Have you ever wondered what social networking sites you should be on? There are a few main ones that you must be on - MySpace, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook. You may also want to join the social networking sites that are specific to your industry. Of course you are already on Active Rain.

The first thing to do before setting up a social network is to sit down and write a profile - one common profile that you will use on all your social networking sites. Your profile should show people who you are and why you are competent to do what you do. You want to add your personality to this profile, too. Many of the sites have places for you to list your interests, so that's a good place to start adding personality.

So how much of "you" should you add? That's a good question. Since you plan on doing business with some of your contacts, then try to stay on the professional side. When in doubt, look at other people's profiles and see what they do. Don't outright copy someone, though.

Then choose one photo that you will be common to all the sites. To brand your social networking sites to your website, gather together your header, your logo, and your main website color codes to be used to customize your site.

Now that you have so many social networking profiles out there, what's the point of having a website? Think of yourself as a rock star. You round up your band and your costumes and put them in the tour bus. You visit many cities gathering a following. That's your social networking. Each site is a city where you gather fans. Some of your fans may become groupies and follow you around to other sites. Unlike rock stars, you should reciprocate and add them or follow them also.

But you can't fit everything you own into your tour bus. You can't fit all your products, all your services, plus all your price lists. You may fit a few testimonials, but not all. You get the picture. What you need is a home base, a place where these things all fit. That's your website or your blog site. On the social networking sites you are going to leave links so when your fans want to know more about you, they will click on the link to your website or your blog. That's where they will find out everything they need to know.

You read that correctly. With Google's new Gmail Custom Time you can back date email. Did you forget to send an executed copy of a document on time. Back date it. Did you forget someone's birthday? Back date an ecard. You can also mark it as "read" to make them think they forgot about it. Pretty cool, huh?

Here's a screen shot.

WHAT IS SOCIAL NETWORKING - I'm sure you've heard that people buy from people they know, like, and trust. Social networking is all about giving people a chance to get to know you and like you so they will want to find out more about you and what you do. Social networking sites allow you to connect with millions of people who would have never known you otherwise.

What's the first thing most people ask when they meet you? "What do you do?", right? People are naturally curious about what other people do. Your answer starts their wheels churning as they begin to make assumptions about you. With Social Networking sites, you can control what you want them to know about you and your business by leaving breadcrumbs (links) on your profile page to where you want them to go from there.

They will begin to trust you in several ways. One is by seeing that someone else they trust has done business with you or is connected to you in a business manner. This is why people have portfolios and testimonials on their sites. Another way people get to trust that you are a good person to do business with is by reading what you write or seeing what you connect to and what your interests are.

I know what you are thinking - you only service a small area, why do you need to connect to millions of people. My answer is, you don't. You can choose to only accept connections to people who fit your ideal client profile, or are only from a certain area, or you can connect to everyone. It's totally up to you.

WHY SOCIAL NETWORK - Think of the world wide web as a giant popularity contest. Sort of like high school, but less drama, lol. In high school people made assumptions about you based on who you hung out with. Online, people are the same. You want to find the groups of people that are similar to who you want to be known as. (Birds of a feather... well, you know.) Once you are in the group and you begin to show your expertise, you will find people coming to you who want to learn about your market. You will then be the expert who helps them. You can choose almost any angle to connect with them.

Sounds a lot like blogging here on Active Rain, doesn't it? Although AR is a blogging site, it's also social. People make relationships here which often turns into business deals. See? You've been social networking and didn't even know it!

WHERE ELSE SHOULD YOU NETWORK - There are several places online to set up profiles. LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Ryze, and many more. One is not better than the other. Just choose the ones that you want to be associated with. Remember, you are controlling what you want people to know about you.

