Unless Gary Vaynerchuck, head of a New Jersey Liquor company with over 100 employees and a turnover of more than 50 million dollars is nuts, the answer is most certainly yes.

Gary V noticed a shift towards social media a few years ago and so he decided that he would give up his role of leading the company he built up with his father to focus on creating a wine TV show that is now the phenomenally popular Wine Library TV blog.

Most people actually thought he was nuts for doing that and some people just think he is nuts anyway but one thing is for sure, he knows a heck of a lot about social media and it’s worked like a charm in his business.

Here is a 4:25 minute snippet from an interview he did with Rich Schefren a while back:

As you may have gathered, Gary Vaynerchuck is huge on becoming part of the community. He apparently gets over 500 emails per day and he takes the time to answer every one of them personally. Since his increased popularity as a result of his Wine Library TV blog, he has also started a blog where he just talks about business, which is also a passion of his. If you really want to understand social media, watch Gary Vay.Ner.Chuck as he probably gets it better than anyone else on the ‘net.

Recently Gary did a promotion for a book that he is about to release, “Crush It” (I’ve pre-ordered mine through Amazon, it’ll be a classic for sure). A few of his subscribers where unhappy with the marketing tactics he used and here is the response he made about that on his blog – http://garyvaynerchuk.com/

He really understands the pulse of his market, he seems to have an incredible instinct for business.

So Where Is The Best Place To Start With Social Media?

There are literally hundreds of social media platforms these days and it can be a little bit overwhelming knowing where to start. One of the points that Gary Vaynerchuck made in that short audio snippet was that you must become part of the community and DEFINITELY come from the place of giving and sharing information rather than selling.

A blog is a really great place to start with social media because you control the environment. It’s a way to write or video blog about things you feel are worth sharing with your audience. Not only can you create your own information but you can also post other peoples videos, audio, and articles on your blog — in a sense you become an aggregator of great information, creating a central hub with all the content you feel is worth sharing.

One of the fastest ways to get known in your community is to link to other peoples content and share it with your peers and readers.

Ferny Ceballos from SEO Networker posted an excellent video and article about how approaching social media with a generous mindset can really have a huge impact on your business. Adam Taha posted an excellent example of how this can play out, also at Better Networker.

But What About Promoting Your Competition, Surely That Can’t Be Good?

It seems counter intuitive to promote your competition, but if you do it surprising results may just come back to you in ways you could never predict.

Here is part of the comment I left on Ferny’s post about interacting with your community. I was writing this from the perspective of an acupuncturist in a small town;

But is it a good idea to promote your competitors?

As I mentioned, I live in a small town and there are a number of chiropractors, physiotherapists and other alternative practitioners that practice here. You could say they are my competition but I promote them every chance I get…

Sometimes for one reason or another I just can’t get the results I’m looking for with a patient, once I recognize this, I refer them to whoever I think could help them the most. Based on the referrals from my fellow practitioners, I’m guessing they have the same issue .

The absolute crux of the matter in all of this it that I do it NOT because I want more referrals BUT because I genuinely want what is best for my patients…and they get that. Even if I can’t help them, they still send their friends to me for treatment. Funny old world isn’t it.

I truly believe that having an abundance mindset in business actually widens the market for everyone whereas worrying about your competition and having a scarcity mindset actually shrinks it.

The Four R’s To Becoming Part Of Your Community

It’s so easy to become part of a community and you will find it fun and rewarding as well. So here are 4 easy rules to follow to help you fit right in;

R #1  Reach out and relate – you need to actively seek out people that are in your community. If you go to popular blogs in your niche you’ll be able to find links back to lots of peoples blogs. Subscribe to their RSS feed or via email and comment on any posts that they make. People put a lot of effort into creating a blog post and they will be thrilled when you acknowledge their work, deep down most people want to feel appreciated…so let them know your listening.

R #2 Respect – although people will often comment on blogs to get a link back to their own site (which is fine) don’t leave crumby comments like “great post man” or something inane like that. Always point out what you liked about their article and contribute your own thoughts on the subject. If you disagree with something they have written then be diplomatic and say so in a constructive way.

R#3 Reward - if you like what someone writes, go ahead and bookmark the article in your favourite bookmarking site or vote for it on one of the voting sites like Digg or StumbleUpon. Perhaps their article inspired you to write something and so it’s nice to link back to that post in your article.

