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By Bradley Hess in Featured

BlogAs you sit down to write a blog you need to ask yourself – who is going to be reading this and how can I help them? As I have mentioned in several of my blog posts the trick is not to create something with the intent to “make” it go viral. The trick is to create a blog that contains valuable information and is well written and then it will go viral. This same principle applies when looking to increase your readers’ interaction. Interaction increases continued readership.

Target Your Audience

I have a good friend who owns a helicopter flight school and when he sits down to blog he is communicating to an entirely different audience than you or I may be intending to communicate with. With this in mind make sure that you are targeting the correct audience. If your blog is geared toward an audience looking for information on kite building, you won’t want to write a post that directs most of its attention to model airplane building. You may want to write a blog comparing the similarities and differences between the two, but the main goal of the blog post should be appealing to your readers’ main interests.

You may want to write a list of questions that you would be interested to know the answers to if you were new to the niche which you are blogging in and answer those in a blog post or two. Make sure that your blog posts do not wander from the main subject. The more on target your posts are, the more likely your readers are to return to your blog and share it with others they know. Blogs are meant to be dedicated to one subject such as professional networking, vintage car restoration or triathlon training.

By Kalena Jordan in Featured

We all hate email overload. Web-based email programs like Gmail have built-in smart spam filtering and advanced labelling, but you can still miss important emails if you receive hundreds per day.

In an attempt to solve this problem, Gmail software engineers have today launched the Priority InBox.

Basically, this is an advanced sorting tool for your incoming mail. Your new Gmail InBox will be divided into three sections: Priority InBox (unread), Starred Emails and Everything Else. Based on a variety of signals about the importance of an email, Gmail will flag it and move it to the top section of your InBox, giving it priority over all other mail.

For example, if you are in daily email contact with a person, Gmail will determine that emails from that person are important and should always arrive in your Priority InBox.

You can also manually promote or demote emails to/from your Priority InBox by using the “+” and “-” buttons provided. You can use filtering to control your Priority InBox and you can customize the three InBox sections to suit your needs.

The longer you use Gmail, the smarter the Priority InBox gets at sorting your mail. From the official blog post:

“Gmail has always been pretty good at filtering junk mail into the “spam” folder. But today, in addition to spam, people get a lot of mail that isn’t outright junk but isn’t very important ‘bologna’, or ‘bacn’. So we’ve evolved Gmail’s filter to address this problem and extended it to not only classify outright spam, but also to help users separate this “bologna” from the important stuff. In a way, Priority Inbox is like your personal assistant, helping you focus on the messages that matter without requiring you to set up complex rules.”

In a side note, news of Priority InBox was leaked early, despite a strict media embargo that was meant to be in place until this evening. Maybe it’s just me, but a media embargo seem ridiculous in the age of social and real time search. A media embargo from Google, the foremost advocates of social and real time search just seems ludicrous. But anyway, I digress.

While internal Google staff and some BETA testers have been trialling Priority InBox for some months, the feature will begin rolling out to all Gmail and Google Apps users over the next week or so. You’ll know if you have the new feature if you see the “New! Priority Inbox” link in the top right corner of your Gmail account.

By Fauzia Burke in Featured

twitterI have a confession to make: I was not an early adopter of Twitter. To be honest, I didn’t get it. I didn’t get the language. It seemed like a string of links to even more things I had no time to read. It felt overwhelming. LinkedIn and Facebook made sense as a perfect extension of networking I was already doing, but the charm of Twitter eluded me.

Sound familiar? I hear the same thing from many people, but what I discovered when I actually engaged on Twitter has turned me into a devotee. Twitter has been one of the greatest learning tools of my career.

If you are hesitant to join Twitter, you are not alone. However, I want to encourage you to give it a shot. Set up an account, follow some people and learn some things. People on Twitter are very generous with their time and knowledge. Yes, you will spend time on Twitter that you already don’t have, but you will also learn things that will make you more valuable, smarter and “in the know.” I use Twitter instead of Google for information gathering, and it has made me more productive.

Change is all around us, and the only way we can move forward is to change together and collaborate. I am still a newbie, but if I have inspired you to try, here are some tips to get you started:

1] Come up with a goal for trying Twitter. Is your goal to interact with the media or journalists? Is it to gain exposure for personal branding in your area of expertise? Is it to learn from others who are experts in their field? Or is it to increase traffic to your Web site or blog?

2] When you sign up, complete the profile as fully as possible. Add a photo, short bio, user name and real name. People want to know who you are. Your bio should reflect your goal. Make sure you include the URL for your site, blog or Facebook page.

