Too Many Late Nights in Front of the Computer Screen?

There's lots of apps etc. online to make our lives that little bit easier. 
     I think it's too harsh to say we have no will power as everyone is different, but I know through bitter experience that late nights/early mornings on the laptop happen all to easy.      We all lead such busy lifestyles now that we need all we can to help us along the way & that's where this new desktop reminder comes in. 
    There are too many times where we find ourselves online far later into the evening than we meant too (cue cursing & getting into bed, looking ta the alarm clock & working out exactly how much sleep we have before work the next/same day)
  We don't mean to, I mean we go online with all the best intentions of "just having half an hour" it just never seems to work out that way. The internet has this way off sucking you in.

                                                      You can click here to find out more 


The simplest ideas are the best they say & My Personal Desktop Reminder I would say falls into that category. Simple but yet so so handy. 
    Its visible and audible. One of the six random alarm sounds at your chosen time interval AND a message box pops up on your screen as well,  so it doesn't matter if your volume is turned up or not. 
   The nice touch is that you choose the message that pops up, so you can explain to yourself again exactly why you have to get off the net !!
       It's quite a reassuring thought to know that you will never have another unplanned late night sitting in front of your computer screen.

12 Unexpected Social Media Tips

Believe it or not, social media extends beyond Facebook and Twitter. It’s any website where people can discuss content. YouTube is social media. Your blog is social media. Pinterest is social media. And yes, Facebook and Twitter are too. So if you want to leverage social media in a big way in 2013, consider these strategies:

1. Talk less about you and more about others. Share more about others, and you become a curator. You become a source of the best from everyone else, and a person who attracts attention.

2. Create roundup content. Instead of doing your own blog posts only, create posts that are an accumulation of ideas and thoughts from many experts in your industry.

3. More than mobile devices. Lots of us live on our smartphones, but make sure your content is also ready for laptops, notebooks, tablets, desktops and game systems.

4. Be real, be you. You’d think this would go without saying. When you’re being you, you’re the most comfortable, right? Yet we all still reach for a mask when we’re around others. That’s fake and inauthentic, as well as being a real energy suck. The only people you’re making happy are the people who aren’t interested in the real you. What fun is that? Being anything but yourself is a losing proposition.

5. Pictures! Pictures! Pictures! Not only is a picture worth a 1,000 words, it draws at least 1,000 eyeballs, wait—2,000 eyeballs. Photographs constantly outperform text, cartoons, links and videos. Images rule. Use more of them.

6. Customer services monitoring. Set up your social media to watch for your name. If people are talking about you, you need to be ready to respond.

7. Dump surveys monitor media. Asking people what they think is WAY different from listening to people talk openly about you. Surveys are notorious for giving false positive feedback. Instead monitor social media to see how people are talking about you. You can collect some insightfully critical feedback. And you should be monitoring social media anyway, so you can give immediate, timely customer support.

8. Pinpoint locations. When problems (or opportunities) arise, you can use social media tools to pinpoint where the discussions are coming from. Maybe that ad you ran that was so well received well by people in the western U.S. is offensive to people in the eastern U.S. (because it bastardized their state motto or made fun of them somehow). Once you know the location of the problem, you can fix it fast.

9. Retweet. Get in the practice of retweeting your followers’ content, quotes and comments. It lets them know you’re actually reading, promoting and supporting those who support you.

10. Inspire. There are only about, oh a million websites that curate or collect really quotable quotes. Find those sites and share the quotes you find inspiring, insightful or moving. Don’t be afraid to link to a site with a video that has nothing to do with business, but everything to do with what moves people to do great things.

11. Solve problems. You don’t have to be Mother Teresa, but jump in and answer questions, solve problems and provide links, information or other resources to questions people pose. You may not answer all of them, but answer as many as you can. Be known as someone who is willing and able to help others. You don’t have to give yourself away, but you should be giving back.

12. Engage. It’s not enough to sit back and watch. Get off the bench. Engage with your followers, your fans and your critics. Answer questions, make comments, have conversations. Show people you’re a real person and not just sitting back somewhere counting your money while the social media show rolls on. It doesn’t have to be rock star content every time, but it does have to be real, be positive and be relevant.

