10. Get involved - There is no use in fighting the social media outlets. They are here to stay. And it is a contact sport, so you have to be involved and contacting people in order to play. Besides, why wouldn’t you want to get involved? It is a free outlet for you to build relationships with your customers, grow your reach, grow your business, and make more money. Get off the sidelines and get into the game.

9. Engage Your Market Place – Don’t just sit inside the various social media outlets watching people interact and do their thing. Get involved and answer people questions. Connect people with those might need to connect with in order to be successful. Provide people with links and information that might take them to the next level. And this information doesn’t always have to be your product or service. You just need to engage your audience and get them use to coming to you for what they need. That would be a successful social media campaign because once they did need your product or service, they would be comfortable enough with you to get it.

8. Don’t Spam Your Product or Service – This has to be the fasted and easiest way to make your social media name irrelevant, useless, and annoying. Spamming people via social media is the process of just blasting out your products and services over and over without ever giving anything of substance or value for free. You know what I am talking about, “Buy my widget. Buy my gadget. Did you see this great gadget of mine, get it!”

Believe it or not, this is the activities of many of the Internet marketers in the world and how they use social media to so called build their business. Then, they complain terribly about how ineffective social media is to grow your business, but the through is they are not operating properly and merely doing nothing but frustrating their followers and friends with a constant onslaught of nothingness. Do this at your own perile.

7. Use Third Party Applications – There are litteraly hundreds of third party applications out there that can make you totally more effective a social media marketer. Be sure to check them out and use them. For example, one of the main ones that come to my mind is TweetDeck. It allows you to monitor and participate in all your social media accounts from your desktop without having to visit each site every minute to be involved. It is a must have for social media marketers.

There are a few more that allow you to post to all of the various social media outlets all at once. This is a very useful tool as it saves you massive amounts of time because you don’t have to visit all of your accounts over and over again only to type the same message. The two that we would recommend would be Adjix.com and HelloTxt.com, they both are great and very similar in useage.

6. Only Engage in a Select Few Social Media Outlets – Yes, there are hundreds of various social media outlets, but this doesn’t give you cartblange to just engage in all of them. Why? Because you only have  so much time in a day. I mean really, do you really want to be sitting in front of a compter screen talking to virtual friends all day long.

Well, maybe, but this isn’t the most effective use of your time. I would suggest tht you focus on at least the big three and expand to one or two more that is very niche based for your industry. The big three are obviously Facebook, Twitter, and LinkIn. Not sure if you can afford to sit out on these three various outlets, but I am sure you know what is best for your business. If I were you, I would at least engage the big three. You don’t have time for all of them…trust us on this one. We tried to do it.

5. Avoid Negative People – Just like the real world, negative people will drain your time, energy, and effort. This is not something that you want in any of your businesses. You cannot afford it. Therefore, you have to step back and get away from them online and offline as well.

How do you do this? It is very simple. If you are on Facebook, then unfriend these people. If you are on Twitter, don’t follow them. I think you get the picture, but trust us here and do it as quickly as possible. Nothing good can come from negative people, but negative energy. And negative energy is not going to produce you more business, it is going to cost you business.

4. Get Multiple Accounts – If you are like most Internet marketers, you are offering multiple products, services all in various niches. Good. Just make sure that you start multiple accounts for each one. You want to do this because you will be talking about various things under each product or service, so you don’t want to confuse your friends, fans, or followers with all the various messages that could be coming out of your social media profile.

Now, if you are just being yourself, then they will have to deal with it, but if possible get yourself a few accounts for your various campaings and run with it. It is just much better to keep it clean and moving forward.

3. Position Yourself as an Expert – The crux of the social media matter is branding and positioning. If you are able to show people that you know what you are talking about, are focused on your niche, provide great information and resources, then you can position yourself as an expert in your niche. This is what you want and what you need.

The reason you need to work on positioning yourself as an expert in the field is because people only buy from those that they perceive as an expert and they trust. Displaying your knowledge base to be both practical and useful to your followers and friends will go along way with building trust and expertise. Once this is done, then not only will they buy from you, but they will refer friends and maybe even join your affiliate programs to move your prouducts as well.

2. Add Value to Others – In order to position yourself as an expert, you have to add value to others. There is simply no other way around it. Adding value means that you help them solve their problems by asking inquisitive questions, directing them to useful information, providing useful information from your archieves, and just being there for them if they need to talk it out.

Remember, to provide them with information doesn’t always mean that you have to give them your information or products. If you are reading a great article on the website of another person and it really applies to someones situation, send it to them with a note saying that you were just browsing the net, came by this article, and thought it would be great for them and their situation. This is what people do when they are seeking to add value. But don’t worry, this type of value will add creditibility, trust, and expert positioning to your name….and this is ultimately what you want to create in your niche.

1. Build Relationships First – We mentioned that you shouldn’t be spamming your followers, friends, and fans. What you should be doing is seeking to create relationships with the people that you are engaged. This is the secret sauce of social media marketing, relationships.

