…but I’m learning how to network like a pro.

It’s been awhile since I’ve posted anything here. I’d apologize for that, but I’m not really sorry. I’ve been rethinking my whole business strategy and had pretty much decided to shut down completely because there’s one thing I’ve learned over the past few years… To be a success in any type of business you need to have great networking skills. And, quite frankly, I suck at networking.

But I made a promise to myself this year, and that is that I would give myself one more year. And if I couldn’t achieve the level of success that I intended for myself by the end of 2010, then I will pack it in and explore a new path.

Once that decision was made, it was easy to determine the next step — learn how to improve my networking skills, both online and off. I’m such an introvert that it’s really hard for me to interact with people. I don’t mean just meeting new people. Even friends and colleagues I’ve known for years have felt the effects of my introvertedness as I go through long periods where I don’t keep in touch, don’t know what to say or even how to act around them. I’m not kidding when I say that I am seriously socially challenged! I am the epitome of what Dr. Ivan Misner calls a “cave dweller” in his book Networking Like a Pro.

You know how they say that once you make a decision, the Universe does everything in its power to get you what you need to succeed? It wasn’t long after I’d made my decision that Dr. Misner’s book appeared in my path. And I have to tell you, it’s changed my way of thinking about networking and how to go about it.

I had always been under the impression that you had to be the ultimate extrovert to be a successful networker. You know, the life of the party, totally outgoing, winner of every popularity contest kind of person. And that is so not me.

Reading “Networking Like a Pro” taught me that even an introverted, bookwormish, stand-in-the-corner-and-speak-when-spoken-to (if you’re lucky) person like me can be successful at networking if they play to their strengths. Better yet, the book actually gives concrete examples and strategies that I can use to make myself more comfortable in group settings.

If you follow me on Facebook you’ll no doubt have noticed that I’ve been talking about this book a lot over the last little while. I’ve been more active on Facebook in the last few weeks, and it’s becoming easier every day because of the things I’ve learned while reading it. I can’t help but talk about it because I know how hard it is for shy people and beginning networkers to really get out there and do it. And there are so many examples of people doing it wrong too! I know that I’m nowhere near a networking pro, and probably never will be, but I’m confident that I can hold my own now.

If you want to take your networking skills to the next level, you should read this book. And now is a great time to pick up a copy. It’s International Networking Week from today (Feb. 1) until February 4th, and to celebrate Dr. Misner is giving away a six-month subscription to Networking Pro which includes access to the resources at NetworkingNow.com. You can find out more details here: Networking Like a Pro Special Offer. (not an affiliate link)

Happy International Networking Week!

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It’s Day One of my project to get traffic to the PLR blog. As I mentioned in my last post, one of the things I did wrong with the giveaway was that I didn’t put enough focus on driving traffic to the site. My goal now is to take the blog from the 30 visitors a day it gets now to 100 visitors a day using social media as the main source of traffic.

In order to have a starting point to measure from, I took a screen shot showing the daily visitors for this month so far. I also went through the individual URLs to determine the most popular posts by actual views and how many times they were used as the entry page. I’m not going to list the actual URLs here so as not to skew my results, but the top three we’ll be starting with have stats as follows:

• URL #1 – Page views = 80, Used as entry = 31
• URL #2 – Page views = 66, Used as entry = 22
• URL #3 – Page views = 54, Used as entry = 24

The goal by time we reach the 100 visitor a day mark is to have all of the individual posts bookmarked. I’m not using automation for this, nor am I outsourcing at this point because there’s no room in the budget for it. I also want to get a feel for how each site works and that’s not something you can really do using mass-posting software. (Not that I’m against the software, because I can assure you when the budget allows it’s on the list to buy!)

I’m also not going to overly concern myself with finding the absolute perfect keywords. I have, in the past, driven myself to distraction and inaction by over-analyzing keywords so this time I’m just not gonna worry about them and get things done. I do have a list of about 10-12 relevant keywords that I’ll be using just to keep the tagging consistent and that’s as far as I’m going with keywords for now since I’m not focusing on SEO at this point.

