Category: Grow a Home Business

    Content for Your Membership Program

    One of the most important things you need to make your membership program successful is an enormous amount of content. The content cannot just be any old content either; it must be relevant, focused, and high quality to meet the standards of a membership website. However, there are simple ways to find all this content and make it work.

    * PLR – Private label rights content is a great way to find plenty of content to use in your membership website. You can find all kinds of PLR, from eCourses to full-fledged packages that cover all aspects of a particular niche. The key with using PLR is to rewrite it and change it up to make it your own. A great place to get PLR is All Private Label Content.

    Link – http://allprivatelabelcontent.com/

    * Videos – Making videos doesn’t have to be that hard; you don’t even have to appear in the video if you don’t want to. Record your desktop doing something that you want to teach your members to do. Record an interview, or post videos members made. You can also hire people on Fiverr.com to make explainer videos for you, or use a service like YumYumVideos.com.

    * Reports – A report is really a small eBook that talks about one specific problem or issue and how to solve it, or it can be an overview of many problems with links to solutions for each problem. It’s up to you how you might want to do reports. But you’ll need to have them for your membership website.

    * Infographics – An infographic is a pictorial depiction of data that is hard to explain with words. Usually infographics are quite in depth and long. You can use a service like Piktochart.com to help you create awesome infographics. All you need is the data.

    * Podcasts – A podcast is an audio recording for the net. It is a lot like a radio show that is just not live. You can record interviews using software like Audacity or Pamela for Skype to create your podcast. You can hire someone in Fiverr to make a wonderful promo opening for your podcast and sell advertising spots too.

    Links:
    Audacity – http://web.audacityteam.org/
    Pamela for Skype – http://www.pamela.biz/en/

    * Webinars – You might not think of webinars as content right off the bat, but it is. Plus it’s an easy way to get more content for your use on your membership website. Spend an hour a month having a Google Hangout that you record. Transcribe it, repurpose it, and use it multiple times.

    * Teleseminars – A really great way to produce more content is a teleseminar. You can do teleseminars simply with software like Instantteleseminars.com and what’s more is that they can play again as “live” anytime you want.

    * Event Information – Whenever you have a podcast, webinar, teleseminar or other event, you can promote information about the event to your membership. This event is a great way to use the words that get attention from your audience, as well as to get new members. When you say members go to the event free and non-members have to pay, you’ll get attention.

    * Memes – A great type of content to use on social media are images with quotes or data that you find interesting and that your audience will find useful. Add a compelling graphic with the quote and you have a winning meme that might go viral. Be sure to watermark it. You can create memes easily using Canva.com.

    * Research Data – To develop enough content for your membership website, you’ll need to continuously research data about your niche. You can report on that data in a straightforward way, and then you can use bits and pieces of the data to create even more content.

    * Presentations – Using PowerPoint and SlideShare.net you can create slide shows about any topic with research to back it up. Don’t forget that you can repurpose a slide show or presentation into a podcast or a report.

    All of this is content that will improve your membership website. Having a mixture of content types is going to make your membership website a lot more interesting to members, and make members more likely to stay connected and renew their membership each month.

    Categories: Membership Tags: Tags:

    Expanding the Lifetime Value of Your Customer

    You probably know that each customer has a lifetime value in business. This is called the CLV, customer lifetime value. It translates into the amount that you can earn on any one customer as they enter your product funnel. Understanding your CLV can help you determine how much you should spend on marketing, and also help you determine ways to expand your CLV.

    * Become More Customer Centric – Customer service is one of the most important parts of any business. Even if you have the best products or services in the world, if your customer service is lacking you won’t last long. If you want repeat buyers, treat your customers with the importance they deserve.

    * Build Targeted Upsells – With technology like LeadPages.net you can easily create an automated system to build upselling into the buying process. For example, you can do it in the shopping cart, or you can do it through follow-up emails.

    * Create Logical Cross-Sells – A cross-sell is a just selling a different product to a current customer. It should relate to your audience, but it doesn’t have to relate to the first product that you sold them the same way an upsell does.

    * Be Responsive – It’s imperative that you set up a system that makes you seem super responsive to your customers. Whether that is a ticketing system, a 48-hour answering policy, or open office hours doesn’t matter. But, you need to be perceived as very responsive to keep your customers happy.

    * Over Deliver – Every product or service that you deliver should be better than the customer expects. The fact is, you won’t please everyone all the time, but you can shoot to over deliver. If a customer is unhappy, you can over deliver with your solution to fix their problem.

