Archive for the ‘Social Media Networking’ Category

• The best way to engage anyone is to ask them questions about themselves. Most people have one favorite subject in common and that subject matter is “me…me…me…me…me…me”. Isn’t that your favorite subject?

• I was fortunate to have one of the companies I worked for early in my career force me to go to what I thought was one of the most lame sales training courses called “Dale Carnegie”.  After all, I was 20 something and I knew all I needed to know…right?  Wrong!  I think you find that out when you hit 30 something…you know, not knowing as much as you thought you knew.  Though I was forced to go to this training class I thoroughly hated, I chose to make the best of it and take away as much information as possible.  After all, I was there….they were there and I didn’t have a choice.  So, when life hands you lemons, make lemonade.

• One of the greatest gifts I took away from that sales training coarse was reading the book “How to win friends and influence people” By Dale Carnegie.  I highly recommend this book to any person who will take the short amount of time it takes to read it, it will change you and your relationships.  It will help you understand that people simply want someone to take interest in “their stories”, what is going on in “their lives” and that taking an interest in other people really is the number one way to build better relationships.

• On that note, I would like to encourage you to add questions to your blog posts to better interact with your readers.  There are many simple questions you can ask as you close out your blog posts, here are a few ideas:

1. How will this information help you?
2. How do you plan to use this information?
3. How else might I be of assistance to you with the information I have provided above?
4. What experiences have you had that may add to the discussion?
5. After reading what you read, what is your commitment to implementing in your own blog or website?

• I will close by having you think back to the last social gathering you were at and recall if most of your conversations were about you or the person/people you were conversing with.  Which of those conversations were most interesting to you?  How often were you engaged in “interesting” conversation where you were learning about someone else, what they do, etc.  If you are the type of person who finds yourself learning about others during conversations, I bet those people think you are a GREAT conservationist!  I love the old saying “you have two ears and one mouth….remember to use them accordingly”.

• I really am interested in your thoughts and opinions and truly wish to know how you plan to use this in your next blog post, networking event or sales call.

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• Let me explain….Anytime you can link back to your own site using your specific keywords, it helps your “cause”. Let me give you a  very specific example with a keyword specific to one of my clients.

• The keywords “California mortgage loan” or “California home mortgages”  are being targeted by one of my blog subscribers who owns the blog/site www.cahomemortgage.net.   In the previous sentence, I created three valuable links to his site.

• A direct link by typing his domain name and linking it back to his site.  I have also created two even more valuable links back to his site by using his keywords and linking those back to his blog site.  When you have a link back to your blog/site which is  your actual keywords, it gives Google more clues as to what your site is about.

• The lesson here…create as many links back to your site on other websites or blogs which contain your keywords.  Having links to your site from other sites or blogs is one of the factors Google uses to determine ranking.  You can achieve more links by participating in social networking sites along with participating in other blogs and commenting and creating links that way as well.  Anytime you can participate AND add value to a blog or forum AND create links, it is a real win/win situation!

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I felt I needed to share a recent article I read on Line 25, which is a website about web design. The article listed the 20 most common used plugins for Word Press. It is a good list, many of which are in use in my own blog.

• When it comes to getting found on Google, on of the most important steps that hasn’t yet been covered in the series Getting Found On Google is submitting a site map to Google.

• In order for Google to know your blog is up and ready for business, you must invite the spiders to “crawl on by” by submitting a site map. Your site map tells Google what pages are on your site and gives the spiders a “map” of where to crawl. A site map also helps the spiders crawl your site fast, fast is important!

• I personally use Google XML Sitemap. I found it easy to install and set up, and I like it because it is automated. This handy little “widget” keeps Google updated on new posts, pages, etc. This site was being indexed on Google in just a week after submitting my site map via the plugin Google XML. Though your site may not be “ranking”, you can find out if Google even knows your site/blog exists by typing your blog URL blog address in the Google search bar.

• The Contact Form 7 plugin is also a great tool I have implemented on my own site so I can easily be contacted or asked questions on blogging, search engines, Google, etc. I found it very easy to add in to the site.

• Adding a plugin for people to bookmark your articles on sites like “Delicious”, share them via email or “digg” them on the “Digg” social network is very important. Adding this sort of plugin to your blog site will help spread the word. It is really important to getting found on Google because it creates links in to your site.

• These are just a few on this great list of 20 I have tried myself and encourage you to check out the list. It is a great list and any of these plugin’s can be installed right from the “Add New” menu item under the Appearance section of your side menu. See below for the images to guide you.

Happy Blogging – Nadine Blogs!

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First of all, what the heck is #followfriday?  Follow Friday is when you help other people on Twitter find interesting people to follow. The # makes it searchable in Twitter Search.

If you watch the trending topics, which you should, you will notice every Friday includes #followfriday.

This is how to participate.

In your post include #followfriday to suggest people to follow on Twitter. You would suggest other people you find interesting to help others find them too!  Add “#followfriday” anywhere in the Tweet so it is searchable. The “#” is very important – don’t forget it!  Learn about twitter lingo here.

Here is an example and you should feel free to copy ad paste this in to your post.

#followfriday I find the tweets from @nadineblogs interesting.

you can also list several people you find interesting by placing @ in front of their user name in to one post AND including #followfriday anywhere in the post.

You can find Follow Friday suggestion on Twitter Search or by clicking on #followfriday in the trending topics on the right side of your home page.

Have fun!

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Lesson Six:

Naming your pages:   How you choose to name your HTML web page files and blog posts is very important. Every clue you can offer Google helps “your cause”. For your Word Press blog, make sure take advantage of your ability to use the “permalink” editing option, right below where you title your article to make sure it matches your content OR gives Google the proper hints about what you website or blog is.

