This might seem like a completely obvious post, but sadly, it is not obvious enough. I get emails every day from people who want to do business with me, but have no clue that I’m instantly judging them by their signature (or lack, thereof). A signature is hugely important, especially online. You can’t just hand people your business card through email, so the email signature takes the place of a card.

In order to present yourself as being professional, you must include a signature with your emails, and these signatures must have the following elements:

The Proper Elements of a Business Email Signature

1. Your Name – Pretty obvious, no?
2. Your Professional Title / Position – People need to know where you fall in the scheme of things. Your title or position in a company immediately tells others this.
3. Your Company’s Name – Should be as obvious as including your name.
4. Your Phone Number – If you’re not willing to include a phone number with an email, then who on earth can take you seriously?
5. Your Company’s Website URL – This is a must, especially if you’re corresponding with people working on internet related businesses. The only reason not to have your site’s URL is if you’re hiding something.

Optional Elements

• Your Fax Number – While most professional emails contain a fax number, people can do without it.
• Your Email – The recipient of your emails will always have your email address, but by adding it to your sig, you just make it easier for people to find.
• Your Business Address – While it helps to know where someone’s physical presence is, in the current day and age people aren’t using snail mail as often as they used to. Mailing addresses are great to have, but not 100% necessary.
• Alternate Phone Numbers – Having additional ways to contact you is always a plus.

If you’re trying to do business or create business relationships online, you must post your signature in your emails!

How serious will a potential partner take you if you contact their company in hopes of forging a relationship when you don’t include a signature?

Example of An Unprofessional Email Request

A few days ago I got an email inquiry about advertising on BiggerPockets.com. The person who contacted me, asked me for information about the site’s traffic, wanted to know if I’d give them free time to test their ad, and even asked for a discount in my ad prices. I had never heard from this person before, and they hadn’t told me anything about who they were. Worst of all, their signature contained only 2 elements, their name and phone number. In addition, their email address was a generic one from one of the major internet providers. Clearly, this person did not look very professional to me.

Do you think I gave any information to them?

I had no way to identify her and wasn’t about to send priviledged information to just anyone. Had she simply included a proper signature, I might have looked at the email completely differently. As a result, I had to waste my time by sending her an email asking her to identify herself. I immediately judged her as being unprofessional; she now has to work much harder to build up my trust. (Somewhat unrelated sidebar: Asking for ad discounts and free ad time to test her potential spots clued me in to the fact that she is not very professional as well. Who does that? If I had worked with her in the past, I’d have had no issue with the request, but asking on first contact is just bad form. Why would someone assume that you would give them a discount if you don’t even know who they are?)

Are there any other email signature elements that you feel are necessary?

One thing every blogger, web-designer, and entrepreneur has in common is that we all have some kind of office that we work out of. For some of us, it is a lounge chair on the beach, for others, a cluttered mess.

What Does Your Office Look Like?

Here’s a look at mine. I call it “Organized Chaos!” As you can tell, there are papers on the floor (they don’t last there long . . . my dogs get to them and shred them eventually), the all-important trail mix, scattered electronics (digital camera & camcorder), notes everywhere, and the centerpiece, my iMac (if you haven’t tried switching to Mac, I would highly consider it!).

Group Photo Contest

Now that I’ve shared my home office with all of you, let’s see what your workspace looks like!

While I don’t have any prizes to give out, I thought it might be fun to see how chaotic or immaculate the offices of the rest of you are.

Here’s what I propose:

1. Take a photo of your workspace (without cleaning it up first – we want to see how it looks in reality).

2. Post it on your blog in a post about your workspace.
3. OPTIONAL, But it would be great if you did: Link to this post somehow (I deserve credit for the idea, don’t I?).
   
4. Contact me via my contact form and point me to your post . . . I’ll add a link to your post from this one.

5. Visit all the other interesting workspaces of your fellow bloggers. Feel free to comment on the photos.
6. Feel free to tag your fellow bloggers if you’d like!

If anyone has some sort of prize they want to give away, we can always transform this into a fun contest. Anyone?

If no one decides to participate in any way, at least you all now know what kind of environment I work in.

So . . . Share Your Office / Worspace With The Rest of Us!

Disclaimer: This was partially inspired by all the group writing contests out there.