3] There is no need to panic if you don’t have a ton of people following you. If you post good information, people will find you slowly and steadily.

4] You may have multiple goals for Twitter, feel free to have multiple accounts. At our firm we have 11 accounts and each one has a different audience and purpose.

5] Start off by sharing your knowledge. I bet you know a lot about your industry and your business. Think of Twitter as a great way to share that information. If you read something helpful, share the link on Twitter and let others benefit from your find. Generosity is a good business practice.

6] Because we are limited to 140 characters on Twitter, you will need to learn about shortening URLs. I use a site called Bit.ly because it helps me track my shortened URLs. Or you can use a web site called Hootsuite which allows you to shorten URLs, track them and manage multiple accounts. It’s kind of like the Swiss Army Knife of Twitter.

7] Learn the common abbreviations. We created a helpful postcard for our clients. Please feel free to print it for yourself.

8] If you read something you like on Twitter, remember to retweet it. It’s a great way to give credit to people who are putting out good information. If you want to join the conversation, use reply.

9] Follow people you already follow in other ways: Journalists you admire, comedians who make you laugh, or authors who inspire and teach.

10] Be a good community member. A good rule of thumb is to have a 4 to 1 ratio for self promotion. One self-promotional tweet to 4 that will help others or engaging in the community through reply or retweet.

If you are new or nervous, follow me on @websnapshot and we’ll learn together. My goal for this feed is to learn and share good ways to integrate social media and web publicity. Along the way, I share resources and tools with my staff, increase exposure for my clients, get business ideas, and collaborate with smart people. I post links and articles everyday that help me be better, and I hope they will help you as well.

FSB Associates will increase the awareness, sales and long term visibility of your books with our unrivaled online book publicity. We have been promoting books and authors online since 1995. You can trust our experience!

By Andrea Carless in Featured

bloggingMicroblogging; it may sound small due to the “micro” word; but I tell you; it’s one of the giants on the internet when it comes to traffic, promotion and sales for your blog. You must know which microblogs can give you the best benefit.

Without even visiting the web-page, a good Keyword Analyzer will have a module that will tell you whether or not links on the page use “NoFollow” tags. This lets you avoid you from wasting your time on building links from sources where you receive no search engine benefits. It’s otherwise known as Follow or No follow.

Let’s proceed to what makes microblogging so attractive, not only to marketers, but also to customers. The fact that the fewer words make them easier to read, understand, and digest. Another is that readers get to be curious about the microblogs, since its brevity only allows for teasers and promotions. If done right, microblogs can attract large traffic into your site.

Let’s look at the top 5 giants when it comes to microblogging:

1. Twitter.
Tweeting is now the trend. And no, it doesn’t mean making bird-like sounds. Twitter is a microblog which allows people to post status messages, called Tweets. Twitter’s interface was made to be user-friendly.

2. Plurk.
Plurk is a new player when it comes to microblogging but it’s faring well. It attracts many people, especially those that would like a visual representation of their microblog posts, which Plurk provides.

3. Jaiku.
Obtained by internet storm, Google, Jaiku was first obtained in 2007, and has since been closed to users first to start with the beta testing.

4. Pownce.
Another one that’s very similar to Twitter in the way it presents its microblogs, is Pownce. However, unlike Twitter it has a 140-character limit.

5. Spoink.
Crazy name, lovely microblogging platform. Spoink allows microblogging from mobile phones. While this may not be considered an innovation since many microblogging sites are already ahead of that, but Spoink is one up above the rest because it allows podcasts to be featured from everywhere.

Now, affiliate marketers should seriously consider going into microblogging. Before you proceed with microblogging; first weigh your options whether it’s important for you and your business and whether you’ll target the right audience.

For affiliate marketers and the like, microblogging is one of the things you would want to get into. With the certain age groups that it targets, the customers might probably be into microblogging sites. So just from there, you can already see what a big prospect market, microblogging sites can be. Aside from that; it can help build up your site’s awareness and also add up to your credibility.

Also, if you are too busy to scout for updates about the other sites that are relevant to yours, you can also get generous updates from microblogging sites too. Given though, that you do take time to do the search required to do just so. Aside from that, microblogging sites help expand your business and gain some contacts or followers.

So now that you have seen and read the importance of microblogging; you ask yourself where you can get more information?

