SiteProNews |
- 10 Networking Blunders That Cost You Sales
- A Flaming on Your Blog
- Dreamweaver Users Still Need To Understand HTML
- Level Up Your Web Traffic
- My Tactics for Getting Those Top 5 Spots in Google
| 10 Networking Blunders That Cost You Sales Posted: 27 Aug 2010 05:00 AM PDT 
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. Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources |
| Posted: 27 Aug 2010 05:00 AM PDT 
It is important that you handle flaming, in fact you probably want to have a written policy about inappropriate behavior on your blog including flaming. How to Handle a Flaming on Your Blog First and foremost you want to make sure you address any flaming or other personal attacks that appear on your blog. This is especially true if someone is attacking another reader of your blog. Your failure to handle these types of postings will make it appear as if you condone them. You want your readers to know that you value them and will make sure they are not attacked for participating on your blog. The first thing you should do is delete the flaming post. Once it is deleted you should contact the person who was flamed and apologize for the behavior or the person who flamed them and let them know the offensive posting was removed. After contacting the person who was flamed you need to contact the person who posted the inflammatory posting. You should let them know the offensive posting was removed and that you do not tolerate that type of behavior on your blog. If their post was extremely offensive you can immediately ban them from your blog. The alternative is to warn them that if they post anything in the future that violates your blog policies they will be banned. How to Handle You Being Flamed If the personal attacks are directed at you, it is important to take action. Just as you would protect any member of your blog you need to protect yourself as well. Though you should always invite feedback and commentary, including negative commentary, you should not accept flaming. Remove any inappropriate comments and provide a warning to the person or persons who posted it. You can even invite them to post an edited version of their comments if appropriate. Most will probably not take you up on the offer but some may. If you protect yourself and your readers from flaming you will be promoting a healthy environment where topics can be discussed and heated debates can ensue without rising to the level of inappropriate flaming on your valued blog. Frank Breinling is a recognized expert in Internet Marketing. Here you can grab info product ideas cashyourwebsite.com, his newest Project about Bloggin you can find here, xdreamblogging.com. Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources |
| Dreamweaver Users Still Need To Understand HTML Posted: 27 Aug 2010 05:00 AM PDT 
Although you do not need to write HTML code when using Dreamweaver-since the program generates the necessary code as you work visually, it is still necessary to be aware of the elements that make up your pages. This requirement will become apparent when you come to style and position your page content. At this point, you will need at the very least to know-or to know how to find out- the name of an element. (This is where the Tag Selector becomes so useful.) The HTML HEAD element A web page consists of two main areas: the head and the body. The body contains all of the elements which will be displayed in the browser window and the majority of which will be visible to the user. The head element, by contrast, contains information about the web page; meta information as it is sometimes called. The HTML TITLE element One of the most important elements which can be placed in the head is the title element which should provide a broad heading which reflects the content of the page. It is extremely important that each page should have a title and that the title be pertinent to the page that contains it. Dreamweaver automatically adds a title element to every new page containing the text "Untitled Document". The simplest method for modifying the default title in Dreamweaver is to enter a title in the Document Title box of the Document toolbar which is normally displayed at the top of the page. What is the body element? The visible elements of a web page are all placed inside the body element; the part that visitors to your site will see in their browser. Clicking on the body tag in the Tag Selector will therefore select everything on the page. Learn Dreamweaver CS5 the easy way, check out Dreamweaver CS5 Mastering the Basics by Grant Gamble. Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources |
| Posted: 27 Aug 2010 05:00 AM PDT 
One of the most important things you have to ensure to keep your website traffic coming is having website optimization. Also known as SEO, search engine optimization is a great way of optimizing your content such that it does not just entice your visitors to read and come back but would also be a way for you to get popular results on various search engines. The internet these days is heavily dependent on various search engine sites as people use these to generally help them find the information that they need. These search engines use their own types of web crawler so that they could find the information that closely matches what the person has typed. Most web crawlers use keywords in order for them to quickly identify the matches that would turn up in their search results. Because search engines are a business themselves, they have to make sure that they produce the best results for online users. This is also the reason why you have to pay attention on how you implement your SEO strategies because search engines have strict rules when it comes to these. Social bookmarking is another technique you can explore to boost the visibility of your website and ascertain that a number of visitors visit it frequently. What would be crucial here is your appearance on social networking sites. Once your site is socially bookmarked and recognized among various social networking sites, your ad campaigns can in turn go viral and reach out to more viewers. Link building is also something that you should try. In here, you might need to forge partnerships with other websites so that some of their keywords can be linked to any of your web pages. This is also where online directories can be useful because they can offer a free and easy way for you to build those links. Article directories can also be a good place to start doing your link building. Do you need help in promoting your business online? Let an online marketing professional help you: internetmarketingclix.com Cedric is an article marketing expert, expert link builder, SEO specialist, and freelance article writer: internetmarketingclix.com/freelance-article-writer Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources |
| My Tactics for Getting Those Top 5 Spots in Google Posted: 26 Aug 2010 10:00 PM PDT 
