This is a guest post from Lynn Terry of ClickNewz, successful internet marketer for well over a decade, and blogging full-time for more than five years…

A lot of online marketers view Social Media properties as a means of getting traffic to their blog or website, or as a way to get inbound links. This creates a lot of noise in the social media spaces, flooding info streams on sites like Facebook and Twitter.

You can push content out, pull feeds in, use software programs to automate your processes. Auto DM’s on Twitter for example, are a robot-like way to “connect” with your new followers. Or so people think…

I’m all for automation and systems in my online business, and use them strategically. I use post-dating features in WordPress to schedule blog posts, autoresponders to follow up with new customers or subscribers, and scheduled email notifications for my readers to receive my latest blog updates.

But with Social Media, standing out from the noise in your readers’ info-stream is extremely important. If you really want to stand apart, and connect with your target audience, consider these 5 important elements in your Social Media strategy:

1. Reply/Respond – First!

I check in daily on my Social Media properties, my favorites being Twitter & Facebook, and I focus in on replies and mentions. You may not have time to get involved in the active stream of updates from others, but you’ll do well just to reply to any tweets or replies. The same with Facebook – I check first for any new messages on my wall, or replies to my own wall posts.

No matter how good your information is, if you only push out content and never respond to replies or questions… you’ll quickly become part of the noise in their info-stream. Ignore, and you’ll be ignored.

2. Be Resourceful, Not Just Self-Promotional

To be a true Market Leader in your niche, you’ll want to be the “go-to guy” for all things relevant. Break news, share blog posts you’re reading, retweet or share updates from other Market Leaders in your space.

While you may think “hey, I’ll be promoting my competitors!”, the truth is that you’ll providing valuable content to your readers. They will appreciate the updates, and make it a point to keep an eye on your for more interesting links.

Obviously you’ll mix your own updates and links in with these, and the end result is that you’re considered a valuable resource. Not just self-promotional.

3. Engage, Ask Questions

In addition to sharing solid information on a regular basis, and responding to any comments or questions, you also want to be the discussion-starter. Ask your friends & followers questions, or engage them in an active discussion about a hot topic.

If you’re niche is Time Management, ask them which techniques they use and like to manage their busy schedules. If your niche is Gift Ideas, ask them the best gift they’ve ever given – or received. You get the idea.

People like to be heard. Giving them an ear will ensure they also give you theirs.

4. Let Your Readers Do The Promotion

Be sure that you include Social Media options with your content that encourages your readers to Stumble, Digg, Tweet, bookmark your page, or share your content on Facebook.

While publishing your own links on your own profiles is a good strategy, what other’s share and say about you will carry much more weight than what you share or say yourself. Make it easy!

5. Join Conversations About You, Your Site & Your Products

There are several ways to track conversations across the web. You’ll want to set up Google Alerts for your name, your domain(s), and your product titles. This will send you an email alert of any blog posts or mentions so that you can view them and join in on those discussions.

Posting a simple “thank you for the mention” is a good start, but you can also check for issues or questions that need to be addressed. Don’t let a conversation about your product hang out there without acknowledgment.

In addition to Google Alerts, you can set up a column in TweetDeck for an ongoing search of keyword mentions. You can also use http://search.twitter.com to search manually.

One of my personal favorites is http://www.ubervu.com which allows you to track mentions and conversations across all of Social media – including FriendFeed, YouTube, Twitter, Blogs & Blog Comments, etc. UberVU is especially helpful as it tracks links even when they are shortened by TinyURL or Bit.ly

6. Be You, Not Your Brand

Even if you are using Social Media to promote a company and/or a brand, you want to be the human element behind that logo or username. Make sure that people know who you are, and how to address you personally as a start.

As an example, I follow @Aweber on Twitter. But I also follow @JustinPremick – Director of Education Marketing at Aweber. It’s Justin that I usually have personal conversations with regarding Aweber features or specific services they offer.

People like to do business with people.

There is a big difference between being ON Social Media properties, and being engaged in Social Media.

You may not have time to read every single tweet from every single person you are following, or keep up with your Facebook friends’ hourly updates. But you can organize your information streams strategically, and focus on industry news & events to share with your followers and friends.

And if nothing else make sure you respond to every conversation about you, to you, or in direct response to your updates. Being accessible and personally engaged is what will make you truly stand out from all of the Social Media noise – head and shoulders above your competition.

Best,

See Lynn’s own Twitter Marketing Strategy and Internet Marketing Blog for even more great tips on Social Media & online business success.

