As Internet marketers, do you participate in your markets?
Grab a cup of coffee or your drink of choice, have a seat and read this. On forums or other places, I’ve been known to toss out some long winded rants. The objective is to toss out some thought provoking ideas that lead to some deeper discussion on a subject.
We’ve all seen posts or articles where people want to have success on the Internet and build a successful business. Most everyone starts with a feeling of information overload, where do I begin and all this crap?
One word that comes up all the time is focus! Pick a direction and focus on it. Seems simple, but not so simple when you have life pulling you in multiple directions. Then there are all the Internet marketers trying to get your attention so you buy their stuff. If you follow all the links for sales pages that come along everyday, you run the risk of losing your mind, your money, or both.
Pick what you will focus on and steer clear of everything that doesn’t apply to what you have chosen. That means everything. If you are on a list from an Internet marketer and they no longer fit your focus, unsubscribe from the list, that includes mine.
Lets get back on focus here, Success with Participation
No matter what niche you go after or membership you belong to, participation is key to getting the most out of it.
If you are going after a niche market, look for the competition and participate on their sites if that is available. Find blogs that are in your niche, post real comments that add to the discussion. I approve all relevant comments or comments that are sincere! The volume of spam comments amazes me.
Contact the site owners and trade content, promote each others stuff. Jump in with both feet, don’t be shy! Make a name for yourself with quality participation and people will start to follow you and perk up when you have something to say. Everyone knows all this stuff, right?
As a member on many paid memberships, it amazed me when so few actually participated. Typically I don’t spend that much time in forums and no one really should. Time should be spent building your business. But at the same time, if you are paying for a membership, a little participation goes a long way.
Live participation brings more success
Joining the conversations on the Internet is actually a better approach. Find the top sites in your market and start posting comments, join the dialog. Add your voice to the mix and by all means, add a link to your site so people can find you.
Adding quality content with comments on other sites will get attention from visitors as well as the site owner. Once you have added enough quality content to other sites in your market, make contact with the site owner. At this point, you have expanded your circle of friends through participation in your markets.
Expanding your circle of influence
Once we establish ourselves on other sites in our market, the top five sites or so will do for starters. Our circle of influence begins to grow, all those comments and links bring traffic and comments to your site. Start to notice who all the players are in the niche market, make some new friends. Then the opportunities begin to grow in many ways, more products to market, joint ventures, cross promotions.
Success with participation is not that tough, it all starts with all of us participating in the markets we want to get into. Hiding behind user names or just lurking behind the scenes will not get any of us anywhere. We all have something to contribute, don’t be shy, toss out what you think and see what sticks.
Adding our own personalities to the many conversations on the Internet only serves to add to the richness of the net. By adding real experiences and relevant content, we also give Google exactly what they want to provide their customers. Give Google the relevant content that they want showing up in the search engine and they will send you more traffic for the effort.
Join the conversation, leave a comment if you like what you read here. Don’t be shy, we don’t bite!
John Stiles