    * Create a Referral Program – Let your customers earn money or points by recommending you to other people. Often, when people can earn enough money to support their buying habits, they’ll be more likely to spend money with you. It’s a win-win all the way around.

    * Stay Connected – Find ways to stay connected with your audience, such as social media, email, teleseminars, and webinars. The more ways they can connect with you, the happier they’re going to be and the more your CLV will expand.

    * Develop an Inner Circle – One way to expand your CLV is to provide a fee-based inner circle that certain customers can join. It can be on a private forum or even be run by Facebook. You can use a private Facebook group or create your own forum with native software.

    Nothing is more important in your business than your customers. The more you can study what they need and find a way to deliver it to them, the longer they’ll stick with you. But, you have to keep creating products to keep those who’ve bought from you interested and wanting more. You also have to deliver exceptional service and quality so they get past the first product in your funnel.

    Categories: Customer Engagement, Grow a Home Business Tags: Tags:

    Networking with Members

    When you join a membership group, the whole point is to network with members, and the whole point of doing that is to build relationships. People like to buy from people that they trust, and the way to build trust is to network with people enough that they can get a good idea of what type of person you are. Even if you’re an introvert, you can network with members successfully.

    * It’s All about Them – Just like your “about me” page is really written with your audience in mind, and all about them, so is networking with members. It’s about them, not you. This can actually take a lot of pressure off your nerves when attending membership meetings.

    * Don’t Sell Anything – Networking meetings are about building relationships, not about selling. Yes, your ultimate goal is to get more clients and referrals. But to do that, focus on just making connections and getting to know people.

    * Make a Good Impression – Don’t show up at meetings in your jammies even if you work from home in them. Instead, dress in a professional way depending on the type of membership you joined. If the typical dress at the meeting is a business suit then you need to wear one. If it’s more dressed down, that’s great; but always present a clean, professional appearance that will please your ideal customer.

    * Have Business Cards Ready – It might seem old-fashioned, but the business card is still available and a popular way to share information when networking. You need to have cards with you at all times because you never know when you’ll meet someone who needs the information you have. Don’t fling your card at people, but when an opening comes up – such as they ask, or you ask for theirs – then you can trade cards.

    * Practice Your Elevator Speech – Some people claim the elevator speech is too old-fashioned and “canned.” However, if you don’t practice talking about what it is that you do, framed in the language of benefit to your audience, you will be lost and so will your audience.

    * Be Ready to Answer Questions – Not only should you know your niche well, but you should know how your audience likes to hear about your niche. In this way, when they ask questions you can always frame the answers in terms of benefits for them. Remember, you don’t “do data entry” – you save time for your customer by doing those tasks that they don’t want to do.

    * Make Out of Meeting Dates – This means that you want to continue building the relationship outside of the meetings. This is a great way to take the networking to the next level. Arrange luncheons to learn more about the person and their business, and move forward. You are going to want to refer others too, so getting to know them is imperative.

    * Go to Meetings Regularly – Once you join, it’s important to be an active member. Joining and getting on a list isn’t going to help. Participating, showing up, and being an active member will do wonders for you.

    It’s important to remember that networking with members is all about building relationships. It’s not just about going to a meeting, sitting there while everyone else talks, and “doing your time” then going home. You need to get out of your comfort zone and truly network. But, simply by making it more about them than you, you’ll be able to do it well.

    Categories: Grow a Home Business, Networking Tags: Tags:

    How to Optimize a Squeeze Page for Search Engine Traffic

    When building a squeeze page it’s important that you understand who your audience is and what the purpose of the page is before getting started. Then, to optimize the squeeze page appropriately consider the following.

    1. Keep It Simple – Don’t go nuts with putting every last thing in every last squeeze page you make. You don’t want pop-ups and pop-unders on the same page. You don’t want too many keywords to gunk up how readers view your page either. You want the page to read well for real-life visitors, while at the same time attracting the search engines to rank you higher.

    2. Know Your Keywords – Study the keywords that your audience uses to find you. It doesn’t matter what other people think about your keywords, it only matters what your audience is using to find you. Look for high value, low competition keywords to use to attract your audience.

    3. Keywords in Titles – Not only should the titles on your page be keywords, they should also be in the proper heading style. If the search engine recognizes it as a header, it will place more importance on the words than if it’s body text.

    4. Optimize Title Tags – If you look at the top of any webpage, there is a title for the page. Take advantage of this area to define what the search engine sees about your page. If you don’t control this area, every page of your website will have the same title tag. Differentiate each page in order to get more hits from search engine.

