The Word Constructions blog has now moved onto the Word Constructions domain. This has been a long term goal for the blog and I was finally able to make it happen today.
The blog can now be reached at www.wordconstructions.com.au/blog The existing content will remain here for now, but it has all been copied across to the new location for easy reference at any time.
If you wish to subscribe to the blog, you can do so by clicking here for the RSS feed.
I have just been reading part of the Small Business Diva blog where she wrote about networking, and her 6th point reminded me of a networking breakfast I attended a month or so ago.
Donna-Marie wrote ” When at networking events, don’t try to talk to everyone there and shove as many business cards as possible into everyone’s hands nor push your products/services on people. ” And I couldn’t agree more. Networking is about building relationships, not getting your name in front of the maximum number of people.
At the breakfast I attended, I happened to sit next to a man who didn’t tell me his name or show much interest in talking to me (his choice, and it doesn’t bother me!) However, as he stood up to leave he handed a business card to everyone within reach, said good-bye and left. He still didn’t say his name or use mine (I had introduced myself).
The end result? I left his card on the table and he gained nothing from handing it to me.
Compare that to others I have met at networking events where we have swapped cards and later exchanged emails and possibly helped each other in some way, even if we never used each others’ services.
So don’t go to networking events with the aim to hand out heaps of cards; reserve your cards for the people you click with or who specifically ask for a card or information about your services.
Walking out of a networking event with two or three, or even one, good contact is a great feeling - and a successful event.
Every website and blog owner knows, or soon learns, that links are a great way to build traffic and search engine rankings. And most realise that incoming and outgoing links are both important parts of the equation.
But what makes a good link? How do you want to be presented on other sites and blogs when they are linking to you?
Obviously, you can’t always control how people link to you - you often don’t know about links until after they are established - but if you are prepared, you can increase your chances of getting good links, and offer good ones in return.
Many people assume a banner link (that is, an image of your business is linked to you rather than text) is the best option. This is not really true. People looking at the site may notice a banner sooner than text, of course, but don’t always respond more to a picture than to a few well written sentences. And not every realises that a banner can be clicked on as a link - they look for underlined text as a link. What is more important though, is that search engines can’t read images so any text in the banner itself is not picked up by a search engine.
So a text link is often more effective. But even then, some text links are better than others. For instance, a descriptive link to my article on formatting letters is more effective than just a link to Word Constructions as it gives the search engines and readers more information.
As you read my blog and website, you will notice that I try to include a description in every link to add more value to you and those I link to. Is this something you will try now?
Happy writing!
