Making Money Using iStadia #3: Optimising your Profile 
First of all, if you haven't seen the first two articles, I suggest that you review them first.#1: Social Media is a Business Tool
#2: Goals, Target Market and Keywords
At this point, you have identified your keywords or phrases. The next step is to ensure that they are in your profile title*, profile text, and tags.
Setting up your profile
Think of these as making up the golden thread that tells search engines that your profile (and the same is true of blogs, articles and news) is a relevant page to show someone searching for those keywords.
You also have a profile summary*. This is like an elevator pitch and should scream “click me” (metaphorically, that is) as it will appear on searched for you on search engines.
Profile Settings Tips:
- Staying with the example of the sports marketing consultant in London we used in article 2, you might simply make your title “MyCo Sport Marketing, London”.
- Don’t ‘stuff’ your tags box with keywords that might dilute the relevance of your page.
Links
Edit Profile Title: http://www.istadia.com/memberprofilepageedit.php
Edit Tags: http://www.istadia.com/memberprofileedit.php#tagsbox
Write your profile copy
It is really hard to overemphasize the importance of your profile. Used well, it may be more important to your business than your own website. Of course, this depends on how big your business and web budget is.
You can get a free website, or throw one up on the cheap, but what are the chances that it is really doing anything for your business?
Does anyone that doesn’t already know you ever see it? Does it create leads?
iStadia has been designed so that (especially if you have signed up to your Premium or Premium Plus membership) you have access to a suite of tools that are there to make you more visible.
Once visible most important thing about your profile copy is that it states clearly to visitors that you have something to offer.
Profile Copy Tips:
- Write for people first. Yes, you need to get your keywords in for search engines, but your copy has got to read well to the human eye.
- Focus on the benefits of what you are selling - what can you do for the visitor? What’s their pain, and how can you take it away? People don’t want to see your qualifications first. You might be (rightly) proud of your certification or accreditation, and some clients might want the comfort of knowing that you have credentials, but these are irrelevant unless you can convince someone that you have something they need. Focus first on the target customer and their needs - not yours!
- You can embed links in your profile. If you want visitors to ultimately proceed to your own website, use this! Don’t just stick in a link like “http://www.myco.com” or “click here”. Neither is doing much for you. Again, the link should use your keywords, or a variation on them, as ‘anchor text’. To do this highlight the text, then click on the link icon in the editor, then add the full url (e.g. http://www.myco.com) when prompted.
Edit your profile: http://www.istadia.com/memberprofileedit.php
* Require Premium or Premium Plus membership
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Over a series of articles will be exploring all of the steps outlined in the downloadable document Using iStadia to Make Money: Networking and Marketing your Business.#1: Social Media is a Business Tool
#2: Goals, Target Market and Keywords
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Rob Robson
Co-founder, iStadia.com
Making Money Using iStadia #2: Goals, Target Market and Keywords
Set your goals
So if you haven’t done so, think hard about what you want to achieve with your business.
Think about how your online presence will fit into that.
What do you want to convey?
To whom?
What is special about what you have to offer?
What can you offer them that will bring them closer to buying from you?
If you don’t ask yourself these kinds of questions, and know what you want to achieve, then your marketing activity, whether on iStadia or elsewhere, is likely to be unfocused and at best “hit or miss”.
Identify your target market
Hopefully this is really obvious to you, but often people say to us “I’m not sure iStadia hits my target market”.
Let’s bust that myth right now.
Your content - and the keywords (next step) that it contains, will define the people that your content reaches - whether your profile or other content (later). In other words, we provide a platform that lets you reach your target market.
If you’re not in sport or exercise in some way, I’d recommend using other sites, but other than that iStadia does not limit the type of person that you can reach.
This is because the majority of our visitors come from search engines, where they find your content. That’s what’s so important about content. It really is the engine that drives the internet. Sure, you may have something to sell to your fellow professionals, but you most certainly don’t have to for iStadia to work for you.
Choose the keywords for which you want to be found (by your target market)
This is a really important step, and not to be skipped. Think about what people might actually search for, not clever or fancy terms that people don’t know. There are some great articles on iStadia that haven’t been read much because the titles were too ambiguous - clever even. On the web you have to give people signposts.