Market Samurai is ultimate dream tool for your SEO needs today. Get high quality back-links, increase your site’s traffic and visibility and best of all; get to increase the general performance of your site with just this one Keyword Finder software on hand. Download Your FREE Copy of Market Samurai and Laser-Target High-Traffic, High-Profit, Low-Competition Markets With Devastating Accuracy => www.MarketSamurai.com/c/freetrialdownload.

By Steve Shaw in Featured

articlewritingWant to know how to get a quiet person to talk your ear off?

Ask them about something that they are passionate about– A hobby, their work, their favorite author or musician.

When you have the chance to speak about something that you are passionate about, you can talk for hours, and it feels like minutes.

I’ve noticed this with myself–some of my best articles about my niche are the products of spontaneous conversations I’ve had with people who innocently asked me something that I am very knowledgeable and passionate about.

Whenever I find myself in one of these conversations, I think “This would make a great article!”

When you are doing article marketing, you are always on the look out for new and compelling article ideas. The ideas listed below will help you generate more conversation oriented topics.

1 – Think of yourself as an ambassador for your niche.

Wherever you go, no matter if you’re enjoying some leisure time or are officially “at work”, always be on the look out for someone who needs more information about your niche.

Even if you think that person will never become a customer or buy any of your products, still take the time to give them information that will help them succeed.

An ambassador lives to spread truth about his or her niche. This takes you out of the position as sales person (which can be a turn-off to others) and puts you into the amiable position of “the go-to expert”.

2 – Plan how you’ll answer this question, “What do you do for a living?”

This may be a very simple question for most humans, but for those of us who own internet businesses it can be a tricky question to answer outside of the context of the online world. Let’s say someone in the offline world asks you this question–what will you say? How can you explain what you do in a way that they will understand?

Here are some pointers I’ve developed:

*Instead of rattling off some obscure title or description that no one in the outside world would understand, talk about the type of people who you help and what you do to help them.

*Force yourself to avoid technical lingo–use language that your grandmother would understand.

*Speak about your general field, rather than about your specific business, at least at first. Remember, you don’t want to send any “I want to sell you something” vibes (because you really don’t want to sell anything–you’re just having a conversation).

As an example, I would say that I help business owners market their websites. That is something that someone from the offline world can sink their teeth into, and it will lead to other questions. Many of the conversations that you have about your niche with newbies or folks outside your field are excellent fodder for your articles.

If you are going through a writing slump or just want a fresh way to generate article ideas, I have an assignment for you.

STEP 1: Turn off your computer and go out where people are. Go to a party, a coffee shop, the gym, the grocery store–anywhere where you can encounter live humans.

STEP 2: Put on your ambassador hat. Smile at people, be open and friendly. Engage them in conversations. If someone talks to you, be interested in them and ask them questions. The point is to provide fertile ground for conversations to develop. No pressure here–just be yourself.

STEP 3: Did any article topics arise from your conversations? Sometimes you can take the simplest question that someone unfamiliar with your niche asks and turn it into a helpful article. No topic is too simple!

Do this, will you? What’s the worst that can happen?

At worst you will have enjoyed a break from sitting behind your keyboard and staring at your monitor. Sometimes that in itself is enough to jump start your creativity and inspire writing ideas.

For more info on how you can use article marketing to reach thousands of potential prospects for your website, go now to http://www.submityourarticle.com/report . Steve Shaw is an article marketing expert and founder of the popular article distribution service www.submityourarticle.com used by thousands of business owners.

By Chris Gustafson in Featured

Starting an Internet business can be tough. Especially if you have never owned your own business in the past. Not only that but your family and friends can discourage you from ever starting your business!! They will tell you, that only a few people ever make any money and it is a HUGE waste of time!

Sadly, though they may be half right. Unfortunately, only 2% of the people who ever start an Internet business will make any money whatsoever. The people who do make money online are not any more skilled that us…NO! Instead they were fortunate enough to know the 5 great lies of Starting an Internet business.

1. Starting An Internet Business Is Expensive

An Internet business can actually be started for ZERO cost! That is why this is the very first great lie of Internet business. When you are getting started in your online business you can start with something as cheap and simple as affiliate marketing. Affiliate Marketing cost you nothing to get started, and your only job is to drive traffic to a website that you don’t own. Then once people purchase a product from that affiliate website, through your link, you get a commission. And here’s the best part: There are MANY free ways you can learn about to drive traffic to a website.

2. You Can “Get Rich Quick” With An Internet Business

Many people have a “Get Rich Quick” mentality when they first start their Internet Business. These people think that having their own Internet business is easy and does not require any work. Do not believe this because it is a fools hope.