The power of social media is in its ability to influence others. You can’t influence people if they don’t know you and you don’t know them. Think about ways you make an impact on people that lasts. When it comes to making an impact on social media, the rules are pretty much the same—listen, be humble, be real, be honest, be helpful, be there. Now go. Make an impact!

4 Effective Places to Advertise That Won't Empty Your Wallet

Many of you know that I am definitely a proponent of free traffic. I love working with my blog, writing articles, prospecting on Facebook, and even making videos from time to time.

But, sometimes you just have a pressing need to get some traffic!

For example, how do you know if your funnel is working if you only have 3-4 people visiting it a day? You'd have to wait 30-45 days before you have enough data to make any sort of judgment on the effectiveness of your marketing plan. That's not an efficient way to run your business.

Or, maybe you need to build a "seed" list of a couple hundred subscribers so that you have some people to market products to. A "seed" list also allows you to participate with other marketers in list swaps and webinar swaps and things like that.

Or you simply just want to supplement your current lead flow by paying a little bit here and there for something extra.

However, there is a serious myth out there that needs dispelling.

A lot of people believe that paid advertising has to be really expensive. Of course it can be, but spending under $100 on advertising can still give you some fantastic, immediate results.

If you can send a few hundred visitors to your site in less than a day, it makes split-testing and tweaking much easier.

Plus, you don't have to just sit around and wait for enough people to stumble across your page. You can take control now of the leads and sales you generate by paying for it.

Now, I know that a lot of big-time marketers pay thousands upon thousands of dollars every single month on advertising, and that is how they are able to earn millions of dollars per year.

Here, I'm just going to assume that you have a very small budget, and show you the absolute, most useful places you can spend a few bucks to generate leads.

Let's say you find a spot for $40 that generates around 80 leads every time you spend the money. $40 is an amount that almost everyone can come up with, but if you did this once a week, you've got 320 leads a month. I'd say that's a significant boost to your business!

So here are my 4 favorite places to do some inexpensive advertising...

1. Ezine Solo Ads

This strategy will work for you because most other people fail completely at it!

For that reason alone, it's a very under-used strategy, but can be your most effective one if you know how to use it.

What is involved in this strategy?

Basically, there are a lot of marketers out there that run their entire businesses by generating very large subscriber bases and then sending out a steady newsletter. They charge other marketers to place ads in these outgoing newsletters.

Now, if you can find a newsletter where the target audience are all people in your industry, you'll know that you'll get a killer response with an ad.

Everyone on the list is interested in the topic because they had to subscribe to the newsletter in the first place. They've already requested more info about your industry.

However, I highly recommend only buying solo ads.

Most newsletters offer solo ads, top sponsor, middle sponsor, and bottom sponsor ads. The top, middle, and bottom ads refer to the placement of the ad inside the newsletter itself. With a solo ad, a separate email is sent out to the list, so you get to control the subject line as well.

One of my favorite marketers, Daegan Smith, showed a test result where he bought a solo ad, and top, middle, and bottom sponsor ads in the same newsletter. The solo ad pulled better than all the other ads combined... hmmmm...

The very first time that I ever bought a solo ad, I paid $50 and got 57 leads from it. I liked it because it was immediate, and right away I knew that I had a pretty good capture page.

Like I said above, most people stink at ezine advertising, so how can you succeed where others fail?

The ultimate key to success with advertising is to be very, very picky about where you place ads.

I only place ads in ezines where the home website is very professional looking. Also, the subscriber base must be growing. Sometimes, a marketer will have a list sitting there for 5 years and then, out of the blue, decide to send out a newsletter. The problem is that the list is very stagnant and the subscribers won't even remember who the newsletter is from or why they're getting it.

Most serious ezine publishers will say on their site how many subscribers they are adding per week or month. This will give you an immediate indication if the list is stagnant, or being filled constantly with hungry, interested marketers.

Next, I always get in contact with the publisher. I ask a few questions about the newsletter, like if other people have promoted an offer similar to mine and what kind of response they received. I ask how fast their subscriber base is growing, and I also send them a copy of my ad to get a second opinion on it from a real pro.

I know it's a bit of a process to go through, but in the end it will be well worth it because your results will be so much better than the average marketer's results.

Most people aren't willing to pay the price to do the homework, and that's why you'll succeed where others haven't!