R #4 Repetition - Gary Vaynerchuck made the point about repetition; “you have to be out there early and often”. I remember listening to an interview with John Chow and he said that when he started his blog, he had an average of 1.7 posts per day for the first year! Darren Rowse from ProBlogger.com recently wrote a post about 21 Common Blogging Mistakes and lack of consistency was number 5 on his hit list.

If you just follow those 4 basic principles you’ll soon have people in your community writing about you and your work.  One thing is for sure though, social media can be used in business.

I’ve got some more absolute gems from Gary Vaynerchuck coming and so if you want to receive my blog posts via email, simply enter your address in the box below.

So what do you think about promoting your competition, is it a good or a bad practice?

Steve A.

The training in the Renegade Professional is the most comprehensive training on setting up a internet/network marketing system I’ve seen (and I’ve been around a few membership sites over the past few years).

Although this training is really aimed at network marketers who are wanting to take their business online, there seems to be quite a number of people who are not in network marketing but are still finding the training very useful.

Almost every aspect of internet marketing is covered in great detail. Here is a list of some of the topics that are covered;

• Social Marketing (121 video tutorials)!! Pretty much everything you can think of is covered here.
• Traffic Exchanges (1 video tutorial)
• Google Adwords ( 9 video tutorials)
• Telephone Prospecting ( 7 video tutorials)
• Copyrighting ( 5 video tutorials)
• Lead Capture Pages ( 11 video tutorials)
• Email Marketing (10 video tutorials)
• Finding Your Niche Market ( 4 video tutorials)
• Creating Information Products ( 1 video tutorial)

That’s over 150 training videos that are designed to help people understand every element of internet marketing. It’s an incredible amount of information and so to help people avoid information overload, there is a 90 day action plan to give a framework to the learning.

The way the Renegade Professional is structured is that the person who introduces you is also your guide. This is a person that you can go to if you have any specific questions or if you need help. Apart from this there is a support staff that is also very efficient.

Getting Your Blog Set Up

I’m one of the contributors to the training material for the Renegade Professional. So far I have posted 21 videos totaling nearly 5 hours of training on WordPress blogs. I’m a huge fan of blogs and so this is a topic that I love to teach.

To me blogs are like children; they take on a personality of their own and it’s very easy to get attached to them (especially when they bring you business).

About one month before the Renegade Professional opened, a gentleman contacted me inquiring about the training that was inside the members area. He had subscribed to many different training programs and so wanted to know if the Renegade Professional was the real deal.

He called the morning Renegade Pro opened to thank me for introducing him to the training, he was thrilled.

The other day he called me to let me know how happy he was with the wordpress blog course that I had put together. Here’s a testimonial that he wrote;

I am a baby boomer. I am 54 years old and am without any internet expertise. The idea creating a blog would stir up feelings of overwhelm and confusion. I would feel like a dinosaur who was no longer pertinent to their environment. I would wonder how a techno phobic like me ever find a way to participate in the internet and the opportunities it affords when the technical hurdles seem so large and unresolvable.

I am now making a blog. I was shown how to make two windows on my computer. One window for me and one for my blog creation teacher Steve Anderson. He tells me what to do on one window and I follow what he does on the other window. He takes me through click by click in the videos he has created.

Steve explains everything in simple ways and he is taking me by the hand every step of the way without missing anything. I am borrowing all his technical knowledge, which I haven’t got ,and am learning at the same time from his clear explanations.

I am now  gliding through a the technical maze of the internet with ease. Writing and speaking are not a problem for me. But using the internet as a platform for such activities has been a huge problem for me.

Thanks to Steve this is now not the case!

Bede Draper

www.livingrightly.com

It absolutely thrills me to see people taking positive steps towards achieving their goals. The training in the Renegade Profession really is like nothing I’ve ever seen. It’s perfectly suited to the baby boomers and people who have trouble understanding technology.

Having said that, the marketing concepts covered are cutting edge and all that you need to succeed online.

The Renegade Professional Has A Limited Capacity

The Renegade Professional can only take so many members, a high value is placed on supporting existing members. We are continually increasing our capacity to service the people that want to access this training and every so often the doors are opened to take in new members.

