marketing / MLM company. Even though there have been laws to protect each one of us from “pyramid” schemes, it’s surprising how many scams there are out there that help to fuel these doubts. There are many successful people out there who are working with legitimate Network Marketing / MLM based companies, so there is no need to have too many doubts as long as you do the proper research. Whatever your reason to try to work a Network Marketing / MLM business, whether it be to earn extra income, have more time freedom, create a full time income while only working part time or any other personal reason, it’s important for you to look at each company to check it out. One basic thing to look for is the time the company have been trading and, if possible, check out their reliance to pay you. Each Network Marketing / MLM company is usually licensed by the government to ensure that they practice proper business.

The main reason for most people is to earn more money and make their fortune. One thing to remember is that there is no such thing as “get rich quick” – this is where most of the scams are derived from. There is work to do as in any other business, but the rewards are much greater if you make a success of it. So, if you want to live your dream, don’t believe that the fastest way to earn is the best. One particular story I heard from one of my mentors recently was about a person he met who was homeless and destitute. The man had just been released from prison, and was asked why he was in prison in the first place. His answer was overwhelming – he had been dealing drugs for a lot of money, all of which had been taken off him, and then sentenced to a very long stretch in prison. He had been released due to being stabbed in the leg and also because of good behaviour. The moral to this story is that he chased the money and was worse off because it was only short term. You need to look for a solid and stable source of income that will grow rather than give you an instant amount and then fail.

What to do to be a Success

Mainly because of the economic situation these days, many people are looking for ways to build a new business with a Network Marketing company or starting an online business. If you are seriously considering either or all of these options, first you need to get some useful information. Here are a few tips to get you started:

Develop the Right Mindset

Before you can be a success in any form of business, you need to have the right mindset and determination to do “whatever it takes” to build that success. Remember that the only people who fail are the ones who quit. There is a learning curve you need to follow and get through to get to your destination. Careful planning is necessary so write down what you want to achieve and do it. Do it daily like clockwork because this will lead to success. If you are planning on using the internet, this is vital because results come when you get seen and arouse people’s curiosity and therefore they want to find out more about you. Developing the right mindset will help you to progress further every day. Don’t get disillusioned because you don’t see instant success, keep doing what you do and you will get success. If you give valuable content to your leads and website visitors you will get their information. Some people can do this in a short time, from hours to days, but a lot of us take a little while longer. Provide value to the people who have requested information from you and you will start to get conversions to join you in your business or purchase an affiliate product or one of your own products you have developed.

Successful People Are Usually Passionate

A great deal of successful people have a real passion for their business. If you are passionate about your product and believe in it, then you are much more likely to learn more about the products you promote and become an expert. If you know just a little more than the people you are training, you can position yourself as an expert and your passion in your field of expertise will drive you to keep on learning and training your prospects. If you wish to work on the internet, there is a minefield of information that you can be overwhelmed, so be careful to research properly.

Consistency Is The Key To Success

To enable you to achieve success as quickly as possible, you need to work consistently. Construct a business plan and a daily action plan and stick to it. Don’t overanalyse because this can kill your business. If you have something to share, share it. If your content is valuable to people and you know it will help somebody have a better day, don’t worry about it being perfect in every way because this will take up so much of your time. Get the content out there. Be consistent with your marketing, emailing your list and everything associated with your business plan and results will come. If you need to work on your education, then do so, but get things done EVERY DAY.

Remember these 3 words (as said to me by one of my mentors when discussing the same subject of education):

Read, Learn, DO

Here’s to your future success.

Barrie Evans

Help Your Home Business Success With A Mentor

Thinking about a home business?

Wondering how you can be a home business success story?

All of a sudden there is a great deal of things to consider when you start a home based business online or offline. You are faced with so many Network Marketing / MLM Opportunities these days as well as affiliate programs and many other systems that are flooding the market these days. The thing to remember is that, like any other business, you are on a journey to achieve your goals and if you can find a mentor, then you can be closer to achieving that end.

There are many ways to work for yourself, here are a few of the main ones:

To sell your own product or service and keep all the profits.

Purchase Private Label Rights (PLR) to sell someone else's product that you can test, tweak and brand as your own, keeping all the profits.

To and sell someone else's products as an affiliate to earn a commission and maybe earn a second tier commission if the program is set up that way to get residual income.