    5. Use META Descriptions – Every page has a META description that will define how the search engine displays your search results to the reader. Make the most of this feature. If you use WordPress to build your sales pages, you can use a SEO plugin like YOAST, which allows you to control the META description and even see a preview of what it will look like before publishing the page.

    6. Keywords in Subheadings – Creating subheadings with keywords and header tags will help not only lead your user’s eye down to what you want them to read and describe the actions you want them to take, but it will also draw attention to the search engines.

    7. Keywords in Links – Make links within the squeeze page with words that are keywords and specific about the link. Don’t use words like “click here” – use words that describe what they’re clicking such as “100 Stroganoff Recipes” instead. Most people understand that underlined words are clickable now.

    8. Keywords in URL – If you can include a keyword in the URL of your squeeze page, that is a very good use of a keyword or keyword phrase. Don’t go too crazy with the keywords, though; you want the page URL to also look nice.

    9. Use Descriptive Keywords in Alt Tags – Search bots cannot read images, so it’s up to you to provide descriptions to the images that you have in your sales page. Use more than “pretty blue flower” to describe the image. Instead use words that are particular to your offer.

    10. Craft Awesome Headlines – Headlines in squeeze pages are important because people do not read horizontally online; they read vertically. Bolding a headline using headers and making sure it’s an important keyword, will not only lead the search engines to rank you higher, but it will also help your audience read your page better.

    11. Create Actionable Copy – Your squeeze page copy should include keywords that make sense. Don’t overdo it because using more than two percent keyword density in your pages will send alarms to the search engine that your site might be spam. Instead, create copy that leads your viewer to perform some sort of action.

    12. Consider Adding Video – Video is often shared, which adds an additional dimension to the sales page, but while a search engine bot can’t really watch the video, it can read the tags and notice that there is a video. And since users like video a lot, the search engine is more likely to put that page toward the top of the results.

    13. Responsive Design – People don’t exclusively use their PCs when looking at sales pages. In fact, a lot of people use their mobile devices while they’re waiting in the doctor’s office or visiting a coffee shop. The more responsive your design is, the more the search engines will like your page.

    Using these tips to create a fully optimized squeeze page to get more search engine traffic will work. Try making one or two changes at a time to make the effect even more useful for getting more search engine traffic. Search engines also like websites that are updated often – and since sales pages and squeeze pages don’t typically change much, improving your page over time is another way to garner more search engine traffic.

    Categories: website Tags: Tags:

    The Importance of Being Mobile-Friendly

    The Google mobile-friendly update may have you scratching your head and wondering about the value of making the investment to the changes. Your business can be a brick and mortar store and still find benefits in being online and mobile-friendly.

    Any advantage you can build in your industry can help you grow your company. Choosing to create a mobile-friendly website will not only help your company in the Google search engine, but will also draw attention to your site from users on the internet.

    Some Facts to Help Understand the Value of Mobile-Friendly

    – Most consumers need to see a product or activity seven times before following through on a specific call to action. Creating a mobile-friendly website will help your business get in front of the eyes of your potential customers.

    – Most consumers are making use of mobile devices for searches and even for purchases. Experts had been predicting that mobile use would overcome desktop and laptop use by 2016, but the threshold was crossed at the beginning of 2014. That means that your potential customers are using mobile devices to find and interact with you. Make it easy for that to happen.

    – The more time that individuals engage with your website (and therefore encounter your products or your services) the sooner they are likely to follow through on your call to action. Mobile visitors will engage more if the website has been optimized as mobile-friendly.

    – Visitors will not wait for loading. Mobile-friendly websites are optimized to load faster to offer quick solutions to mobile users. Studies have shown that most users give up on a website that takes more than 10 seconds to load – although most website design experts say that the time threshold is likely much lower.

    – A strong, mobile-friendly website will provide an advantage in a busy market place. Your company competes against all the other companies in the industry for the attention of consumers. It also competes against every other company. Visitors have more to see and less time to see it all because of the busy lives that spin around them. Creating a friendly and easy to use website can make your company one of those investments.

    – Mobile-friendly websites invite more engagement. More engagement means that a visitor invests more time in your website and on your website. This can translate into visitors becoming clients and clients becoming brand advocates.

    – Users are on the go and they are getting their information on the go. An interactive website – optimized for the mobile user – helps guide your users and offers them click and engage opportunities.