Now, your ad should promote a capture page with a free offer on it. Another reason that marketers are unsuccessful with advertising is they try to outright promote their MLM. Doing that is the fastest way to go broke in advertising.

Use a headline that generates curiosity and hints at giving free value.

Then, give some specific numbers or results in the body of the ad. Your entire ad needs to be only about 4 lines or so, but pack it with curiosity, secrets, and value.

"Generate 39 leads a day completely free

with these 8 hidden lead strategies

that will have you dominating the competition

in 30 days or less! Free report inside:

"http://www.YourCapturePage.com"

This type of ad is very up front about the benefits anyone will get by clicking on the link. They'll get more leads, they'll beat the competition, and they can do it in 30 days.

Plus, the words "these 8 hidden lead strategies" builds up a TON of curiosity for any online marketer. It will be really hard to resist knowing what those 8 strategies are.

That's all there is to it! Just make sure to do your homework, and the rest is a piece of cake.

2. Facebook Pay-Per-Click

I know that normally PPC carries a reputation that it is ridiculously expensive and you shouldn't even try it unless you have thousands of dollars you don't mind taking a match to.

But, with Facebook, that is no longer true.

With our premise of spending under $100 for a strategy, even Facebook PPC is within reach because of their extremely efficient targeting and keywords aren't all that expensive.

I've been able to have some very good results for spending just $5 a day. In fact, in one day I once signed up 4 people into my marketing system for $10.

I like Facebook PPC because it becomes obvious after just a few dollars if the campaign is going to work or not. You don't have to burn through money to know if an ad is going to pull.

For example, any ad you run should have a CTR (click through rate) of.1 or better. Sometimes, I'll check back after a day, and I'll have 6,000 impressions and two clicks. Obviously, something isn't going right, but I've only been charged for 2 clicks to find that out.

Most of the time, my clicks are around $.30 or even less.

Here are just a few tips about PPC:

- Target specific MLM companies (if you're in network marketing)

- Send to a capture page with a free offer (just like ezine advertising)

- Write ads basically the same way you would with ezine advertising, except make sure to mention the name of the company that you are targeting in your ads. For example, "Hey Nu Skin Reps!" as the title of your ad.

- Find engaging, bright pictures. That is the key to making your ad stand out in the crowd

- Rotate through several ads in the same campaign. It happens very often that an ad will run successfully for 3 or 4 days, but then fall below.1 CTR. Just pause it, run a different ad, and then you can run it again a week or two later with great results again.

3. Warrior Special Offers (WSO)

The Warrior Forum is the world's largest forum strictly for internet marketers, and they put special emphasis on network marketing. There are always thousands of people on there.

It's a great place to do some free marketing because you can respond to questions and post your own helpful tips, while indirectly marketing with your signature line.

However, the WSO's are an amazing way to market. Basically, they are offers that are placed in a special forum within the Warrior Forum, and they have to be approved before they are displayed. It costs $40 to place one.

Now, because everyone here offers products that cost money, if you offer a FREE WSO, it will stand out like crazy. You can garner more than your fair share of attention.

Of course, you have to construct a well thought out ad. Basically, a headline that you would use would be put in the subject, along with the words FREE WSO.

Then, you can construct an ad just like the others we've talked about. The Warrior Forum will even let you spice it up with fonts, pictures, and different colors to help make you stand out a bit.

And, of course, you're sending people to a capture page that offers the free WSO you were promoting.

These ads are great because they're cheap, and you can get immediate traffic. Once you've written a successful WSO, you can submit it every couple of weeks or so and know how many leads you'll get.

It's really not uncommon to generate 80-100 leads using this strategy effectively. Spending $40 for 80 targeted leads will definitely get the job done for you!

4. Warrior Forum Banners

Obviously, this is another marketing strategy within the Warrior Forum itself. If you head on over to the Warrior Forum, there are huge banners that are the first thing you see.

Because there are so many network marketers surfing the site, buying that banner space can be a very effective use of money.

It does cost $100 for one day of advertising, but imagine the exposure you're getting straight to other network marketers!

And, like the WSO's, you can put in images, change the fonts, use colors, and basically anything you can do in Photoshop. You're not stuck with black and white like ezines and PPC.

With a banner, all you have to do is come up with a headline or two that creates curiosity and hints at extreme value. Adding an image and some different colors will go a long way to setting your ad apart from others.

