united tribe300x300 How Important is it to Connect with Real People Online?

The start of this new year has been incredible for me. It seems things are just advancing at an accelerated pace for me and in the right direction I would add. What was the catalyst that has made all this happened? It’s through networking and connecting with other people both online and offline.

Last month Patricia Millman from Lavender Uses made her first guest post here on my blog on communication advice to technical people. Her guest post has helped me considerably to make me known to a number of people who would not have heard of me otherwise and I’ve seize the opportunity to make new connections and I’ve yet to connect with all the people who’ve made a visit to my blog because there are so many of you.

If you are hesitating or still thinking of accepting or doing a guest post, I’d say do it, it’s good for web traffic and getting your name or brand more exposure out there.

Now here is a blog post I recommend that you read to demonstrate how you can fail online if you are neglecting or avoiding to connect genuinely with others online and my take on it.

Read how in this Web 2.0 age (Web 2.0 means the Social media sites: Twitter, Facebook and blogs, etc) if you are not scrupulous about doing the right thing online and trying to make genuine connection online it can ruin your reputation forever. You can read the details of how my friend Brankica Underwood and I have exposed a spammer on her blog. This is a post that has gone viral in the blogging community as the number of comments and her Google Analytics can show.

The message is simple, if you are too busy or genuinely not interested to connect with people online and you are hiring Virtual Assistants (VA) to do your commenting for you, make sure you monitor what they are doing, for if they do the wrong things (spam), it’s your reputation they are tarnishing. Reputation and trust when lost are something extremely hard to regain. Pleading ignorance isn’t an acceptable excuse, you’re still responsible for your own name and reputation. If you are conducting an online business or have a blog and are too busy to really connect with anyone online or you have no genuine interest in people then you are making a big mistake. It is of vital importance to show real interest in people, that’s an important component of building trust in yourself online.

Remember people buy products they know and/or from people they know. So building your name and reputation is an essential part of conducting an online business. This age of Web 2.0 has got no place for the the disdaining, arrogant, selfish, or antisocial business owner who prefers to seclude themselves behind their glass walls and would have nothing to do with their staff and customers.

My next recommended reading is from Brankica again: What is a blogging Tribe?

This is a very informative and a must read post. This post is also about networking with other online business owners or bloggers to work together as a team (or Tribe) for online success. If you’re struggling with your online business or blog and you’re looking to have more comments and traffic to your blog, let me say it’s not yet another information product that you need, but real support from real people is what you need. You need to shed the attitude that you have to learn it all and do it all yourself. If you are holding to this attitude then your business will only pick up after you’ve learnt it all. How long do you think that would take? 10 years?!? You need to network and connect with real people now not  later. Only real people can help you where you are lacking in skill, only real people can syndicate and recommend your contents, services, and products to their friends. I may have just reveal one secret to your online success just here, if you are paying attention.

To connect with people, it’s a matter of finding like minded people who you can trust. Here is how you can find the right people for you. In this Web 2.0 age, there are genuine people who are active on the social media and blogs (yes there are).  Their online activities leave trails. As you browse the Internet or use Twitter you’ll come across these people, check them up. See what they talk about, find out who they talk to, see whether they are genuinely helpful and interested in people. When you’ve found someone you would like to make contact, catch their attention by retweeting them, to connect with them, reply to their questions and ask them questions on Twitter or comment on their blog. If they thank you and answer you, then you know they are real, keep communicating with them, you’ve just made connection with them. If they don’t reply then you know they’re not the right people for you.

Here is a further Twitter tip: If you think you are following too many people who are just spamming or crowdng your Twitter wall with useless junks, then use those applications to find out who you must unfollow: The Twit Cleaner and Tweepi. The Twit Cleaner will produce a report about the quality of the people you are following on Twitter. You’ll easy spot people you’d be better off stop following on Twitter. I use to not like Tweepi but they’ve recently made some changes and augmented their features. So, go ahead and give those tools a try and improve your Twitter experience. It will feel so much nicer when you know you are following mostly real people and know your tweets are being read and answered by real people.

I also made some breakthrough on Twitter when I started to participate in #blogchat. Find out more about #blogchat, that’s again a place (actually a hashtag) to connect with real people on Twitter.

Networking Idea

Now what are you doing on your blog to help facilitate the creation of a community and networking?  Here is an idea you could implement on your blog: check out my friend Julia on how she is using her blog to help local businesses to network and start their online presence through her blog at SwanbourneCentre.com. I believe that is an excellent initiative on her part for the local business in her area. Do you think you could do something similar on your blog?

Recommended Video of the Week

Here is my recommended video for this week. This video may be slightly off topic for this post, but I feel I need to bring your attention to it. It’s by Elise, a friend again. You’ll find her video informative, entertaining and fun to watch. In this video she’s revealing how to do smart mobile phone marketing. A must watch. There is one WordPress plugin tip in it and much more. Read her post for more details on the subject.

WordPress Tip of the Week

Now to my brief WordPress tip for this week, for you who’ve read my post on social bookmarking and tagging your social bookmarks, here is a little plugin that can make the tagging your blog post a little bit more easy. Use the WordPress Simple Tags plugin to manage your tags and get suggestion for tags. You could used this plugin as a keyword suggestion tool as well. To use the tool, first write up your post and then click on the Tag suggestion of this plugin and select from the list of suggested tags.

Tag suggestion How Important is it to Connect with Real People Online?

That’s it for this week.

Questions and Actions

  1. What are you doing to build your online reputation?
  2. Share with us what you do to connect with real people online?
  3. Are you interested to be part of a bloggers’ team?
  4. If you are not part of a group yet and would like to be in one, please express your interest in the comments.
  5. Don’t just read this post, go make some connection out there.

Oh, by the way, have you subscribed to my newsletter yet? I really want to use my newsletter to connect with you and keep you up to date with my latest tips and new post release. So fill your name and email address below and click Subscribe Me.

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