Jason Sanders

TAG, YOU'RE IT!!!! SAY IT WITH PICTURES MEME

I've been tagged by Sheila O'Mara for this very interesting MeMe, using photos. I was a little intimidated by this task, so I let it sit for a couple of weeks, but I'm happy with how it turned out. Let me know what you think!

Here goes:

Age at my next birthday.

My favorite movie or tv character:

A place I want to travel to:

Favorite Food:

Favorite Place:

Favorite Color:

Favorite Sports Teams:

Favorite Hobby:

Bad Habit:

Well, there you have it. I think you probably GET THE PICTURE.

Now to tag 5 of my favorite, very smart members who will do a FANTASTIC job at this MeMe.

And the lucky bloggers are:

Susie Blackmon

Jared Christiansen

Cathy Tishhouse

Don Sabinske

Ron Bridges

For those I have tagged, don't forget, when you tag your 5, let them know!!! Have fun and be creative. I have to say, this was not exactly the easiest thing I have done. It was fun though!

Jason Sanders

Business Networking Specialist

Twitter has been much maligned in the blogosphere, being described as a waste of time, a leach of productivity, etc....and yet it has continued to grow and win over users by the millions. So if you've been sitting back wondering what all the hype is about and now find yourself ready to jump on the bandwagon, lest you miss something...there are a few things you need to realize.

The Twitter users that you see out there with hundreds, thousands, tens or even hundreds of thousands of followers had to start somewhere. When they first created their Twitter accounts, they were all alone in the Twittersphere, likely talking to themselves. Which brings me to my next point.

It's OK to talk to yourself (on Twitter that is). A lot of people complain that the question that greets them when they log into Twitter, "What are you doing?" sells the site short and doesn't convey everything that Twitter is or all the opportunity that it provides. And the truth is that Twitter is about much more than what everyone is doing at any given moment, but the question "What are you doing?" is a good starting point for those just getting their feet wet.

When you first sign up, before you establish any followers it's important to put yourself out there. Even if it means just telling people what you're doing. Yes, I know you're talking to yourself when you do that, but just go with it. In fact you can expand the conversation to answer the questions, "What have you accomplished?" and "What is important to you?" Obviously there's lots of other questions to answer, but this was just a couple of ideas to get your creative juices flowing.

Why would you talk, when potentially no one is listening? I'm so glad you asked! The answer to that question is embodied in the next step to establishing yourself on Twitter. Before I answer your question, let me lay out that next step. Now you need to start reading tweets of other users, perhaps even doing searches for content that interests you, and when you find someone who's writing something interesting, you should elect to follow that person. There's a pretty good chance that the person you follow will follow you back if you've done what I have described to you in the precediing paragraphs.

Let me clarify, when you follow someone on Twitter, the first thing they are going to do is look at your Twitter profile and read what it is that you tweet about. Your profile page holds approximately 20 tweets as well as a short bio and a hyperlink for your blog or website. If you decide to start following people before you even write a single tweet, a large number of those you follow will not follow you back, because it isn't obvious what you're up to, who you are, what you care about, what your message is.

We can take this thought a step further and ask the question, "What do your last 20 Tweets say about you and your business?" Do they say, "I only ReTweet other people comments because I have no original ideas of my own."? Do they say, "I'm a maniacal self promoter who doesn't care about you and your business but is only interested promoting my own agenda."? Do they say, "I only use Twitter to promote my presence on Facebook (or some other networking platform), thus showing that I don't get Twitter, get other peoples interests, or get people to follow me here or anywhere else." Hopefully not. Instead it would be good if your last 20 tweets sent the message, "I'm a real person! Here's some of the things I care about. Look, I engage in conversations with other people! I've got something to give - Here it is!" If you can convey this message on your Twitter profile you'll attract other interesting and engaging individuals and you'll have a valuable and dynamic Twitter community before you know it.

Jason Sanders

Business Networking Specialist

Earlier today I read a great blog post by Lisa Udy, entitled Want More Google Juice For Your BLog? Here's The Ticket. In it, Lisa emphasizes how important linking is to SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and gives some great ideas on how to build links, where to go to list your blog or website so more people will know about it, and some great advice on differentiating anchor text. If you don't know what I just said, I suggest you go read her blog!

Links are such an important aspect of SEO, that many people end up going "Link Crazy", linking all of their Social Networking sites to one another and to their blog, to their website, then linking everything back until what you end up with is a sort of spider web of web links.

What you may not realize is that 2 way links do not give you maximum search engine optimization. So if you have your blog linked to your website, and your website linked to your blog, search engines will notice that and will place less value on those links. If you think about it, this makes sense, because otherwise it would be too easy to game the system. The reason links effect SEO so strongly is because a link is a good indicator that there's some good content at the destination of that link. Think of a two way link as one hand washing the other. Both sources respect one another and link to one another its a trade. Truly good content doesn't have to bargain, or trade for links. People are captivated by it and want to share it, therefore they take the time to link to it. In this way, a one way link represents a more organic representation of a websites value and carries more weight in Search Engine Algorithms.

