A study of 13.2 million people conducted by Rapleaf shows that the launch of your social media site needs to target women.

The study shared by business weekly points out that while both men and women use Social media. The women far outpace the men.

“As a result, with the next wave of innovation likely to target women more than men, this gender gap on social networks (and increasingly in all of social media) will only widen. Naturally, male adoption of social media will grow as well. It just won’t keep pace with the expanding engagement among female users.”

Read the article  The Social Media Gender Gap

Rap Leaf Study Statistics on Google’s OpenSocial platform end users and Facebook users

Your marketing plan targeting women online needs to include social media.

Watch for Her Blog Radio to debut in August 2008 !

We are working on our first four shows and if you are a female blogger we would love to have you join us ! Just stop by and complete our introduction form.

As an affiliate you need to learn about affiliate parasites to protect your commissions. You work hard to bring quality visitors to your website. An Affilaite parasite will write over the cookies set on your website with their own cookies to steal your hard earned affiliate commissions. Hiding your affiliate links will not necessarily prevent the theft of your affiliate commissions by an affiliate parasite. Hiding your affiliate links may help but to prevent affiliate commission theft you need to ensure you only promote parasite free programs,

So how do these parasites work ? You can watch an example HERE.

Pop ups (adware) and toolbars are the two most common affiliate commission predators.

If you haven’t already you should subscribe to Benjamin Edelman’s  feed to learn what providers and companies you should be keeping an eye on.

As a Merchant, establishing your company as a reputable affiliate merchant to your potential affiliates is critical. The risk you take by using a network that is not parasite free may easily result in the failure of your affiliate program and the tarnishing of yoru company;s reputation. If you plan to generate a reliable consistent revenue stream based on affiliate partner sales you need to know the concerns your affiliate’s have with affiliate parasites and take the steps needed to protect their commissions.

Share a Sale is a parasite free Affiliate Network and if you are considering an affiliate program, its the first network you shoudl be checking out.

Additional Information on affialite parasites:

AMWSO

Affilaite Marketing Forums

Kudos go out AGAIN to Mashable for sharing these top 30 Firefox plugins you need.

I can’t wait to check out the Colorful tabs and Facebook tool bar.

Of course a few of them look as though they would only be adding to my already endless to do list. So be sure to only download those you feel you would really benefit from.

It is with great enjoyment I announce I will be assisting Jennifer Tankersley of ListPlanIt.com (also known as the List Mamma from List Mama Blog), with reviewing the List Plan It website service, marketing, and affiliate program.

List Plan It provides access to over 300 ready-made, ready-to-fill-in-lists, with more being added each month. ListPlanIt.com was created was to be a one-stop resource for lists and planning pages. If you are like most other listmakers, then you probably value continuity. You probably want your lists to look uniform and neat. You very likely wanted lists that you could type into to keep them uncluttered. Purchasing lists from ListPlanIt.com means you don’t have to reinvent the wheel! All you have to do is fill in your own information.

Watch for updates !

cforms contact form by delicious:days

Web Site Magazine (get yours for free HERE) had a great article this month about where the mobile web is heading. I devoured the article as this is something I had been reviewing over the last month for my blog clients and even some larger websites I work with.

I am mobile and if you want me to stay on your site don’t exploit my bandwidth ( no unlimited plans in my location) you need to offer a mobile friendly version of your website.

Mobile friendly WordPress Blogs are simple with a Word Press Plug in. (Yet another reason why you should be considering the switch to a Hosted Word Press Blog.)

Other Blog users may want to use Google Reader. You can find some instructions on creating a mobile friendly version of your blog with Google Reader at Digital Inspiration.

Looking for some more information about Mobile web users and how it may affect your blog or business website, check out this months Website Magazine.

In my search for information on how to track keywords used in Twitter I discovered Tweet Board, which appears to be a unique Twitter Analytics tool.  It appears you have to follow them on twitter and hopefully you will get added.

The subject at hand is how to scan Tweets to as a business tool. If you don’t mind receiving text messages of your tweets or you use one of the few IM programs offered by twitter you can simply log onto your twitter account and go to the devices tab.

These options don’t work for me, however I discovered Tweet Scan simply register and insert your search terms. Tweet scan will perform a daily search and email the posts to you.

This is a great way to know who’s talking about your business industry, competitors and your business online.

Know the PR, Alexa Rank and related Alex Links of any website you are viewing in Fire Fox with

Search Status

I have been working on organizing my business life this last week in an attempt to save time anywhere possible.

One of the ways is that I have begun requesting V Cards, from new clients, networking partners, and anyone who emails me. I spend too much time entering signature details manually into outlook contacts, and as a small business owner I bet you do as well, Of course that’s when we actually do it and don’t simply flag the email to follow up on. (How many of those flagged emails are in your inbox?).

So today I encourage you to go into outlook right NOW. Really it will take 2.5 minutes.

Continued

I belong to a few women in business groups. Some are formal networking groups, and some are online “forums”. The one thing that often astounds me is that people do not take the opportunity to establish business contacts out of these online business networks, groups, and forums.

I am not suggesting you spam your groups with your business. I am talking about REAL business networking opportunities and missing them when you don’t use those opportunities to introduce yourself.

About 10 years ago I attended a series of classes for entrepreneurs starting a new business. A three month program covering everything from business plans to finding investors. Even accounting. I think I went blank during the bookkeeping and accounting, but one thing that REALLY sticks out to me is the entire day we spent on introducing your business when given the opportunity.

With a recent roll call in one of my online Women in Business forums, (OK I started it - I was talking to all these women and I had NO idea what their business were), I was a bit shocked that these women weren’t taking the opportunity to really make an impression, one that I would remember next time I needed a service so I could find them again or remember their business name when someone I know was asking about their type of product.

Let me state, signatures do NOT work as a means of introducing yourself and your business.

I rarely click on a signatures, but if I feel I personally know you AND I have a real understanding of what you offer I will Google for you in the future. Just this week I found a copy writer and hired her, she couldn’t recall how she knew me. Thats OK, because I remembered her telling me what she did and the name “Crayon” ( i recall it being part of her blog domain) two minutes on Google and there she was.

I went online to see if I could find some articles on how to introduce yourself in business networking situations, specifically online. There are many business forums that came up in my search asking you to introduce yourself, however nary an article on HOW TO introduce yourself in these online business networking situations.

So here is what I want and need from you in an online business networking introduction.

Continued