Often times the people you see who are “overnight successes” on the Internet, have spent months if not years perfecting their business. Very rarely will someone truly be a “overnight success”, and when that does happen, it is almost all luck. So the bottom line here is, your Internet business is exactly that…..a business! Treat it like one, work diligently on it, and never give up. Success takes time.

3. You Must Know HTML, Programming And Graphic Designing In Order To Start Your Business

I have to admit that this is one thing that held me up a little personally. I am NOT a tech savvy web guru by any means. In fact, I could not put together a web page if you held a gun to my head. However, what I found was that there are people who are willing to do this for you…..for cheap!

Sites like Elance, and Odesk are sites where you can hire people to do all of this work for you. And here’s the best part, it’s really cheap! Most of the bidders at Elance and ODesk are from India and will be willing to do the programming work for you, for as little as $6.00 per hour!

4. You Don’t Need To Know How To Sell Anything

Think about the logic in that statement above. It doesn’t make sense. Of course, you need some salesmanship abilities! How on earth do you plan on selling things on the Internet without being able to sell? Now don’t panic, if you don’t currently know how to sell. This is all stuff that can be taught. However, you must go into your Internet business with the knowledge that you will need to learn how to sell.

5. You Don’t Need To “Build A List”

Have you ever heard the phrase “The Money Is In The List”? Building a list is essential to having success with a Internet business. Without a list, you won’t make any money! Building a list is important because it builds your list of people that you can market and sell to! Not only that, but you can sell to the same people multiple times.

The 5 great Internet lies listed above are all things you must know and accept. You have to be smart in order to really achieve success that you could possibly imagine.

Success is like enlightenment. It is a path and not a destination.

Now that you know what the 5 great lies of starting an Internet business are, you will need to know how to actually start your Internet business. If you click on the link below you will be taken to a FREE 5 day course on starting and building your very own Internet business. No catch, just great free information. Click on the link below now!

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By Kalena Jordan in Featured

googleRemember when Google promised us they were getting close to being able to provide search results in real-time? Well this week they’ve cracked it.

In an official blog post, Google announced real-time search results are now available. But instead of being integrated into regular search results pages, real-time search has been given it’s own home – a dedicated page for people to conduct searches in real-time.

You can also access Realtime Search by clicking the “Updates” link in the left-hand panel of normal search results. The results appear as a constantly refreshing stream. Your Google Alerts also work with Realtime Search so you can be sent updates for your target searches within minutes of them appearing in Realtime Search.

We’ve been able to see some real-time results in SERPs already, with social search results containing recent Twitter posts and Facebook status updates, however being able to isolate real-time search results from regular organic search results is extremely useful, especially if you are looking for information relating to an event in a specific location or a developing news story.

A couple of handy new features allow you to refine Realtime search results by pinpointing results by location or time and you can even see entire conversations to get context about any topic.

For example, the political situation in Australia is currently in turmoil as the country faces a hung parliament as a result of an election draw. Political developments are in flux and it’s difficult to keep up to date. If I conduct a search for “Australian election” using real-time search, I can see tweets from as recently as 1 minute ago and news stories posted within the last hour.

Realtime Search and updates in Google Alerts are available globally in 40 languages, and the geographic refinements and conversations views are available in English, Japanese, Russian and Spanish. To learn more, visit the Google Realtime Search info page.

By Jill Whalen in Featured

contentWhen you review the keywords from which people clicked to your site, are they only peripherally related to what you offer? If so, your website is likely suffering from BlindWebsititis!

What Is BlindWebsititis?

BlindWebsititis is what happens to websites when those in charge of their content don’t come right out and say exactly what every page is all about. Instead, they use only corporate jargon, non-descriptive copy, or – in acute cases – no copy at all. It’s a horrible condition that affects hundreds of thousands of websites every year. Sadly, the pain of BlindWebsititis goes well beyond the hurt to the website itself; it often spreads to site visitors who have to try to guess what the company offers.

Even search engines aren’t spared from BlindWebsititis. Their symptoms include the miscategorization of the afflicted websites because there’s no way for them to assign relevant keywords.

Rather than dealing with the pain of BlindWebsititis, many users click away from infected sites as quickly as possible, in search of healthier ones that clearly say what they’re offering.

By John Sylvester in Featured

The advance of social media discourse could be harshly described as a continual distraction, containing noisy encumbrances of rapidly-sampled psychotic diatribes from multiple silos. This, it is said, is one of the profound questions about the narcissism of the modern psyche.