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1. Pay-Per-Click
2. Banner Advertising
3. Ezine Advertising
4. Text Links
5. Leads (co-registration)
6. Offline Marketing
7. TV, Radio & Podcasts Advertising
8. Newspaper Advertising
9. Word of Mouth Referrals
10. Paid Inclusion
11. Traffic Packages
12. Classified Ads
13. Cost-Per-Action
14. Search Engine Optimization
15. Article Marketing
16. Affiliate Programs
17. Press Release
18. Directories
19. Forum Marketing
20. Email Signature
21. Shopping Sites
22. Shareware-Download Sites
24. Traffic Exchange
25. Banner Exchange
26. Link Exchange
27. CPA Networks
28. Affiliate Networks
29. Desktop Messaging
30. Contests & Races
31. Tele Seminars & Conferences
32. Write Testimonials
33. Surveys
34. Create a Product
35. Expired Domains
36. Exit Traffic
37. Myspace
38. Google, Yahoo & AOL Groups
39. Facebook
40. Social Bookmarking
41. Blogging
42. Video Sites
43. Podcasting
44. Content Sites
45. Wikipedia & Wikihow
46. Yahoo Answers
47. Return traffic
48. List Building
49. Viral Traffic
50. Joint Ventures
51. Product Launches
52. Cross Promotion (Integration Marketing)
53. Giveaway Events & Bonuses
54. Freebies For List Owners

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This is a guest post by Dr. Mani.

So you want to write an ebook – and are eager to get going. But wait! There are a few simple things you need to do first to make sure your project goes smoothly and fast.

1. Research what’s available

Before you set out to create your content, survey the marketplace. See what others in your niche are doing. Study their process. Look at their quality and depth of their content offering.

Then, decide how you are going to DIFFERENTIATE yourself, set yourself apart from the crowd and become someone special in that niche.

2. Brainstorm

In free-style, jot down notes about what you are going to offer prospects in your niche. Just list things without worrying about details. Rely on your expertise and knowledge. Think about what kind of value you can add to your audience.

3. Arrange your content

After you have listed all the pieces of content you plan creating or offering to your prospects, the next step is to arrange them into some kind of structure.

• What will you give/create first?
• What will follow it with?
• What more will you give people who have already got this?
• What is your next step, and how will it benefit your audience?

4. Decide how much to give

• You may know enough about a subject to fill 10 volumes. But are you going to share all of it?
• Or will you give some, and withhold the rest?
• Or will you use part of it as a ‘teaser’ sample, to entice some prospects to pay you to learn more?
• How much will you be writing or recording on a topic?
• Will you have articles of 500 words? Or will your ebooks be 50 to 60 pages long?
• And will you create one new report every week, or month, or less often?

5. Plan who will create your content

If you intend outsourcing your content, identify your writers or creative people and have them tested and trained before you begin. I’ve had multiple projects stalled because the people I hired couldn’t deliver, or had to quit for some reason or another.

6. Set timelines and schedules

Having a goal and deadline for each component of your infopreneur project will guarantee it gets done, and done on time.

Decide how much content you will get done on a daily or weekly basis. Create a system to monitor and track progress. Without such a system, you will get hopelessly lost and fall behind.

= = = =

About the author:

Dr.Mani is the author of “Which Niche Will Make YOU Rich?”, a step by step guide to identify hot profitable niches easily. Read about the BIGGEST mistake in information marketing, and how to avoid making it http://InfoProfitz.com/guides/whichniche.htm
–

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Last week, I got the chance to interview fellow internet marketer, Rhys Davies. I asked him couple of questions about internet marketing as well as exactly how he generated $148,000 in NET profit (that’s right – not including costs) in the year 2008. Not bad for a 17 year old.

This is probably one of the most in-depth email interviews I’ve ever conducted (or received!) where Rhys reveals some brilliant golden nuggets. Also, be sure to check out his upcoming product Mafioso Marketing 2.

Enjoy

——-

How did you first get involved with Internet marketing?

I absolutely hate it when people ask this question to me. Most Internet marketers have this amazing, fascinating story of how they first got involved with Internet marketing, and mine is quite a bit different. My story is quite embarrassing. Now, I first started Internet marketing when I was around 12 or 13, and I was just an average, teenage boy on the Internet that loved Myspace.com. You all remember those days, right? Ha-ha. Now, on MySpace, you used to be able to put images on there, on your page. You used to put videos, widgets, and all that type of stuff. One day I was searching on Google for some images to put on my MySpace page.

Now, don’t ask how, but somehow, in those search-engine results, I came across the Marketplace at Sitepoint.com, and on there was someone selling a site that gave away these MySpace images. This site was making one or two dollars a day, something like that, and it was for sale for 50 bucks. I can remember saving up my pocket money at the time to purchase the site, and I did. And I’ll tell you now; I thought I was going to be a billionaire in the next year. I was sitting there with my one or two dollars a day, absolutely loving it. I could go down to the shop and afford any packet of sweets I wanted. You know those times where you look back in your life and think, what was I thinking!?… that is one of those moments.

