I was in a discussion today with several people on the merits of using forums to connect with new prospects. We all agreed that being a part of three or four forums is an excellent way to answer questions for others on your area of expertise, get your own questions answered, and to just be a part of something that has staying power.

Using Facebook and Twitter may be good for your business, but our tweets and posts soon disappear as new ones appear in the timeline. Forum posts are there forever, and can be read by someone searching that thread at any time in the future. Another thing I truly love about forums is the idea of being able to change my signature line whenever I have something new to promote. It is then changed on every post I have ever made in that forum, for as long back as I have been a member.

I belong to two paid forums and several free ones. There are benefits to both, but if you are just starting out I would recommend going to Google to search for a free one on your topic. Spend some time just reading what other members have to say, and then offer valuable tips and resources if you have information that will be helpful. Remember that your signature line does the marketing for you, so you do not want to try to sell anything when you are commenting.

Your email account gives you access to the people in your life. You must be able to communicate in this way in order to maximize your effectiveness in the shortest amount of time. That’s why I was shocked to see so many people struggling with this during a three day marketing conference I attended and spoke at recently.

I now receive hundreds of emails each day, and enjoy reading and responding to those that require my attention. The other ones are filed or deleted from my email account. This can be manageable. Each day at this event there were people trying to find messages from friends and business contacts, and saying they couldn’t remember which email they had used to sign up for a particular program or event. They would log in and out of several email services, sometimes giving up before locating what they were looking for. I could not believe what I was seeing.

I am not an Outlook person. The idea of my email being

Another way to build your business is to stay connected with the people who have had an impact on your life. The very first person to mentor me was Raymond Aaron, and I continue to learn from him to this day. We met while I was still teaching in the classroom and working part-time in real estate. His level of energy and enthusiasm, along with his knowledge of how to change your life, made him the perfect person to mentor me.

Raymond has been there for me during some pivotal times in my life. One was when we shared the stage at an Internet marketing event last year. Another was when I won the ‘Better Your Best’ contest at Big Seminar in Las Vegas. And now that I have completed my first book, Raymond has written the foreward.

Stay in touch with your mentors throughout your life. You will continue to learn from them, and their lives will be enriched by seeing you achieve your goals.

As you grow your online business and more people join your list, you will want to keep the same type of community you started with. The best way to do this is to ask the people currently on your list to refer their friends to you. This is an excellent way to connect with your list, find new prospects who will already know something about you, and to start an affiliate program for yourself, if that is something you are ready to do now.

Think about how things work in the offline world. You may be looking for a new restaurant, or a place to hold a birthday party, or a new hair salon close to where you live. These days we usually go to Google or somewhere on the Internet to get ideas on who we can contact, but isn’t a personal referral always better?

When I moved to my city in 2006 I needed to find a salon to cut and color my hair every few weeks. I looked online, drove around town to see what was there, and looked through the magazines and flyers that came to my home. But for the first six months or so I continued to drive more than twenty miles each way to go to the salon in the city where I had lived for more than ten years.

Finally, I met a woman who

As quickly as possible, take your online prospects and clients offline. This may sound counterintuitive to what we are attempting to accomplish on the Internet with our businesses, but it makes perfect sense in terms of a solid marketing strategy. You will want to think of ways to connect with your list away from the Internet that will work well for your niche. I have found this to work extremely well for everyone who does it.

When I was just starting out online in 2006, I made very few sales. This was partly due to the fact that I only had one product of my own for sale that year. Whenever I would receive an email from my merchant provider to notify me of the sale, I would immediately call the person to introduce myself and to thank them for purchasing.

People were shocked to hear from me. I would talk to them for five to ten minutes and they would tell me all about why they had purchased my

You will want to build a lasting relationship with the people on your list. In order to make huge profits with a small list, one with fewer than a thousand names, you must remember why they came to you in the first place. This may be the most important thing to keep in mind when you begin to connect with them and to promote your own and affiliate products to them. These prospects are much more than just numbers on your list; they are the people that will determine if you are successful or not in your quest to build an online empire.

Think about this as you write your emails, choose the products and courses you will promote, and respond to your prospects individually. Straying off the path and offering them off topic information will not serve you well over time.

Writing an email to your list should be a personal communication between you and each of them. What I mean by this is that you need to