If you are not spending some percentage of your time networking, you need to fix that.
In-person/ hand-shake/ business card type networking is irreplaceable — you need to be doing some of this.
But networking online is also very powerful — because you can network with anyone in the world from anywhere you have an internet connection.
You simply need to learn the ropes.
The fundamentals are the same as networking off-line — you often need to put the interests of others ahead of your own.
One way to do this is to “Retweet” someone’s message on Twitter.
Here is how:
Find a message you like and would like to share with your Twitter following
Copy the message to your clipboard (Ctrl +C on a PC)
Paste the message into the Twitter message box. (Ctrl + P on a PC)
Type the following in front of the tweet:
RT @PersonYouAreRetweeting
Now just send out the tweet.
This is a form of networking and “schmoozing” on the Internet. In the case of the example below @gbussmann has “retweeted” my message to his following. I appreciated that.
Netvibes RSS reader (To monitor all of the blogs and news sites)
An RSS reader is a place where you can aggregate everything you read online into one place — it is VERY convenient.
I use the free Netvibes RSS reader twice per day, once in the morning and once during my lunch to read all of the blogs and news sites in my industry.
If I read an article, more often than not, I make a comment at the bottom. This is a form of online networking. Bloggers absolutely love when you comment on their articles and they (along with other readers of the blog) will often click through to find out who you are and what you do — especially if your comment is good.
This 8 minute video will get you all set up to start networking using your own RSS reader.
Start by typing in a “seed list of words” you think people are using when they search Google
If you can’t think of a “seed list” you could also get started by sending Google to a competitors website [or to your own website] to see what Google suggests you should be targeting.
Scroll through the list of words and suggestions that Google returns
Do some research to find out if you are ranking well for any of these keywords by typing the words into Google yourself (make sure you are not logged into your Google account while doing this research)
An XML Sitemap is a “road map” of your website built specifically for search engines like Google.
You can find out if you have one by typing in:
http://www.yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml
Just replace ‘yourdomain’ with the name of your domain.
It is certainly worth your time to build an XML Sitemap, especially if you have a fairly large website — like 25 or more pages.
Build your XML sitemap using this free tool, and upload it to the root level of your server and then submit it to Google here. If you don’t know how to upload files to your server, call your webmaster. See the pics below for guidance.
Download and save the XML version of the sitemap and get that puppy on your server at the root level.
If you are using WordPress, you can simply install this plug-in and it will do all of the work for you. This plug-in will even create a new sitemap every time your site changes and submit it to Google for you. Are you starting to see why I love WordPress — they make everything so much easier.
What questions do you have about creating an XML sitemap?
Are people swiping the content off of your website and passing it off as their own? This can be a real problem because Google doesn’t like to have more than one copy of any web page in its index.
Google will choose one of the copies of this content — and filter the rest.
You can use the free Copyscape tool to determine whether there are multiple copies of your website content on the web. You just might discover that you have created multiple copies of this website content yourself by building multiple duplicate websites without realizing the negative impact.
Are you wondering how to get your business onto those cool Google Maps?
You need to build a “Local Business Center” by clicking here and filling out all of the info about your business.
You will need to have an actual business address to submit — if this is your home address you may want to think twice about submitting it for everyone to see on the Internet.
After you submit your business address to Google make sure that you include your address on your website — Google likes to see the same information in multiple places — it calms their nerves and makes them more confident that they have good information for their customers — the searchers.
You can read what anyone is posting about any topic. You can use Twitter Advanced Search to search and read “tweets” about any topic and limit that search to a geographic location.
Spend a few minutes searching Twitter for the keywords that are important to your industry. It is the world’s best (and cheapest) focus group.