For your HTML pages, use all lower case letters to name your pages AND used a “-” between any words.

Example using Keller Williams Business Cards.html, should be named keller-Williams-business-cards.html. When you have spaces instead of dashes in-between any file name that has multiple words, each space will become a % on the Internet. Examples would be Keller Williams Business Cards.html would become Keller%Williams%Business%Cards.html. It’s not clean and it doesn’t help your cause.

I have had make many repairs to the names of my own files from making this mistake many times. Remember, always in lower case AND no spaces in your files name, always dashes.   Same goes for naming your images or anything else which will find its way to the Internet on your website.

Lesson seven:

Proper tagging: When creating your website or blog, it is important to have proper “title tags”, .“meta description tags”, “meta key word tags”, and  “Robot. Tags”.  I know it sounds overwhelming, but with blogging it is super easy and very helpful if you wish to rank.  Again, it gives Google the clues it needs to know where to “index” you.

This is what they all mean:

“Title Tags” – The title of the page within the site or blog. Make your title tags relative using the information above.  It is also what shows up as the title of your page or site on the search engine listing. While putting your company name may seem important, you may consider leaving it out if it won’t encourage someone to “click”.

“meta description tag” - This is a SHORT, did I mention “short” description of what the web page is about and should include your keywords. If you make your description too long, it could end up counting against you (I will explain this part in future lesions), so use your words wisely and this can end up being the description that shows under the page title in the Google search results so it should also be a good “heading” that captures the persons attention who is reading it when they find your site in the Google Index. Also, make sure it includes your most important keywords.

“meta key words tags” - this is a list of words that best describe the subject of your website to the search engine. The list should not be too long. Did you hear me???  The list should NOT include too many words.  Keep your code clean and precise, it works in your favor.

“Robot tags” - Your robot tags tell the search engine if the search engine spiders should crawl the page or NOT crawl a particular page. You are probably asking yourself why you would have Google NOT crawl one of your pages. Well, the answer is simple, the fast Google can crawl your site, the relevant pages of your site, the better. There is no reason to have Google “follow” your companies “Contact Us” page for instance. That particular page most likely has nothing on it that will improve your chance with Google, so why have the spiders crawl that page. You want them in and out as past as possible. To have the spiders crawl the page, use the word “follow”, to keep the spiders from crawling a page, use the tag “no follow”.   You will see this option in Word Press, for HTML pages, you need to manually add them in.

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I have talked about “mixed” media being very important to the success of your blog and adding video to your blog being part of that “mixed media”. The Flip Mino camcorder combines remarkable video quality in a pocket-sized package that’s designable. Free Shipping Order Here!

I can personally attest to video camera The Flip being one of the greatest little gadgets for adding video to your site.  It is the size of a deck of cards, weighs next to nothing, it is SUPER easy to use, records in high definition, and loading the recorded video to your site could not at all be easier.  You “flip” out the USB plug, plug it in to your USB port and start importing!

Videos can be imported on any computer because the software you need to import is IN the video camera! And…one of the best parts, you can upload straight to YouTube once you import if you have no edits to the video!

The software it comes with the camera includes editing tools that allow you to cut out parts of your video you dont want included as well as combining your videos in to  one video if you record in a few different sessions.  I have been very pleased with my purchase and always have a quality video camera on hand for recording whatever comes up because it is so small and light.  “The Flip” video camera is a great addition to your bag of tricks to including mixed media on your blog and allowing people to get to know you alot better by recording yourself and adding it to your blogs.  People will keep coming back to your blog when they really feel they can connect with you.  Happy blogging and get yourself “A Flip”!  , it is currently on special and the model pictured is just over $100.  When you read the reviews, which there are currently 62 of, 49 people of the 62 gave this product FIVE STARS!

There is more than one model available, so make sure you check out the different models before you decide which one is the best for you. The Flip Mino camcorder combines remarkable video quality in a pocket-sized package that’s designable. Free Shipping Order Here!
$10 Off on Flip Camcorders with Coupon Code”Flip10″: Mino, MinoHD,Ultra, and UltraHD-Special Terms Apply Exp. 9/30/09

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When you are new to Twitter, some of the “twitter lingo” may be a bit confusing and hard to keep up with.  Here are some quick tips on “twitter lingo” to help you out.

• @username + your message – directs your tweet to that person and also shows in their “replies” tab.
  Example: @Printerbees – Thanks for the printing coupon!

• D username + your message – a “direct tweet” that sends the  person a private message that does not show in the public time line.
  Example:  @RyanSecrest – what do you think about Paula possibly not returning to American Idol?
• RT @+username – “retweet”, if someone posts something you like and want to share with the people who are following you, give credit to the person to posted it by putting a RT (retweet) before the @username.
  Example: RT@Pdiddy “The future belongs to those who prepare for it TODAY!!!” -Malcolm X… A little inspiration for everyone’s Friday!!!

• #followfriday – Follow friday is the day when you recommenced other people on Twitter to your followers.  If you think the people who are following you will like someone you are following recommend them on “Follow Fridays”
  Example: @nadinebogs #followfriday  or I recommend @nadinebogs because I like her updates #followfriday , you can also add several users in one tweet or when you “ReTweet” something.
  
• #topic  “hashtags” -  This is a way to “tag” your twitter update on a specific subject.  Makes it easier for followers and non followers to search it on the Twitter home page or in the trending topics area.
• Nudge username – haven’t heard from one of your friends in a while…nudge them by typing nudge username
  Example:  nudge Oprah

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