The first goal that many people active in social media right now have is turning your network into revenue-generating traffic. For tips on how you can achieve that goal in the next 10 weeks, catch our last post.

And here’s the #2 Goal:

Goal #2:  Spend less time social networking and more time making money!

Here are five tips to save tons of time on your social networking:

1. Block out 15 minutes each day for this activity
2. Know what you are doing: posting on walls? Making new connections? Sending birthday wishes? This will help you target your time and not get distracted.
3. Create a system for what to do and when: accept friend requests on Mondays & Thursdays, respond to messages on Tuesdays & Fridays, build new friends & post on walls on Wednesdays.
4. Don’t do it yourself! If you have a system, why can’t your VA or even your teen help out?
5. Turn your virtual friends into real friends! Pick up the phone at least twice each week to talk to some of your new friends. Build those relationships now before you need to sell something. Promotions will be much easier later on.

For more assistance with your social networking to save time, build relationships and start making money, check out the KickStart Coaching program. This program dives into a different topic each month to help use social media to build relationships and even offers private coaching as well.

Did you set goals for 2009? Where are you at? Here are 3 popular goals with some tips to help you achieve these goals in the next 12 weeks!

Goal #1: Turn my social networking friends into buyers.

Here are 5 steps to social media success that work for everyone, no matter your business or your personality!

1. Build a profile that ATTRACTS the right people.
2. Build your network with quality, not quantity. Make sure you know who you want to connect with. It’s about strategy and it’s not random.
3. Build your visibility through activities like wall posts and comments and having conversations.
4. Build your credibility through sharing good information-yours and others.
5. Build traffic by blogging, integration and good conversations (yes, conversations warrant being listed twice)

It’s not too late to participate in my “30 Days to Create & Automate a Traffic Generating System” This is a 4 week bootcamp where I teach you my step-by-step proven system that takes your social networking, builds relationships and drives massive traffic to your site to buy your products and services.

Yes, this program started last week and we are recording all of the calls, so you won’t miss a thing if you can’t clear your schedule! For more information, check out the sales page now!

Blogging is a foundational tool in your online marketing campaign. And you should be blogging everyday if you can. This will build quick visiblity, credibility & traffic to your site. It can also drive traffic from your social networks into your marketing funnel when you do it the right way. In fact, if you need a kick in the pants for your blogging, it’s not too late to jump into my good friend, Sandra Martini’s 30 Day Blog Challenge–and it’s free!

But are you using your blog to build relationships?

Here are 3 simple ideas to take your blogging to a new level:

1. Live on the edge! Ask pointed questions that will inspire people to respond to your thoughts and your topic. When your readers respond, always acknowledge their responses–even when you don’t agree. These conversations may be the first steps in new connections.

2. Talk about others in your posts! I don’t want you spamming, but feel free to share other experts opinions on your blog. Add your own commentary, of course. Make sure to include a link to her original post or social media page for quick reference and then let her know you just mentioned her on your blog (sent her a Tweet or post on her Facebook wall/page).

3. Invite upcoming experts to be “Guest Bloggers” on your site. Make sure they are either writing original content for you or repurposing at least 30% of the content for your readers. Allow them to incl ude a small bio box and their photo at the end of their articles with a link. Quickly, you will have other experts promoting your site and thanking you for the opportunity to build their own audience! And we haven’t even gotten into the time-savings opportunities…

Do you see the win-win-win in each of these ideas? When you are leading from a place of “shared abundance” and you value your community and relationships in your business, great things will come!

StumbleUpon is one of the best-kept secrets in the social networking world. Probably because it’s not really a “networking” tool. SU is a bookmarking tool that was designed to sort and tag favorite sites. It has evolved into a great resource to drive traffic to your site and to build fantastic relationships.

And you get start using this tool in just a couple of easy steps:

1. Go to www.StumbleUpon.com and download the toolbar. It takes a few minutes and will make bookmarking the easiest social media activity you do.

2. Take your “hot JV” list and visit their blogs and web sites. You are looking for valuable content that is relative to your expertise and your audience. When you find a good article or post, give a “thumbs up”. If you are the first person to rate the page/post, then you will also be able to add your commentary.

3. Spend 2 minutes each day reviewing blog posts, articles and videos from your friends and mentors (you should be doing this no matter what social media tools you are using to build your visibility & credibility) and “Stumble” your favorites. Then you can tweet about them and/or share them on Facebook as well.

This “secret” really only takes a minute for each site/article/post you bookmark. The best part is that everything that you rate will also be kept in your account for future reference! The theory is that you will bookmark your “friends” great content and add your commentary and they will do the same for you. Please note your friends may not be active on StumbleUpon, but other great people are. This is a great opportunity to increase your cirle of influence and circulate in new groups!

