You know how often I get asked about how effective social networking is for someone’s business, from my clients or when I’m out networking from random business owners?? Hundreds a month.

It’s amazing. It’s amazing how many of us are on the social sites but also how many are not!

I think if you’re an entrepreneur, no matter whether you do business locally or globally, you should be doing some amount of social networking as ONE source of lead generation in your business.

Of course there are hundreds of other ways to get leads too and I’m only talking about ONE right now (and it’s not always the most effective depending on how you utilize your time but it’s certainly affordable).

Lead generation is ONE goal to have when you network online but it can also do the following for you:

- solidify long lasting relationships – either personal or professional

- provide an easy way to connect faster with target prospects, referral sources or mentors

- establish yourself as an expert in your field by answering discussion questions, posting tips and articles or even inviting ‘friends’ to live events like teleclasses and webinars

- drive more traffic back to your site for special promotions, downloads or interaction

- provides a central place to share photos, videos and basically get more publicity than you could ever pay (or pray) for

Is it worth it to spend my time on the forums or having profiles on these sites?

I say definitely yes.

- You want to ask and answer questions on forums and blogs

- Post comments, articles, events, information, tips, surveys and polls, anything to get the visitors attention

- Record and post interesting or business related videos (nothing too embarrassing!)

- Send people requests to join your ‘network’, ‘fan page’ or ‘group’

- Pursue those in related groups for interaction, advice, joint ventures, etc.

- Dig deeper into the websites of those you’re really interested in working with or those you want to pay attention to you and relate to them on a deeper level if you can – this is the way to make the most of your time I think.

- And so much more….

Whew! I know this can seem daunting and more sites pop up every day right?

I mean, you can even start YOUR OWN social network these days (not that you want to).

So, what should your ROI (Return on Investment) be you ask?

Well, granted this stuff sucks up a ton of time! So, if you’re delegating some of the initial connecting and basic weekly/daily posts and then you’re only in there mostly to dig deeper, get personal and maximize your time; then you can really build a great following. One that’s loyal and interested in new things you send out. A following that clicks and interacts with your profile, your videos and your website.

This is how then you get them on your list over time, get them to attend teleclasses or join your programs or even refer you!

I can tell you that the hardest part of figuring out whether your time/money invested in social networking is paying off though is that it’s not that easy to track results.

So, if you want to really find out if it’s working for you, you have to set up systems that allow for really detailed tracking – tracking your traffic, conversions, customers and more.

One of the most common questions I’m getting these days is “how should I measure the value of all the social marketing things we’re doing like Twitter, Linked-in, Facebook, etc.?”

My answer: WHY are you doing them in the first place? If you can’t answer that, you’re wasting your time and the company’s money.

Sounds simple I know, but I’m stunned at how unclear many marketers are about their intentions/expectations/hypotheses for how social media initiatives might actually help their business. In short, if you can’t describe in two sentences or less (no semi-colons) WHAT you hope to gain through use of social media, then WHY are you doing it? Measurement isn’t the problem. If you don’t know where you’re going, any measurement approach will work.

Here’s a framework for thinking about social measurement:

1.       Fill in the blanks: “Adding or swapping-in social media initiatives will impact ____________ by __________
extent over _____________ timeframe. And when that happens, the added value for the business will be $_____________, which will give me an ROI of ______________. ” This forms your hypotheses about what you might achieve, and why the rest of the business should care.

2.       Identify all the assumptions implicit in your hypotheses and “flex” each assumption up/down by 50% to 100% to see under which circumstances your assumptions become unprofitable.

3.       Identify the most sensitive assumption variables — those that tend to dramatically change the hypothesized payback by the greatest degree based on small changes in the assumption. These are your key uncertainties.

4.       Enhance your understanding of the sensitive assumptions through small-scale experiments constructed across broad ranges of the sensitive variables. Plan your experiments in ways you can safely FAIL, but mostly in ways to help you understand clearly what it would take to SUCCEED — even if that turns out to be unprofitable upon further analysis. That way, you will at least know what won’t work, and change your hypotheses in #1 above accordingly.

5.       Repeat steps 1 thru 4 until you have a model that seems to work.

6.       In the process, the drivers of program success will become very obvious. Those become your key metrics to monitor.

In short, measuring the payback on social media requires a sound initial business case that lays out all the assumptions and uncertainties, then methodically iterates through tests to find the model(s) that work best. Plan to fail in small scale, but most important, plan to LEARN quickly.

Measure social media as you should any other marketing investment: How did it perform versus your expectations of how it should have? If those expectations are rooted in principles of profit-generation, your measurement will be relevant and insightful.

This post questions the notion about secret search engine optimization methods and SEO secrets. Are there SEO secrets or is SEO just a process of layering the fundamentals to produce the appropriate reactions?

If you came here to find a list with an illustrated “it’s as easy as 1-2-3 checklist”, then it is time to adjust your expectations and focus on more tangible guidelines to provide a foundation for producing real SEO results.

Anything worthwhile takes time, energy and effort. To create top ranking results in search engines is no different. There is no need to try and trick search engines, just give them what they want and allow the algorithms to work in your favor.

If your method is ethical, the last thing you need to fear is algorithms. Remember, they work for you if you provide the right signals.

What ARE the proper SEO Signals?

The secret to SEO (if there is such a thing) is based on a trinity of relevance…

1. Build as many relevant keywords to relevant pages as possible.

2. Build scalable site architecture and naming conventions (think Wikipedia).

3. Make sure that humans and search engine spiders know about it.

For example, if you have 1000 pages and each one ranks for 5 keywords, then you have 5000 relevant keywords driving traffic to your website; as a result of that will produce x amount of converting visitors.

Getting from 5000 to 50,000 keywords or respective visitors requires a scalable relevance model. And to create relevance you must identify your market and craft methods to appeal to attain traction tactfully and efficiently.

Growing anything takes time and naturally you must feed a site of that magnitude (to reach 50K visitors or more with something fresh, new and unique or exciting if you ever want to see them again (not just more of the same old new same wrapped in a new dress).

So, instead of thinking of the marketplace from the ground up, you can apply the top down model and emulate formulas for SEO that already exist.

Which type of strategy would you use? More pages to create more traffic (which requires more links and more time) or less pages and a higher concentration of theming you’re content to rank for a specific keyword? It really depends on your competition and ranking objectives.

Not everyone purchases or takes the optimal conversion objective the first time they visit your website. In fact, many will never return, so which do you focus on?; first time visitors, repeat visitors or both.

You have to have the simplicity and the clarity to communicate benefits to first time visitors, yet offer enough substance for those coming back for a second or third time to evaluate your offer. Providing substantial value is one method you can use to evolve the context and engagement levels of virtually any website.

Between forums, social media, search engines, press releases, targeted promotional platforms (like classified), affiliate’s, b2b marketing and websites like craigslist, e-bay, Google product search or other targeted niche sites, you should be able to tailor a specific offer to each type of prospect to create a frenzy and achieve suitable conversion over time.

The reality is, just because you haven’t tapped into it, that traffic exists and there are consumers frequenting competitors sites using the sames keywords you could acquire if you apply SEO. You just have to create something worth entertaining to incentivise visitors and then once they do, give them a reason to come back or pass it on to others.

So instead of thinking about short-cuts, automation or bending the rules. Just consider, there are no real SEO secrets, just temporal algorithms that are bound to change.

Search results do not just magically appear on their own, you have to plant the seeds and tend the results to harvest the reward of traffic, conversion and engagement, that is the real secret of SEO.