Finding new leads and potential customers for your business is the challenge of every small business operator in America. Since most don’t have the resources of major corporations to advertise nationwide they must find the best way to maximize the resources they have to attract attention. A great resource for small business is BetterNetworker.com.

BetterNetworker.com describes itself as the internets number one social community for home business owners. On the site you will find a wide variety of articles about how you can make your company more successful. Charles Heflin focuses on social media and using it to “flood your business with free traffic, leads and long term profit.” Mark Weiser focuses on prospecting. His latest article is “The proper way to follow-up with prospects so they will say yes I want to join your team.”

BetterNetworker.com is affiliated with the Association of Better Networkers. The website includes interviews with a number of ABN veterans who operate very successful home businesses. Through the interviews, they share many of the secrets that they have used to find new customers and grow. Would you like to know more about using blogs to generate traffic, new prospects and distributors? What about the steps people are missing in generating leads? Or creating a six figure income with MLM. Those are all featured interviews at BetterNetworker.com.

BetterNetworker.com also includes an extensive forum section where you can ask questions of the experts and share success stories. There are thousands of posts on hundreds of topics that could help you build your business. There is an MLM training forum, as well as a copywriting forum and even a lounge just to relax and chat with fellow entrepreneurs. Wondering about the best way to promote your business with Google pay per click or search engine optimization? The answers are right there in the forum section.

BetterNetworker.com also includes an extensive section with business opportunities.

Here you can post information about your own business to find people who will help you sell or you can search for other business leads that may tie in with what you are selling.

The website also includes a resources section that can help with website development and posting articles about your business on other sites like EzineArticles.com and www.articlecity.com.

Belonging to a bunch of social networks simply because you know that you need to be on them for business isn’t enough to get results.

Twitter is the latest craze that is all the rage right now, and just like all the others, everyone is flocking to it without really understanding how to harness its power. So, I’m going to share with you 10 dirty little secrets that work for ALL social networks alike that will pull in leads like a big game fisherman casting a wide net in the ocean.

1. Tell your personal story on your profile page – avoid putting up a bunch of content about your business or your products. Open up and let people see that you’re a real person. People will stop by to learn about you, so give them something they can relate to.

2. Join specific groups that are targeted for your business – this is where you can begin to identify your target audience. Do a keyword search in the groups to find the ones that are relevant and JOIN THEM ALL. More on that in a moment.

3. Start writing content that is valuable to the group – people are always looking for tips, tricks, tactics, techniques and other creative ideas to help their business, so be that creative source. Be consistent with your writing and make it compelling.

4. Post your content on all the groups that you belong to – not everyone that is part of one group belongs to all the others, so make sure to spread your knowledge around in mass.

5. Follow up on EVERY comment posted to your article – when someone takes the time to write feedback on your content, take a moment to thank them for their contribution. Hint: when you get up to about 10 comments, your readership DOUBLES. So, help those numbers rise by commenting behind everyone.

6. Make friend connections with those respondents – it doesn’t work to randomly go around soliciting for friend requests. It’s better to have added value to someone first which proves to them you are someone they should connect with. Send another private note thanking them for their feedback and requesting to become friends. 80% of the people will connect with you.

7. Only accept friend requests if it is relevant to your purpose on the site – you’ll get people trying to connect with you at random, but don’t accept it just to build up a friend list. Remember, you’re there to market your business to a targeted audience, and you want to keep your friend inventory as pure as possible.

8. Make comments on other group member’s discussion topics – this is a powerful way to keep you in front of people. Simply post a few lines in support of the content, praise the writer, and that’s it. When you sign your name, make sure to ONLY put your full name and website link. Don’t’ try to sell. Set a daily goal on how many responses you want to make and be consistent.

9. Survey your friends to find out what their needs are and meet them – once per week, send out information to your friends that are more targeted to their specific needs, and soft promote your site. Now you’re starting to drive traffic outside of your articles!

10. At least twice per month, send an invitation to participate in an event that’s not part of the community – you’ve been adding value to them so this is a comfortable and acceptable approach to promoting your business. If you were doing this step on the front end, it would not work.

Remember, it’s always about adding value up front, not about selling your business. Give enough of yourself in the right way, and people will attach themselves to you like groupies. I guess that makes you an internet rock star, right? Not bad!