If you want to verify this you can use Yahoo or Google's link checker and you'll notice that they don't register sites in which there are 2 way links. You can also read Wikipedia's definition of Methods of Website Linking - Please notice Multi-Way Linking.

I imagine you reading this with a scowl on your face, wondering, ok then how do I get more links to my blog, and more links to my website...what can I do to increase my SEO? I'm so glad you asked! ;-). There is a way to make your blog and website work together as a linking machine. It's called a link chain, and I'm going to attempt to explain to you how it works, or at least how I use it.

The first thing I do is have my ActiveRain blog announce my new blog posts into my Twitter stream. You do this by going to the settings option on the sidebar of your profile. It's easy. All you do is provide your twitter username and password and ActiveRain makes an automatic announcement in your Twitter stream every time you post a new blog. (See Below)

Of course the key is to have at least one, if not several links to your website embedded in your blog posts. Again, read Lisa's article above for some great ideas how to do this. You want to link your blog to your website as often as possible (Write a blog post everyday that includes links.) in order to get the best results. I like to write about how to help businesses get more business by getting more referrals in order to highlight my website. Just to re-iterate, this whole process is designed so that all of your links from your AR blog go to your website, but your website never links back to your AR blog.

Now you're wondering how you get more links to your blog.

To make a chain you have to add another link. I did this by creating what I refer to as a "Drone Blog" through Blogger. This is the blog that my website links to. The sole purpose of this blog is to provide links to my ActiveRain blog. I never write content for this blog. It's not another blog that you have to write for, at least not the way I use it. Instead of writing content, I recycle content from my ActiveRain blog. You're probably thinking that it sounds like a lot of work, copying and pasting blog posts, etc. That's not what I do at all. If I were to do that, I would end up with a second blog that had a lot of links back to my website (the website links to the second blog, so the value of the links would be canceled) and that would be a waste of time. I know this can get confusing, so I want to just emphasize - what I'm doing with this "Drone Blog" is providing a vehicle to have more links to my ActiveRain blog. How do I do that? (See an example of my "Drone Blog"/Summary Blog Below)

Remember a couple of paragraphs ago, I explained how ActiveRain announces my new blog postinto my Twitter stream? By using Tweetdeck I can now email that abbreviated announcement, which contains - A LINK TO MY ACTIVE RAIN BLOG POST! The great thing about my "Drone Blog" through Blogger is that I can post a new blog just by emailing it to a specific email address that Blogger provides. So I email my New Blog Post Announcement from TweetDeck to my Blogger "Drone Blog". I have a signature line set up in my email account that contains my name, my contact info, and a link to my website. When I email this infomation, my email signature line along with the New Blog Post Announcement from Twitter ends up getting posted to my "Drone Blog" as a blog post.

The website signature line link back to my website serves two purposes:

1. It directs anyone who should "happen" to land on it to my website, where I actually make my money.

2. It cancels out the link that is coming from my website to the "Drone Blog".

I would never want the drone blog to compete with my Active Rain blog for Google Juice, because the ActiveRain blog has all the great content and my "Drone Blog" is just has a summary. The end result is that the circle is complete and by writing a single post, I'm able to generate to non-competing links to the most important two sites to my business - My Website and My AR Blog. The circle is complete. (See How to email from TweetDeck below)

I also use this strategy with Social and Business networking groupssuch as Facebook and LinkedIn. My profile on these forums links to my website, but my website links to a group or page that I've set up within the forum to promote my business. It's a great way to keep people informed about how connected you are without canceling out the value of those connections.

I hope with the pictures and everything you are able to understand the process I'm trying to convey.

I guess I'll have to see what the comments say! :-D Let me have it, what do you think?

Jason Sanders

Business Networking Specialist

Twitter is one of the hottest blog topics these days. Tons of people have signed up and are putting themselves out there through 140 character "tweets". As has been discussed, and anyone who has spent a significant amount of time on Twitter can attest, after a while you need to start filtering out the noise that comes from hundreds to potentially thousands of people who you might choose to follow and everything that they are putting into their tweet stream.

The most popular solution to this problem has become Tweetdeck. Tweetdeck allows you to group those that you follow into categories as well as filter the messages that you receive down to those that contain information that you are interested in, or information that is relevant to your business.

Recently Facebook made some changes to the profile homepage that seem to mimic Twitter's tweet stream. This exciting new change has allowed Tweetdeck to release a new Beta version (v0.24.2b) that interacts with both Twitter and Facebook simultaneously! That's right, you can now use Tweetdeck to update your Twitter and Facebook status by typing a single message!

