Developing Relationships Online

Have you ever cringed when people talk about working/using MySpace? If you’re thinking it’s just a place where kids get together and listen to bands, hopefully we’ll disabuse you of that notion today. I finally took the plunge and dived into MySpace a couple of years ago and I can't believe all the really interesting people I have met.

I have met many believers in the law of attraction. I have made friends, and yes I have met many business partners. I have learned a lot about MySpace in my travels and while I always have more to learn, I’m going to share some of what I’ve learned with those of you just venturing into prospecting online.

I’m going to use MySpace to demonstrate how you begin to brand yourself with involvement in social communities and attract people to you. I think it's really important to understand that these techniques will work regardless of the community you feel most drawn to... yet the tools used within different communities might vary. I'm active in a variety of different online communities but when you’re just starting out you may find it easiest to simply focus on one until you’re comfortable there.

I realize that some people just starting to explore working from home on the Internet might feel overwhelmed... and even wonder how it's possible that anyone can succeed when so many people seem to be marketing the same products and services.

The reason is... because YOU bring your own unique element to the picture. That's why it's really about creating BRAND YOU!

Sure... if you and I have a certain number of things in common we're likely to attract some of the same people and yet, we are bound to express ourselves differently and attract differently!

And the beauty of MySpace is that there are MILLIONS of potential new friends to meet!!! So let’s start at the beginning.

Joining communities is a simple matter of clicking a join button and following directions. After you join you will be able to use the toolbar to take advantage of connecting with people and things within the community.

From most of the pages at MySpace you'll notice a toolbar along the top of the page that links to a variety of things... it's the series of words that looks as follows:

Home | Browse | Search | Invite | Film | Mail | Blogs | Favorites | Forum | Groups | Events | MySpace TV | Music | Comedy | Classifieds Ahhh... there's no place like home! HOME always takes you to your back door... in other words, If you click the word 'Home' from anyone's page it will take you to a new page where, if you're not already logged in you are either invited to log in OR you'll be invited to create a profile. There will be many other things on that page that you may want to peruse. It's amazingly interactive which is part of the reason MySpace is such a great place to meet people.

You can so easily find others who share your interests in books, music, hobbies and even philosophies!!! For instance, when people post in their blogs they are invited to list music they are currently listening to or books they are currently reading. On the Member login page there is a box on the left side that contains the word, 'Books'. Clicking on 'books' will take you to a listing of books that are listed on blogs. In mid-December the #1 top book listed was The Secret by Rhonda Byrne, today it’s once again J.K. Rowling with Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince followed by a list of 4420 books! Above this is a box where you can do a search to find other readers. Pretty nifty tool for any readers interested in connecting with others who enjoy reading too!

That is all on the page called 'Home' even if you haven't logged in. Once you have logged in you'll notice that 'Home' looks a little different... kind of the difference between standing outside of your home looking in and actually walking through the door and being able to rearrange things if you choose... or add a new piece of furniture or a knickknack here and there. ;-)

Here is where you can Edit your Profile, change your Account Settings at will, Add/Edit your Photos, Add/Change your Videos, Manage your Calendar, Manage your Blog, Manage your Address Book, View your Profile, Pics, Videos, Blog, Comments, Friends and Groups. It's also where you can find your URL should you ever want to share the address of your profile with other people. And believe me, if you're marketing anything online you will want to share your MySpace URL! Here's my address: http://www.myspace.com/AmbassadorofPlay What's yours?!?

Home is really a vital place and right from your home you will discover there are a lot of people available for you to meet.

Like the search engines, MySpace has a search function. It's located in the toolbar and is a great way to find people.

I want to talk about how people will find you. Your URL, or the tag at the end of your MySpace address, will be an important factor in whether people find you or not. You will be asked to choose a URL for your page. You can not change it once it has been chosen so it is a good idea to spend a little time thinking about this.

You want your URL to be something that represents you… your philosophy, your passions. You want it to be something that others may put in the search bar looking for likeminded people. I want to share with you a message I received from one of my business partners who has the word ‘abundance’ in her MySpace URL.