HOW SHOULD YOU NETWORK - After you choose which sites you want to be on, set up your profile. Make sure your profile is linked to your website and blog so people can click to find out more about you. Each social networking site does things a little differently. Facebook and LinkedIn are similar in that you set your profile, then you get "connections". LinkedIn is sort of like an online resume. The more information you add about your past, the more people will connect with you. Each of these connections is a potential customer. You need to go in regularly and either add people to your connection or approve their requests to connect. Each of those sites have groups you can join, too, that will help with your exposure.

Twitter is a little different as you are talking to people directly. It doesn't depend on static connections. You can use Twitter to announce things such as a new listing or a price change or something you want people to know. That's not an actual conversation, but it's ok to do it that way. Twitter should be updated at least weekly to keep your info fresh. You are only allowed a few characters so it's not like a blog where you can write an article if you wanted to. As you get into social networking, you may find more social sites that are real estate specific.

On these places you want to cite your credentials to show your competence and show any testimonials you have. You want to show you have good character, that you are someone people want to do business with. And third you need to show your personality so people will want to connect to you. Showing personality online is hard.

You also want each one of these places listed in your blogroll here on Active Rain, and also on your website, so people who found you in a different way can click to your social networking places. The more places you can be found online, the more credible you become.

HOW OFTEN SHOULD YOU NETWORK - Social networking can suck the day out from under you if you let it. Anyone who's said they were addicted to Active Rain knows what I am talking about. On the other hand, you can spend an hour per week just touching on your social networking sites, updating posts, and making connections, and still have good results.

When you meet someone for the first time, do you tell them that you are a real estate agent? That could be a bad thing - here's why.

Everyone has a pre-conceived idea of what a real estate agent is. For the most part, Realtors rank just above used car salesmen in the eyes of the general public. So when you say, "I am a real estate agent", the person's mind starts reeling about the stories they've heard or the last interaction they had with a real estate agent. This may or may not be a good thing depending on whether their experience or stories they've heard was good or bad. Most likely, the stories were bad. A happy customer tells two people. An unhappy one tells 10. Even if the person has had a good experience with a Realtor, when you say you are a real estate agent you are now lumped in with the group of real estate agents that they already know. You don't stand out.

I propose that instead, when someone asks you what you do, tell them what you do, not what you are. "I sell homes to people just like you!". Of course you'd get more specific than that. You can get specific about the types of properties you sell, and you can get specific about the type of person your typical client is. In any case, when you tell them what you do rather than what your title is, you've taken away the chance for the person to put you in a category. You've given them a new category, your own.

Say it loudly, say it proudly, and say it with a smile.

"I help real estate professionals just like you use technology and the internet to sell properties!".

Big surprise coming! Did you know that the Real Estate community is one of the most marketed group? J/k, there's no surprise there. We are all looking for that magic bullet that will catapult our business to the top. Someone comes along and says they have that magic bullet and we are so quick to try it out. We justify it by saying that what we are doing now isn't working so it can't hurt to try, right.

I want to warn people to go slow on your purchases, especially in the beginning of your career when money is still tight. If you find you need something and you don't have it,  you can always purchase it later. If you purchase it and find you don't need it, you have simply lost money.

I am the self-proclaimed "Queen of Free". Some people like to pay top dollar for everything they buy thinking that the more they spend, the better the product will be. It's a personal choice that isn't necessarily bad. I just don't perceive value as having anything to do with the cost of an item. In my experience, many free programs are just as good as the top dollar ones.

I especially love Open Source software. An Open Source program means that the software comes with the source code so developers can fiddle with it and make it even better. Open Source programs are almost always - free.

As you would suspect, free doesn't mean you get the best programs, just as it doesn't mean you get the bottom of the barrel. It does sometimes mean you get the bare minimum of what you need a program to do.

If you purchase a program and it doesn't do things the way you need it to, you may find yourself purchasing a second program to fill in the gaps. Most programs don't allow reselling, and even if they do, you'll never recoup the full cost of what you paid. If you download a free program and you find out you need it to do more, first you now have a clear understanding of what was missing out of it. Second, you haven't spent a dime, only sweat and (sometimes) tears.