The best way to get some ideas is to head on over to http://WarriorForum.com and check out the banners that other marketers have put up there.

In fact, if you can find a banner that's been posted on different days, you know they're getting some good results. Otherwise they wouldn't be spending $100 a pop.

Each of these 4 strategies is powerful enough that you could build your entire business with it.

My favorite use of these strategies is to get immediate results on whether my capture pages are working. Then, I know I can direct my free traffic there as well and know I'm going to get good results.

And that's the real key: test everything. If you're going to spend money, you better know exactly what results you're getting. You have to track your conversions and your sales in order to know if you should use that strategy again and if you need to tweak your page.

Now, these strategies I've shown are so inexpensive that you can drive hundreds of visitors to your site in a single day without breaking the bank.

And, if you completely bomb and don't get any results, at least you know what doesn't work and you have to change something. That's better than spending $500 on Google PPC or sending free traffic for two months before you know it doesn't work.

And finally, don't shy away from paid strategies because others have told you it's too expensive. While trying to build a large, successful online business, you need to explore several options for generating leads. Plus, with these strategies, you can give yourself a pretty good head start without spending very much money

I hope these strategies help you to incorporate a few paid strategies into your marketing plan!

Why Should You Bother to Create Your Own Product?

At first glance, creating your own product seems like a big hassle when you could just sell other people's products and take an - often hefty - commission. Or you could go across to a resale rights site, buy a product for $10 or so and - if you believe the sales pitch - resell it to people for triple that amount or more. Of course, that second scenario doesn't actually pan out in real life, but you live in hope!

Selling other people's products

There are several problems with selling other people's products, especially if the other person is only someone that you've "met" on the internet.

Firstly, the other person may stop selling the product without notice. That's happened to me on a number of occasions. In one instance, I was making a good number of sales per month so I know it wasn't due to lack of profitability. They just disappeared off the face of the earth.

In other instances the product wasn't selling enough to keep the domain name going so, again, that negated all the time I'd spent promoting it.

Or, more recently, a software program I was promoting was removed because it no longer worked and it wasn't worth the developer spending the necessary money to bring it up to date.

So, as you can see, selling other people's products isn't the smooth path that people promoting affiliate marketing as an almost dream lifestyle quietly don't tell you. You have all the risk that any commission only salesperson has. Without necessarily getting the compensation to go with it.

Buying in re-sale rights

Resale rights are just that - the right (subject to certain restrictions) to sell a product as your own. The supermarkets do a version of this all the time - it's called white labelling because historically a product was supplied in plain white packaging, ready for the purchaser to put their own label on it. Nowadays all that is usually done by the manufacturer but the name has stuck.

With information products, you usually get a PDF book, maybe the Word document associated with it, possibly some audios and/or videos and maybe a sales letter and graphics.

Which sounds like a bargain until you find out that your granny could write a more compelling sales letter. Sure, the letter looks good but it doesn't do the job of selling.

Then there's the main product itself. 60 pages of (usually) ghost written content that's been researched - if indeed it has been researched - on Wikipedia and a handful of blogs.

There's a reason the original author didn't want their name on it.

Creating your own product

So long as you know your subject, this isn't actually as difficult as it sounds.

The main product just needs to be created - written or spoken or video - from an outline you create. So spend a while getting down the main sections and the sub-sections and the sub-sub-sections. Then create something valuable about each.

The sales letter doesn't have to be top quality copy. Sometimes home-made sales copy works a lot better as it doesn't come across that you're a slick salesman. Some sites even deliberately make their sales letters look like they weren't written by a professional - but we're often talking big money for that as these often are, and that kind of copywriter really isn't cheap.

Graphics can be done at sites like Fiverr and so long as you supply the original image that you've bought and got the license to, the results are fine and you won't get in trouble on copyright.

Then there's the advantage that you can use an affiliate program to resell your product and let other people act as commission only salespeople for you. It's win-win for you!

What Kind Of Online Business Model Best Fits Your Needs?

So you want to make money online and you want to do it quickly. After all, there's nothing better than rolling out of bed when you want and firing up the ol' computer to see how much money you made overnight. Whooaaa.... not so fast...

