If you want to succeed in internet marketing, making online friends can help you. Once you make online friends, it can get you some great results such as:

• Get you new leads
• Get you help in the social sphere
• Help You sell more stuff
• Get help with problems

Get new leads when you stay in touch in online water coolers or make friends with someone who’ll pass along helpful info.  This can also apply when you’re in a jam. Maybe you’ve got some online friends with technical skills that can talk you through that problem. Get help in the social sphere when you need a great article Digged or Stumble’d or want someone to write a helpful review or testimonial for you and sell more stuff because your online friends can help you do that by talking about you as the “Go-To Guy/Gal” in a particular area of expertise.

How Do You Make Online Friends?

The web can be a little bit cliquish but the cliques are not impenetrable. Here are five tips to help you get started:

1. Find blogs in your niche and comment on them, blog roll them and post on your social networking sites how great they are. The website owners will take notice of you
2. Be helpful in online community forums in your niche for newbies. You can find some great protegees who will happily promote you
3. Sign up for all the social tools you can and befriend people who are either in your target audience or in your peer group (preferably BOTH if it’s suitable for that application)
4. Do something philanthropic online and do a giveaway to get some attention.
5. Join an entrepreneurial group. There are groups online dedicated to helping each other build their businesses. Some groups are available on group sites like Google, Yahoo and MSN and there are paid memberships sites such as StomperNet, Internet Entrepreneur Club or Universal Wealth Creation as well that help people and some even offer conventions.

Over time, a bit of socializing can bring you some profitable dividends and if you can find some friends in high places you can definitely make more of an impact online and become sought after as an online friend to others as well.

Have a most outstanding day.

Dana Prince
Internet Marketing Blog
www.SeanSEO.com © 2008

Today’s featured free tool is Ping.fm.  This is a pinging tool that lets you update all your social services with one update.This includes many types of services like sharing sites, blogs and micro blogging tools too.

Here are some of the popular services you can update with it:

Twitter, LiveJournal, MySpace, FaceBook, Tumblr, Hi5, Yahoo 360, Xanga, Mashable, Flicker, FriendFeed, LinkedIn. The list goes on.

The point of this type of tool is that it saves you from having to visit all those sites individually. The service can be used to update your status, add a link, talk about a project you’re working on and all your followers in those services get an update. You can’t converse with people unless you visit the sites indivdiually and you want to do that at least sometimes so you don’t appear to be a selfish social marketer but this can be a substantial time saver!

How Ping Fm Works

Sign up for all the social media sites you want to individually first and then sign in to Ping.fm. Then you can add your user name and password for each of those web 2.0 sites and begin taking advantage of Ping.fm. It does take a bit of time to set up initially but can be well worth the effort.

(PS: Update: Forgive my blunder. Yesterday I told you I’d write about making more online friends but started today’s post before reading my day planners. Tsk, tsk. Tomorrow Sean is posting so I’ll be sure to post about that topic for Thursday! Cheers, Dana)

Have a most outstanding day.

Dana Prince
Internet Marketing Blog
www.SeanSEO.com © 2008

When trying to make money online, who you know can often impact your success levels. If you have online friendships, make the most of them! Here are some things you can do:

1. Ask for a blogroll exchange. You link to them, they link to you.
2. Ask for Stumbles, Diggs, etc. when you write a great post.
3. Consider doing a joint venture where you work together to promote a product and split profits.
4. Ask them to Tweet about you on Twitter. Re-tweeting your tweets or telling people you’re a great person to follow can be helpful.
5. Ask for a testimonial for your sales page  and / or review of your product on their site linking back to your site.

As you can see there are a lot of things your online friends can do for you. They can also share tips and advice and be a sounding board for you at times as well. Don’t forget to reciprocate and do things for them as well. Through mutual back scratching with online friends we can all be more successful.  The more online friendships you have, the better! Need to make more online friends? We’ll talk about that tomorrow!

Have a most outstanding day.

Dana Prince
Internet Marketing Blog
www.SeanSEO.com © 2008

We recently talked about how forums can be valuable for you in terms of networking, building SEO, finding gigs and building your online reputation.  Here are some forums that internet marketers might like to visit:

Warrior Forum: A great place to not only find out everything you might want to know about internet marketing but the WSO (warrior special offer) provides you with a place to buy and sell products related to the world of internet marketing. This forum is a goldmine of information for novices and for pros in the world of internet marketing.

SitePoint: This is a great resource for everything related to websites. Looking to get design and programming tips, talk about advertising and SEO or flip your website in the classfieds section? This is a great resource.

DigitalPoint Forums: Digital Point, known as DP is a popular internet marketing and webmaster forum.

V7 Network: Another internet marketing / SEO / webmaster community

Forum Etiquette

Here are a few forum etiquette tips so you can enjoy the forum experience and not find yourself banned.

• Understand linking, posting and advertising policies.  Read the terms of service to be sure
• Stay away from flame wars where people are arguing and debating if possible. Not a good idea to join a new forum and get into heated arguments
• Introduce yourself
• Add  value to the conversations
• Follow standard netiquette (CAPS MEANS SHOUTING, etc.)

Have a most outstanding day.

Dana Prince
Internet Marketing Blog
www.SeanSEO.com © 2008

Community forums can serve many purposes for the successful internet marketer. There are thousands online on just about every topic you can imagine. Some are very busy and can have lots of members as well as a high Google page rank.

Here are a few of the ways you can use forums to your advantage:

• Your forum signature appears on every post so the more posts you write, the more links to your website(s)
• Many forums have classified sections so you can utilise this to advertise your products / services
• Talk to the webmaster / admin about link trading or displaying your banner. Forum ad fees are often very reasonable
• Chat with like minded people and get some visits to your website
• Get information about your niche
• Some forums offer revenue sharing
• Some forums allow you to feed your blog(s) into your control panel

Forums: A Social Marketing Goldmine!

Not only can you meet people, sell your wares and learn about your niche but forums offer a great opportunity for off-page SEO for your own websites.  Don’t abuse them or else you might get banned but follow the rules and be a valuable member of each community you join and you can definitely reap some rewards.

Have a most outstanding day.

Dana Prince
Internet Marketing Blog
www.SeanSEO.com © 2008