    There will never be a one-size fits all answer to the internet. Even if that one answer did exist, the habits of users and the challenges search engines face to keep up with the users would cause that one answer to change and shift as well.

    Building a successful business in today’s society is benefited with an online presence. Creating an optimized and mobile-friendly experience will further increase the focus that your company can receive from internet traffic.

    Categories: Mobile Tags: Tags:

    Facebook Ads Best Practices

    Facebook ads are a great way to get the word out about your products and/or services. Facebook offers PPC and CPM ads. A PPC campaign is a pay-per-click campaign that you only pay when people click, while a CPM ad means that you pay a set amount for views. Both are good ways to run ads, but you’ll see that using CPM is a little better and easier.

    Set Your Goals

    Knowing why you’re running a Facebook advertisement is important. You need to know what you hope the results are. Do you want to build your email list, sell an actual product or service, or something else?

    Learn Facebook’s Power Editor

    Facebook has a wonderful editor so you don’t need to use any outside sources to create your ads. Use Power Editor. It allows you to manage many different variations of the same advertisement and is very useful. You do need to use Chrome to use the Power Editor, but it’s simple to use.

    Link to Power Editor – https://www.facebook.com/help/194355723944655/

    Target Your Audience Carefully

    When running any type of advertisement, it’s important to understand who your audience is and what they want. On Facebook ads you can target your audience down to the exact person you want to see the advertisement; this is a huge leap forward in marketing for any business. Even though you’re a home business, you can compete with bigger businesses due to these features.

    Segment Your Audience for Different Ads

    The power editor allows you to duplicate ads, and then edit them to change the demographics. Doing this serves a couple of purposes. It allows you to conduct an A/B test to see who responds better to your ad, but you can also change the images, headlines, etc. to fit each segment of your audience better.

    Use Custom Audiences

    A custom audience allows you to reach people who have already been to your website but are now surfing on Facebook. This is called remarketing or retargeting, and it is a very powerful way to market to targeted people and get a high rate of return.

    Use Facebook’s Optimized CPM

    This is an amazing thing because it makes it easy for you to get views for your advertisement. CPM stands for cost per thousand impressions. Facebook’s algorithm knows what’s best in terms of this set-up, so let Facebook choose for you. It will really work better and save you money too.

    Build a Responsive Website

    As of April 21, 2015 Google is ranking responsive websites higher than those that are not responsive. A responsive website is one that works on all mobile devices as well as PCs. It’s best that your websites are responsive. You don’t need one for mobile and one for PCs – you need one site that works regardless of the platform your audience uses.

    Get Professionally Made Graphics

    Don’t skimp on graphics, but you don’t have to spend that much. You can do it yourself too and have them look professional if you use Canva. Try using Fiverr to save a little money on finding someone to help make your ads. You can get stock photography that is good to use on Stockfresh or iStockphoto.

    Links:

    Canva – https://www.canva.com/
    Fiverr – https://www.fiverr.com/
    Stockfresh – http://stockfresh.com/
    iStockphoto – http://www.istockphoto.com/

    Hire a Copywriter

    Writing content is different from writing copy. Copywriting is a specialized skill. Let a copywriter take what you’ve done and improve it. If they start with something you’ve written and then fix it to work better, you’ll save a little money on the copywriter. And overall you’ll save a lot of money on running the advertisement because you’ll get better results from professional copy.

    Using Facebook to run ads is a great way to get involved in online advertising. Pay-per-click and CPM campaigns can be overwhelming, but Facebook has it set up so that you can do it without even being a professional. It’s a great way to put your toe into online advertising for your business.

    Categories: social media Tags: Tags:

    Ten Reasons to Add Teleseminars to Your Schedule

    Teleseminars are conducted over the telephone and are a way to perform a group call to talk about something important in your business. You can do teleseminars inexpensively and easily, using technology you already have. They are a great way to build relationships with customers you have and to attract more customers, too.

    1. Make More Money – Anything you can do to add another income stream is a great idea. You can charge for teleseminars or you can promote a product or find sponsorships to help you bring in another stream of income.

    2. Improve Your Image – If you want to build authority, teleseminars are a fabulous way to do it. You can show what you know by talking to movers and shakers in interviews, or just talking about a certain topic, or by conducting a Q & A session.

    3. Build Your Email List – Conducting teleseminars is a great way to build an email list fast, especially if you conduct them for free or very low cost. Building an email list is an essential part of doing business online, too.