That’s it for me today. I’m off to get started on my social bookmarking tasks for the day. I’m actually really excited about doing this. It’s something I’ve always managed to find ways to procrastinate over, so I’m counting on the fact that I’m forcing myself to get it done publicly to keep the ball rolling. If you want to make sure you get the latest posts and results, be sure to either subscribe to the email version of The Ritchie Report, or subscribe to the RSS feed.

Have a great day!

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It’s only a failure if you don’t learn from it, to paraphrase Malcolm S. Forbes. And that’s a good way to sum up how I feel about my birthday PLR giveaway now that it’s over. It was a success on some levels because I learned a lot, but it wasn’t as successful in terms of hard results as I’d hoped it would be.

In the end the lack of hard success boils down to one major issue: lack of promotion. Even though I emailed, tweeted, and blogged about the giveaway I didn’t do all the other stuff that my coach suggested I do to get eyeballs on the pages. I didn’t social bookmark the daily posts; I didn’t mention it on facebook after about the first day or two; I didn’t do any article marketing (which is kinda touchy when PLR is the subject matter anyways); and I didn’t do video after the first one. Yes, I know better. Yes, I know that in reality the ratio of promotion to content creation should be 80/20. And yes I know I should listen to my coach because he’s a success and I’m not… yet.

But I’m going to rectify that. The blog is staying up (with the freebie links removed, but more on that in a minute). My next challenge is to take the promotion aspect of things more seriously than I have been. So I’m going to be doing the social bookmarking, creating some squidoo lenses, and definitely some video marketing. My new goal for the PLR blog is to get the daily visitor count up to 100 a day.

My second big mistake was that I didn’t ask for help. It wasn’t that I thought I could do it all alone… I knew that it was a lot to take on. It was more a case that I’m not very good at asking for help even when I know it’s necessary. It’s also that I’ve been away from IM for a long time and so having no list or other asset to leverage, didn’t feel like I had anything to offer in return. This giveaway was my way of re-introducing myself to the community and making a fresh start.

Lesson learned. As soon as I’m in a position to start building a team of helpers and partners, that’s what I’ll be doing.

There were a lot of positive aspects to the experience too, and these are what made it a success for me.

• I discovered that I can stick to a topic and a blogging schedule when I really put my mind to it.
• I discovered that I really love sharing information and resources that have the potential to make a difference in someone else’s life. I always suspected this but was too afraid of being a failure at it to really try.
• I learned that I still have some work to do to overcome my fear of failure.

I also learned that I’ve come a long way from the last time I tried to build a list and run a newsletter. I don’t take things nearly as personally as I used to. I used to cry and hurt for days whenever someone unsubscribed or sent me less-than-flattering email. I know now that I saw each unsubscribe notice as a personal rejection and a validation of my former abuser’s claims that I was worthless and that no one liked me or cared about anything I had to say anyways.

If you don’t know my story (an you probably don’t because it’s not something I’ve really talked about much) I am a survivor of domestic abuse, both physical and mental. By the time I got out of my last marriage, my career was in tatters, I had absolutely no friends left, and I thought that I was lower than pond scum. It’s taken me ten years to claw my way back to feeling even a smidgen of the self-confidence I used to have. So for me to look at the unsubscribe column and not feel like the world is ending is a major accomplishment. And for that reason alone this last month has been a huge success for me on an emotional and psychological level.

Would I do it again? You betcha! In a heartbeat. I had a blast finding things to write about and choosing the products to give away every day. I’m actually thinking of making this an annual thing.

As for what happens next, I’m planning on moving all the download links into a password protected area this week. You will get the password as soon as I get it set up, and it will change every month. I plan to keep adding to the gifts collection whenever I can. I’m also planning on setting up an affiliate program and you’ll be the first to know about that as well. I have the software, I just have to find the time to install and test it.

I want to thank you for being a part of this for the past month and hope that you enjoy all the experiments yet to come.

Thanks for being here!

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