Here are The Offices / Workspaces of Our Friends Out There

• David Pitlyuk’s Cool Multi-Screen Office
• Blog-Op’s Workspace Exposed
• Francesco Mapelli’s Bedroom Office
• Alison’s Workspace Revealed
• Melt du Plooy’s Workspace
• Claire’s Workspace Exposed
• The World Around Us’s Workspace
• Minddriven’s Workspace
• Workspace of the author of the Banalita Blog (italian)
• Brandon Hopkins’ Workspace Video Tour
• Andrew Flusche’s Workspace
• Mark Shead’s Sparkling Workspace
• Nirmal’s Cubicle Workspace

I’m a huge fan of MyBlogLog, as it has become a great tool for building blog traffic, but I have one issue with the site that continues to annoy me:

The Problem with MyBlogLog
When you add a friend, the site redirects you back to your own profile. This is extremely annoying! When I find a user that I’d like to befriend, I want to continue surfing their profile after adding them as a friend. Once I’m back in my profile, it is difficult to find these new friends.

My Solutions
I have 2 solutions for this problem:

1. Redirect a user back to the friend’s profile . . . this seems to be the easiest, and most obvious solution.

2. Create a section on our profiles where we can see users we just befriended; there is already an area where you can see people who befriended you. I believe that this is an essential upgrade (by itself or in conjunction with the first suggestion)

How You can Help
If this problem annoys you as well, just let Eric know.

How to Reach Me on MyBlogLog
You can network with me on MyBlogLog. Either add me as a friend (my username is bigp), or join the TimeforBlogging Community!

I had high hopes . . . they have summarily been squashed!

As many of you are aware, I tried to put together a networking event here in Denver for web-entrepreneurs, developers, investors, etc. The event this morning was a complete bomb!

The Networking Event of The uhhhhh Century. Well, Maybe Next Time!

I sat at the location for close to an hour and no one showed up . . . well, at least I was in the company of some other interesting people (I did some networking, nonetheless!). I guess that’s the way things go sometimes! I think it may show the difference between Denver and Boulder as far as tech is concerned. When I attended a similar event in Boulder, which was announced in a similar fashion to this one, there were over 20+ people who attended. Oh well . . .

We’ll try this one more time – I’m going to plan on it being at a bar. This way, if I’m stuck by myself, I’ll at least have a beer to keep me company. Stay tuned!

Sometimes people ask me why their blog isn’t growing as fast as they’d like it to, and I usually ask what they are doing to build an audience. Most of the time, the answer I get is “I’m writing good posts” and “I try to do it regularly.” While this is important, I’ll venture to say that it is only a small fraction of what is necessary to build traffic to your site. What is the other 50%?

50% of Blogging Success is Connecting with Others

Most of the bloggers out there who are frustrated with their blog’s traffic growth are simply not doing enough to connect with other bloggers outside their sites. That’s why I feel that tools like MyBlogLog are so important. In this day and age, people want nothing more than to connect with others. This explains the growth torrent of blogs, forums, and other social websites.

What Do You Need to Do to Connect?

• You have to get out and see what others are doing, talking about, writing about, etc.
• You have to visit other sites and comment on their posts and get involved in the discussion.
• You have to email other people in your space and get to know them, and more importantly, let them get to know you.
• You have to network outside the virtual world..
• You have to be original and show people that you aren’t just another imitator trying to get your piece of the pie.
• You have to write quality posts about interesting or helpful subjects and you have to show people why it is important to them.
• You have to convey a passion in your writing.
• You have to be opinionated.
• You have to reveal at least a small part of yourself.
• You have to shape the debate in your area of content.

I can go on and on, but I’m getting a bit distracted watching the NBA Playoffs . . . I suppose the main point I’m trying to get across is this:

If you hope to build a thriving blog community (all the top blogs are primarily communities – just look at the amount of comments they get), then make sure you’re spending a good chunk of your time connecting as well as writing!

I wrote about using MyBlogLog a few weeks ago (networking with social media sites) for networking purposes. I now want to tell you exactly how to build massive traffic using the MyBlogLog community.

MyBlogLog is an extremely important tool for getting a blog off the ground and for building exposure to your site. Many people don’t realize how powerful it really is! This post will help you get a jump start in building traffic to your blog / website, and will also help you find new, interesting sites you never knew about before.

How to Set Up MyBlogLog on Your Blog or Website

1. Create an account with MyBlogLog. This hould take less than a minute. All you’ll need is to pick out your username, email, password, and the URL of your blog. Once you’ve created an account, be sure to upload an image of yourself as your avatar. Photos are just more personal and make things a bit more inviting.
   
   

2. To bring more interest to your profile, or simply to help users get to know a bit about you, be sure to fill out some personal information in your profile. Again, it really just helps people to connect with you.
3. You will then want to claim your blog or website. To do this, you’ll need to place a snippet of code that MBL provides you within your blog’s template. Now, when you look at your profile page, you’ll see your website.
   