    4. Slash Customer Support Costs – A great thing to do with teleseminars is to offer them to existing consumers who have purchased your product. This is a good opportunity for anyone who purchased to ask you questions live and learn how to use your products to their fullest potential.

    5. Generate Another Income Stream – As mentioned, charging for teleseminars is a great way to start another income stream. Having one teleseminar per week with 20 to 40 people in attendance for a cover charge of just 5 dollars can increase your income by $100 to $200 a week for just one hour of work. What’s more, you can use a service like Instantteleseminar.com to replay as live any event.

    6. Teleseminars are Inexpensive – The technology involved with teleseminars is inexpensive compared to other types of event software. Plus, it’s much less expensive that other types of live events due to no need to rent space.

    7. Perfect for People Who Hate Selling – If you’re nervous about a live event because you don’t like selling, there are no worries. You should not sell at a live event at all. You should seek only to provide information and education to your audience.

    8. Create Information Products – You can use a teleseminar to create an information product. Transcribe the event, add to it, or bundle a recording of a teleseminar that has a lot of information into another product.

    9. Create a Joint Venture – Teleseminars are a good way to attract other people who are movers and shakers in your niche to form a joint venture partnership for more teleseminars, or for projects that include teleseminars. The more people you have to help, the less work and the more guests you’ll get.

    10. Promote Your Products – While you don’t want your teleseminar to be overselling, you do want to use the seminar as a way to promote your other products, including yourself. For example, if you would like to speak at live events, a great way to start is with teleseminars, then webinars or Google Hangouts, and finally in-person events.

    Adding teleseminars to your schedule can improve your business exponentially. You’ll make your audience feel more connected to you, and build stronger relationships that help you get real results in your business over time.

    Categories: teleseminars Tags: Tags:

    Awesome Software for Memberships

    One of the things you’ll need to figure out when you decide to start a membership site is how you’ll run the technology. Thankfully, today there are many options available at your fingertips for running your membership website.

    Before you even look at membership software, though, write down the features you want it to have and the budget you’ve set for the software. In addition, consider your technological background and how much it will cost you to get professional assistance if you need it for any of the software mentioned.

    * JigsawBox.com – This software is mostly directed towards coaches, offering a lot of features that will benefit coaches like drip content, eCourses, integration with autoresponders and so forth. This is a cloud-based service so you don’t have to worry about the technology; you just have to set it up and start collecting revenue.

    * aMember.com – This is a plugin for WordPress that works very well and is very popular with online marketing experts who have membership websites. The software turns your WordPress site into a membership site and an affiliate program. You would need to purchase separate forum software if you wanted a forum.

    * Wishlist Member Plugins (http://wishlistmemberplugins.net) – Another plugin for WordPress, this turns your site into a membership website and it integrates with PayPal, JVZoo, ClickBank and other payment processors. It also integrates with ONTRAPORT and Maropost and other autoresponders. With this membership software you can do everything that you need to run a great membership site.

    * iGrOOps.com – Another cloud-based solution that has an enormous amount of features, from message boards, to drip content, to meetings and more. It’s exhaustive but can also be confusing and look oddly old-fashioned compared to a WordPress-driven membership site.

    * Rainmaker Platform (http://rainmakerplatform.com/) – Built by the people at Copyblogger, this is an expensive option. However, it does a lot and comes with Copyblogger Authority membership. Run from a WordPress platform, they handle hosting, all the technology and more for you.

    * SocialGO.com – A cloud-based solution that seeks to help you build a social based website, this can work as a membership site if you pick the classic version. However, it might not be responsive and has some limitations over some of the others. It also has some pluses which is that it’s simple to use and implement and get started.

    * EasyMemberPro.com – Affiliate program, forums and more are all yours with this software. It really is as easy as they say to set it up. Plus you can integrate it with WordPress and more. If you’re more advanced technologically, you can get a lot out of using this software.

    * MemberPress.com – Integrates with WordPress as a plugin to build WordPress-based membership websites. You’ll gain control over who sees your content. It enables sales of digital products securely and accepts payments right on your website.

    * MemberGate.com – This full-featured software is amazing and has so many features – from an affiliate program, to a shopping cart, to podcasting, to forums and more. There really isn’t anything this software cannot do and the support is incredible. Once again the website templates look a little outdated, but they all work well.

    Memberships are lucrative, but you need to choose the right software for your needs. Consider your budget, how many members you want to attract, how much you plan to charge members, what you want to include in the membership website and more, as you pick and choose which software is right for your membership.

