Are you looking for a list of great social networking sites?

September 1, 2008 by John Dilbeck · 3 Comments
Filed under: Attracting Visitors, Blogging, Business Networking, Promote Yourself, Social Networking 

I have found that participating on social networking sites has helped my business grow and I’ve met some great people in the process. Some have become real friends.

It takes time and effort to network effectively, so don’t think it can be done in a few days or weeks, and don’t try to do it more quickly by using software to speed up the process.

If you sincerely want to network with other like-minded people and you’re willing to take your time and socialize with them – not just spam your ads towards them – then you’ll find a great list of social networking sites on Kelly Stone’s blog:

Want A List Of Social Networking Sites?

I just found Kelly’s blog and I’m finding lots of topics that interest me there.

Yes, I found her through social networking.

I saw her on a Recent Visitors widget on my Squidoo Marketing community and followed the link back to her MyBlogLog profile where I found her blog’s community and then visited her blog.

It sounds like a lot of effort, but it took only a few minutes.

Along the way, I joined her blog’s community and added her as a contact at MyBlogLog.com. Then, I subscribed to her blog via email so I won’t forget to keep in touch.

Have you been using social networking to help build your business and make new friends? It takes time, but it works.

I noticed that she didn’t have a link to www.apsense.com, which has a Google PR of 4, and an Alexa rank of 45,857.

I like Apsense, but haven’t had the time to play in their sandbox lately. It’s one of the things I intend to do more of in the near future.

If you’re not already a member, I’d like to extend an invitation to join Apsense and network with me there.

For an example of what you can do on Apsense, I would like to invite you to visit my profile and business center on the site.

If you would like to network with me on some of the other major social networking sites, please see the links to my profiles on the About page of this blog. I look forward to meeting you. We can probably connect most quickly on Twitter and MyBlogLog, because I’m more active on them than the others.

If you are active on any of the major social networking sites and would like to network with the readers of this blog, please leave a comment with links to a couple of your profile pages. While you’re doing that, I would enjoy reading about your experiences in social networking and your major areas of interest.

So, on which of the social networking sites have you pitched your tent?

Act on your dream!

JD

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Where do you promote your blog?

August 22, 2008 by John Dilbeck · 7 Comments
Filed under: Affiliate Marketing, Blog Directories, Blogging, Business Networking, Forums, Promote Yourself, RSS Syndication, Social Networking, Squidoo Lenses, Twitter 

You’ve taken the time to research a topic for your new blog and decided there should be enough interest to make it worth the effort.

Then, you created the blog, chose a theme, modified the theme, selected plugins and widgets, and now you are ready to write great articles on all the topics you researched before starting.

Right?

Hopefully, that was your approach.

I think most bloggers throw up a blog and then look for something to write about. I know I did that on some of my first blogs.

I was a lot more focused and took more time to research what I was going to do before I started this blog.

Either way, now you have a blog, you’ve been writing on it for some time, and you want people to find you and read what you have to say.

Ideally, they’ll also post great comments so you and your readers can learn even more about the topic of the article.

So, where do you promote your blog?

There are lots of ways to promote your blog, and I’m sure you know of many that I’ve never used. I hope you’ll share them with us.

Let’s start with some that work well for me.

Create a lens about your blog on Squidoo

My main place to promote my blog is on Squidoo. For instance, I created a lens especially for this blog at 21st Century Affiliate Marketing.

Syndicate your RSS feed on your other blogs

I syndicate the RSS newsfeed from this blog on several other Squidoo lenses and some of my other blogs, such as you’ll see in the sidebar of my Marketing With Squidoo blog.

Create a community for your blog on MyBlogLog.com

I also registered this blog on MyBlogLog.com and created a community for it at 21st Century Affiliate Marketing.

There are several benefits of creating a community for your blog there. First, it syndicates your RSS feed as headlines on the page. Second, it makes it easy to increase your business networking as people join your community. Third, they offer widgets so you can see who has visited you lately. This makes it easy to visit their sites and/or make contact with them on other social networking services.

You can see this in action towards the bottom of the left column of this blog. Look at the Recent Visitors widget. If you hover your mouse over the visitor’s face, you should see a fly-out that lists the blogs and sites for which they have created communities on MyBloglog.com. It also makes it easy to join their communities and increase your business networking.

About half-way down every page on this blog, in the right column, you’ll see a section called “New with John Dilbeck.” In that section is a widget provided by MyBlogLog that shows my latest activities on this blog and other sites and blogs I author. It also shows what I’ve been doing on several networking services such as Twitter, del.icio.us, StumbleUpon, and others.

It has taken a long time to set all of this up, but now, whenever I do something on one of my blogs, websites, or forums, that action is recorded in the RSS feed and is automatically syndicated on multiple other sites. I get visitors from a wide variety of sites as a result.

You can see another example of this at work on my profile page at the Squidoo Marketing community I created. In the right column of the page (and every other page of the site), you’ll see the Recent Visitors widget for the MyBlogLog community I created for that social networking site. In the center column, you’ll see the wider widget from MyBlogLog that shows my activities on my sites and the social networking services I use regularly.

Syndicate your blog’s RSS feed as widely as you can

Syndicating the RSS feed from your blog on multiple sites is a good way to get your writing noticed by both new readers and the search engines.

Should you tweet your blog on Twitter?

I use a plugin called Twitter Tools to post an announcement about new blog postings to my twitter profile.

At first I was unsure about this and created a Squidoo lens called Should You Tweet Your Blog? to learn what other people think about the idea of automatically tweeting new blog posts. I’d welcome your opinions and feedback either on that lens or by leaving a comment here.

Link to your blog on forums and in comments on other blogs

I’ve talked about my blog on various forums and in comments on others’ blogs.

Be sure to add value when you post to the forums or comment on someone’s blog. As long as you’re adding to the conversation and helping others, the link to your blog will be welcome, or, at least, tolerated.

If you just jump in and write a post or comment about your blog that doesn’t add any value to the discussion, it will probably be deleted. At the very least, you’ll look like a spammer, and I know you don’t want to do that.

One good place to list your blog is in the thread started by Michael Galante on the ConquerYourNiche forum, Share your active blog here. I’ve found several blogs there that I’ll be reading and I’ve subscribed to a couple of their RSS feeds.

Another good place to link to your blog, especially if it is related to Internet marketing, is in the Members, show off your blogs! thread on Lynn Terry’s Self-Starters Weekly Tips forum.

(By the way, I’m one of the moderators of the SMO: Social Marketing & Social Media section of Lynn’s forum, and I invite you to come and share your knowledge and experiences about social networking with us.)

I have links to this blog in my signature file on a number of other forums where I’m active. Each post I make to those forums will link back to this blog.

Make good comments on other blogs

One way you can promote your blog is to make good comments on this one.

WordPress, by default, uses “nofollow” links so the search engines won’t follow links to the site you list when making your comment.

I’ve installed the DoFollow plugin so you’ll get some linklove when you post a good comment here. I also installed CommentLuv, which will try to find the last post you wrote on your blog and will link to it below your comment.

Additionally, SezWho is active on this blog and it will keep track of the comments you make on blogs with SezWho installed. It’s a pretty cool tool and I think we’ll be seeing more blogs using this nice tool as time goes by.

I hope you’ll make use of the rating feature SezWho provides to express your opinion of what I write and the comments others leave. By rating what we say, it will go into the multi-site comment aggregator that SezWho maintains and we can raise (or lower) our reputation based on the quality of our writing.

Now, I welcome substantive comments that are on-topic and I look forward to talking about affiliate marketing with you in any discussions that develop here.

However, I’ll delete your comment if it doesn’t contain anything worthwhile or is off-topic. So, don’t bother leaving a comment that says something like, “you have a good point,” or “that’s great.” I’ll delete ‘em in a heartbeat.

Don’t spam something I write with an off-topic comment full of advertising. Poof! Gone.

But, if you write something about the topic that adds to our understanding of your viewpoint or which offers links to on-topic resources, then I welcome what you have to say.

Do you comment on blogs?

My friend Mitch posted an interesting article called Why Don’t More People Comment On Blogs? on his blog a few days ago.

Do you have any thoughts on that subject?

In Summary

I mainly use Squidoo lenses, Twitter, a community on MyBlogLog, sig files on other forums, and comments on blogs to promote this blog.

How do you promote your blog?

Act on your dream!

JD

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Have you updated your new Squidoo lensmaster bio page?

August 20, 2008 by John Dilbeck · Leave a Comment
Filed under: Business Networking, Promote Yourself, Social Networking, Squidoo Lenses 

Yesterday, while looking for something (I don’t remember what), I looked at my lensmaster bio page at Squidoo and was surprised to see that it didn’t look anything like it did the last time I saw it.

What!?

I don’t like surprises and I generally react negatively when one of my pages changes without my knowledge or approval. So, I didn’t really like the new appearance of the page.

But, I tried to keep an open mind about it.

I went searching for more information about the change and found an active thread in the Lensmasters Lounge at SquidU.com.

Then I found Megan Casey’s post on the SquidBlog: New lensmaster bio page, live now!

That’s were I learned that what I was seeing was only the tip of the iceberg in terms of potential information the page could show.

I immediately edited the profile page on my Squidoo dashboard, and you can edit your profile, too:

http://www.squidoo.com/member/profile

I was able to add links to my blogs, websites, social networking profiles, and more. There’s even the ability to feature up to five of your favorite lenses right in the middle of the page.

It took all of a few minutes and now my lensmaster bio page is much more useful to me and I hope to any readers who find it.

I still don’t like surprises, but I do like the features in our new bio pages.

Have you updated your profile, yet?

Act on your dream!

JD

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Lynn Terry asks if you’re in or out with Twitter

August 18, 2008 by John Dilbeck · 4 Comments
Filed under: Blogging, Business Networking, Social Networking, Twitter 

Lynn Terry has a great discussion going on her blog post and comments at Twitter: Are you IN or OUT?

It took me a long time to see the value in Twitter and that only came after I found the right group of people to follow. Along the way, I’ve followed a lot of people and unfollowed quite a few.

Now, I’m following some very interesting people who are interested in blogging, Squidoo, CafePress, affiliate marketing, and other things that interest me and are a major part of my business.

In fact, I learned about Lynn’s post because of a tweet from one of the people I’m following. Cool, huh?

If you’re interested in Twitter and want to join her conversation, jump on in.

Twitter: I used to be OUT, but now I’m definitely IN.

Act on your dream!

JD

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Are you in the Triiibe?

August 2, 2008 by John Dilbeck · Leave a Comment
Filed under: Business Networking, Marketing, Social Networking 

Seth Godin, marketing genius, online entrepreneur, and founder of Squidoo.com, has opened a new social networking site, and membership is by invitation only, at this point.

He has now opened it for another round of participants.

You can get the information on his blog in this post: Are you in the tribe?

He has an interesting way to qualify new members and to keep out the tire-kickers.

I followed the steps a couple of days ago and was invited to join the Triiibe. (Yes, that’s three “i”s in the name. He has an interesting explanation, in that it takes at least three people to become a group, and that the domain he wanted was already taken.)

The Triiibe is hosted on Ning.com, a site that I really like and which hosts my Squidoo Marketing community. (If you use Squidoo as part of your marketing mix, you’re invited to join us there.)

When I made it into Triiibe, I found almost 1,000 other people interested in the same topics I am, which include leadership, tribe building, marketing, and so forth.

I’m trying to catch up on some of the conversations and I’ve met some interesting new people and was happy to see some of my friends there, too.

Seth is on to something here, and if you’re interested, don’t let pre-purchasing his next book stop you from joining the Triiibe.

Act on your dream!

JD

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Should you tweet your blog? Part 2

July 24, 2008 by John Dilbeck · Leave a Comment
Filed under: Blogging, Business Networking, Squidoo Lenses, Twitter 

After installing TweetMyBlog a couple of days ago and testing it, I found some things I like and dislike about it.

While I still feel comfortable recommending it as a useful tool that works exactly as advertised, I’m not sure it’s the tool I want to use for notifying my Twitter followers about new posts on this blog.

So, based on a recommendation by thefluffanutta, I’m now testing Twitter Tools to see if it does a better job of what I want.

So far, I’ve tested three widgets to show my Tweets in the blog’s sidebar. I’ve used the code provided by Twitter, the widget from TweetMyBlog, and the Twitter Tools widget. Of these three, I think the Twitter Tools widget is much better.

This post will be the first one that is automatically tweeted by Twitter Tools, so I won’t know what I think of it until I’ve used it more.

I’ve expanded my Squidoo lens, Should You Tweet Your Blog, a great deal today. Now, rather than just focusing upon TweetMyBlog, I’m thinking more about the process of automatically having your blog post to Twitter whenever you post to your blog.

Is this a good idea or not?

So, I’ve added several new polls and another duel where you are free to express your opinion. I’ve also added a Plexo link list so you can link to your blog, in addition to the link list that was already on the lens for linking to your Twitter profile.

If you have a few minutes, I hope you’ll visit Should You Tweet Your Blog and post your opinions and comments.

I’m still not sure which tool I’ll use to tweet my new blog posts, if I use any at all.

I may revert to tweeting manually. I don’t know, yet.

What do you think?

Act on your dream!

JD

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The personalized profile pages on I Love Hits continue to improve

July 22, 2008 by John Dilbeck · Leave a Comment
Filed under: Blogging, Business Networking, Marketing, Social Networking, Traffic Exchanges 

Recently, Jon Olson had a great idea and added personalized profile pages for ILoveHits.com members.

For example, here is my profile page: I Love Hits Blog for John Dilbeck.

Now, in addition to linking to several social networking sites, you can syndicate the RSS feed from one of your sites or blogs, link to a blog and/or website, and post entries to your very own blog.

Additionally, a members directory is starting to grow as more people edit their profile and add information to their pages. There is a link to the members directory on the bottom of each of our profile pages.

If you have edited your profile and created your ILH blog page, there is also a link to it on the bottom of the pages you promote on the I Love Hits traffic exchange.

Earlier this morning, when I logged in to the members page, the Locker Room, I noticed three entries from members’ blog postings. I don’t know if these are the three most recent posts or if they are a random selection. There may be other criteria at play, too.

Regardless of how they are selected, the blog postings are now starting to appear in other places and not just on your profile page. Three entries on the Locker Room page are in a prime location.

This just keeps getting better and better.

I also noticed that there is a new “Get to know me” badge with javascript that can be added anywhere you can post javascript. I just added it to the right column of this blog. If you click that badge, it will take you right to my personalized profile page.

This is a very nice addition, too.

Are you a member of ILoveHits.com?

Have you created your personalized profile page and posted to your blog there?

Act on your dream!

JD

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SFI Marketing Group affiliates – have you registered for A2A?

July 20, 2008 by John Dilbeck · Leave a Comment
Filed under: Business Networking, SFI Marketing Group, Social Networking, Squidoo Lenses 

On July 17, 2008, Gery Carson announced the introduction of the SFI Marketing Group “affiliate to affiliate” (A2A) system.

Now, SFI affiliates can meet other SFI affiliates all over the world, or in their local neighborhood.

Hundreds of affiliates have already registered and I’ve had the pleasure of meeting some people that I hope will become friends over time.

I wrote more about this on my SFI Marketing Group Affiliates lens. (This lens has been deleted.)

