Mind your Business

At the moment I’m trying to set myself up in 5 or 6 social networks at the same time, some I joined months ago and forgot, until I received their messages. And right in the middle of all this I found Today.com and applied at once, before I could forget it. This time, joining here, I thought I should really have a profile more or less worked out.

Now that that is done, I can finally start my own blog, on one of my domains, Uhus im Internet.de. Lots of content in my head still, and I can write double, unique content each time, with thinking just once - obviously I do it in two different languages. (Uhus meaning people online 50 plus and Under Hundred, BabyBoomers, like me.) So much about organization of work.

It also does make sense, to have a halfways nice basic profile before deciding to join communities and forums, including various signature lines, then you don’t have to think something up again and again. But what I should actually be doing is setting up my salespages, advertise my leadcapture page, surf traffic exchanges and read and send safelist mails…. One can really waste a lot of time on the Web 2.0.

Then why do I do it?

Not because the Gurus, who now have enough time for that, tell one should be and market in social networks - I was in some already before I knew something like Internet Marketing existed at all. (Wished I had known, IM was so much easier at that time - more about this later.)

(sideline: I don’t use the word Gurus in a negative connotation. Many of them are great, and from whom else should I have learned all the things I know. Without negative qualification, for me it is just a short positive word, like a title.)

Apart from the fact, that also an Internet Marketer needs some fun sometimes, it is necessary to mingle, to communicate with all kinds of people, build relationships, also outside business. An important part of work is networking.

Unfortunately, most people I meet mix that up with network marketing and flee. In online marketing communities it is the same, with the only difference, that there they mix up network marketing with downline hunting in addition. So they don’t network, but just spread useless advertising all over the place, including their ‘friends’ ‘ profiles. 

Only to spam their friends inboxes too, they add as many as they can. And - to come round to the main point of this post again - many don’t have a proper profile, not even a name. But the keywords are  Social Marketing,  Relationship Marketing,  Social Network.

How can anyone build a relationship without even an own, recognizable Name? (and how do they plan to do business without?) Can you imagine to have a friend called ‘Colon Cleansing’ ? - I rarely decline friendship requests, but that one sure, however healthy that might be, and some others I declined too, who had only their companies’ (Ag)logos for a picture, which is worse than no picture at all.

I better close for now, before this becomes a rant, not without a fazit:

All kinds of web activities, that look like playing to those who are not concerned with online business, are part of the work of of an Internet Marketer.  And they are not for plain advertising. Advertising is important too, but if any at all, it brings only a momentary effect. For finallly reaching success, it needs a long time of diligently building an Internet Presence first.  Personal  Branding. 

Not for getting famous, as some frown, or for hiding. On the contrary, one must always be oneself, always accessible, and, most important, always recognizable.

I am the mixture of me and my virual self: ~Neila~ Sabine R., the Spacelady  of… (Well, my homepages are still under construction, and my old blogs in English and Denglish a bit neglected, but if I can, I edit this resourcebox soon, otherwise, please keep on reading my blog here.