    Categories: Membership Tags: Tags:

    Get Others to Promote Your Membership Program

    When you start a membership program you want to have a steady flow of new members entering the program at any given time. The average time someone stays in a membership program is usually 12 weeks or 3 months. Therefore, you need a constant stream of people coming into the membership to keep it full and active.

    Members Only Referrals

    One of the easiest ways to not only encourage people to stick around longer than 12 weeks but also to get new members, is to allow members to refer your group. Require people to stay a member to be able to refer the group and receive commissions. Offer a nice 50 to 60 percent recurring referral percentage to the members who refer others. This will keep them around longer, as well as get more members.

    Affiliate Marketers

    If you don’t want to allow only members to promote your group, you can let affiliate marketers promote it. But, you do want to choose the marketers carefully to ensure that they will use honest methods to promote your group. Provide graphics, blog posts, and other information to help them market your membership.

    Make YouTube Videos

    A good YouTube video can go viral. If you create a regular channel on YouTube that people like to watch, it is another means of promotion for your membership program. You don’t even have to mention the membership program other than at the end of the videos, and in the description bar. Ask people to share – this is a great way to get other people to promote your membership program.

    Create Infographics

    People love sharing infographics that give data that the audience needs to know. They also are more likely to share visual material than the same data in print or a blog post. The best way to start is to put the graphic on your social media networks. Ask your family and friends to share, and you’ll create momentum.

    Provide Excellent Graphics

    Other people are more likely to want to promote your membership group if you offer good material and graphics to help them promote it well. Memes, infographics, videos and more all offer everyone a good way to promote your membership program.

    Personalized Webinars

    A really good way to promote your membership group is to ask movers and shakers within the industry to host a webinar where you’ll be the guest. You will answer questions and then promote your membership at the end of the webinar.

    Ask for Testimonials

    The testimonials of others will help you promote your membership program, but it will also help other people promote your group. The more good things you can show people about your membership program, the better. The more good people see, the more they’ll want to help promote your membership.

    Memberships are a lucrative way to create a new stream of income based on the niche you’re already involved in. You can provide your products and/or services in an entirely new way that guarantees regular and timely income.

    Categories: Grow a Home Business, membership Tags: Tags:

    Nine Ways to Participate in an Online Community

    One of the ways to make an online community work is to practice a high level of participation. When you get involved in your online community, it will really pay off in a big way by making you closer to the other members. You and the members can become awesome resources to each other throughout your business’s growth.

    1. Introduce Yourself – When you become part of an online community, start out on the right foot by introducing yourself according to the rules of the group. Most online communities have rules that prohibit sharing of URLs or advertising, but most allow you to introduce yourself to get started in the group.

    2. Ask Questions – Once you’ve been properly introduced, start asking questions to get the discussions going in the group. This is a good way to get to know each other as well as to get to know your audience. When people answer your question, be sure to comment back and thank them and add to the discussion.

    3. Answer Questions – When other people ask questions that you have an answer to, be sure that you answer the questions honestly and openly, without any intent to sell them anything. Give of yourself freely and you will end up with a large return on investment.

    4. Comment on Stories – When other people introduce themselves or tell a story, be sure to comment on them. If the community often posts informative articles, be sure to comment on those too and to point them out to others in the group for reading.

    5. Create a Good Signature Line – Most groups allow you to have some type of signature line that has a link back to your website. Be sure to provide a specialized link just for that group that offers specials for group members.

    6. Fill Out Your Profile Completely – Additionally, most online communities have a profile area. Be sure to upload a nice headshot, and to fill out the entire profile. That way when someone wants to learn more about you they can easily do so.

    7. Invite New People – When you know that the group would be a good fit for someone you meet elsewhere, share the group with them. Bringing in new people to the community keeps the community alive and fresh.

    8. Be a Resource to Others – Never be afraid to be an open book resource within your area of expertise. If you want to be known as an expert, show that expertise within your answers to others.

    9. Start a Subgroup – Once you’ve become well known and people start coming to you more, see if you can start a subgroup inside the group. Ask for permission before doing that, but it might be of help to the group owner if you don’t own the group.

    If you make it your goal to do everything on this list over a period of time, you’ll notice something amazing happening. You’ll notice that you’ve built real relationships with the people in the group, and that they are referring you to potential clients and you are potentially referring some of them to clients too. It’s a two-way street when you are part of a community. The fact that it is online doesn’t mean it’s not real.

    Categories: Grow a Home Business, Networking Tags: Tags: