When you create blog posts, write articles, have forum ideas or anything else of value to share with our online community, it’s important to have an efficient distribution system to follow. Should I post to Twitter, my Facebook Fan Page and my blog? Where are the appropriate places to share?

The answer is EVERYWHERE. As long as you are offering valuable content and not trying to sell everybody on everything, then other business owners will appreciate your information and look to you as a leader.

I fumbled around with this for a little while until I got organized and came up with a very simple system to make sure I send it to all of my different outlets. I created a video for you that explains how, where and why valuable information should be shared…

Click here to view the embedded video.

What’s the point of having all of these great ideas and training if you can’t share it with everyone? Keep offering great value and people will be drawn to you.

Leave a comment below and share your thoughts, insights, stories, and questions! And take just a moment to share this video with your friends and followers on Facebook, Twitter, or any other social site you like! Looking forward to hearing from you…

Your partner in success,

Ryan

Having a Facebook fan page is an integral part of establishing your own brand and presence within the social networks.

Fan pages were designed for celebrities, bands, businesses, and public figures to promote their brands to the public. Unlike a personal Facebook account where you’re limited to 5,000 friends, there are no limits or restrictions to the number of fans or followers you can have with a fan page. Also, Facebook is starting to crack down on using personal pages for business networking.

Here is a quick video that shows you step by step how to create your own fan page:

Click here to view the embedded video.

I used to wonder why most people online are so willing to offer such valuable advice for free. From a capture page, it’s obviously to get you to opt-in. Every company out there will offer you a sample, but never as valuable as what you can get in this industry. A 10% off coupon at Domino’s? Great, that’s worth a dollar and I already know I like pizza. You can/should literally turn free information into thousands and thousands of dollars.

Here’s an experiment I’d like to conduct:
Take a newbie who has the desire to be successful and only allow him/her to use the free training that comes directly from capture pages. It would take a pretty long time to piece all of the strategies and sources together, but I’m willing to bet that one will be successful just using that information.

Seriously, if you piece together a free boot camp here, a free pdf there and everything else offered for free, you’ve got a pretty solid plan.

This industry is like no other in many respects, but the free exchange of ideas is both baffling and refreshing. Of course, you’ve got people out there that aren’t willing to give away any secrets, belittle people on forums and take, take, take, but for the most part, the community is willing to help each other. It fosters a great working environment.

From a purely business point of view the answer is that the bigger the pie grows, the bigger our portion becomes.

However, it’s more than that. Our business is relationships and once you cultivate them and get to know people, you legitimately want them to succeed. What other industry can offer that?

I have recently endured an online tragedy and I’d like to help everyone else avoid the same pitfall. As the story goes, I wanted to change my domain name because it was RyanMMcMullen.com and that extra “M” was confusing (Michael is my middle name in case you are wondering). A state congressman from Oklahoma has selfishly taken RyanMcMullen.com, so I had to get a little creative. For some time, I’ve preached about proper domain names and had gone against my own personal rule by having the two “M”s side-by-side.

So, I bought my new domain, www.RyanMcMullenOnline.com and was excited to change my blog to reflect the new domain. Like an idiot, I did not back up my database. I changed it through my host and WordPress and lost everything! I know we’ve all had that sinking feeling when you know you just did something terrible. I felt sick, used some colorful language and was ready to throw the computer out the window. That’s how awful it was.

Once I collected myself, I spent roughly 3 hours on the phone with PowerHost and we couldn’t retrieve any of the information. As great as WordPress is, it doesn’t like major changes. Okay, no big deal, I can put together a blog pretty quickly and easily, right? Oh, it gets better. Not only did I not back up my database, but I didn’t save all of my blog posts either. Did I mention what an idiot I was?

I lost most of my content because I naively thought, “Hey, it’s online and the blog is one of the few things I control.” While our blogs cannot be policed or taken down like a FB page, YouTube or Adwords, we’re still at the mercy of the database.

I cannot stress to you enough how important it is to save EVERYTHING. Now, I back up my database regularly and save my posts multiple places. If I can save one person from having to rebuild their blog and content from scratch, this post will have been successful.

Here are directions for your WordPress database:

http://codex.wordpress.org/Backing_Up_Your_Database

My blog is not quite back to it’s original glory because I have a programmer working on new graphics and it’s missing content, but I did learn a valuable lesson to pass along to everyone: FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, BACK UP ALL OF YOUR INFORMATION!!!

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I’ve had numerous people ask me what are the differences between the
two largest social networking sites and which one is better for online
marketing. While the latter question is debatable, I know most top
producers will agree with me when I say Facebook is more effective.

Including the number of users, the two sites are fundamentally the
same, but there are some nuances that make Facebook superior. In
general, MySpace is geared towards a younger, teenage audience. It’s
easier to add people, thus it’s easier to get spammed and nobody wants
that. To be fair, the best features of MySpace are the graphics and
you are able to customize and dress up your homepage to make it more
branded. Score one for MySpace.

Facebook on the other hand, has a more adult audience. Also, the
communication and format is more personable than MySpace. It’s
acceptable to talk about business on Facebook whereas you will be
chastised on MySpace for the same conversation. I absolutely do not
mean that it’s okay to sell everybody on Facebook. That is a no-no
across the social media board. I am illustrating the fact that the
free exchange of business and professional ideas is encouraged on the
Facebook platform. Please don’t try to sell everyone to whom you
become connected.

Both sites are great, but for online marketers, the free exchange of
ideas and the audience being more mature makes Facebook the clear cut
choice.