A couple weeks ago at 10am on a Saturday morning I received a phone call. It was a woman who told me she had woken up feeling very depressed. She hadn't been to MySpace in a while, but felt compelled to log in on that morning. She said she typed "abundance" in the search bar and my page was number one. She said she did this at 7am and had been on my page since then. She said she felt so much better looking at my pictures, reading my story and felt that she just needed to talk to me. We talked for about 30 minutes that day. By the end of the call I felt great, she felt great and we agreed we'd talk again soon.

That's the power of marketing YOURSELF at MySpace. YOU are your product. You may have a business/product/service to offer people, but YOU are what is attracting people to you. Just remember that while you are choosing your URL.

The first thing you will want to do after joining MySpace is create your profile. While I realize that the theme this month of TheNetworkMarketingMagazine.com is PROSPECTING, which means getting out there and seeking people likely to be interested in your business, please take the time to create a profile that supports you in doing this… it will be well worth the time and effort. And you just may have fun in the process!

Creating a profile is about more than just the words you write. There are a variety of ‘layouts’ to choose from and the layout you choose can really impact the ‘feel’ of your site. Make sure you choose a layout where you can see all of your text all the time. Some layouts include background images that, depending on color, can cause text to disappear or simply be unreadable. You don’t want people to have to struggle to read your story or they will leave. I know I do. Make it easy to read with a clean, simple layout and you will do great!

Understand… you are selling you on this page. People will want to join your business because of WHO YOU ARE, so let them know who you are. Here are the steps to writing your story:

• At the top of your page put in a slideshow of your family, your

loves and interests anything that expresses who you are. You can

make free slide shows at www.rockyou.com. It’s a quick, easy process. When you are done just copy the code they provide and stick it at the top of your “about me” section. The slideshow accomplishes a couple things, it lets people know who you are, but it also keeps people on your page just a little bit longer. People love pictures.

• Next you want to build up some credibility. Let people know some of your accomplishments. It doesn’t matter what they are. Remember you are calling the name of people who are like you. No matter what you’ve accomplished it will strike a chord with someone. Somebody out there has probably accomplished the same thing and would like to connect with a like-minded person.

• From there let people know why you are on MySpace. Is it to find like-minded people? Do you live in a rural area and find it hard to meet people? Do you have a spirited child and need to talk to someone else who knows what that means? Cool. Put that out there so people know what you are looking for.

• Next you are going to talk about your history. What makes you who you are right now at this point in your life? Did you grow up poor? Did you grow up rich? Boarding school? Lots of jobs? No jobs? 1 of 10 kids? Only child? Terrible job drives you to work from home? Talk about how you got here.

• Then you want to go right into your story. This is the most important part. You want people to know YOU, and what you are about. Tell them. Tell them what you are doing, how it’s going and where you plan to take it. You can be as long winded or brief as you wish, but remember if you are going to be long winded it better be pretty engaging so they will keep reading to the end.

• Next you find the solution. You had this issue, how did you solve it. Did you find the perfect program? Did you move to Hawaii? What changed to solve the problem or issues you were facing in your life?

• Last but not least you are going to make a call to action. What do you want them to do? Call you on the phone? IM you? MySpace message you? Send you an email? Well tell them to do

it then! Don’t make this a wishy washy feeling statement. You are an expert, so position yourself as such. If you want to change your current experience call me now 555-1414. I can help.

• Now I add at the bottom a little note that if people are too shy to

call they can take a quick look at my business and then call if that makes them more comfortable.

At no point on the page do I mention my business name or what it’s about, no banners, no ads, just MY STORY!!

In fact it's important you don't add banners to your page, or ads for your business or affiliate links, as you will be seen as a salesperson, not a "real" person.

It’s working for me and I know if you put these steps into action it will work for you as well. You may notice that I do put links to things I’ve created online… perhaps articles, videos or Squidoo lenses. From these resources people will be able to find links to my business even if they haven’t contacted me directly yet it keeps my MySpace page friendly and personal.

Where are Your Prospects? That's what MySpace is all about; Making friends and meeting new people. This is easily done by going to your back office and clicking on the "search" button in the task bar. You will have the option to search in a lot of different ways. One of my favorites is “Search Profiles for People with Similar Personal Interests.” Just enter a term, click ‘Find’ and meet others who share your interest!

