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How to Build Your Network Using LinkedIn

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build your network using linkedin

LinkedIn is a great choice if you’re interested in using social media to build your business. LinkedIn is designed for business and for networking, so if you want to talk business or connect with someone, you won’t be shut out or hidden like on more friendship-based social sites like Facebook. LinkedIn is easy to use, but there are some tricks to ensure you’re getting the most out of the networking site. Read on to learn how to use LinkedIn to seamlessly build your network, business, and connections.

Fill Out Your Profile…Completely!

Your presence on LinkedIn is like your online resume. When applying for a job, you wouldn’t submit a resume with important information missing, so don’t leave your LinkedIn profile only partially complete. LinkedIn offers a handy percentage bar for your profile that lets you know how close you are to having a complete profile. Having a complete profile not only makes this progress meter go away (yay!) but it makes sure you look as professional as possible when your name comes up in a search or you request a connection. If someone sees that you haven’t filled out your profile, they may think you’re not active and reconsider reaching out to connect or to tell you about a new opportunity. A complete profile can lead to many more connections.

Personalize Connect Requests

When you send an invitation to connect on LinkedIn, LinkedIn auto-populates a little message with the invite. This message is nice, but totally impersonal and does nothing to increase the likelihood of someone connecting with you. Take the time to personalize each connection request. The space for text is small, so no need to go overboard. Just write a quick note about why you want to connect and perhaps what you can offer your new connection. This step is crucial when you want to build your network using LinkedIn. 

Connect with People Only When It Makes Sense

LinkedIn will constantly show you previews of profiles that you might want to connect with, but don’t take all of these suggestions to heart. The most powerful networks on LinkedIn are carefully curated and connecting with just anyone doesn’t allow you to build this kind of network. Only connect with people if you know them or you can find a mutual connection to do an introduction. Also consider sticking to your industry when building your network. It may be nice to connect with your hairdresser, but if you don’t work in that industry (or have any intention to) it can be confusing to have so many connections not relevant to your work.

Update Your Status and Share Content

LinkedIn allows you to share status updates or write and load full user-created posts to the site. Consider sharing articles related to your business for your status updates, or, if you have time, regularly write a blog post that will go on LinkedIn as well as your own personal site. People will see that you’re active and engaged and blog posts will make you seem like thought leader in your industry.

Keep Your Profile Up to Date

Don’t let you profile get out of date! People are constantly searching LinkedIn for new connections or to suggest jobs. If your profile has your job title from two companies ago, the people that reach out to you won’t be the right ones because they will have old information. Keep your profile up to date and add new accomplishments as they happen to ensure the most beneficial connections.

 

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Advice

How Setting Goals Leads to Success

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How setting goals leads to success BL

How do you know when you’ve succeeded in your business? In your affiliate program? You may think you’ll know success when you see it, but it’s hard to know why you’ve had success or what to strive for next if you didn’t set goals. Setting goals may seem like an obvious thing, but many people fail to set them, resulting in an ineffective strategy or business moves that don’t make sense. Learn how setting goals leads to success by designing your goal path, achieving them, and then moving forward.

What are You Trying to Achieve?

Goals are important to success in business, not just because they give you something to strive for, but because they give you focus. Perhaps you open a pizza shop and you think it’s obvious that you want to sell pizza, but how? Do you want to sell more pizza than any other shop? Do you want to sell more pizza at the lowest price around? Or do you want to sell the highest quality pizza around, regardless of price? This is a simple example, but it applies to all business. You may think that just by starting a business or affiliate opportunity that your goal is obvious, but it’s not. What do you want to get out of starting that business or affiliate program? Now you’re on your way to setting goals.

Measuring Success

Part of what makes a good goal is the ability to measure it. Putting numbers to goals can be intimidating and many people avoid it because, what if they don’t hit those numbers? The important part of creating measurable goals is to just start. Say you’re that same pizza shop owner and you want to set some goals for how many pizzas you sell next month. Will the number you set as a goal be too high? Too low? It doesn’t matter in the beginning. Pick a goal and then start measuring your progress toward it. After those first few months, you’ll be able to see what is a reasonable goal, what is a reach goal, and what is setting the bar too low. Then adjust your goals accordingly and you’ll be on the right path to achieving the right goals.

Reset Your Goals

Once you hit a goal, what do you do next? Set a new one, of course. Often times this will mean setting a new higher goal in the same category, like last month you sold 300 pizzas and this month you want to sell 400. But new goals can also be subsets of your bigger goals. Maybe you want to sell 400 pizzas next month and make sure the customer doesn’t wait more than 20 minutes for their pizza. Or you want to sell 400 pizzas, but 100 should be for take out so you can get more cash into your business without taking up space in the dining room. Adding these qualifiers onto your goals help to guide your business better and identify what you need to improve and what doesn’t matter. Think how you can refine your goals each month.

Filing Your Goals

So you’re hitting your goals, setting, and refining them. How do you ensure continued success? Don’t forget these goals. Have a system to file your goals and information so you can look back on them to find what led to success or just compare numbers. While the goal of your business is to keep growing, it important to have information from previous months and years to give context to your growth and success.

 

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WebSites

What to Do Once Your Affiliate Website is Live

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affiliate website

Congratulations on buying your domain and taking the time to set up your website! Now what? A great website is wasted if you don’t use it right. Read on for what to do now that your affiliate website is ready for business.

Let People Know

Now is a great time to follow up with everyone you told about your new website. Maybe you told friends you were working on it, or have been putting off customers waiting for your new site to be ready. Now is the time to reach out! Send a personal email to everyone who has been waiting for your website and direct them to it. If this site is an update to previous website, go through your old mailing list to let past customers know of your new address. Lastly, share your big news and links to your site on social media. This is a great way to hit a large audience at once and find some new visitors to your page.

Find New Customers

One way to find new customers with a new website is by ensuring your content has good SEO. SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization and refers to using the right keywords and phrases to drive traffic to your site and earn higher rankings with search engines. Identify several keywords and keyword phrases that apply to your business. Next use a tool like KeywordTool.io to idenify which of these phrases and words are more powerful in driving traffic. Then use these keywords throughout your website to ensure they are picked up by search engines.

Keep Content Consistent

You’ve no doubt put a lot of effort into creating just the right content for your website, but don’t let that content get stale. To keep visitors coming back, keep content updated frequently. One easy way to do that is to add a blog. With a blog, you can share updates frequently without having to edit your entire website. A blog can demonstrate to your visitors that your website is managed well and that you are available should someone need to reach out. Also make sure business information like address and hours are always up to date. The best way to get and keep customers and traffic is to share the most up-to-date and accurate information possible.

Plan for Updates

Just like you need to keep your content fresh, you need to keep your website design looking fresh too. Make updates to your website design as needed. If you find people aren’t clicking the “Contact Us” button as frequently as you hope, perhaps move it to a more prominent place. Invite feedback from your customers and friends on your website design and makes changes accordingly to make site visits as effective as possible. Last, try to look at your site through new eyes every few months. Is there something that needs to be changed? Is the design serving its purpose. Remember, once your website is complete, the work has just begun!

 

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