Before you can get to the part where you actually make money, you need to decide exactly what to sell. That's right, in order to make money online you'll need to sell something, usually a product or service. I'd like to help you decide what that something should be. After all, there are lots of choices. Unfortunately many of them lead to a dead end, wasting your time and money in the process. The following plan will help you avoid all that. When deciding what to sell online, you need to consider the three basic online business:

Buying and Selling
2. Creating and Selling
3. Selling Existing Products and Services
Each of these three options have successful models and unsuccessful models. So let's run down each of the options above, starting with choice number one...

1. Buying and Selling

You could use the basic retail model, where you sell like a retail store, except with less overhead than a brick and mortar store. But that's an expensive endeavor. Perhaps that's why the most common strategy for buying and selling on the Internet is starting an Ebay business. In this model, you purchase items, usually at wholesale and then sell them at a higher price by auction.

There are two keys to success in this strategy... finding the right niche and finding the right wholesale sources for products in that niche. An eBay type business can be a lot of work. However, if you like this business model and have your heart set on trying it, there are still some opportunities for new players, if you are clever.

Here's an example of what I mean by "clever"...
A couple years ago I met a neighbor of mine who makes his living buying things locally and selling them on the web. He specializes in antique furniture and other old items from my geographical area. He spends a few hours a day visiting flea markets, yard sales and local auctions. With a knack for spotting deals, he snatches up anything he considers grossly underpriced then markets it internationally, via the web.

OK, "market it internationally" may be a bit too fancy of a description for what he does. Basically, he takes a couple of snapshots of each item using his digital camera then sells the items at auction on ebay.com - the number one meeting place for buyers and sellers across the world. And believe it or not, he makes quite a comfortable living doing this. It works for him because he has a unique selling position.

His unique position happens to be his location. The region where he lives a great place to find many undervalued antiques and other authentic items. He's simply finding a new home for the items and filling a need at the same time. After all, where else would someone from say, Australia, find an authentic antique table from another country?

This is the path I chose to make my own living online. (I also mix in choice three below, buy I'll get to that in a minute.) I prefer the "creating and selling" strategy above all others, since I have complete control over exactly what I sell and how much profit it yields. I sell information and services. I create my products and services using my computer and then mold them into many different marketable formats including print books, ebooks, software, consulting and advertising services.

If you have, or can research and gather information on a niche topic, you can make money using this model. For centuries, people have been making money selling information and related products and services, and it will continue forever. It all boils down to helping people save time and money avoiding learning something the hard way -- through research. Basically, you do the research and sell the results. The better the information and services, the higher prices you can demand.

With a global audience online, you can create and sell just about anything! If there is a market for it, you can build a business around it. And therein lies the equation... Before starting ANY business you must consider carefully, WHO you will be promoting to. Think hard about the people who might be interested in what you plan to sell. And beware... if the answer is "everyone", that's usually a BAD thing.

Identifying a niche market gives you the ability to target ONLY your prospects you spend FAR less marketing and advertising. So do some market research BEFORE you start creating your product. I'll list some good research sites at the end of this article, that will help you determine if there is a need for your product. Finally, let's consider a third angle for those of you who do not have the time or inclination to "create and sell"...

3. Selling Existing Products and Services

You can start a new business online selling existing products and services. You simply earn a commission from each sale you make. The commissions can be one-time or recurring depending on the product or service you sell for the merchant. There are affiliate programs on just about any niche product or service you can imagine. Whatever niche you plan to develop your business around, you'll more than likely be able to find affiliate programs you can join.
And that is the key... choosing a niche that interests you. Something you enjoy doing or talking about. You may be surprised to find out that you can make money in just about any niche imaginable. Selling existing products and services is not just for new businesses.

It is also a great strategy for established businesses who want to grow their bottom lines. When done properly, it can yield income growth of more than 30% literally overnight. How can I make such a bold statement? Simple, I've experienced just that, by simply selecting existing products and services carefully and then introducing them to my current prospects and customers. The common thread in all three strategies...

In case you didn't notice, all three money making strategies above contained one common component -- proper niche selection. While you should choose a niche that interests you, you also need to choose a niche that can be profitable. To determine if your niche can be profitable, take a few moments and visit the following websites.

1. Ebay's Pulse lists popular searches as well as most watched items.
You can also search through just about any category imaginable.