Join a Network Marketing Company to build a business that offers residual income on a monthly basis.

Residual income is income that keeps coming in month after month, year after year, from work you do just one time. You could sell a recurring membership to a customer enabling you to receive a commission every month thereafter.

If in a network marketing / MLM type structure you can leverage income from other people’s efforts as well as your own. Leveraged income is very powerful and can increase your income using the power of the network.

These days so many people worry about their pension provision and the security of their job, so opportunities to earn more money are greatly sought after. If this could lead to financial and time freedom then that would be the ideal solution wouldn’t it?

Whatever your reason to look to start a home based business, and whatever your financial situation, a mentor can help you build an online income over time. There is no such thing as a “get rich quick” opportunity because they are not solid and lasting. The best opportunities take work and effort to produce results. An Internet business is simple, but requires dedication and consistency. There are a couple of questions which can help to be answered by a mentor.

These may well be:

How do I know if being my own boss and working on the internet is for me?

How do I choose what kind of business to start?

How will I know if I’m doing things right?

A mentor can guide you in the right direction. This is because it’s likely they have experienced the same difficulties that you may face and help you to get round them without any problems. A good mentor will have the solutions ready for you rather than the problems you may face on your own. Your mentor can recommend programs to you that they found useful to them so your learning curve is progressed faster. They will be available to you for any questions you may have and help to guide you through the process.

You may have to pay a mentor to further your education in whatever marketing system you wish to employ, or by far one of the best ways is to seek out a great Network Marketing Company with a solid foundation, find a good leader to work with and you will be mentored by them. If you are working online and offline in this type of business, you may have to have more than one mentor to help you. I have found this to be the case because sometimes two different opinions have helped to improve my knowledge and effort.

If you want to do affiliate marketing, your mentor should be able to help you to find the right program to promote. These programs are usually ones that they use themselves and are happy to share with you. As a general guideline, you should make your choices based on products in which you have personal interest, the programs' track record and recommendations from entrepreneurs who you admire and respect. Research your market carefully.

Whichever way you decide to progress your business idea, consider getting a mentor to help you. They can give you the best advice to get into the right programs for you and help you generate leads for your business to build good relationships with and grow your business.

Barrie Evans

Facebook Marketing Tips - What To Do And Not To Do

If you have your own business and are on Facebook, I have some useful Facebook marketing tips for you to help you to build a business relationship with new prospects using Facebook as a business building tool.

You may think that these Facebook marketing strategies are pretty straight forward, and they are, but it’s amazing the mistakes that people make if you are not careful. I hope these Facebook marketing tips can help you to alleviate any potential problems that may arise.

It’s important to have the right mindset and take action if you don’t want to get left behind. There are many businesses using Facebook to market their products and grow their business, which is increasing the competition. If you think that Facebook marketing doesn’t work, or you’re too late to get a slice of the action, think again. With over 500 million people on Facebook and growing daily, there are some potential prospects or customers there for you as long as you do things the correct way. Of course, if you use Facebook you will know that your message will not only go out to your friends, but to their friends too, which increases the power of the beast.

In a nutshell, if you use Facebook to market effectively and efficiently, you will get results converting friends and fans into prospects and eventually to sales or sign ups to your business opportunity. This is not based on how long you’ve been on Facebook, but HOW you use it.

In order for you to get started in the right way, Here are some basic “do’s and don’ts” that you can use right away.  Start by implementing good practices and eliminating the bad, and then you’ll begin to brand yourself as an expert in your subject as well as someone who provides real value.

If you can brand yourself in this way you will get more fans and followers who’ll come to you for more advice because they trust you. Using your own unique personality, talents and continually growing skills will set you aside from many others who don’t spend as much time branding themselves in this way.

Tip #1

DO use a photograph of yourself.  It’s important to “be you” and show you’re a real person. Your photo should reflect this, so if you feel being more formal initially is more relevant to you, use an appropriate picture of you in a suit and tie. If you are a naturally smart, but casual person who is more family orientated, then get a family photo and show lots of these of you having fun.  If you’ve got a photo of yourself with a well-known person in your niche, use it, because this will add more credibility to your personal branding.

DON’T use an avatar or a picture that isn’t relevant to you, unless it directly relates to your niche.  If you’re a dog lover, you can use a photo of You and your dog together. The most important thing for most people is that they feel they can get to know you personally. This is less likely to happen with a photograph of a beautiful sunset (unless you’re in it) or a cartoon teddy bear.

