Is your email address optimized for your social networking sites? If not, you're making yourself too difficult to track down, and people will give up trying to find you. This week I sent a mailing to my 1137 LinkedIn connections. Here are a few of my observations: 4 email addresses sent me an auto responder asking me to click on a box to confirm that I was a human. Those systems are good for personal email, but don't let your clients or prospects go through hoops or they're bound to go elsewhere. (Many people -- myself included -- delete those individuals from our e mail lists. Now I've removed them from LinkedIn, too.) 20 email addresses

Learning who has mentioned your name or liked what you've tweeted is very easy.  Just go to your twitter account and click on mentions.  Here are some tips to "befriend" people you might not yet know, but may want to know as they appreciate what you've tweeted. 1) Follow those who have retweeted your posts or mentioned your name in posts. 2) Retweet any post where you've been mentioned. Just double check any of the links to websites as they might have moved. 3) Really take a look at your posts -- the ones that hav been retweeted to see what's important to your followers. Look for other such tweets in your arsenal. 4) Mention people

Social networking for business owners is about building relationships.  It's about you as a person who owns a business, getting to know others who may become prospects, alliance partners or referrals.   The venue allows us to get to know you, as we would if we met you at a networking meeting. One of the tips I give my clients is to always use the same photo on the sites you visit, as people will start "remembering" you.  In marketing, consistancy is key. Social neworking sites have agreements we sign prior to joining.  Most of us don't read the agreements, but they are there.   If we do something "against the agreement" the social networking site may send you

Your photo, that is.   Do it now.  Go to the main social networking sites you belong to and make sure that each one has the same photo on it. "Knowing" that someone is on the right website or profile, because they see the right person helps people connect better with you.   -- (C) 2011 Maria Marsala

Now that is the question! Here is some advice I provide my clients... 1) In Excel, create a list of your benefits/results and features of your services.  Ask others how they would look you up on the web and use those words, too.  This makes a great keyword list, too. 2) Look to make that the most important words you choose in #1 end up in your profile. 3) Complete your profile 100% 4) Use add ons: look at the additional information list and add what you can, look at all the apps and use the ones that have to do with you. 5) Update your blog at least weekly and show the posts on your