(Update August 2009: Affiliate link removed, as I no longer promote SFI Marketing Group.)

One of the drawbacks at the moment is trying to find people I know who have already registered. There is no feature for searching by screen name and there are no plans for being able to search by actual name, so, unless someone you know tells you their profile page link or the screen name they chose to use with A2A, it’s going to be difficult or impossible to find them.

To make this easier for me, I’ve added a new module on the SFI Marketing Group Affiliates lens so you can add a link to your SFI A2A profile page – if you want to.

While you’re at the lens, I hope you’ll answer the polls, participate in the duel, and leave your comments or feedback.

Act on your dream!

JD

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How to build a tribe

May 3, 2008 by John Dilbeck · 1 Comment
Filed under: Blogs, Business Networking, Communities, Social Networking, Squidoo Lenses 

Seth Godin wrote a very interesting article in the SquidBlog, entitled Squidoo two point oh! that talks about where Squidoo has come from and gives some hints about where it’s heading.

That isn’t the part of the article that caught my attention, however.

Towards the bottom of the article is a section called How to build a tribe and it describes succinctly some of what I’ve been trying to do over the last few months.

I’m going to take the liberty to quote from this section, and I heartily recommend that you go and read Squidoo two point oh!

Here’s what Seth said about building a tribe:

How to Build a Tribe

If you want a tribe, you need to earn one. You earn one by being the best in the world at what you do, by sharing generously, by being clear and clean and transparent and easy to work with. The masterpiece lenses on Squidoo have organically generated a following. You can too.

The only way we can make that happen, all of it, is to be open, to give you tools and to trust you. The current generation of the best Squidoo pages–the ones that rank high, get traffic and generate income–are the sort of thing that you want to visit, follow, and be part of.

It’s not particularly difficult to imagine the benefits that you’ll get when you have a tribe of people who like each other and trust you. When you have a blog and a Squidoo lens and a Facebook group and a network of people waiting to hear from you. That’s your tribe. You–and your ideas–are the glue, the magnetic attraction, the purpose. Now it’s time to sync them all up.

So that’s where we are, and that’s where we’re going.

If you run a small business or a charity or work on a major brand or are a stay at home mom, your entire world changes once you have a tribe to lead. A group of people who want to interact with each other and with you to discover new ideas and to contribute what they know.

I’m doing my best to follow this model and look forward to seeing how it all comes together over time.

Thanks for the mental image of building a tribe, Seth.

Act on your dream!

JD

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New lens for our Squidoo Marketing Community on Squidoo.com

March 16, 2008 by John Dilbeck · Leave a Comment
Filed under: Business Networking, Communities, Lenses, Marketing, Squidoo Lenses 

I recently created a new lens for our Squidoo Marketing Community at Squidoo.com.

Its purpose is to syndicate a couple of RSS feeds from our new Squidoo Marketing social networking site. The new lens republishes the Latest Activities feed toward the top and the Forum feed toward the bottom.

Additionally, you are invited to vote in our poll and participate in the duel.

You’ll need to be a Squidoo lensmaster to participate, and you can become one for free. I recommend Squidoo and have numerous lenses there with more on the drawing board.

Are you an expert on something? Build your own Squidoo lens and tell the world. It’s free, and you may even earn some money from it.

Please feel free to link to the new lens at:

http://www.squidoo.com/squidoo-marketing-community

I look forward to seeing your feedback on the lens and please – if you want – rank the lens (5 stars is best) and offer your comments in the duel or the comments section at the bottom of the lens.

You’ll note that the people who are participating the most on our new social network are the ones who are getting mentioned the most on our new lens.

How easy is that?

All you have to do is participate on our social networking site. I’ll be republishing those feeds on other sites I own. That means that there will be more links to your profile page as you participate more and as I have the time to syndicate the news feeds on more sites.

Can you think of something I should add to the new lens to make it more useful? All suggestions are welcome.

Act on your dream!

JD

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