Tip #2

DO fill out your profile with as much personal information so that you can paint a little picture of who you are and what you have to offer your friends and fans. Include a link to your fan page, blog, Twitter account or anywhere you provide value. Whatever you do, providing VALUE is the key. It may be better to use your personal profile as personal to just good friends, but you can still include links etc.

DON’T use your profile to directly market your product to your friends. This will ultimately annoy them and you could have your profile removed by Facebook. Also, doing that will lump you in with the rest of those people who blindly jump in just to tell you how brilliant their business is rather than providing value and showing the benefits they can offer. Your goal is to attract people to you rather than send them away. Which would you prefer to do?

Tip #3

DO create a fan page.  Your fan page will be the most important part of your Facebook marketing. It’s the place where you can freely promote your product or opportunity to your fans. Your fans have joined you to get great information and training from you, whether it is free or paid, so use this well. Your fan page can provide you with a list of highly targeted leads that will help build your brand on the internet, so treat them like gold!

DON’T just put up a page with no content or value as this will send people away from your page as quickly as they came. If you don’t know the best way to get your fan page set up, there are lots of inexpensive fan page generators that will help you create a more professional page that will help to increase your credibility.

Tip #4

DO provide VALUE. When you are looking to increase your fans and followers, you should visit other business fan pages and comment on their posts etc. Provide value to the conversation and you will get more fans (as well as using FB paid ads to get more followers). Providing value is also relevant on your own fan page to keep your fans coming back for more. Your marketing can include great free content to your fans, such as links to blog posts, and also a means to invite them to webinars and provide trainings and new tools and other campaigns designed to get a sale, but don’t get greedy with it.  Be certain to include several posts in between each offer that strictly provide value. To entice the “LIKE” to your page, find an offer you can show to your potential fan that is great value and is free. That way you can ask for their contact details in order for them to get the free gift and also to get the LIKE in order for them to be a fan and therefore become your new prospect.

DON’T go out and spread your link and opportunity all over friend’s Facebook wall, or on other fan pages. Ask yourself this – would you like it if someone came to your fan page and all they wanted to do was to promote their product or opportunity? I doubt it! Facebook is a great place to brand yourself and build credibility, but you will appear to be clueless and just another “waste of space” to most if you don’t go out and provide value as discussed earlier.

I hope these few Facebook Marketing strategies have been helpful to you. I wish you luck in your business and hope you get lots of fans and followers who can benefit from the value you provide to them.

Barrie Evans

Link Building Strategies To Help With SEO

If you have a website (or blog), then Link building strategies are vital to your search engine optimization (SEO) requirements when you start to market your business online. Link building consists of getting good relevant backlinks (links to your site from other websites / blogs) and also an internal linking structure. Here are some link building tips to point you in the right direction when building links for your site.

Your main priority, before you start to build links, is to make sure that your site has quality content and offers good information and tips relevant to your target market. If you have quality content and there is a lots of valuable information for your site visitors you will get links to your site naturally without going out searching for them. People will share your content if it provides value and is useful to them and others.

Link Building Strategy #1

One of the first ways to get backlinks to your site is to enter your site into web directories. There are many ways you can do this, including manually and with software to help you. Manually is a time consuming task and can be boring at best. A good way is to get a free directory submitter such as Fast Directory Submitter. This software has a free set up to link to 150 directories, but for a small fee you can upgrade to get 2500 links to submit to. The software requires you do this type of linking the most effective way to avoid overuse of the same site detail and description etc (the search engines may disregard the links if there too much identical content when building links through directories). The software asks for you to set up different headlines and descriptions and then rotates them to prevent your link from being ignored.

You can also enter your site details in blog directories. You can find these by a search engine enquiry for blog directories, but among the best are Technorati and blog catalog. If you can find directories that don't require a reciprocal link, then you will have a "one way" link back to your site.

Link Building Strategy #2

Joining online forums based on your niche subject is a great way to start building relationships with people and getting your blog noticed. To get a quality backlink, make sure you include your site url in your profile and signature. The higher the page rank of any forum you join the better because the link to your site will have more weight in the search engines and your site will rank better.

Go and look for other blogs related to your niche and comment on their content. Make your comment valuable, informative and interesting so that it will be approved and include a link if possible. Look for blogs within sites like Squidoo and comment there. These are useful because they are often of good page rank.

Link Building Strategy #3

Take advantage of other blogging and web 2.0 platforms to get more "link juice" to your site. You can use a service like Posterous to "syndicate" your content and automatically sned it out to social networking sites and other free blog services such as Blogger and Wordpress.com. Make sure you include your main keyword for your article in the first sentence, bold it and link to your original article on your site when you post to Posterous. Your content will be shared with the other sites you have signed up to within Posterous content sharing system network giving more authority to your article and site. Another useful resource is Better Networker. As with Posterous, post your article with the link to your site as your main keyword used as the anchortext (anchortext is the keyword / phrase made into a hypertext link to your site) for that link.

You can post your article to article directories where you can get another good link to your site. Be careful to study the terms and conditions as some won't allow a link in the body of the article, but will in a resource box, which is like a brief description of you and your interests. The resource box should prompt a click on your link, but make sure this link goes to your main site (or a lead capture page) rather than your article as in Posterous and Better Networker.This is because some article directories don't like duplicate content, they prefer to have unique content to enable it to be shared elsewhere by the readership (which will add more juice to your site because the link remains in the content as part of the terms to share your content).

If you post your article to other sites such as the directories, make sure you get your article approved and published on well ranked sites with good Google page rank. The higher the page rank the better as this adds further to the authority.

You can also get over to Squidoo and create a "lens", which is another form of blog. You can post your articles there and link back to your site. (Build links to this lens too as it will add to the authority - more about this later)

Create other content that links to your blog or even create another blog that links to your blog. And the key to making the most of this other content is to comment on other people's content. When you comment, make sure that you include the link back to your blog. It's important to remember that your comments should be informative and interesting, not simply spamming others with your link. Squidoo etc.

Another very useful site to get your content shared is Only Wire. There is a free version and a paid version. The free one is good to start with and will syndicate your content to even more places. (Make sure you leave out the sites you use in Posterous though as this may cause you problems)

Link Building Strategy #4

Make use of Social Networking sites. Considering Facebook (as the main example) has over 500 million members, think of how you can use that to develop more relationships and get your links out there. As a business it's more important that you get yourself a fan page so you can keep your personal pages for friends only and then promote your links to your fans on your business fan page (there are many tutorials on how to use Facebook and develop a fan page so I won't go into that here). You can include a link to your site in your profiles. You can also get your blog accepted into Facebooks Networked blogs.

Link Building Strategy #5

You can hold a blog contest. This is a very effective way to drive traffic to your blog and increase your quantity of incoming links. How do you do this? You can promote your blog contest on a variety of blog contest promotion sites. You can even "bribe" contestants with extra entries if they write an article on their blog which links back to your article about the contest.

Link Building Strategy #6

Internal linking is important for relevance and site structure. You need to use various anchortext in your content so that you can link this to relevant pages within your site (you can get plugins to do this for you if you have a wordpress site). For example, if your site is about landscaping and you have a page about lawns, you need to include relevant keywords and phrases as the anchortext linking to that very page and so on. Create relevant links to your pages in your site footer as well.

Link Building Strategy #7

Develop more blogs based around your subject and main keywords and put links to your main site from them forming what is known as a blog cluster. Build links to these extra sites in much the same way as described above relevantly linking to every article on those sites that in turn have anchortext links to the main site.

Link to your squidoo lens by using similar means as you should have links to your main site from here too. You can use Posterous for this by putting in a comment rather than a full article as described above. The alternative way is to say something like "have you seen this great article about..... (whatever) on Squidoo (or wherever)" linking from the anchortext to the article or lens / blog as necessary. You can also use this method to get links to your articles in the article directories too. This creates links to content that in turn link to your site - great "juice".

Link Building Strategy #8

This strategy is not recognised as much these days, but you can still get a useful link to your site.As soon as you have a good amount of quality content on your site you can approach other site owners and request a reciprocal link, which is a link that you in simple terms swap. It can be valuable the closer the relevance to your site you exchange links with is to yours. There are tools available online to help you find potential partners, but the personal touch is always beneficial to build relationships.

If you follow these tips your link building will be ultimately successful, but be aware that it will take time and consistent daily work to get the "juice" needed to get to the top of the search rankings.

Til next time

Barrie Evans