Having a blog is an excellent way to build your own identity on the web - YOU INC.. It lets your readers know who you are, what you stand for and why they might join you in your Network Marketing business. At the very least it is an excellent way to introduce them to your funded proposal system.

If starting a blog is something you wish to explore to grow your presence on the web there are a couple of questions you should know the answer to.

Key questions for blog owners

One question I’m constantly asked is “how frequently should I post to my blog?”

If this is a question you’ve been asking yourself then this post will be important reading. Keeping people interested in your blog, is key to attracting new visitors and having your regular readers coming back.

Unfortunately, many blogs die a natural death because the blog owner loses interest in the topic of their blog and cease posting to it. It is the regular, frequent posting, that will boost your blog’s ranking in the search engines and is essential for the survival of any blog.

Apart from frequent posting what are some other questions you should be asking yourself about producing and maintaining your blog? Like….

• How many blog entries should I make each week?
• How do I make frequent consistently good posts?
• What are the reasons for me to post frequently?
• Why is frequent posting important?

How many blog entries should I make each week?

This will depend on the purpose of your blog. If you are blogging with the idea of “attraction marketing” you should have at least 2 posts, but preferably 4 each week.

Having said that it is important to post often enough to your blog to keep your readers interested. Who wants to come back to a blog that hasn’t been updated in months.

When making your post always remember that quality definitely counts. Posting frequently just for the sake of posting frequently will tend to turn your readers off. So, it is important to find the balance between frequency and quality of your posts that won’t result in burnout on your part.

It is far better to create 2 top quality posts than 4 poor quality posts each week.

How do I create quality postings on a consistent basis?

The easiest way to consistently produce top quality postings is you use a formula. This is particularly important if you are not a natural writer.

The following is the formula I use to produce my posts.

1. Pick a topic that is of interest to you and to your readers.
2. Carefully think about the topic you want to write about. What question(s) are you answering? What problem(s) are you solving? It makes it easy to make quality blog postings if you know exactly what you’ll write. Plot out everything about the post before even beginning to write it.
3. Before you start writing your content, select some keywords that are relevant to your topic. If you naturally use these keywords throughout your post, you will please the search engine spiders which will get your blog ranked higher on search engines. Your visitors won’t mind the use of keywords if they are used in a tasteful way.
4. When you begin writing your post don’t limit yourself to a set amount of words. Just do write naturally like you were speaking to someone sitting across the table from you. If you find yourself getting writers block just take a timeout and relax or stop and come back to it at a later time. I find this is a good strategy for me as it allows me to think things through a bit more and formulate and structure my answers better.

Why is frequent posting important?

Blogs are meant to be outlets for your ideas and observations about your life and business. They are great for airing your opinions and engaging your readers enough to leave a comment. Readers need to have something that makes them want to keep coming back to a blog. That something is usually quality, frequent posts.

Apart from gaining and maintaining visitors regularly posting to your blog will also catch the eye of a search engine–and achieving a high ranking–is another valid reason for posting frequently. Your blog post should contain keywords or keyword phrases throughout it. The more naturally occuring your keywords are in your blog the better.

So, the more posts you make to your blog, the more keywords you have on it. And the more keywords you have on it, the more likely a search engine bot is likely to crawl your site. The more your site is crawled by bots, the more likely it is that you will have a high ranking on a search engine.

Simon’s Recommended Blogging Resources

There are a couple of blogging resources that I use and recommend.

The first one is Blogging to the Bank 3.0 by millionaire blogger Rob Benwell. Version 3 contains some absolutely stellar content on how you can turn your blog into a money making enterprise. Read my review here.

The second is Become a Blogger by Yaro Starak and Gideon Shalwick. This is a more hands on course where you can access to FAQ webinars, forum, and video how to’s galore. You make payments for the 1st 6 months only and get life time access to members area. This course is worth it’s weight in gold. At the time I wrote this it was not taking new members however you can still access the free Blogging Road Map Report.

Simon Smith
97% of MLM’ers make under $10 per week! If you are one of them you don’t have to be! I’ll show you how to build an MLM empire. Register for our FREE Webinar Training

They say that it takes 10,000 hours to become an expert in your field of endeavour. So if you are working a 40 hour week that equates to approx 2,000 hours per year. Which means it’s going to take you 5 years to reach 10,000 hours.

The quit threshold for most people is at 5,000 hours. When it comes to network marketing this threshold is just 180 hours. [90 days x 2 hours per day].

Is it any wonder this fantastic industry has such a high failure rate when the people who start in it don’t give a fair go and put in the hours necessary to gain success!!

I love this video…….. Watch, learn and prepare to be “gobsmacked”

Watch the video

.

When you “burn the boats” so to speak the odds of success increase considerably in your favour. Yes, you will still have your challenges and off days………..

But persevere with tenacity in the knowledge that the only way you can fail in network marketing is if you give up.

Simon Smith
97% of MLM’ers make under $10 per week! If you are one of them you don’t have to be! I’ll show you how to build an MLM empire. Register for our FREE Webinar Training

Here’s the breaking news for the future. Google is positioning itself to be dominant in social media ranking. The days of creating empty social media sites to gain 1 way back links is going to be a thing of the past. If you have used this method to create your back links then expect a “slap from Google” in the near future.

Google Is Planning Their Next Bold Move

Make no mistake social media is going to play a HUGE role in how Google perceives websites in the search results. Their purpose is simply to reward those who are actually active on social media while punishing those who are merely spammers.

Right now Google is sitting back watching the goings on and preparing their defenses. Watching and learning how to use the collective social media data to determine “social buzz“ which will then be applied to search engine rankings.

The Early Casualties

Take Squidoo as an example. You may have notices recently while you have been out surfing the web that Squidoo doesn’t show up in the first few listing as it has in the past.