We have spent the last month discussing how to build content that drives traffic. One of my favorite, high-ranking social media sites is Scribd.com. This is a document hosting site that Google and Yahoo LOVE. In fact, when you upload your press releases, articles, power-points and even excell spreadsheets, the search engines will start scouring and assessing your document for good content almost immediately.

Scribd is a content sharing site that utilizes some bookmarking and networking features to maximize the reach and build credibility & visibility much faster for you than some other sites.

Scribd is also in the process of adding a sync feature with Twitter and Facebook that will definitely build exposure for them and your content on the site.

Best of all, it only takes about 2 minutes to login and upload your weekly ezine article or your latest free teleseminar presentation to start building quality traffic back to your site.

Have you ever partnered with a friend thinking that you could combine your efforts and really leverage your relationship to create more traffic, exposure and even more money in your pockets? But afterwards you felt like you got the raw end of the deal?

This happens all the time. I was talking to a close friend the other day about a “partnership” that she had recently entered into. At first glance, it seemed like a great deal because she was adding benefits to a program that she didn’t think she could offer herself and she got to partner with a really cool friend.

But afterwards, she felt like she was the one doing most of the work without the recognition or the benefits while still splitting the profits 50/50.

Can you relate?

Well, there are 5 steps that I recommend that all potential partners must discuss, come to an agreement and write down before making the “partnership” official.

Step 1: Know Your Purpose: What is the point of the partnership/JV? What do you want to create together? Know what you are doing and why so that you can stay on track. Otherwise, entrepreneurs often get caught up in the potential of what “could” happen if only….

Step 2: Who is the driver? Usually, people come together, brainstorm and create great ideas and think that everything is 50/50. But almost all the time, this is not the case. I strongly suggest that you decide who the driver is, and allow the others to be passengers. Even if the partnership feels even, you must decide who gets what in a worst-case scenario.

Step 3: Who is doing what? Know what everyone’s responsibilities are and be clear about what each person brings to the table. Lay out who is in charge of the creative, the promotions, setting up the event on Facebook, Tweeting, etc. Evaluate these items regarding before, during and after the event and/or promotion. Include what each person will do during the relationship: promotion, creation, expenses, etc.

Step 4: What’s the Win? Be clear about the win (motivator) for each participant. Remember that often the best JV’s are motivated by more than just money including list building, visibility, credibility and even “new pools of influence.” Note that these are the tools used to evaluate a successful partnership in the end.

Step 5: How will I be compensated? If the “win” for each partner is money, then who gets how much? But if the “win” is list-building, you must be clear from the beginning who will host the list, how/when it will be forwarded to the partner, etc. Whichever the “wins”, be clear about the compensation on all levels. Always compensate appropriately and respectfully.

Step 6: OK—so there’s one more step here and this is the most important one: Write it down. After you have had a conversation and made decisions together on each of these steps, write them all down. This is really the most important step since our memories are just not perfect. This also allows for confusion to be  cleared up at the beginning of the relationship instead of the middle or the end.

There are so many great opportunities for all of us to connect and create wonderful collaborations for ourselves and for our collective audiences. And when you take these six simple steps at the beginning of a joint venture, partnership or any similar business relationship, you are sure to have great success, profitability and happiness together!

To access my Partnership/JV Agreement template, click here to download it now for free!

Interested in building your business through Joint Ventures, collaborative relationships and strategic alliances, but not sure how to structure the relationship, or put an agreement into place? I’ve decided to make available to my readers the template I use when putting together Collaborative Agreements, so enter your email below and grab them now!

A few months ago, I had my good friend Michele PW visiting. We tag-teamed a special workshop teaching people the ins/outs of social media and some web traffic strategies. Because I teach various social media platforms in a variety of my programs, I am very active on some of these platforms.

Facebook and Twitter are my favorites- (I reserve the right to change my mind as new platforms develop AND my social network migrates to new playgrounds).

Back to the story: After the workshop, Michele and I are headed out for dinner. Not being very familiar with downtown Salt Lake City, I decided to ask my “tweeps” (twitter peeps) if they have any suggestions. I get a response from someone and we are off. After, I update my tweeps about our delicious meal and there is some more interaction about restaurants, new items on the menus, and good food. If you know me at all, you know that I am “all about the food!”

So at dinner the next evening, with my family and teenage daughters around the kitchen table, I share this great story about how I asked my tweeps for advice and they came through. I am really LOVING these relationships and the ability to connect virtually with great people (In my opinion, people who love food are great people!).

My 16 year old daughter, Jackie, then explains to me that this “Twittering” is just not right-it goes against everything we have taught our children about “stranger danger”! I am communicating with people I have never met about personal things like what restaurant I am going to for dinner! Hmmm–she might have a point!