Now you just click on the person's link and go to their page. Take a look around. See if you would want to interact with this person. If the answer is yes, then you click "add me" or something similar in their contact box (just under the picture). You will then see a message that asks if you really want to be friends with this person. Click yes and be sure to leave them a message. It’s always nice to make a comment about what most attracted you to them. You're done. MySpace will send them a notice you want to be friends and they can either accept or decline.

As people accept your requests they will start showing up in your friends section of your page where you can easily connect with them anytime.

You want to start off doing all of this manually so you can get a good feel for pages and getting to know people.

There are ways to speed up and automate the process. Using the law of attraction you can still find just the right people, only faster! A great way to automate the process is to use friend adder software. I use Friend Blaster Pro Here's a few reasons why I like it.

• It adds friends • sends messages • sends comments • sends timed bulletins • sends a message with your friend request • FREE version You can get all of these functions through the free version. The only limitation is you can only send 50 of each of these things each day. IF you choose to upgrade and get the full version you have unlimited access to each of these functions.

* Don't send more than 300 friend requests a day or you risk having your MySpace account deleted.

It's a great piece of software, and is very intuitive. If you would like to view a video tutorial about how to use this tool to send comments you can find this 5 minute video at the 30-Day-Marketing-Experiment Blog Prospecting and Marketing 'Marketing' is always and all ways about saying the 'right' thing to the 'right' people at the 'right' time! And I'm not talking about 'right' as any kind of value-based judgment. Yet I think it's really important to recognize that getting into relationship with people and moving those relationships into FRIENDSHIPS happens when we share values with others. And we are more likely to do business with someone who feels they know, like and trust us... you know, like a friend.

In other words, a really good marketer knows they don't have a product, service or opportunity for 'EVERYBODY' and knows that it's not necessary (dare I say possible) to become 'friends' with EVERYBODY they meet!

And that's not a problem because all any of us need do is offer our brilliant solution (product/service/opportunity) to the person looking for it when they most want it!

Keep in mind that we will greatly increase our odds of knowing who those people are if/when we take the time to get to know people. This does NOT have to take a great deal of time, and it does mean you want to give some thought to jump-starting things by selecting people who share some of your values. Makes sense that those people may value the same products and services as you...yes?

Understand that one of the things that will reveal a persons values to you is the activities they engage in. We do the things we do because those things support our values. That's not to say we don't all spend a certain amount of energy deluding ourselves about ourselves from time to time so don't get upset with those situations where you believe you've made a good connection with someone only to find out later that we really share very little in common with them.

As an example, you may tell yourself that you truly value reading... yet you rarely read purely for pleasure or personal growth. While you may in fact value 'knowing how to read' you probably don't really value reading in that case. So searching for others who value 'reading' may not lead you to people who have a lot in common with you.

Really give some thought to those 'keywords' you enter when doing a search through profiles over at MySpace. With a bit of honest, authentic soul-searching it will really add to your fun in making friends when you make of point of looking for people who value the same things you value. And MySpace offers so many things that make it a really rich community for making some genuine connections!

Have FUN my friends, I appreciate you!

--Mary K ¸..· ´¨¨)) -:¦:- ¸.·´ .·´¨¨)) ((¸¸.·´ ..·´ -:¦:- -:¦:- ((¸¸.·´* Light EXPECT MIRACLES!

The best thing about network marketing for me is that it asks... even encourages... me to seek out people who are willing to explore and share their dreams and vision. It gives me reason to invite people to share— from their heart— early in our relationship. I love this because sharing dreams and clarifying vision puts us together in an energy that feels so good— so alive. It opens us up to take inspired action, which consistently results in greater and greater levels of success. What a joy sharing this kind of ride with others! — Mary K.

"What I admire most about Mary K. is that she literally and figuratively incarnates one of my most treasured quotes: Dag Hammerskjöld's "To all that has been— Thanks. To all that will be— Yes!" She speaks about the joy of sharing this 'ride' with others. Mary K. IS the joy— to know and to work with." — JMF In addition to editing the articles for TheNetworkMarketingMagazine.com, one of the projects Mary K is involved in is partnering on a series of 30 Day Marketing Experiments. You're invited to stop by and pick up a tip, resource link and/or the benefit of learning from the experiences of Mary K Weinhagen and Jackie Lee at the 30 Day Marketing Experiment Blog