2. Google's Zeitgeist shows weekly, monthly, and annual trends based on the millions of searches done at Google's search engine. Zeitgeist by Country is also available on a monthly basis.

3. Google Adwords Keyword Tool is a free tool that gives you reports on keywords and keyword phrases that you enter into the search box. Statistics show how many users search for you keyword on Google.

4. WordTracker Free Tool shows you the daily searches being done on any keyword or keyword phrase.

Best Facebook Photo Sizes: Cover, Profile, Wall Photos & More!

Want to know the best Facebook photo sizes? Here’s ALL the info you need to create and size your photos and graphics to look their best on Facebook.

Facebook Cover Photo Dimensions

Starting at the top, your Cover Photo will be displayed at 851 pixels (px) by 315px. You have the opportunity to adjust the cropping, but cannot resize the image that you upload or choose from your albums. To ensure you’ll like the results, size in an image editor before uploading.

Facebook Profile Picture Size

The Facebook Profile Picture is displayed on your Fan Page at 160px square, but must be uploaded at least 180px square. You can also upload a larger image, preferably in a multiple of 180, such as 360, 540, or 720, and Facebook will resize it for you. This may give you better clarity, and will definitely give you a larger image in your Photo Album!

Facebook Fan Page Tab Images (Thumbnails)

The Tab Images, or Thumbnails that appear under your Cover Photo, are 111px wide by 74px high. Keep them simple – maybe just type that expresses a call-to-action.

Facebook Fan Page Tab Favicon

A favicon for a web page is a tiny 16px square image that appears in your browser’s address bar. Well, FB Fan Page Tabs also have tiny 16px favicons too! When you click the drop-down arrow at the end of the row of Tab Images, you’ll see the app favicons below the Tab Images, to the left of the text name of the tab. These can be replaced with custom favicons at the time you create a custom tab by followingthese directions. Woobox tells me you can’t change them on a tab you already have installed.

Facebook Fan Page Tabs

Your Fan Page tab itself can be a single image. The width of the tab is 810px, and the maximum height for a full-tab image is 1200px. This is the only Facebook image that I’ve found to have a file size restriction, and it’s 400kb. Choose the appropriate compression when saving your jpeg, It won’t upload if larger than 400kb.

Facebook Wall Photo Size

Photos shared on your wall are displayed as a 403 pixel square image. For best photo quality, size and crop photos for wall posts at least 480 pixel square. 960px is optimal. These will be displayed at 403 pixels square on the Timeline with no cropping made by Facebook.

If you upload a horizontal photo at 403 pixels wide, it will be shown in its entirety. A wider horizontal photo will have the edges cropped off.

In my experience, photos less that 403px wide sometimes get sized up on your wall by Facebook and sometimes don’t! Vertical photos will be cropped top and bottom to a square shape, but the placement of the crop can be adjusted once it’s on the wall.

Facebook Photo Viewer Photo Size

Photos you’ve uploaded will appear in the Photo Viewer, or lightbox, at the size you uploaded them, up to 960px x 960px. Themaximum Facebook photo size for upload and download is 2048px square. If you upload a larger image, Facebook will reduce it so the longest side is 2048px, but it will appear in the Photo Viewer no larger than 960px on the longest side. It can be downloaded at the full size, however.

WARNING: Photos you upload to Facebook can be downloaded by anyone you’ve allowed to view them in your permissions. Any images could thus be reused, even though this is a copyright infringement (unless you have given permission). How to Report Claims of Intellectual Property Infringement

You’ve also allowed Facebook to distribute your images according to their Terms of Service:

For content that is covered by intellectual property rights, like photos and videos (IP content), you specifically give us the following permission, subject to your privacy and application settings: you grant us a non-exclusive, transferable, sub-licensable, royalty-free, worldwide license to use any IP content that you post on or in connection with Facebook (IP License). This IP License ends when you delete your IP content or your account unless your content has been shared with others, and they have not deleted it.

I recommend you NOT upload your professional images at high resolution unless you have a specific reason to do so (i.e. you want fans to download printable images of an event, for example) and also suggest you watermark your images.

Facebook Milestone or Highlighted Post Photo Size

Milestones and Highlighted Posts span both columns of your Timeline, and are displayed on your Wall at 843px wide by whatever height you choose, up to 403px. I like uploading a variety of heights – skinny ones like the one below break up space on the Wall, but become pretty small in the News Feed.