In Nick Carr’s recent book, “The Shallows”, he explains how the printed book served to focus our attention, “promoting deep and creative thought”, while the ethic of the internet is a post-industrialist mentality of “speed and efficiency” and “optimised production and consumption”. He argues we have become ever more adept at “scanning and skimming, but what we are losing is our capacity for concentration, contemplation, and reflection”.

The cultural criticism of this book sparkles with vignettes about how Friedrich Nietzsche wrestled with a typewriter and how Sigmund Freud dissected the brains of sea creatures. But in “The Stuff of Thought”, Steven Pinker, a Harvard professor of psychology, believes human beings are more than capable of adapting to the current flow of constant digital information and stimulus, just as they adapted to other forms of media.

So, which is it? Do we control the amount of information that we absorb and, if so, what benefits do we actually derive from social media discourse?

This is taken at random on a Saturday afternoon from The Nation’s website, one of Thailand’s English-based national newspapers. And we find the following: veen_NT: @lickmymango your typo is terrible but LMAO. veen_NT: @babyfishie I hope not but will be on alert;-) veen_NT: @qandrew lol- me bad. need more chillax;-) babyfishie: @veen_NT Are you going to be a designated driver again tonight?

Breaking news at its most profound. And contemplative and reflective? Take this from Stephen Fry: “V touching article about what it means to play football with your father. Not that I ever did!”

New forms of media, Pinker says, “have always caused moral panics: the printing press, newspapers, paperbacks and television were all once denounced as threats to their consumers’ brainpower and moral fibre”. And he takes issue with Carr that Twitter and the internet are making people dumber by literally rewiring their brains, so that we can no longer think deep thoughts.”

If you have an issue with not playing football with your father in your mid-fifties, Carr seems to have the upper hand at this stage.

But, on the other hand, Pinker sees the internet and social media such as Twitter as digital distractions that are not necessarily making society dumber. In fact, he concludes by saying: “far from making us stupid, these technologies are the only things that will keep us smart”.

A Microsoft tweet alludes to agree with him: “Want to personalize your Win 7 desktop? Make a rotating slide show of your favorite images.”

Slideshow, by the way, is one word and judging from the way teenagers write their tweets, you would think none of them, even university graduates, have spent more than an hour or so on spelling and grammar.

Then there’s an article by Peggy Orenstein in the New York Times, “Twitter is changing how we interact with the world”, in which The Guardian writes: “She describes sharing a beautiful moment with her daughter, but how her experience became split between enjoying the moment and the impulse to split off and tweet about it.”

Now you have to admit that’s a sad indictment about the compulsiveness, a psychosis almost, of social media interaction.

Further, it goes on: “Back in the 1950s, the sociologist Erving Goffman famously argued that all of life is performance: we act out a role in every interaction, adapting it based on the nature of the relationship or context at hand.

“Twitter has extended that metaphor to include aspects of our experience that used to be considered off-set: eating pizza in bed, reading a book in the tub, thinking a thought anywhere, flossing.

“Effectively, it makes the greasepaint permanent, blurring the lines not only between public and private but also between the authentic and contrived self. If all the world was once a stage, it has now become a reality TV show: we mere players are not just aware of the camera; we mug for it.”

Shakespeare would be surely moved by the metaphor. And reality shows are an abhorrence tantamount to warbling Thai karaoke at three o’clock in the morning.

So I suspect she’s referring to narcissism when The Guardian continues with: “Each of us chooses what we present to the outside world, crafting a public identity – a identity that we want other people to see. Every tweet, every Facebook posting, every Flickr upload is part of reinforcing the image we want people to see. While she says she can’t give Twitter up, she questions the expense of that compulsion to post: ‘When every thought is externalised, what becomes of insight? When we reflexively post each feeling, what becomes of reflection? When friends become fans, what happens to intimacy?’”

And then, into the arena comes the businesss bully. Let’s be honest, the real reason I’m writing about this is not to internally elucidate personal identity or provide members of my own race with any kind of insight and knowledge but, cynically, to keep pace with my competitors on Google. So when I read about the meaningful business merits attributed to its cause I tend to skirm, as some might be doing already.

For my next trick, stage left comes Brian Solis, author of the book “Engage! The Complete Guide for Brands and Businesses to Build, Cultivate, and Measure Success in the New Web”, in which he states that social media has “democratised influence, forever changing the way businesses communicate with customers and the way customers affect the decisions of their peers.

“With platforms like Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook, anyone can now find and connect with others who share similar interests, challenges, and beliefs-creating communities that shape and steer the perception of brands. Without engagement in these communities, we miss major opportunities to shape our marketing messages.”

Belief-creating? Sounds alarmingly evangelical.

Personally, I don’t really know what to think. I use Twitter because I understand that Google likes websites that tweet. Because of Facebook I’m meeting an old friend next weekt I haven’t seen in past 30 years. So neither platform can be completely discounted.

And I can still just about digest an Ian McEwan novel during a tropical rainstorm, so my input into the social media scene has not “dumbed me down” as Mr Carr and his peers would like to have us believe.

V9 Design and Build (http://www.v9designbuild.com) produce tasteful web design in Bangkok, Thailand, including ecommerce shopping cart solutions, with functionality that allows owners to set up and maintain their online stores.

By Kelley Robertson in Featured

networking2Networking is a critical skill sales; after all, the more people you connect with the more you sales opportunities you create. However, many sales people make a variety of mistakes that prevent them from maximizing the power of networking. Here are ten blunders and mistakes you need to avoid.

1. Attending the wrong networking events. When I first started my business I attended as many local networking events as I could fit into my schedule. However, I quickly noticed that I encountered the same people at these events-other small business owners out looking for business. These people were not my target market and very few of them interacted with the type of decision-maker I usually worked with so I realized that I was going to the wrong events. Get the most from your networking opportunities by showing up at events that your prospects attend.

2. Waiting for people to introduce themselves. Let’s face it; the vast majority of people are reluctant or hesitant to approach strangers. However, if you take the initiative to introduce yourself to others you will be perceived as a person of authority and power. Not to mention that the other person will be relieved that they didn’t have to make the first approach.

3. Spending too much time talking. One of the most fatal mistakes is to dominate the conversation. If you truly want to make a great impression, limit the amount you talk to no more than 40 percent of the airtime. Remember, networking events are not the appropriate setting to sell your solution. However, they are perfect situations to uncover potential sales opportunities.

4. Failing to ask other people questions. The most effective way to create a connection with someone is to ask them questions about their business and what they do. Ask them about the challenges they face and what they enjoy most about their work. High-value questions encourage people to share information and help you position yourself as an expert and a great networker.

5. Becoming distracted by other people. Have you ever had a conversation with someone who constantly watched the room instead of paying attention to what you were saying? If so, you likely felt ignored and unimportant. I also suspect that you would not refer business to that person. Don’t make the same mistake. Pay close attention to every person you meet and learn how you might be able to help them.

6. Focusing on your self-interest. This follows the last point. If you make the effort to find out how you can help someone else, the chances are they will reciprocate. In the words of motivational guru, Zig Ziglar, “You can anything you want in life if you just are willing to help enough other people get what they want.”

7. Failing to articulate your value proposition. I once spoke with a small business owner at a networking event and after a 20 minute conversation I still had no idea what she did because she was unable to clearly articulate the purpose of her company and her ideal client.

8. Failing to establish a connection. Effective networking means connecting with people. Although you will not connect with everyone you meet, you can improve your results by making great eye contact, smiling, asking questions, and showing interest in the other person.

9. Executing the “meet & move” strategy. We’ve all encountered the person at a networking event who introduces themselves, gives you their business card, asks for yours in return, and immediately moves on to repeat the process with another victim. You get much better results by connecting with a small number of people rather than trying to meet as many people as you can.

10. Failing to follow-up afterward. Post-event follow-up is critical. However, don’t make the mistake of calling someone three months after a networking meeting and saying something like, “We met a few months ago and I thought I’d touch base with you.” This approach simply does not add any type of value to the relationship. Here two follow-up strategies to consider:

i/ When you meet a potential customer, arrange to contact them shortly after the event. Mark it in your calendar and make sure you contact them on the agreed-upon day and time.

ii/ After you meet someone who is NOT a prospect, look for opportunities to refer business to them. You can also help them by sending articles or information related to their business.

Networking effectively can have a dramatic impact on your sales providing it is done correctly. Avoid these fatal networking mistakes and improve your results.

Kelley Robertson, author of The Secrets of Power Selling helps sales professionals close more sales at higher profits. Kelley conducts workshops and speaks regularly at sales meetings and conferences. Get your FREE copy of 100 Ways to Increase Your Sales by subscribing to Kelley’s free newsletter, “59 Seconds to Sales Success” at www.Fearless-Selling.ca. Contact him at 905-633-7750 or Kelley@Fearless-Selling.ca.

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