The reason ….. spammers using automated software.

It has been a favorite passtime for “hollow” commentors to spam Squidoo lenses with nothing that really related to the lense creating a back link to a website/capture page that was totally unrelated to the search topic. This is why Squidoo has fallen from grace with Google and it is rare to see a high ranking Squidoo lense these days.

To try and salvage the situation and put the value back into Squidoo as a viable search resorce the owner of Squidoo was forced to put “no follow” links on the comments of Squidoo lenses.

Myspace is another social media site that has become uncomfortable to be involved with because of the rampant spamming that occurs.

Remove Anything That Is Not Active

I have in the past joined many different social media sites over last few years. Most I didn’t understand well enough to utilise and just left them in the too hard basket never to be used again. And there are more than a few that I found still active. Under the new order these will cause you some damage.

So if like me you are concerned about the way Google is postitioning itself may effect you, because you have many “empty” social media sites, then here is the good news. Go shut them down now because they will affect your rankings.

I don’t want to beat this to death but I will …. Google is really paying very close attention to your social media traces, how you are behaving, and the links you are handing out from your activities. Links coming from active social media pages will turbo charge your SEO efforts.

Keep Your Activity Natural

If your activity is “natural” you will have nothing to fear. That is the underlying message be natural and sincere in your activities. You only have yourself to blame if you fail because you have full control on how you use your social media profile and influence your presence.

Ultimately fewer high quality active social media links will equate to higher rankings. Higher rankings equals more trageted quality traffic to your website.

How Will This Help Network Marketers

This proves that those who are actively engaging in attraction marketing now, to grow their network marketing businesses are at the cutting edge of the new internet. SEO 2.0 as it becoming known as will shape the way we will do business.

Years ago Bill Gates once said “If you are in business and don’t have an internet presence you are not really in business”.

The emerging belief is “If you are in business on the web and not interacting with your clients via social media you are not really in an internet business”

The introduction of Google Social Widgets such as Google Friends Connect, Google Comments and Google Website Rating is just the start of the “one application” allowing access to all types of social media activity.

Just to bring this home and make it really clear to you again Google wants users like you and me to influence which websites are good and which websites deserve to get high search engine rankings.

That is why this will work for Attraction Marketing Network Marketers - because that’s what we do best. We share. And as part of that sharing process we interact to uncover the “true why” and offer information until our prospect decides for themselves what we have on offer is a fit for them.

This is a true WIN WIN WIN for all concerned - our prospect, our company and ourselves.

Simon Smith
97% of MLM’ers make under $10 per week! If you are one of them you don’t have to be! I’ll show you how to build an MLM empire. Register for our FREE Webinar Training

For ages I have been watching on the sidelines wondering how I could use Twitter to advance my network marketing business.

It wasn’t until I read “The Twitter Report” that it all became clear.

Since then I have embraced this mini blog technology and use it daily to stay in touch with and learn from others in the groups I have plugged into.

The Twitter Report is a $67 value but it’s yours for free.

Inside The Twitter Report you’ll discover all the finer intricacies of setting up your Twitter account for gaining MAXIMUM automated exposure.

This report, along with everything suggested inside, will outline a simple step by step method for ethically and spamlessly pumping traffic out of Twitter and sending visitors directly to your website and offers!

Click Here to get your copy of ==> The Twitter Report!

Have you heard of Perry Belcher?

Perry is a great educator and is currently working with Mike Dillard on a new project. In the video below he talks about the things you need to do to build a following on Twitter. ie the finer points of social manners for effective twittering.

Twitter with Simon

If you want to Twitter with me ….. http://twitter.com/SimonsOnline

Please leave your comments below on how Twitter has helped you.

Simon Smith
97% of MLM’ers make under $10 per week! If you are one of them you don’t have to be! I’ll show you how to build an MLM empire. Register for our FREE Webinar Training

The value of business cards can be increased considerably if you use these quick tips. In some cultures how you treat a business card may determine whether you will ever progress past step 1 - receiving a business card.

When dealing with Asian cultures for example make sure you place the card in your top pocket [either shirt or jacket is okay]. That way it will be “close to your heart”. Never put it in your pants pocket [back especially] as this is close to your a*se.

Can you see how this might offend?

Receiving Their Business Card

When someone gives you a business card write the following on the back of the card:

• The date
• Where you met them
• What you talked about
• Any agreements either of you made

At the end of the week when you empty out your wallet or purse you will have a memory jogger if you need to call or follow them up.

If you are filing the cards, this will remind you months later if the person on the business card forgets you, you can remind them when and where you met and what you spoke about. Great for rapport building.

Giving Your Business Card

To make giving your business card memorable, write the number ‘3’ on the top right corner and circle it. As you hand them the card, let them know you don’t have time right now but ask them to remind you to tell them about the 3 money saving tips, or 3 plumbing mistakes, or 3 traps people most often fall into,…(pick 3 things pertinent to your business that will arouse their curiosity). This will get them to ask you about your
business and how you can help them.”

Tip for Design

A recent study showed that a card has a 78% better chance of being kept if the card has your photo on it. If you embrace the actions when giving out your business card they will be even more likely to keep your card.

Consider This….

I’m a prolific collector of business cards. Something that really gets peoples attention is when you take the time to send them a “heart felt” card or note in the mail. Sending a real card is way more effective than email because it is tangabile - touch and feel.

I use Sendout Cards to do this. One way that really gets a persons attention is to include a scan of their business card in the card. To learn more about this check out this post on how I use Sendout Cards in my business.

Don’t forget to post your comments on how these tips have worked for you or if you have other tips on “Making Your Business Cards Profitable” below

To your success….

Simon Smith

For more information and coaching on how to get out of the Rat Race sign in for my free Guide and MLM coaching Webinars.