Even when the doors are closed, you can get access to some incredible free training that will keep you busy for quite some time. All you need to do is create a free account at The Renegade University and you will get access to an amazing amount of free information.

From within the Renegade University you can access over 2:45 minutes of training videos straight from Ann Sieg herself (this is worth a lot). Then there is nearly five hours of recorded webinars from Mike Klingler on attraction marketing, articles, reports and training on computer basics are also included.

I would say that just following the free material provided will get you off to a terrific start to internet marketing and how to generate leads for your MLM business.

Every move you make, every click you take, I’ll be watchin’ you…

It’s kind of creepy but if you are on my website, I’m going to know what word you typed in to get here.

If you didn’t find this site through a search, I’ll know if you came from twitter, facebook or any other webpage on the net.

If you typed my domain in because you already new about this site, I’ll know that too.

I’ll also know exactly how long you stay here, whether it’s 1 minute or 10.

In fact, I’ll know exactly how you leave, whether you hit the back button or click on a link or banner (of course I’ll also know which link or banner you clicked on).

If you stick around and read a few different pages I’ll know that too, and I’ll also know which pages you went to and in what order.

You are probably starting to think this guy is bloody weird, what’s his problem…

Well it doesn’t end there!!

I’ll also know what browser you use, what Internet connection you have and how fast your page loaded on this site.

Tracking is quite fascinating really but if the truth be known, I think it’s a pain in the neck. Tracking for me is like drinking barley grass juice — not enjoyable but something that I know is good for me (well good for my business).

And All This Information For Free!

It’s hard to imagine but all this data that we collect about our website visitors comes free.  It won’t cost you a cent to keep a close eye on your website visitors. You can literally watch every move they make, down to the last click.

Our good friend Google makes one of the most powerful tracking programs on earth available absolutely free. All as you have to do is sign up for a free Google account and then you will be able to set up tracking for your website through Google Analytics.

After you have set up your Google Analytics account, all as you need to do is enter your website details and they will give you a tiny piece of code to put on your site and from that day on, you will get a birds eye view of all your website visitors.

If you are using a WordPress blog it’s even easier, you just download the Google Analytics WordPress Plugin and take a short string of numbers provided by Google and plug them into your WordPress Analytics plugin settings and off you go…track until your hearts content.

Even When You Go, I’ll Still Be Watching You (Kind Of)

Apart from using Google Analytics I also use a tracking program called Adtrackz. This gives me very detailed information about what links people click on and whether those clicks convert into an action or a sale.

What’s the difference between an action and a sale you might ask?

Let’s say that you click on the banner at the top/middle section of this blog. It leads to a page where you can enter your details to receive Ann Sieg’s Attraction Marketer’s Manifesto and over 3 hours of attraction marketer training videos.

The action I want you to take is to enter your details to get the free training. When you enter your details you will get an email asking you to confirm your request for information and when you do that you will get sent to a confirmation page. On the confirmation page is a piece of code that matches the tag (cookie) you got when you first clicked on the banner.

This gives me a statistic of how many people clicked the banner and how many opted in for the free training. For example if 100 people click the banner and 25 people opt in for the training I get a stat that would tell me that my CTA (click to action) is 25%.

I actually have many different links and ways for a visitor to get to that same landing page offering the free attraction marketing training because it is one of the main things that I recommend to my visitors. Every single link and banner has it’s own unique code and so I’ll know exactly which link or banner was was clicked, and which one converted into the action of someone signing up for that training.

Not All Roads Are Created Equal…

Tracking an action…

If someone clicks on a banner that leads to my sign up page for the attraction marketing training and another person reads my review of the attraction marketer’s manifesto and clicks a link within that review, which one is more likely to sign up for the training?

Well, there is no way of actually knowing except track it and see, everything else is pure speculation and speculation won’t pay the bills at the end of the day. Even though I think tracking is a pain in the neck, I know that it’s the only way to get information about what’s working and what’s not.

Tracking the sale…

When a person clicks on my tracking link there is a cookie (basically like a tag) that is attached to their computer memory. When that person goes through my marketing process and then decides to purchase a membership with the Renegade Professional they will end up on the “thank you for your purchase page” and that is where the magic happens…

…a small piece of code on the thank you page connects to the tag they got when they clicked the link on my website and when that happens, my tracking software registers the sale. It’s like 2 pieces of a jig-saw puzzle coming together (don’t ask how it works but it does).

Through this tracking software I will be able to see the exact point of where that sale originated, which page and which link.

This kind of information will allow you to continually improve your marketing.

How I track things on my website…

As an example, I will use attraction marketing and The Attraction Marketer’s Manifesto.

This blog is all about marketing and attraction marketing so those keywords will come up often in my writing. Instead of sending a visitor off my site to the attraction marketer’s manifesto’s landing page, I prefer to send them to a page internally on this blog where I can pre-sell them on the idea of attraction marketing.

There is a number of reason’s why I do this:

1. I Can Pre-Sell My Visitor and Warm Them Up To The Offer

If you think about it, when someone comes to this website and is reading a post and clicks a link about attraction marketing, how pre-sold are they on the concept and are they likely to opt in to get more information?

When I send someone to a landing page with an offer, as much as possible I want to increase the likelihood of them opting in. The way I do this is create a static page on my blog and do a review of The Attraction Marketer’s Manifesto.

This means that they are still on my blog but now they are reading information that is very specific to the topic of attraction marketing and they are also learning more about Ann Sieg (imagine if they click a link about attraction marketing and they get to a landing page that talks about Ann’s Attraction Marketer’s Manifesto but they don’t know who she is? It’s a total disconnect).

When they click on a link from the review page, the link text will it say something like “Get Ann Sieg’s Attraction Marketer’s Manifesto Report & 3 Hours Of Attraction Marketing Training Videos Free“.

If someone clicks on this link they are way more likely to optin as they have been pre-sold on the information plus they know what is on the other side of the link…they are expecting to get an offer.

2. The Ability To Continually Improve My Review Page

Let’s say I have 30 pages on this site that mention attraction marketing and I link from those references straight to my landing page. This would mean that I would have to analyze 30 different pages to see what links are getting people to click through to my landing page.

Not only that, I would also have to analyze which of those 30 pages converted to actions and sales independently…what a nightmare!

By sending all my traffic to one page about attraction marketing I can continually optimize that one page for better click through rates.

I do this for all my flagship products that I promote.

3. Page Rank Sculpting

Now I’m no page rank artist but I know that the more inbound links that a page has the more weight google will give it. So if I have 30 pages mentioning attraction marketing and each one links away from my site, it’s not so good from an SEO point of view.

On the other hand, if I have one page that is totally optimized for the keywords attraction marketing and The Attraction Marketer’s Manifesto and I have 30 pages on my site linking back to it, Google will quickly understand what that page is all about.

Also, whenever I write an article about attraction marketing and submit it to the article directories I will link back to that main page. Over time that page will build up page rank with Google for that term and will show up in the search engines when someone searches for “attraction marketing”. By linking to that central place it’s sending a very clear message to Google about what this page is about.

But how do I know which blog posts are getting the most clicks to my main attraction marketer’s manifesto review page? Well that’s easy too…

I have a WordPress plugin that I have configured to automatically recognize the keyword attraction marketing and The Attraction Marketer’s Manifesto. When ever I make mention of those words on my blog post, that plugin automatically creates a link to my review page and you guessed it…that plugin records which keywords got clicked and from which blog post.

So as you can see, I pretty much have all my bases covered.

If you are not doing this than you are really flying in the dark. You won’t have any idea of what’s working and what’s not.

Can you imagine coming up with a winning formula for the lottery but then not be able to work out what it was? Very painful!

As much as I dislike doing tracking, what I dislike even more is making a sale of a product and not knowing where it came from…it annoys the heck out of me. That’s why I track everything.

Here is a video I made of all of the things that I track on my website and the tracking software that I use.

In the future I’ll do more detailed videos on how to use Adtrackz and Google Analytics for tracking visitors on your website.

You can subscribe to this site via email if you would like to be notified whenever I update my blog, this way you won’t miss these videos when they come out .

I hope you found this useful. What do you think about tracking? Do you do it? Is it a pain in the neck for you too or do you love it?

Click Here To See A Larger Image Of The Renegade Professional Pipeline

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Renegade Professional Free Content Is Great News

I can’t tell you how thrilled I am about the free content that has been made available since the Renegade Professional launched.

As an affiliate promoting the Renegade system products in order to generate leads for an MLM business and also create a steady stream of income, this is really great news.

The training that is provided within the Renegade Professional is desperately needed in the MLM community, there is absolutely no doubt about that.

Obviously there are also a lot of other MLM lead generation systems out there and so as a Renegade affiliate, having such a treasure trove of free content to offer your prospects puts us in a very strong position indeed.

One of the things that I really like about the Renegade Professional training is that it encourages people to be their authentic selves and create valuable content that contributes to the network marketing community and the broader ‘net community.

What I have noticed is that Renegade Attraction Marketers seem to be quite individual in the way they market and promote not only The Renegade Network Marketer but their own business opportunities.

Why Building Your Own List Is So Important

If you are not building your own list using your own autoresponder you are leaving money on the table…plain and simple.

The Renegade Professional, Renegade University and the Renegade System all have generic landing pages where you can direct your prospects. This is not an altogether bad option and one of the great things about being an affiliate with the Renegade system is you can feel safe that they are continually testing what works best.

If you are just starting with out with Internet marketing then setting up your own landing pages and autoresponder sequences may be a little bit too much to handle and so directing traffic to your affiliate system landing pages will suffice but I highly encourage you to learn how to build your own marketing system as soon as you can so that you can have full control over your marketing.

Here are some of the reason’s I prefer to use my own landing pages and build my own autoresponder list;

1. You get to control the messages and the timing of the messages that are sent to your prospects.
2. You can more effectively build your own brand while at the same time borrow credibility through association with Ann and Mike.
3. You can drive traffic to your blogs and articles to help with search engine rankings.
4. You can promote other affiliate products associated to your market.
5. You have a big advantage when the next launch of a product comes around.

These are the main reasons why I feel it’s so important to build your own list. If you ask any marketer they will all tell you how valuable their list is to them. The sooner you start building your own list the better.

How To Leverage The Free Content From The Renegade Professional

There are a lot of ways you can mix and match the free content available to attract people into your marketing and sales funnel. Below is a video of the process that I am currently using although it’s in a constant state of change depending on what is working best.

You can read my review of Ann Sieg’s Attraction Marketer’s Manifesto and follow the links to my landing page if you want to see what my marketing process for the Renegade Professional looks like.

Happy list building.

I’ve had people decide to join my network marketing business 1 and 2 years after our initial contact. Staying in constant touch with these people over a long period of time allowed us to develop a relationship that was built on consistency and trust.

In all cases these people joined me in business at a time that was just right for them. Everyone has their own time line when it comes to getting involved in a business and it has little to do with what YOU would like to see happen. If you are not in constant touch with your prospective business partners, you probably will not be top of mind when they are ready to get started with a new business venture.

With hundreds of people on my contact list, keeping in touch regularly with people would be hard without an excellent contact management system.

Are You a Hunter or a Farmer?

In Joe Nunziata’s book, Spiritual Selling he divides sales people into two groups;

1. Farmers – those who cultivate relationships over a long period of time
2. Hunters - those who go for the quick sale and then move on to the next target

Farmers are the people that build huge lists of contacts and continue to nurture those relationships over a long period of time. If this way of working appeals to you, then having a very good contact management system will be crucial for your success.

I personally prefer to build relationships over time and so have tried a number of different contact management systems.

The first one that I used was Microsoft’s Outlook and I must say that I was very happy with it. I did find that it was a little hard to integrate all of the tasks, notes, appointments and emails with contact information but for a long time I made do with it and was happy.

On a few occasions I lost all my data due to computer malfunction (as well as me not backing up properly) and that was an absolute nightmare. This is not something that can be blamed on Outlook but I must say using a web-based contact management system gives me a lot of peace of mind on that front.

The next contact management system that I used was ACT by Sage. I switched to this because it was recommended by a few of my mentors and most of my team was using it. There is no doubt that ACT has some powerful features that Outlook doesn’t but I never totally got used to using it. I found it a little too complicated and never got past using the simple features.

One drawback with ACT and Outlook

I use a desktop computer for all of my work and both ACT and Outlook were PC based systems. This meant that if I was anywhere other than my office I couldn’t access my contacts, appointments and scheduled tasks. I know that ACT has a palm device that can by synced with a PC but I just never felt inspired to go there.