   

   Both you and your website now have “communities.” Personally, you have the ability to add friends and chat with them. People must join your website’s community, but they can also chat with you through the site’s community.

4. The last major technical step in getting going is installing the MyBlogLog Widget on your blog or website. If you look in your personal profile, you’ll see a link underneath your website’s community “Get Widgets.” The one you are concerned with is the “Recent Readers” widget. This allows you and your other readers to see who has been on your site recently. Layout the widget to your liking and add it to your blog’s sidebar.

Congratulations! You’re Ready.
Here’s where the traffic building begins!

8 Steps To Successfully Building Blog Traffic Using MyBlogLog

1. Make sure you are logged into MyBlogLog. This seems obvious, but if you’re not signed in, then people on the site can’t see you when you’re surfing around.
2. Surf your favorite blogs! Start visiting the sites you’d normally visit and see if they have MyBlogLog widget installed. If they do, click on the View Reader Community link at the bottom. This will bring you to their website’s community.
3. Join the communty and also add the user as a friend/contact. This shows the user in both their personal profile and their website’s community profile that you are interested. It also gives you more exposure so others can find you more easily.
   

   (Note: When you add a user as a friend, you are sent back to your profile, not that user’s. I think this is a glaring problem with the site, as I then have to go back to the blog – to the community – to the user to find their profile again. I hope Eric and others at MBL consider changing this. It will just make things that much easier for users)

4. This is one of the most important steps: Leave a comment on either their personal profile or their website’s community profile. Make sure it is not simply “Nice site” or “Great Blog.” Be sure to leave a relevant comment so the user can tell that you’ve actually visited their site.

   As a result of your comment, the odds are that the user will go and visit your profile (by clicking on your avatar). They will then see your blog / websites and if they have any curiousity in the topic, will check them out. You’ve just exposed your site to another new person!

5. Wash, Rinse, Repeat! After a while, you’ll have targeted all the sites that you are a fan of. Don’t fret, you have much more work ahead!
6. Now that you’ve gone and let your favorite sites know about your interest, it is time to start finding new sites. There are a many ways to do this:
   

   How to find New Websites of Interest

   a) Visit your favorite site’s community pages and look at who else is commenting. Visit their site / blog and return to step 2.
   b) Visit your favorite site’s community pages and look at who else is a member. Visit their site / blog and return to step 2.
   c) Return to your personal profile page and see who “Viewed this Page Recently.” Visit their site / blog and return to step 2.
   d) Go to the “My Admirers” section of your profile. Visit their site / blog and return to step 2.
   e) See who is leaving you comments on your personal community profile or your site’s community. Visit their site / blog and return to step 2.
   f) Visit the profiles of other users you’ve found and see what communities they are a part of. Odds are they will likely be related to their interests. You now have a slew of other communities and sites to visit.

7. Watch the traffic begin! You’ll start to notice traffic slowly start to come from MyBlogLog. Keep people interested by continung to write quality posts.
8. Set aside some time every day to expand your MyBlogLog contacts, visit new sites, comment, and get yourself out there. Remember, every time you visit another site with the MBL Recent Readers widget, you have another opportunity for exposure for yourself. The more you’re seen around, the more likely people will want to connect with you.

Don’t forget that in addition to using MyBlogLog for traffic that there are other important methods. Commenting on other, related blogs with thoughtful messages is hugely important. This should also become a part of your daily routine.

In case you’d like to start somewhere, you can do so with me!
My Personal Profile: BigP (my username)
This Blog’s Profile: TimeForBlogging

Join up and get involved in MyBlogLog today to build your blog’s traffic!

Whoops . . . posted that one a bit prematurely . . . no it’s not a problem I have regularly!

The Creation of a Denver Networking Group

I’ve talked on this blog about why you should get out of the office and network and I’ve decided to start up my own local group here in Denver. This group, will be called (for now) the Denver Meeting of Minds Networking group, and will serve as a means for local Denverites (cool word, huh!) to get together, network, chat, pass along ideas, and expand our horizons as a group.

If you’re an internet entrepreneur, programmer, web-developer, investor, or anyone else involved in a tech startup and you live in the Denver Metro area, please stop by and get involved. The official group page can be found here on the blog at: http://www.timeforblogging.com/meeting-of-minds-denver-networking-group/

Upcoming Event Details
When: Tuesday, May 1, 2007, 8:00 AM
Where: CapuVino – 728 S. University Blvd, Denver, Colorado
How to Register: Visit Registration Page
FREE WIFI? Yes

It should be a great event . . . if anyone shows up other than me (lol to myself). I’ll let everyone know how it goes!