Thanks For Following…Here’s A Sales Page

This post will seem a whole lot more level-headed than my previous rant about telling your readers the truth.  It will also be a lot shorter.  Here’s the gist.

You see somebody has just started following you on twitter. You click their profile link and they appear to be somebody who has put some thought into their profile and site.  You say “What the hell?” and follow them back.  Within minutes you’ve got that automated message telling you thanks for following me and here’s some crap sales page to go waste your time with.  What do you do?

A. Delete the message and go on with your life

B. Follow the link, and send them a direct message telling them how much you appreciate the info

C. Click on their profile again and unfollow them

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Blog Commenting Is About Reach

With as much as we have on us to build a successful online business, the last thing we need to be doing is wasting time.  Time is money.  One of the places we need to make sure we’re being effective in is link building through blog commenting.  Leaving comments on blogs that don’t allow us to engage their readers is a waste of time.  Oh sure, you’ll still probably get the link but what you really want is to join a community.

Toward this end, here are my 7 tips for successful blog commenting.

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For every one of us who is trying to build a business we often get caught up in a whirlwind of tasks that seems to have no end or beginning. We know we need to produce content, build backlinks, evaluate affiliate products and butter bread all in the same workday. What we lose is a macro view of our progress in each of these areas. We’re too often content to think as long as we take some action in any area of our business that we’re doing good.

Never is this more true than with social media. We open account after account because we’ve heard or read that they can help us rank or build our email list or increase our contact list of influential people. While this can all be true, in order for us to be effective in any marketing or social endeavor, we need to have a framework to keep the activity in perspective.

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I want to write a short post and get some feedback from my readers to see if I’m just on another planet or if Tumblr is completely missing the point.

As part of this year’s 30 Day Challenge, we watched a video on how to sign up for and use Tumblr to help drive traffic to our new niche sites. The video was very careful to tell us to pay attention to the Terms of Service and to abide by them. We were reminded that it would all be for nothing if we tried to set up a crappy site with no value and affiliate links because this is something Tumblr expressly prohibits.

I had never used Tumblr before but because I have a great deal of trust in and respect for Ed Dale and his associates I thought I’d give it a try. Here is my story.

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I don’t think a week passes when I don’t read some blogger’s story about how much Twitter has helped them get more blog subscribers, traffic to their site or sites or opened up tons of opportunities for them.

The thing that disturbs me about these posts is that it seems to me that these people already had a large following and getting on Twitter just gave them a new 140-character avenue to stay in touch with an established fan base.

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