Milestone photos less than 843px wide will be centered in the space.

Link Thumbnail Size

Dimensions of the link thumbnail: 90px x 90px, but caries with shape of photo. This is the small icon that appears with a link on your wall. If you’re posting the link through Facebook, and the linked page includes photos, you can use the arrows to choose the desired thumbnail, or check the box for no thumbnail.

How to Create a Visible & Engaging LinkedIn Profile

While the LinkedIn Profile change has impacted the design and user experience, it hasn’t necessarily impacted how you’re found on LinkedIn. For those of you who are new to LinkedIn, the importance of getting found by your target audience on LinkedIn is equally as important as it is to engage that person once they find your profile.

With more than 175 million users (many of whom are executives and decision makers), you would be hard-pressed to get their attention without actively doing something to get found and then engaged.

Here are the steps you need to take to make your profile visible and engaging so that qualified leads start flying into your LinkedIn Messages Box.

1. Define Your Personal Branding Goal

The first and most crucial step to driving qualified leads via LinkedIn marketing is for you to assess, define, and build out your market differentiators and value of you as a personal brand. To do so requires introspection on several levels.

You need to define your goals for being there:

• What are you trying to accomplish by being present and active on LinkedIn?
• Are you truly interested in being a business resource?
• Is your goal to become a thought-leader in your industry and captivate the inquisitive minds of business professionals who use LinkedIn as their main news source?
• Are you simply looking to use the social networking tool to augment and complement your other online marketing efforts in your sales efforts?

Defining your personal branding goal is the first action you need to take. Do it now. Write it out because this will set the tone for your new LinkedIn Profile.

2. Determine Your Personal Branding Keywords

Before you start to create or enhance your LinkedIn profile, you need to then determine, what I call, your personal branding keywords. These are the keyword phrases that brand you. They define:

• What you do.
• Who you do it for.
• Where you deliver your service (location).
• Where you add value.
• In what area you have a focused expertise.

You will want to come up with initially your top 10-20 personal keywords phrases. Then drill down to a solid 2-3 that line up with what you state in your headline, your summary, and what you substantiate throughout your work history and skills.

Primarily, the LinkedIn search engine is looking for these keywords in your title/headline, custom URL, your skills, and your work titles.

3. Highlight Your Experience, Skills and Expertise

At this point, you can then review what your current LinkedIn profile looks like and determine changes in your URL, headline, summary, work experience, and skills.

• Custom URL: Your LinkedIn custom URL is your brand statement.
• Headline: Your Headline reflects what it is you want to be known for (going back to Step 1 and defining your personal branding goals).
• Summary: Your Summary is important. It says hello to your audience in such a way that engages, but doesn't sell and provides direct examples of credentials, awards, experience. This is a great place to provide link addresses of supportive and contact information, such as your website, your blog (if hosted off-site), your e-mail address, reports/articles/whitepapers/books you have published, and links to video content.
• Skills & Expertise: Your Skills are truly areas where you have confirmed experience, and better yet, expertise. Your Skills should match the work experience you deliver throughout the profile, so that skill keywords are found in job titles and descriptions.

4. Develop a Written Target Market Definition and Strategy

Remember that your profile reads top to bottom and is your story of your personal brand – where you excel, how you add value – and addresses your specific target audience. It's important, then, in the exercise of making your LinkedIn profile more engaging, to develop a written target market definition and strategy.

List out what you will provide to said target (products/services/types/way of delivery) and create some real user paths, like we would say in web design user experience. Take it a step further and then relate customer/client needs/pain points to your solutions. The more you deliver a path of credibility in direct relation to your target’s specific needs, the more chance for qualified lead generation success.

Win LinkedIn Engagement

It isn't enough for you to drive visibility in the LinkedIn search engine. What about engaging your target when they aren’t necessarily looking for someone like you, but when they may be active in their Groups or looking for Answers?

These “personal brand impressions” (or so I call them) make all the difference between a cold and warm lead. You must be active in these areas for people to find your profile and find out all about you (and then Message you).

My next Search Engine Watch article later this month will provide an actionable way for you to win in LinkedIn engagement off the Profile. Happy New Year!