As I mentioned, this version is still in beta testing and is not being promoted to the public yet, but if you want to be one of the first to get your hands on it, you can download it now from the Tweetdeck Website.

Once you have the program installed on your computer, you log on as you would normally, supplying your Twitter ID and password. To access the Facebook functionality, you click on the Facebook icon at the top of the page and provide your Facebook logon information. Tweetdeck will now create a new column called "Facebook: Friend Status". This column will contain all of your Facebook friend's most recent status updates. Using Tweetdeck you can then respond to them through Facebook, email their update anywhere you want, or even Tweet it out to your Twitter stream. There's a new green status light under the updates in your Facebook column, these green lights represent friends who are "online" on Facebook. By clicking the green light or their name you can actually open Facebook chat within Tweetdeck!

You have the option of toggling on or off both Twitter and Facebook to use Tweetdeck on one platform instead of the other. If you select to distribute your updates to both Twitter and Facebook, Facebook will not receive any Tweets that are replies to others in your Twitter stream, in other words, if your message begins with @anything, that message will be blocked and not go to Facebook.

This awesome new technology brings along with it a possibility that will no doubt spark a lot of debate. Many people, myself included have used Facebook as sort of a Social Networking Insulator. Up to this point, I've been selective about who I network with on Facebook. I've been diligent in filling out my privacy settings. I feel comfortable on Facebook. I can get away with an occasional off colored remark, because it's all my friends there! No Worries! Right? Not anymore. Now, any one of my friends who uses Tweetdeck along with Facebook could easily RT (ReTweet or forward) any update that I post on my Facebook profile to their Twitter stream of potentially hundreds if not thousands of readers. Goodbye privacy! Hello convenience.

Despite the privacy issue, I'm looking forward to using this as a great time saver. Sometimes there's just not enough time to manage these different forums. Lately I haven't been on Facebook as much because I've been busy blogging and busy on Twitter. This will allow me to be active on Facebook as well with no additional effort. I hope this might help you market your business as well!

Jason Sanders

Business Networking Specialist

You've been faithfully blogging each and every week. Quite some time has gone by and you've accumulated quite a wealth of information in your blogs on a variety of topics that a potential client might find interesting and compelling. Finally the day comes...your phone rings and it's a new prospect, who informs you that they've been following your blog and they have a need of your services and want to get together and discuss working with you to meet that need.

At this point you're super excited! All of your hard work is starting to pay off! Whether it was the detailed market reports in your blog, or the funny anecdotes about your kids, or the volumes of excellent and free advice that you've been dilligently providing each week that attracted this potential client, it's now up to you to seal the deal.

Let's be honest, you could be Hemingway, but all the writing is just the "foreplay" of the deal. The rubber hits the road at your meeting and you need to make the best impression possible. You haven't sealed the deal yet.

How are you going to approach this meeting? There's no doubt you're ready, you know your market, your services and products in and out, so what else is there to do? Many people would just show up to the meeting and take it as it comes. Hopefully they would be successful, after all their potential client already likes them. One might conclude that the deal is theirs if they don't screw it up. But if you don't really prepare for this meeting, any success you might enjoy could be called a coincidence. Those serious about their businesses plan for success. They don't count on it to happen occasionally.

So how do you prepare for a situation like this? It's important that you anticipate your potential clients possible priorities and/or concerns and prepare material to address those priorities and concerns as well as a presentation that draws out the client so that he opens up to you. With some thought and organization you actually lead a client down a predetermined train of thought ending in the logical conclusion that he or she needs to do business with you.

Clients typically have only 3 types of concerns. 1. Price. 2. Communication. 3. Integrity. Depending on the type of business you have there may be a variation of one of the above. So you need to ask the client, "What 3 things are important to you when selecting a __________ Professional to work with?" You ask them a question that you already know the answer to. You allow them to answer, and you may need to lead them....many times they can only think of one or two things. But if you point out these 3 concerns and then present a written plan on how you systematically address these concerns with your clients, it will immediately put a potential client at ease. For more detailed information about how to put this presentation together, see my blog post - Make It Easier For People To Refer You Business.

If you can systematically anticipate your clients priorities and concerns and lay out a clear process in writing of how you address these concerns with each and every client, you've made yourself accountable to your client. This is a huge step that will mean a lot to your client, because very few people care enough to go that extra mile. By being open, and putting everything in writing, you have effectively eliminated any confusion that they may have about how you handle your business and the type of service that you provide your clients, thus eliminating their will to say "No". You are committing to service them in the way that you've outlined in your presentation, and with your commitment, you'll find that any resistance that they may have had to committing to work with you now will melt away.

Now quit reading this blog and go get busy and close some deals!

Jason Sanders

Business Networking Specialist