Now, over a period of time, I obviously had to learn how to make more money from my site. The reality of becoming a millionare from that site, was thrown out the window. I couldn’t live on one or two dollars a day, unfortunately. I was searching around and came across the Warrior Forum. And this place was, really, one of the main turning points in my Internet-marketing career, so to speak. This is where I learned a lot of the stuff I know now, where I met a lot of really, really good Internet marketers, and it’s kind of grown from there. I’ve learned tons different methods over the years, failed a lot, and gained a lot as well. And now I am where I am now, owning a big Internet-marketing business at the age of 17.

How were you able to grow your business into a six-figure empire in such a short period of time?

To be honest, the reason why I would say I was able to grow my business so fast in a short period of time, was for the simple fact that I was able to set goals. Now, I know nearly every person in Internet marketing and other niches set goals. But the problem is that people set goals that are really, really high. For example, they might say “I want to own a million-dollar house”. Now, having goals like this is vital and really important, but the only problem when you have goals this big, is that it takes so long to achieve them.

When you’re going for weeks and months on end without achieving anything because you’ve only got that one main goal, you really get let down by yourself. You think that you are doing something wrong. You feel like you are getting nowhere. It stresses you out. These are problems that you don’t need in a business.

Not many people realize, but these stresses majorly affect your work. Because when you are stressed, your brain can’t be in full throttle. It affects your abilities to write or record videos properly etc. So what you need to do is set small, achievable goals that slowly get bigger, to get to your main goal. So for example, my main goal might be to purchase a massive house. But first, my smaller goal is to say, own a nice but cheap little car, then I want to own a $50,000 car, then I want to go and upgrade to an even more expensive car. All before I reach my main goal.

What happens then, is these goals slowly happen, so you are like, yes, this works, I am able to achieve my goals; therefore I am going to really stick into this. I am going to really try my hardest and I am really going to try and succeed in Internet marketing.

Apart from building a business correctly, the mindset is something that is vital to growing your business. It DOES affect your work.

What are your main revenue streams?

My main revenue streams change all the time, due to the fact easier/faster ways of making money come out all the time. At the moment though, my main revenue streams are membership sites and building sites to sell in the future. Now, first, I just want to talk about membership sites. They seem to have kind of a bad name about them: that they’re going to take a lot of work, you’ve got to keep on thinking of new content, and you’ve got tons and tons of support to answer. And the fact is that it’s not like that at all. Memberships are really; really easy to do once you know how to do them correctly. And I do actually go about talking how I do this in Mafioso Marketing 2.

Personally, I have some membership sites that make me $1,000‑$2,000 a month, which I don’t touch. I don’t do anything with them. The work is all done for me. I get all the support tasks done for me and all the content delivered for me, and I don’t touch it all. Just think, if you have a membership site which is making $2,000 a month, that’s $24,000 a year. Requiring no work, its something that I recommended everyone do.

The other way that I’m making money, like I said, is from building websites to sell in the future. These sites don’t necessarily have to be in Internet Marketing either. I actually sold one of my sites for around $30,000 that I’ve been working on for the last 6 months. All the site did was deliver people “funny videos” every day. It was a fun website to build, for obvious reasons.

Again, I do talk about how I do this in Mafioso Marketing 2.

What is Mafioso Marketing 2?

Mafioso Marketing 2 revolves around the famous “MIF” formula, which stands for Monthly, Instant, and Future. There are tons and tons of products online that teach you to make money. The only problem with this is that not every product is suitable for everyone. That’s a simple fact.

You might purchase a product for $67, you scroll down to the third page, and you’ve got to invest another $1,000 before it’s even worthwhile. That’s $67 down the bin. You go on and buy another product for $97, and then you find out to do this one you’ve got to have 10 hours of work put into it every single day for the next two years. Again, that’s $97 down the bin. And all these $67 and $97, and maybe $1,000 or $2,000, they all add up and slowly but surely you are going to run out of money and not have a business.

So what I wanted to do is create a product where, if one method didn’t work for you, you could just scroll down the eBook and find a completely new method of making money online. And that’s what I did with Mafioso Marketing 2, using the “MIF” formula: Monthly, Instant, Future. In Mafioso Marketing 2, I explain a number of different ways to make money in a monthly income-way, instant‑income way, and a future‑income way.

Mafioso Marketing 2 is really one of the products that is going to really, really help you this year in making an online business, because you’re only paying a one‑time payment to get numerous different methods. And also, in the download page area, I do actually offer a number of numerous bonuses that are also going to make you a ton more money as well.

What is the best way to go about making “instant” profit online?

This is most probably THE most asked question that I get, because a lot of people are just starting out in Internet marketing, they haven’t got hundreds and thousands of dollars to spend, and they just want a nice, quick way to make instant profit online. Now, when people ask me this, I don’t tell them a method on how to actually make instant profit. What I tell them to do is to go and build an email list, because building an email list is most probably your most valuable asset that you’ll ever have in your online business.