For example: “Sports Marketing” is a generic and very competitive search term. It attracts 9,900 searches a month on Google, but the competition for rankings means that your chances of getting onto page 1, and getting a share of those searches, is slim.
“Sports Marketing London”, however, gets somewhere in the region of 600 searches a month, but advertiser competition is low and you can be confident that if you are a sports marketing company in London the searcher is looking for what you have to offer, and not general information about the field.
Likewise, when I was working as a sport psychologist I changed my keyword strategy from focusing on “sport psychology” to “sport psychologist”. I got fewer hits, but more enquiries. Think about that for a moment....
The Google keyword research tool can help you by seeing how many searches a term gets, and how much competition there is for it.
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Over a series of articles will be exploring all of the steps outlined in the downloadable document Using iStadia to Make Money: Networking and Marketing your Business.#1: Social Media is a Business Tool
#3: Optimising Your Profile
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Rob Robson
Co-founder, iStadia.com
Making Money Using iStadia #1: Social Media is a Business Tool
Does the title surprise you? Well, it shouldn’t. We’ve created the site to help sport & exercise businesses and professionals win more business and ultimately make more money. If your 'business' isn't about making money, for example in the non-profit or educational sector, you can substitute 'making money' for another goal.
But money isn’t and shouldn’t be a dirty word. We all, with the exception of a lucky few, have to work. If you are a sport & exercise professional, the chances are that you love what you do, but the reality still is that you have to make money doing it.
Think about what making more money might mean for you. It might secure the future of your business. It might mean that you can give up the day job. It might mean that you go on holiday this year when otherwise you might not. Or it might mean expanding into a new office; bringing more staff on board; or creating new capital to invest.
Whatever your reasons for being in business (yes, that’s what you are if you are ‘only’ self-employed), we want to help you to make more money using iStadia. You see, iStadia isn’t a ‘social networking’ website, but about professional networking and marketing. We hope that you meet nice people along the way, but that’s not why we set it up.
This series of articles, or our downloadable guide to making money on iStadia will help you to do just this. Step by step. You don’t have to do every step, but the more you do, the more likely you are to see results. Results such as:
- More views to your profile and website
- Greater credibility and trust - a stronger ‘brand’
- A more productive network of contacts
- More opportunities to explore
- More qualified (warm) leads to exploit
- Ultimately, more sales (but we can’t go to sales meetings for you!)
Don’t expect instant results. It can take a good few months but keep at it and you will see the benefits.
How does it work?
Ultimately, by taking part in, and sharing with, the community on iStadia you will create bridges with other members of the community and members of the public.
What can you share? Share opinions, advice, knowledge and opportunities (after all, you will know about opportunities that you are either not interested in or equipped to exploit).
Sharing starts by creating content. This is your way of reaching out. Why is content - or high quality content - so important?
Quality content - People view it, search engines crawl it
- builds trust in your ability to meet their needs- makes you a credible source of knowledge of advice
- creates the first steps to building new business relationships
This is what online marketing is all about.
Why Network?
You’ve heard of the six degrees of separation, haven’t you?
The chances are that you know someone that knows someone that can help you achieve your business goals. If they don’t, they’ll know someone who knows someone who can!
The more new - and genuine - connections that you make, the closer you are bringing the resources, tools and people that you need to make your business a success to you.
Quality and quantity in networking
Many people consider real relationships to take place offline - in the “real” world. We’d tend to agree that the ultimate aim is to build offline relationships and business, although we are actively working with and for people that we predominantly deal with online.
Genuine relationships, however, wherever they take place, require time and effort. Having a huge network gives you a large audience to put your ideas, services or products in front of, but having a smaller network gives you a great deal more in terms of really putting it to work.
BNI International, the highly successful breakfast networking organization, has the motto “Givers Gain”. That’s not a bad starting point.
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Over a series of articles will be exploring all of the steps outlined in the downloadable document Using iStadia to Make Money: Networking and Marketing your Business.#2: Goals, Target Market and Keywords
#3: Optimising Your Profile
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Rob Robson
Co-founder, iStadia.com
