Thank you Cheryl and I am forever thankful that I do have the time to appreciate the beauty of God's world.

You are a busy lady and most people trying to make a living online have to be stressed trying to accomplish this. With so many marketers out there it looks to me to a slim chance of even making enough to survive. A few are doing it and have met with some success as stated here in this forum. Blogging seems to be of a great benefit. I have just not gotten into it. In a way, my website is my blog.

My best wishes to all of you and hope to hear more from others. I really am happy to see Diane and Jo using the forums here. Show them we care and support them.

Have a great day,

Sara

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Roger what a joy it is to see what you have written because that is the first step to understanding.

Your one sentence says it all

"I spend a lot of time promoting but I probably annoy some people."


When you understand that anything social is all about value or another way of saying it is..forget marketing and selling, think about value and content, then you will become more transparent, you will be seen as a real person, you will show empathy and there will become an air of mutuality.

When you start building the brand in you as a person and show credibility, then anything that you are using (products) and can come from a place of knowing, then others will become much more interested.

I sometimes think that people do themselves a huge disservice by leaping into social media and forgetting the social.

Here are two examples that might be of use to you

1 I invite you over for a cup of coffee ( or tea) we sit down and one of two things can happen

a) we are sitting there and you start out selling me stuff, you are passionate about what you are selling, but the problem is...we were enjoying the coffee, I never invited you to sell me anything, but to sit down and just enjoy our commonality. I will remain polite of course, but I sure will not want you back..you are just being a salesperson.

b) we are sitting and enjoying our coffee and we are talking about our commonality and the subject comes up about our work and you (causally) talk about something that you have been trying out, the good and the bad and we really start getting into the subject, before you know it, we are coming up with ideas on how to use your product in ways that will help us..yay... we have truly connected. While I may not buy anything from you, I have enjoyed our time together. Sure I will have you back in my home and maybe that next time we see each other I will ask how it is going with that product..I may even say ( if I hear the truth that this is something that is working) hey I can use this product for me, how do I get it?

Two different ways of having a coffee one with a negative outcome and the other positive.


Example 2 comes from a friend of mine. His name is Scott and he sells Watkins. He USES the products and can tell you everything about them and he loves the business ( trust me it comes through loud and clear) when we talk we are not always talking business, but about everything under the sun. We have connected not on business, but in social and I respect him and he has developed credibility. When he needs help or guidance he will ask for it. Thankfully to date I have been able to help him out. Most of the help I give is free tools or knowledge, but there have been some things that is paid and yes has an affiliate aspect to it. I ALWAYS let him know these things so that he can choose. As a result of creating a social relationship, we are both winners.

Am I making sense?

I really do not want people to promote to me, I want to talk to people and as I get to know them, build that trust in them ( and them me) then and only then can anyone talk any form of business.

All too often people will say...try this, by that.. they are walking commercials with no depth nor purpose, you might make some sales via statistical possibilities, but will those same people come back for more?

True marketing goes by many strategies and when using any form of social media...trust me you will get banned or worse ignored if you are just going to promote

food for thought...

Roger & Diane, I would like to address this part of conversation. Roger, I know that you spend a lot of time and energy promoting Adland and the forums. You are appreciated!! Diane does make some very good points. I have always believed to promote you need to present yourself as a person and on a personal basis. Here is one of my letters that I send out about once a month. I get a lot of good response in my pm's but only a little in the forums but even to get 2 or 3 people visiting forums to me is worth it.

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Hello My Friend (first name)

Greetings from our Adlandpro Community. It just seems like a good time to ask you how you are and how are things in your part of the world. It is good to be in touch with so many friends in different places and countries. I want to share a little of my world with you as we have finally gotten over our winter and the plants have begun to bloom.

First Monarch on Comfrey 2011

I am an avid Nature lover and fond of our winged creatures, the butterflies. I followed this one around for days before I finally got it to pose for a picture! Instead of killing the caterpillars that feed on some plants, I capture and raise them. Most of the time I know what species it is but then there are times I don’t and get a special thrill when the butterfly or moth exit the cocoon.

Since most of you are here for advertising a product or pushing the latest program, I won’t take too much of your time. However, I do hope you find some time to visit the forums in our networking community. Please check out Forums to find one of interest and scroll down to the bottom to see what is being posted.

(in this portion, I will select a few forums to promote)

We invite you to ‘take a breather’ and come post in the forums, if you only just stop by and say “Hello”, it will be appreciated and remember every time you post, your signature serves as an advertisement.

May God Bless You & Yours,

Sara

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I am certainly not saying it is perfect but the responses are most times on a personal basis with people telling me about their part of the world. I have made a number of good friends with this method and they contribute to the community. As with this comment, my signature serves as advertising.

Diane, we can learn much from your information and the way you promote.

Thanks again,

Sara

Excellent Sara,

All of these ideas are good input. We all probably want different things but a good compromise is always possible.

I wish some more folk would come here. There are always some that say and do nothing until a new decision is made and THEN they complain.

Roger, there has been much more discussion in AIF than here but I reposted so maybe some others will show up.

Sara

Like everything you will do when you are talking about a product or service, everything has to do with your strategy and yes strategy is very required.

I found a great slide show by John Logar, that might be of use to all of you. As I can't seem to find a way to do HTML in this editor, I am giving you his link:

A Simple Social Media Plan

love the tools he uses by the way, just a side note......


Much of what he is talking about are things that I do. Any plan that you decide to do, has to be unique to you and what you are doing and as such minor changes can and should be made.

@blogneta

Greetings All
I have decided to chime in here since Adlandpro has always been one of my favorite networks.. In fact,, at one time it was my only favorite. I will start by saying that change isn't always the answer.. Sometimes things are best left alone. I used to have several forums here on Adland that were very successful. In fact,, 2 of them were listed on the first 20 pages of the Yahoo search engines. The topics were mental health and politics and I had well over 100 threads in each so they were quite successful forums. Suddenly all of my forums just went dead. I mean we went from sometimes 50 or more posts a day to maybe 2 or 3 and sometimes none. This happened because I let a few rude comments enter the discussion and some people were offended. It turned into a street brawl before I could even catch it because I just had too many threads to really keep track of. There were only a few people who destroyed everything that I had built here over a couple of years but they were persistent.. They didn't have any particular topic they liked either.. They caused problems in every forum they joined and it was the same people over and over. Anyhow,, my forums died and never recovered.
Now,, going back to the change. Adlandpro was my favorite community at one time because of the friendships I made here and the lively discussions that we had. I think all we really need to do is go back to the way it used to be when people could talk and enjoy each others company. I am back in this community right now trying to build my advocacy's in autism and toxic mold. Things are going very slow but I feel like this community is better than facebook in many ways and I am hoping that things work out. Anyhow,, I think we need to do something to promote the discussions and the friendships that used to be the trade mark of Adlandpro. Marketing has changed. Everyone has been burned at least once and hardly anyone is buying anything from people they don't know. People need to get back to getting to know each other on a personal level and sharing thoughts and ideas on a broader scale. The good old "get to know your friends " concept works the best as far as I'm concerned and it is a lot more enjoyable than blasting out ads as fast as you can. So,, I would do something to promote the way it used to be rather than looking for a new way to improve things. If it ain't broke,, don't fix it.. Just sayin .