Then came Oprius…

I wasn’t really looking for a new contact management system but was asked to trial the Oprius Sales and Contact Management system to see if it would be a good affiliate program for the Renegade Marketer System. There was a 30 day free trial with Oprius which required no payment details. I tried it for the 30 days and have been using it ever since.

I used to love playing with new software and tools. I’d happily spend hours fiddling with them until I was comfortable with all of their quirks…not these days. Because I have better things to do with my time than fiddle with software, I want things to be obvious and intuitive. If I try a new piece of software and it’s not fairly obvious how to use it, I move on very quickly.

That was one of the things I liked about the Oprius Sales and Contact management system, everything about it was obvious. Within minutes I could find my way around the basic features and the slightly more complicated features could quickly be grasped by watching their short and simple tutorial videos.

One of the other things I loved about Oprius was the fact that it was web-based. After losing my data more than once this was very appealing to me.

After about 1 week into trialling Oprius I was converted and over the following couple of months I started to really see how useful it was in building relationships for my business.

I was chatting with the CEO of Oprius a while ago and he mentioned the conversion rates for Oprius, I was amazed but not surprised — web traffic to free trial converted at 7%, free trial to paying customers converted at 48% and the retention rate was 98% !!

These are quite an incredible statistics and give you an idea of the level of satisfaction that people have with the Oprius Contact Management system.

Over the coming months I’ll be doing a series where I break down all the features of Oprius and how I use them in my business.

You can take a 30 day trial of Oprius and see what you think. I’d love to hear your comments…

By the way, what contact management system are you currently using if any?

Many people tried for hours to get in but couldn’t.

Although the Renegade Professional team had prepared by getting 2 new servers for the job, it still wasn’t enough. The huge number of people all rushing to get a spot at once caused everything to freeze up and many missed out.

Obviously many people persevered because the doors to the Renegade Professional closed within 8 hours of the launch. The Renegade Pro membership site was bursting at the seems with new subscribers.

For many the pre-launch excitement of the Renegade Professional ended in disappointment…they were unable to access the order page and then had the doors closed in their face.

Some people got up at all hours of the morning to be at the sign up page, while others took the day off work or arranged babysitters…you can imagine how these people felt.

Ann Sieg and Mike Klingler understood this and so beefed up their support staff so that they could take on more subscribers and decided to re-open the Renegade Professional. They re-opened for 2 days to allow those that missed the first time a second chance.

The Doors Are Shut Again So Now What?

The reason that the numbers were limited was so subscribers would get the support they needed. After everything settles down and Renegade Professional team can assess what they need in terms of support the doors will re-open once again.

If you are wondering what you should do in the meantime…don’t worry, there’s plenty.

During the launch of the Renegade Professional there was a lot of excellent free content released and that is still available. You can access the free Renegade Professional training here, this will also allow you to access the free membership area where you will have access to other excellent free resources that will get you started with attraction marketing.

When you join the notification list through the link above you will also get to attend webinars that I will hold to expand on the marketing concepts taught in the free videos. This alone will be enough to help you get started with generating your own leads online.

I had a friend request on my facebook account recently. The person found me through a marketing colleague so I figured that this guy would be fine to add as a friend…

NOT!

Soon after clicking the accept button I noticed Renegade Network Marketer and all sorts of other promotional stuff plastered through my facebook account.

This is the first time I have ever ‘un-friended’ a person on facebook so I was scrambling to find the button for that as fast as I could.

Luckily within about a minute I found it and he was gone…sheesh!

You see, the thing is, my facebook account is a social place. I have friends in there that I went to school with, friends from my wife’s church, family friends, family members and also marketing colleagues. This is not a place for advertising affiliate products or business opportunities, no way!!

A quick look through and you’ll find all my friends are talking about social things mostly; uploading pictures of family, talking about their weekend, a trip they were on, everything except business.

So why was I ticked off?

Think of it like this…

Mr so and so comes over to my party and says,

hey can I come in, your friends such and such said it would be cool if I did.

My response is oh yeah, she’s cool, sure come on in and join the party. Next thing before he has even introduced himself to anyone, he whips out the megaphone and shouts,

“I’m a marketer, a network marketer, come over here and let me sell you stuff!!”