With a mailing list, you can literally make instant profit on demand when you want it. And not only can you make instant profit; you could also make instant monthly profit. Because, with a mailing list, you could promote a membership site, of your own or as an affiliate, and then, instantly, you’re going to start getting membership commissions. And this is just killer. Sometimes I can promote a membership site and get like 40 people to sign up to a membership site, and that pays me, say, $47, for three, four months.

So, to be honest, I wouldn’t necessarily say that you should go around, first off, looking for an instant profit method to making money online. What you should first do is go around looking for ways to build a mailing list so that you can make instant profit on demand or monthly profit on demand.

Now, I’m not going to just leave that question there and say, “Build a mailing list.” I am actually going to tell you one of my favorite ways to build a mailing list. Now, personally, I know of hundreds of different ways that you can build a mailing list. You can do PPC, you can do ad swaps, etc. But the one that I recommend is doing giveaways, because they are ultimately the best way, when you’re starting out, to build a mailing list. You don’t have to pay for them. All you have to do is have a product of some sort, or a service.

To keep updated on when these giveaway sites are running, do a quick search on Google.

What advice do you have for other young entrepreneurs out there looking to start their own business?

Being young and being in business is kind of different to being older and being in business. When you’re younger, some people do seem to look down on you. They kind of think that you’re doing something that you shouldn’t be doing, especially when you talk to friends and family about it.

They’re like, “Hmm. Are you sure you’re not selling something you shouldn’t be?”

My advice would be to just do what you’re best at, and carry on doing it no matter what anyone else says. Don’t let anyone else’s opinions or what they say get in your way. When somebody says something nasty or someone comments about how young you are and say “Are you sure you’re not doing something wrong?” just tell them to go away, in a nice way. Just say, “I’m running a business here. If you don’t believe me, that’s up to you.” Just be strict but firm with them, OK? Obviously, don’t swear at them and tell them all the names under the sun, but just don’t let them get in your way.

Also, you need to remember that you are trying to build a business. You’re not in it just for the money. Because I know a lot of people can go and just focus on the money first thing, and then, once they’ve got all the money, they’re stuck, they’ve got nowhere to go, because they haven’t got a business. Make sure that you build a business first, because once you’ve got the business foundation there, tons more money is going to come from that.

Thanks for the interview Rhys. Any final comments?

Keep up all the good work. I’ve been hearing a lot of good stuff about all the people out there doing and starting their online business. Like I said in the last question, just don’t let anyone stand in your way. Do what you’re best at and keep at it.

If you’re interested in purchasing my Mafioso Marketing 2 product, then you can go to the website below.

—> Click Here To Go To Mafioso Marketing 2

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Before you start your business, the first thing I need to get right is my mindset. You can have all the knowledge and information in the world, but if you don’t have the success mindset, all that will mean absolutely nothing and you will not accomplish much.

So what does it take to have a success mindset?

Different people will tell you different things. Some might say it’s focus, others might say it’s visualization. They are all right in different respects, but, the key to success really comes down to one thing:

Passion.

When you love what you’re doing, you’ll never give up. You’ll keep focused, you’ll push yourself and you’ll feel motivated. When you can align your passions with your goals, then the whole mindset thing will eventually catch up with you. That desire to accomplishing your goals kicks in.

It’s almost like your goals become your passion. And when your goals become part of your passion, then you can’t help but to achieve them.

I love internet marketing; I absolutely enjoy it. Yes, it’s a lot of hard work. I work 110% every single day. But to me, it’s just like fun. I breathe, live and eat 24 hours a day… almost to the point of obsessiveness.

Look at people like Donald Trump, Steve Jobs, Warren Buffet. They don’t do it for the money. They do it because of the passion they have for what they do. These people are billionaires yet they are still working. I’m pretty sure they’ll have enough money to live on if they choose to retire tomorrow.

Don’t know what you’re passionate about? Get a pen and write down a list. Think about:

• What are my hobbies?
• What gets you excited?
• What do you love to do in your spare-time?
• What are your talents?
• What were your childhood dreams?
• What do you daydream about doing?
• Is it something you would do even if you didn’t get paid?

Look around and see if your passion is just right under your nose. It might be “stored” in a photo album of your childhood, it might be from a book, it might be from a movie. Go up to your family members and friends and ask them what do they think you’re passionate about. Sometimes, we don’t see that passion ourselves and miss the forest for the trees.

Finding your passion is the right place to start, but it may also be the most difficult part of becoming an entrepreneur. Business can be fun. If you don’t have fun, if you don’t enjoy it, you’re never going to be successful.

Success waits for those who follow their passion.

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