Contributing to social networking web sites such as LinkedIn and PartnerUp can bring significant value to your business or organization. Posting on sites like these holds two great benefits. Firstly, it connects you with like minded people. Fellow contributors give you insights and new ways of looking at your world. And, as an added bonus, they may turn out to buy your product or want to form a business partnership with you. Secondly, your posts give valuable back links to your web site. These are valuable as the major search engines count relevant back links as a vote of confidence in your web site. It is partly through these votes of confidence that the search engines raise your position in search engine queries. The question is, "How can you improve the effectiveness of your postings?" You spend appreciable amounts of time and energy contributing to on-line discussions and you want to make the most of each posting. Right? Well, here are my tips on how to get the most from your on-line contributions so that you can reap the two key benefits I outlined in my introductory paragraph. Make a meaningful contribution with each post. Do not post spam or useless comments, such as "Great post". Add value to the discussion, pointing people to additional resources or sharing your experiences. Always, and I mean always, remain respectful of other people's contributions. Remember, you are on public display. Remain professional at all times. Nothing will put people off you and your business faster than you engaging in a flame war with someone you disagree with. State your disagreement plainly and without emotional undertones. Post regularly as a way of developing relationships and increasing your exposure. As you become better known to the other contributors, they will more likely visit your web site. New business partnerships are sometimes forged after initial contact on a social media site. For web sites that allow you to post a profile, submit as full a profile as possible. Avoid posting highly personal information, such as your birthday and private address, as identity thieves scour social media sites for personalities to steal. Include a professional looking photograph in your profile, as this shows that you are a real person. Include relevant hyperlinks in your profile, such as links to your web site, blog, your other social networking profiles and publications you have authored. Doing so increases your back link count for the search engines and gives other contributors an easy way to find out more about you. Include a well crafted signature line at the end of each post. Include your name, your title and your organization's name, where appropriate. Hyperlink prominent words in your signature line, such as your organization's name, tag line or book title. It is very important that you hyperlink your keywords (such as your business name), and not only your urls. Your hyperlinked words are known as anchor text. The words you use in your anchor text signal to the search engines what your web page is about, raising your significance in the search results for those terms. Vary the urls and anchor text in your signature lines. A preponderance of specific urls and anchor text in your hyperlinks looks contrived to the major search engines. Such weight given to a limited number of hyperlinks does not look natural and will devalue your web site in the eyes of the search engines. Add the title attribute to your hyperlink code wherever you can. Some social media sites allow you to edit the HTML of your comment. In the hyperlink code, add a descriptive title, such as title="life coaching services". Many web browsers display this text when visitors hover over the hyperlink with their mouse. The major search engines also use this text to figure out what your web site is about. Where possible, do not spend a lot of time and energy on social networking web sites in which your hyperlinks sport the "nofollow" attribute. This attribute is attached to your hyperlink in the HTML code and functions to diminish the value of your hyperlink as a back link to your web site. If you use the Firefox web browser, you can easily see which web sites use the "nofollow" attribute by installing the Quirk SearchStatus add-on. Alternatively, you can look at the web page source code to search for rel="nofollow" and . If a social networking site attaches this attribute to contributor back links, do not immediately discount the site altogether. The web site may still be of great value if the site is active with lots of potential buyers or business partners. For more information on promoting yourself on-line, refer to http://www.businessperform.com/webcoach Now that you know what makes for a valuable on-line post, what are you waiting for? Get in there and start posting. See you on-line.