Why am I not getting leads from Social Networking?

Hello Sta.rtup.biz Members!

One of the most important things that you can do when you are trying to utilize Social Networking to build your personal brand is to start a Blog. These are the marketing sites of the future and if you do not have one, you are going to be left behind. Gone are the days of replicated marketing sites.

There is a process involved and you have to set yourself up to know this!

So I see this all of the time! It seems that people think that if you put a Blog online and you write a couple posts that every visitor should be filling out your form or subscribing to your posts via RSS and this is just not the case!

You have to change your mindset. We live in a society that has come to expect instant results, but when you are using Social Networking you must understand that it is a process.

My first Blog was nearly a year old and had hundreds of articles before I started getting subscribers on a regular basis. This did not bother me because that is just what I expected.

I did not Blog because I wanted to make money and build a list, I did it because I really enjoyed what I was writing about.

If you have a new Blog, you should expect it to grow very slowly. There are ways that you can help it along however and that is by doing some of the following.

1. Add your Blog URL to your social sites and send people there instead of your marketing sites.
This will actually attract more people because when you send them to a marketing site, 99% of them will hit that wonderful back button. But if you send them to a Blog, it can help them get to know you.

2. Create an account at www.Technorati.com
Create an account here, and look for other Blogs in your niche and read and comment regularly on them. Get to know the authors. Repost some of their best articles on your site. This will create what is called pingback and chances are they will then do a pingback to your blog.

3. Create what I call your "Social Web"
Connect all of your social sites together so that when you post an article on your Blog, it is syndicated to ALL of your social sites like Twitter, Facebook and linkedin just to name a few. I teach you exactly how to do this on my Blog www.whoisdavidfoster.com

4. Use a WordPress Self Hosted Website
WordPress is by far the leader in Blogging for many reasons. I highly recommend that you use a self hosted WordPress site because it is the best for the search engines and just various customization reasons.

5. Post consistently
This is VERY important. Especially to a new Blog. You have to be consistent with your posts. If you write sporadically, your readers will come that way too. Initially you should be doing a post every day. Do one MAIN article every week and then smaller informative posts to fill. The reason is when you finally do get readers, you want there to be information there for them to read. If you only have one or two articles, they will not stay long, and they will definitely not subscribe.

6. Minimize Ads
Your Blog should not be one big Billboard. If you visit my Blogs you will see very little advertising. I have come to HATE Blogs that are all ads and banners. It makes it so hard to find the actual information and it can really lead people to leave your site in a hurry.

So in a nutshell, this is how you should set up a potentially successful Blog. I teach this on my own Blog and I also do a live broadcast every Monday night where I answer your questions live to help you figure out how to build YOUR Social web and attract people to you.

This is the REAL magnetic sponsoring system. You will notice that this is where ALL of your top marketers are heading, and you have a chance to be ahead of the curve right now!

I offer a FREE Blogging Course on my Blog that shows you how you can set up your own Blog. Visit me at www.WhoIsDavidFoster.com!

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Comment by william clements on June 22, 2009 at 3:13pm: I believe having a blog is important. It is like a dairy for business men and woman and is yours. Your suggestions for traffic are true. If people spent the same amount of time on sending people to their site to join their business as their blog they may actually get signups indrectly!

Comment by Anthony on June 22, 2009 at 2:43pm: ALL i like to say is have a good positive day which leads to a great week :o)

Comment by Nancy Galway on June 22, 2009 at 2:36pm: great info, I was not convinced a blog was a good idea, now I am!
thanks!

Comment by Carl Mortimer on June 22, 2009 at 2:30pm: Hi David:

You have offered a lot of good advise and if only people would understand that it takes a large degree of sincerity in your writing to build a degree of trust. This trust cannot de developed overnight. Keep up the good work of sharing your views. Carl Mortimer

Comment by Ron Ferrin on June 22, 2009 at 2:11pm: I think that using social networking as a personal email list is a waste of time and will only lead to loosing more business, rather than building wealth.

100% on what was said about sending people to a site other than your sales site.
100% on what was said about branding yourself.

I use Back Door Marketing, using Social Networking and community causes as a way for people to discover my businesses.

It's easier to say "Let's connect on facebook. Go to [mywebsite.com] and click on Become My Facebook Friend,"

Or to say, "I'm involved in a non profit that helps local schools. Check it out on [mysite.com]

Then when people are there, they can DISCOVER your business AND you have not branded yourself as someone trying to make a sale. You can also include links to your blogs.

Ron

www.RonFerrin.com

Comment by Jonathan Bradley on June 22, 2009 at 2:07pm: I agree David, great post. A little, often is better than occassional long essays.

Comment by Paradise on June 22, 2009 at 2:06pm: P.S. GREAT blog, David!!

Comment by Paradise on June 22, 2009 at 2:05pm: It's about creating, building, and retaining relationships with the people you would like to do business with. Once we attract the right people, we should never get so big in business that we lose the personal touch.

You can create, build, and retain relationships by patronizing each others businesses as well as encouraging and sharing resources and experiences that have helped you achieve the successes you've had along the way.

I think sometimes we're afraid of sharing what we have and what we've learned because we think someone is going to STEAL it away or do better than us with it. But my strength is that I know what God has for me is for me so helping someone else is not going to jeopardize that. I'm going to do and be what He has destined me to be.

Feel free to CLICK HERE to read 4 Factors for Building a Loyal Customer Base

Shellye Lyons aka Paradise
Founder/Executive Director
National Business Women Enterprise Network

Comment by Kelly Williams on June 22, 2009 at 2:03pm: Thanks for the article, David.

You've helped me confirm I'm moving in the right direction. I recently launched my new self-hosted WordPress blogsite. I watched it climb right back to rank where my old site left off. You've given me much food for thought with your points about Technorati and syndicating to all my social sites. With more consistency and a bit of strategy, there's no where to go but up!

Cheers =)

Comment by William Downey on June 22, 2009 at 1:45pm: It's an excellent article with some great suggestions. The staff here keeps telling me we need to do this so we will start.