Ok everyone, just a quick post today, but I couldn’t resist. I’m soooooo excited about Perry Marshall’s new 2010 Definitive Guide To Google Adwords! I have his original version, which is great, but Google is constantly changing their tactics and if you’re advertising your home business using Pay Per Click Advertising you know it’s getting increasingly harder to compete with other marketers, let alone keep up with the rules Google continues to impose on us. Perry has taken all of this into consideration and has re-written and released his new and incredible version of the Definitive Guide.

There are so many cool new additions to the ebook that I can’t name them all here, but here is just a taste of what he’s offering:

• Bonus Modules Included:
  - Affiliate Module
  - Copywriting Module
  - Beginners Module
  - UK Marketing Module
  - Info Marketing Module
  - Content Network Module
• Google Coupon Value -Credit towards free traffic for new advertisers valued up to $75.
• Dramatic new simplification: -Replace heavy-lifting of thousands of keywords with X-Ray techniques that tell you the exact conversation inside your customer’s head.
• The #1 AdWords improvement technique of all- period
• Google Slap: A thorough explanation of Quality Score, with multiple approaches to solving any problem and a robust diagnostic checklist

And these are just a few! If you want more information go to http://bit.ly/YfYJe. He’s also offering a FREE 5-day course on Google Adwords.

My favorite four letter word is FREE, so I’m always looking for ways to LOOK like I spent money, but in reality I haven’t paid one dime.  Online, this is quite easy if you know where to look.

Now what’s cool about these strategies is that they allow you to take one piece of information and recreate it in different formats, thereby giving you 7 times the effectiveness.  So, check out these 7 marketing strategies that you can use to punch out more content with less effort and at no cost.

1. Turn your articles into Podcasts – get with Feed2Podcast, turn your content into a podcast and submit it to podcast directories like iTunes.
2. Turn your articles into exe (executable files) – in this format it is now considered software allowing you to submit it to hundreds of software directories.  Download websitezip packer and it will turn any html page into a solid exe file with an integrated browser.  This technique alone will get you hundreds of visitors and subscribers to your content.
3. Convert it to a powerpoint and post it to Slideshare.net – this site gets a ton of traffic and has a good ranking power.  People can click through to your website right from your presentation, so make sure you include a link that is highlighted to increase the click through rate.
4. Use TubeMogul.com and blast out a video – TubeMogul.com gives you the power to post your content to 20 different popular video hosting sites (i.e. YouTube, Google Video, MetaCafe, etc.) with the click of a button.  You could even use the powerpoint from Slideshare.net and add audio and use that for a video  – how about that?!  Include actual text with the video to improve Google ranking for the video.
5. RSS – Create a number of customized RSS feeds and submit them to the top RSS feed directories.  If your content is not on a site that has RSS, a service called Dapper can create an RSS from any site.  To get started post your content to sites like Squidoo,  Google Knol, HubPages, Blogger.com, Wordpress.com, Vox.com, Tumblr, Weebly, Terapad, WetPaint, PbWiki, Wikispaces, and WikiDot, to name a few.  Once you submit to these sites, grab the RSS and submit to all the different RSS directories.
6. Turn your article into a PDF – You can post PDF versions of your articles to Scribd, eSnips, DocStoc, Calameo, Issuu, Yudu, FreeIQ, and ButterflyReports.com for increased exposure.
7. Turn your content into a widget – a widget is an application that can be placed into web pages like Facebook, Myspace, etc.  Go to widgetbox.com to turn your content into a widget.  Then, you can post the widget to sites like Google Widget Directory, Yahoo Widgets, Friendster Widget Directory, and a host of other widget directories.

Now you know that massive exposure doesn’t have to cost you an arm and a leg.  All you need is just some great knowledge of how the “big boys” do it, right?

You’ll be amazed at the influx of visitors, subscribers, business partners and customers simply by applying ONE of these strategies.  Pick your favorite, or use all 7, and start to explode your business today.

Carin

P.S.  The ideas don’t stop there.  If you want to learn more about how to get more leads and make more money, there’s a stockpile of other fabulous ideas at www.TopWealthMasters.com.