Free is great in the beginning of your business building when you don't have a lot of money coming in and you are on a limited budget. When you start bringing in a little extra cash, you can upgrade to the programs with the extra bells and whistles.

When choosing what programs and software you want, be open minded and check out what is available for free first. Ask around and find out if anyone you know has tried the free programs. See what limitations the free programs have. Then decide if free meets your needs.

And don't forget that your computer comes with many programs already installed so take a good look at your list of Programs under the Start menu and see what programs you already have before you decide to make a purchase.

It's really funny how there's so much information on the internet, but when you're looking for something and you don't type in the right keywords, you can't find it. I was recently looking for an "autoresponder" when I should have been looking for a "sequential autoresponder". Apparently they are two different things.

An autoresponder sends an email message in response to someone sending you an email. You may have seen these. Suppose someone is out of the office or gone on vacation. You send them an email and you get an immediate response saying the person is out of the office and what their instructions are. Most web hosts offer you a few autoresponder emails that are designed to handle small jobs such as announcing that you are out of the office. 

But suppose you want to send a training course or a drip email campaign. This can be done in one of two ways. The first way is that every person who signs up gets the next email in the sequence. If the email goes out on Mondays and I sign up on Tuesday, I don't get any email for 6 days, and on that 6th day I get the same email as everyone else. Most autoresponders can handle this fairly easily.

But what if you didn't want anyone to miss out on any of the emails? You wanted each person to get email #1 the day they sign up, email #2 so many days later, email #3 so many days after that, and so on until they've finished your training. You get a second sign up and they receive their email #1 immediately and their email #2 the same amount of days later. There's no missed email messages. For that you will need a "sequential autoresponder".

A sequential autoresponder is a timed series of email messages. Very few companies offer the sequential autoresponder.

There is a third option. You can have someone set this up on your own web server using MySQL. I know it can be done, but I have no clue how. If you choose to do it this way, be extra careful to ensure people double opt in to your mailing list. Double opt in means that they fill out the form to receive your emails and you send them an email back saying, "If you are really the one who signed up for this email, and you really want this email, click on this link and prove it." This protects you from being called a Spammer. You don't want to have your ISP banned from the internet providers.

A good use of an autoresponder is when someone signs up for your newsletter, you can offer a free download. When they sign up, an email is automatically sent to the prospect asking them to click on a link. Once they click on the link, the autoresponder sends a second email. This is the email you put the link to their free download in. You set it up once and forget about it until you want to change the item you are offering.

This is different from an ezine, or online newsletter. With an ezine, person A signs up today and gets this month's issue. Person B signs up next week and he doesn't get anything until the next issue is sent. Sort of like a magazine subscription. An ezine sounds like an autoresponder, but the ezine is scheduled to go out by you where an autoresponder is triggered by the person sending you an email first.

One of my favorite books is a collection of articles by Amy Dacyczyn (pronounced Decision) called The Tightwad Gazette. Amy was a pioneer. She started back in the early ‘90s writing articles on ways to live within or below your means back when living on credit cards way above your means was the norm. Amy took a subject that she was passionate about, realized there were others who were equally passionate, and began writing a newsletter to connect with those people.

That was her goal, to connect with like-minded individuals. Word spread like wildfire about this guru of savings and within a few short years, Amy was able to retire. She simply took her newsletter that she had been sending out and compiled her articles into 3 books (she later compiled the 3 books into one called The Complete Tightwad Gazette). At this writing, she spends life with her 6 teenagers living on a farm in Maine.

Blogs are popping up all over the internet. From what I hear, it's like 1 per minute. That's a lot of blogs. I'm sure that means there are a lot of good writing out there, as well as a lot of crap being written. I would like to stay on the side of good writing. Amy obviously did things right. Here are some of the reasons I think she succeeded:

1. Amy didn't have the internet "experts" to distract her from her vision. She only had what was around her and her passion. She wrote about what she knew, which is what made her the expert.     

a. As a blogger, are you writing about your passions or are you writing what the experts are telling you that you should be writing about?