So how do you explain it’s different to you child? While Jackie was really giving me a hard time (because that’s what kids do to their parents), I was stumped for a little while. Of course, in business, we HAVE to reach out to strangers on a daily basis. But with social networking platforms like Twitter, you have strangers around the world “following” you. Hmmm!

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Here is a great response from my good friend, Andrew Stone:

MaryPat,

I read your email and I do have a comment on the “stranger danger” aspect of things. Your daughter is right and my wife is right for that matter. We have to be careful what we discuss and how we discuss it.
Our lives are an open book and it is a little freaky. However, it has to be that way in my business and in yours. So how am I careful? I may ask for advice on a restaurant, but I don’t say when I am going. I
mention the neighborhood I live in, but I never mention my address. I may tell people when I am home sick, but I never tell them when I leaving or for how long. I use YELP.com religiously, but I never review while I am on a vacation, I post them when I am back home. I may mention that I love to walk my dog to the dog park, but I never mention that I make it a daily practice between 5pm and 6pm (not my real times, LOL).

We have to be very careful on all of these sites. There are crazy people everywhere and I don’t want to meet them at home. We tell our children to be careful on the net and regulate their use, WE have to be
careful as well. We can put our children’s and our families lives in just as much danger as we put our own lives.

Remember that everything on the web is out for the world to see FOREVER. It may get buried, but it is still there.

Another little tidbit of information, we protect our networks and our computers with firewalls, but if you have a network connected gaming machine (wii or xbox), the world can have easy access to your home
network. Turn it off completely and even unplug it when it isn’t in use. Save power, the planet and your network!

Andrew

http://www.andrewstonerealtor.com

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I’d love to hear what YOU think!

My teenage daughter was embarrassed when I asked her to “clean up” her Facebook wall the other day. She had no idea that the new texting feature on Facebook was posting messages publicly instead of privately. While you might think this to be an issue that is more prominent with teens that us professional entrepreneurs, I beg to differ.

I noticed a Twitter friend of mine this morning posting a reply to the Twitterverse that displayed his irritation at being tagged “just to get me to read the article.” This seems to be a regular issue on Facebook with people tagging more prominent “Facebookers” to get into their news feeds and in front of more people.

In case you are still fairly new to Facebook and the world of social media, tagging is the ability to “label” your content that you share within your social networking & content sharing sites. While “tagging” on many sites is often a personal labeling system, on some of the networking sites, it is very public and very powerful. With the power comes responsibility. So here are three simple suggestions to protect yourself from harmful or irritating tagging on Facebook.

1. Adjust your privacy settings. On Facebook, there are 5 types of privacy settings: Profile, Search, Feeds, & Friend Requests/Activities, and Applications. I highly recommend that everyone using Facebook adjust their privacy settings strategically–based on who you want to see what. This is especially important for photos, videos and notes tagged with you as well as your news feed that includes all activity pertaining to you.

2. Review your wall daily. This may seem like a nuisance, but a 15 second scan of your wall can avoid embarrasing ads and messages that some of your “less than stellar” friends may consider funny. Remove these items daily.

3. Be informed. Adjust your email/text notifications so that when someone tags you or posts on your wall, you are notified immediately and can either respond or remove the information.

Whether you are a student or a professional, you need to be strategic with everything you do and say in your social networking. As my good friend, Mari Smith, says, don’t post anything that you wouldn’t want your grandmother or your great grandkids to know about you. Also, don’t post anything that you wouldn’t want posted on the front page of the New York Times. Thanks, Mari, for that great advice.

This is my simple list of 3 steps to safeguard yourself against unwanted tagging. Let me know if you have any more suggestions.

Generally speaking, there are three types of events in Facebook: Events that you host, events that you are the featured expert, and events that you attend. Only one of these should be hosted by you in your social networking/promotional campaign, but all can be promoted by you.

1. Hosted events: these events are hosted by you. You are responsible for getting quality attendees and should, therefore, be the creator of the event. If you are hosting another expert on the call, then use his/her name
and expertise to help spread the word.

2. Featured Expert events: these are the events that YOU are featured as the expert. The event is typically hosted by someone else, unless you are featuring yourself. These events should be created by the host. Make sure to share the event with your network by “sharing” to your wall and even inviting some of your favorite friends.

3. Events to attend: these events may be hosted by favorite friends and/or relevant to your passion, expertise or interest. These can be shared to your network by using the “sharing” feature on the event and by sending private messages to friends. When you attend an event, your response is sent into your news feed for all your network to see. This is a great way to promote your friend’s events and relevant opportunities.

Sometimes, it makes more sense to use your affiliate links when you are promoting an event. In these cases, you should direct people to the correct web page and not to the Facebook event. But remember, social media is a
community of sharing, so make sure to be considerate.