I’m like, who the heck is this guy coming into my party and pitching crap to all my life long friends (well it’s not crap, Ann’s stuff is great).

They didn’t ask for it and most likely are not interested in it. You see next, these intruders say to your friends, hey I’m a buddy of Steve’s can I join your party too? Then they go in there and trash your friends house with their sales pitches.

Then my friends are like, dude, what sort of people are you hangin’ with? That guy you introduced me to was a jerk, just tried to sell me stuff!!

I’m sorry buddy, this is a party not a sales convention, you’re out!

Why am I telling you this?

Because social media is getting extremely popular and many people are catching on to the fact that it’s a powerful business tool.

In my opinion there is a right way and a wrong way to use social media in business – the above example is definitely the wrong way in my opinion.

If this guy wants to join any of my other social networks do you think I will accept him…no way!

Social media is like a party and at parties you get to know people. If over time a relationship develops were business becomes part of the natural conversation then that’s great, but there’s no need to force it.

Twitter is the same, some people go on there and just pitch stuff all day long, the community hates that. People on these networks are looking to interact with people that bring value not sales pitches. Networks marketers that bring the old 3 foot rule to social media will be avoided like the plague.

I recently made a welcome page for my Twitter profile so that when people clicked on my Bio link they would get taken to a video message from me introducing myself.

When people click on your profile link they want to know a little bit about who your are, they don’t want a landing page or a sales page, that’s not why they click. Why not give them what they want?

(My rant and an explanation of a better way to do things. Length 8:53)

What you’ll notice on my twitter welcome page is that I do talk about business and I also add links to my websites BUT when a visitor clicks on one of those links they know exactly where they are going, it’s not a tricky link that is misleading at all.

Think of it like this, I interact with people on Twitter which is like socializing at a party. If people are interested enough in what I’m saying then they are going to want to know more about me and more about what it is that I do.

In a real life setting they would come up ask me but on a social media site they will go to my profile page and click my bio link, it’s like the person saying tell me more about yourself Steve…

At that point in the conversation I don’t just shove a business card in their face and say, here’s where you can buy my stuff…no I talk a little about myself and mention work as well.

If the person shows interest than I may hand them a business card and say call me some time if you’d like to know more.

This “tell me more expression of interest” on social media is when they click my website links on the welcome page.

Do you see how it’s more natural?

I’m not presuming that they are interested in what I do and just send them there, I’m giving them that choice and that’s just the way people like it.

I know it sounds like pure commonsense but seriously, there are so many people out there getting it so wrong in my opinion.

They are totally alienating themselves from the community and giving the mlm industry a bad name while they are at it, it’s basically spam.

Well that’s my little rant for the day.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on this topic.

The past couple of days I noticed that AVG was crashing each time after a scan. I ignored it for a while but today curiosity got the better of me and so I decided to check out the scan logs and see what was going on in there.

To my horror I found that there were some warnings about trojan horses in the system! They were;

trojanhorsedownloader.bandoadAHZS and trojanhourse.generic12.BGE1

Just typing it makes me nervous….

Naturally the first thing I did was Google it to see just how bad it was (anything with a name like that couldn’t be good right?).

After a few quick searches I decided that these little trojan horses had to go and sooner rather than later.

I found a link to the MajorGeeks Forum and they had some solutions for getting rid of malware but it seemed like a ‘major’ pain in the neck to me (and hip pocket as some of the solutions where paid software).

I decided to do a little more hunting around to see what I could find. I came across a thread in the AVG forum which seemed like it might work.

Some how this breed of trojan horse attached itself to the restore files in the system. Now I’m not a major geek but I know that your computer remembers dates so that you can restore your PC if something goes wrong (which obviously won’t work when you’ve got little horses in there running wild).

The fix was too simple to be true really, just get rid of all the restore points on your PC and trojan horse be gone!

I decided to make a quick video of the process just in case any one else using AVG comes up against this little devil.

And if any of you trojan horse breeders out there happen to read this, leave me alone ya buggers. I’m just a simple little Internet marketer goin’ about my business, haven’t you got better things to do with your time?

Hey did you ever wonder if the spyware and malware software producers create these viruses so they can sell there stuff?

Just a thought .