I don’t have some magic formula, just online marketing stuff that works. Very simple stuff that everyone can do to get those top rankings. Here are some of the tactics/things I do: - article marketing through the free article directories - create videos on my niche products - make blog posts in my niche areas - do press releases for my targeted products - create free ebook guides on my subject areas - build separate lists for each major niche market with follow-up emails - participate in online forums with my sig links added - make regular tweets about any new content - find out my competitors’ main backlinks and duplicate them - create Google Alerts for my major keywords and add comments/links to the ones I like - keep adding fresh content pages to my sites keyworded to phrases used by buyers Now on second thought, some of those are not so simple, but they can be easily done by most webmasters. Or, you can get someone to do them for you. For example, I get my videos done for me since I simply don’t have the time or expertise to do them myself. If you’re poor at writing or have little time, you can even get someone to write your articles for you as well. Same goes for your web content, but you have to be careful and make sure it is of the highest standard. Still, these tactics are fairly basic online marketing stuff which anyone can do to get those higher rankings. Perhaps, what many webmasters fail to realize is that getting and keeping your keywords on the first page of Google does take a lot of work and time. For very competitive keywords, I usually put in a year’s work to get to those top spots. It sometimes takes a lot less if your content (an article or video) becomes viral and lands on a lot of sites. That does happen, but for me it is mostly building steady one-way quality links back to the page or site I want ranked high. However, it is this time factor which DEFEATS most people. They don’t have the patience or the resources to wait it out. After a couple of months they throw up their hands and come away believing all this Internet marketing stuff is for the birds. Don’t get the wrong idea, there are probably programs and systems out there which will give you instant success on the web. I just haven’t found them yet, nor am I really looking since I have figured out how to get those top rankings and earn money on the web. However, the catch is, it usually takes around a year or two of hard work before the serious money starts flowing. There are exceptions. If you’re good at writing articles, you can get immediate traffic and a few sales. Same goes if you’re into making videos and they become popular and featured in Google… you will make some sales. However, for steady targeted traffic which flows regularly and keeps the sales coming each day; you will need to keep those top rankings in the search engines for your keywords, especially in Google. Once you get those top rankings, I find you have to maintain them by continuing to build links by writing articles, making posts, creating videos… and so on. My goals are very modest. I am doing affiliate marketing or sales where I usually get from 2% to 5% since I am promoting high-end electronics which offer low commissions. I also do some ClickBank type info products where the commission rates are much higher – 50% or more. I also concentrate most of my time on products/services which give me a recurring income – make one sale and earn a percentage for years to come. The trick here is to promote services where once clients sign up they tend to stay with these services for years… services like web hosting, autoresponder services, telephone services, internet services and so on. If you have your own products, your daily earnings will be much higher. Same thing if you do drop-shipping… but that also brings in other complications and worries. I like affiliate marketing because it suits my lifestyle. I refer the sales or clients and the merchant does all the rest. Now, I have also found if you target longer keyword phrases which have little traffic but also much less competition, you can bring in sales in a matter of months, sometimes weeks. This “long tail marketing” as it’s called, goes faster, but you have to cover a lot of ground to be successful. I prefer picking “mid-range” keywords that have competition, but if you put in the work, you will land on the first page of Google. I usually stick to keywords which have around 1,000 – 10,000 searches a month. Highly popular keywords which get hundreds of thousands or millions of searches I don’t bother with because I know I just can’t compete with multi-national companies getting most of this traffic. So it is a matter of picking the keyword battles which you have a good chance of winning. You do need to do a lot of research to see who is ranking for these keywords, what kind of backlinks they have and what kind of resources they’re pouring into obtaining/keeping those rankings. I also check to see who owns the domains in the top five spots or on the first page. If one person or company owns 4 or 5 of these sites, it means you’re going to have your hands full trying to compete for the top spots. One simple strategy for getting those top spots in Google is to create two or three keyworded domains competing for the top spot. Link these together and one or, in most cases, all of them will land in the top three or four positions. For lucrative keywords, this can prove very profitable because your sites are receiving the majority of the web traffic for those keywords. Keep in mind, however, that in many niche markets major companies are now hiring writers, SEO services and webmasters to get those top spots. It sometimes can be unnerving. Imagine you’re a small webmaster operating in a niche for years and suddenly you have four or five top brand multi-billion dollar companies competing with you for the same keywords in the search engines. This happened to me and to Google’s credit, small webmasters still have a chance to keep their spots on the first page. How long before these small webmasters are totally wiped out is anyone’s guess, but I believe for very lucrative keywords, it is only a matter of time before big companies throw so much advertising revenue and SEO resources at getting those top spots that the little guys will have a very slim chance of holding their keywords. Fortunately, there are countless small niche markets and products that an online marketer can target and rank well for in Google with just a little hard work and patience. Using some of the tactics listed above will get you to those Top 5 spots in Google – just give them and yourself some time to reach your goals. The author is a full-time online marketer who has numerous websites. For the latest web marketing tools try: internet marketing tools. Everyone is Profiting from Google, are you? Find out how here: Google Cash File Copyright Titus Hoskins. This article may be freely distributed if this resource box stays attached. Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources |
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