2. Amy didn't write to get rich. She got rich, but that was secondary. Amy wrote because she wanted to meet others that shared her passion. She regularly included letters from her readers in her newsletters.

a. As a blogger, are you writing to share your passion, or are you writing to make money?

3. Amy stuck to one subject in her articles. She didn't pretend to be an expert on everything. She showed the steps that brought her to the conclusions she made so others could follow the steps and come to their own conclusions. She wasn't a "know it all".

a. Is your blog all over the map as far as subjects go, or are you steady on one course?

4. Amy was human. Once someone questioned her because she took a muffin away from a free buffet to eat later. This made her honestly question herself whether she was ethical by taking it rather than eating it there. She asked other's opinions. In the end, she regretted her decision to take the muffin.

a. We all make mistakes. You don't want to look incompetent in your blog, but you do want to be approachable.

5. Amy was the first.

a. With so many blogs out there, it's hard to be the first, or even original. That means you absolutely have to be the best. There's no room for mediocrity.

You want to know what I saw today!?! A VA, here on Active Rain, who says she is "certified Military Spouse Virtual Assistant". Ok. Who gives that certification? And what the heck does it mean? Why do Military Spouses need a VA?

I swear some of these certifications are purely made up. I think I'm going to start offering blog posting certification. All the VAs here can pay me $395 and I will give them a logo for their website that says they are certified to post blogs. It will immediately give their blog more credibility than other blogs without the certification.

Seriously, how do you know what certifications mean anything? Well, the NAR REPA certification is given by the National Association of Realtors. You can bet that certification is a good one. IVAA has two certifications that are important, the CRESS or Certified Real Estate Support Specialist, and the Ethics Checked certification.

Other than those, take a look at what the VA had to do to achieve the certification. Just because it's a certification doesn't mean the teachers knew what they were doing. The virtual assistant industry is unregulated. Anyone can say they are certified in anything. It doesn't make their knowledge any better than someone who's been in the trenches gaining life experience. At this point in the VA industry, a person's associations and memberships have as much weight as their certifications, if not more.

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EDITED TO ADD: I was contacted off blog for clarification on my intentions with this post. I figured I'd post them here to make sure everyone reading this understands.

1) I am not knocking the VA industry. I did laugh when I thought there were VAs to Military Spouses, though.

2) I am not knocking VA certifications. I am just warning people that some certifications may be bogus and to check them out and not blindly believe a logo that anyone can make.

3) A VA who is an active member of popular VA organizations is less likely to be fly-by-night. They are also more likely to know lots of cool stuff that can help their clients because we VAs talk to each other and we share all the good info with each other. That's why I think affiliations are as good as certifications.

I hope that clears up any misunderstandings.

I came across an excellent blog post on how to make your blog a better blog. It's a 31-day action plan written by NorthxEast, a blog about blogging.

If you are new here and haven't started blogging, this is a great way to start off on the right foot. If you've been blogging a while, it's a good exercise to get your blog in shape. Even if you only do some of the ideas, your blog will be better.

Here's the link to the action plan...

I'm reading a blog. It's a blue blog. And it's about credit. It's a good blog. Lots of good information. And well-written.

Um, there's a problem. I don't know who wrote it. It's not an Active Rain blog because Active Rain blogs have the person's picture and a way to contact them in the right sidebar. I did get there starting here, though.

It's definately a Wordpress blog. I know because it says so on the bottom.

There's a HOME page an ABOUT tab but those pages are blank. I would think it was a new blog except there are 18 posts. And according to the archives the first post was in September of 2006. There's 31 chicklets and 8 people on their blogroll. None of those links helps me figure out who wrote the posts.

If this blog sounds familiar, just a suggestion, but you may want to add some contact info in your sidebar or sign your posts.