Also I’ve been adding my webcam videos in the lower corner of my screencasts to give them a little more of a personal feel as well.

In order to do this you will need to be using the Tech Smith software, Camtasia (I wish it was an affiliate product because it’s an awesome tool). At $299 USD I feel it’s reasonably priced but if it’s outside of your budget then I would just use the 30 day trial and make videos like a madman (and hopefully make that in affiliate commissions).

The other option is to use the free software Camstudio (I’m not sure if you can have screencasts and webcam videos together though).

I decided to make a video of exactly how I create my Camtasia videos with my webcam video included. It’s about 16 minutes long, so I hope you’ve got a cuppa ready for this one!

If anything is unclear, feel free to ask a question in the comments section, I’m more than happy to make another video.

The only problem with this is that you can only meet so many people in any given day and so there is not much leverage there. This leads us back to the next best thing which is video.

Different ways to use video

Basically you can do videos of yourself speaking or screencasts.

Screencasts

A screencast is where you use a recording software to capture your computer screen so you can demonstrate how something is done. This is really good for a how-to videos and this kind of information is highly sought after on the Internet.

You can also record a Power Point presentation using screencasting software which is more like a presentation rather than a how-to type video. These also can be very useful as long as they are not too long or boring.

There is a free screencasting software called Camstudio. I’ve never used it so I don’t know much about it but I’ve heard that it’s adequate for doing this kind of work. If you are on a tight budget then that would be a good choice.

If you have $299 to spend then I would highly recommend Camtasia. I’ve been using it for a few years now and am very happy with it. In fact, I don’t know what I’d do without it now.

Webcam Recordings

This is basically where you use a webcam to record yourself speaking about a particular topic. It’s very easy to do but if you don’t get the settings and light right, your videos can make you look and sound pretty bad. It is possible to get reasonable quality videos out of a webcam though and until you decide to get a more expensive camera it will be fine (it’s all I use at the moment).

What’s The Best Online Video Hosting?

There is a huge number of choices for hosting videos, some paid and many free. I’m not going to talk about paid services today because I’m not actually using any of them at the moment (although I have tried many).

Youtube is perhaps the best known free video platform but it’s not my preference for embedding videos onto my websites.

You can upload your videos to any free video platform and then take a simple piece of code and paste it into the appropriate place on your website and like magic your video appears. The term for this is embedding videos.

Basically the information is being transferred from the video service you choose and is just getting played on your website. One of the traps with many video sharing services is that they will play other peoples related videos once yours has finished.

If the viewer clicks on the actual player they will end up on that persons video channel. This is not so good for marketers wanting to keep visitors on their web sites.

Things to consider when choosing a free online video service;

- Do they have advertisements and is there an option to turn them off? Some services run ads on your videos and you’ll get a commission on the click. It may be a few cents per click but to me, it’s far more valuable to have people stay and watch your video.

- What happens at the end of the video? When someone is watching your video and they get to the end of it, you want to have some control over what they see next. If it’s just ads or someone else’s related videos that’s not ideal in a marketing situation.

- How is the quality of the video and what are the download speeds like? Not all video services are created equal and believe it or not, Youtube is not the best quality service out there. I’ve looked at many different services and the two that I’ve settled on for now are Viddler and blip.tv.

- How much choice do you have with the video players? When you are embedding videos onto your website you may want to change the color and size of the video player. In some cases you may want to adjust the sharing options as well. Of all the players again Viddler and blip.tv seem to offer most customization.

Here’s a video where I talk about why I feel Blip.tv is a very good online video hosting service:

Although I now use blip.tv for embedding my videos, I still upload my videos to all the major video services. You may wonder why I would bother doing that? It’s mostly a traffic and exposure strategy really; I use blip.tv for embedding my videos onto my website and all the other services to get traffic and exposure.

It’s a pain uploading videos to all these different video services so I automate the process using various tools. In another post I will talk about these services and so you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed so you don’t miss those posts as they come out (you see at the bottom of this post a box to do that, I prefer to subscribe via email as I don’t use RSS readers at this stage).

I will actually do a blip.tv tips series so you can take advantages of all cool features that they offer…that will be coming soon. For now you may want to duck over and get yourself a free blip.tv account, it’s a piece of cake.

I’d love to hear what you think is the best online video hosting service…