Participate online
July 17th, 2005 | by mbhunter |Participating in blogs, forums, and discussion groups is an excellent way to get the word out about who you are and where your website is. Most blogs that accept comments will give you an opportunity to include a link to your website. The key word is participate — this doesn’t mean posting a gazillion comments that say nothing but “I agree 100% — http://www.imshootingmyselfinthefoot.com” Once in a while is all right — just not all the time.
Foremost, though, be yourself. If people like who you are and respect what you have to say, you’ll leave a good impression and you’ll both benefit from the interaction. If you rub people the wrong way but you’re still being yourself, then they’ll tell you loud and clear that you’re rubbing them the wrong way. This gives you the opportunity to assess what went wrong and learn from it.
But pretending to be someone you’re not won’t work for very long. First, it’s exhausting keeping up a front. Second, there will be a backlash when people find out. Good internet buzz helps you, but bad internet buzz hurts you and usually does it a lot more quickly.
Participate to generate your own buzz — and listen and learn so that you can generate good buzz by being yourself.