Don’t listen to anyone in the social media market claiming to know the truth if they are not pushing relationships as the most important thing to build in this space. The reason you have to develop relationships first is because this is how people are using social media, to interact with others and build relationships. So if you don’t first seek to establish a relationship, then you are like a piece of junk mail that gets tossed into the recycler bin before it is even glanced at. And this is not something that  you want. Even though social media is free it doesn’t come absent of your time. And the last thing that you can afford to waste is your time.

Build the relationship first, provide value, establish expertise, then maybe decide to offer your following, friends, and fans a product or service.

Internet marketers have to understand that they really only have two great resources in this business, their time and money. Your time is critical because you only have 24 hours in a day, of which at least 4 to 6 of those hours are spend sleeping or resting, even if you are a vampire. Then a few of those hours must be dedicated to running errands or seeing the family. Therefore, you are only left with a small portion of your 24 to work on your business, so every  moment you spend wasting time is anti productive to your business.

Obviously, your money is a key resource because you worked hard to earn it, but it allows you to leverage yourself, hire other people to work in your business, or purchase additional education programs or resources to help your business. Therefore, this resource must be used wisely.

However, most Internet marketers waste their time and money doing many very silly things throughout the day. Are you wasting yours?

Here are the top ten ways Internet marketers waste their time and money.

10. On Twitter all day – Don’t get me wrong, Twitter can be an effective tool if you are using it right. But if you are setting on the regular Twitter.com page reading update after update cause you are just curious of what the world is up to, then you are wasting time. With all the Twitter applications available on the Internet for marketers, there is no reason to be on the main Twitter page. And if you are, then at least spend your time in on the search page looking to build relationships with people that could make a difference to your business.

9. On Facebook all day – Like Twitter, Facebook.com is a great place to expand your business, network, and more, but it is definitely a time trap. I can see you know sitting there watching the updates, chatting with friends, messaging, and playing the ultimate killer of time….Mafia Wars!! Sure, some of these activities are very relevant to your business, but don’t fool yourself. There a lot of things that you need to be doing to be successful as an Internet marketer and they all don’t lie on social networking sites. Do yourself a favor and close the page from time to time.

8. Playing video games – As a computer, tech literate person, it is likely that you enjoy video games. There is nothing wrong with PlayStation 3, X Box, PSP, or any of the other gaming platforms, but remember you only have 24 hours in a day and less than that to work on your business, so each hour in front of these games is an hour away from your business. And if you are not working on your business, then how can you expect it to be working for you?

7. Watching television or YouTube – I like television like the next next guy, but unless you are researching a post, then you don’t need to be locked into this time warp. A small intention to watch a 30 minute show can quickly turn into a two hour ordeal and most of your time gone for the day. Do yourself a favor and create a schedule to watch your favorite shows. Or better yet, DVR them and watch when you are spent from working on your Internet marketing business and just need a minute to get away.

6. Not using Internet productivity tools – There are literally thousands of tools out there on the Internet designed to make you more effective as an Internet marketer, even a better person. But if you are not taking the time to research them, finding them, and utilizing them in your business, then they will never work for you. Take a moment and find out what tools people are using that are making them seem to be in 12 places at one time while building their brand, credibility, and reach.

5. Staying busy, instead of effective - This is one of the toughest things for all entrepreneurs to get a grasp of. I will admit that it took me a while to figure out what the business of Internet marketing consisted of and what I needed to be doing on a daily basis. Here is a secret; much of these activities do not require you to be on Facebook, Myspace, or Twitter for hours at a time. Much of your work will consist of link building, networking, planning, and outsourcing work that doesn’t take all of your know how and expertise. The key is to remain effective in all you do and not just busy.

4. Buying materials, reading them, and not putting them to use – Why would you buy a product, read it, and not put it into action? I am not sure, but people do it all the time. Why do you think these Internet marketing gurus love you so much. They know that if they get your trust that you will just purchase and purchase and purchase.

Nothing wrong with purchasing, but you have to ready, willing, and able to implement the systems and techniques into your business and websites. Seriously, you can have the best ideas, strategies, and techniques in the world, but if they are not working for your Internet business, then what good are they? The only thing better than knowledge is applied knowledge.

3. Not having a plan – How can you reach a destination if you don’t know where you want to go and don’t have a road map to get there? You can’t. So don’t fall into this trap of having big dreams, but don’t want to do the mental work to figure out how you are going to reach those goals. Your plan doesn’t have to be a 35 page business plan, but it should be on a physical sheet of paper and stuck to the wall above your desk. As your plan develops and changes, then make the alterations to your physical paper and keep rolling. This is your business, treat it like such and make it happen.

He who fails to plan, plans to fail. Remember that and get it done!

2. Not having a daily agenda or schedule – Maybe you cannot plan out your week in advance, but surely when you get up you can set goals on what you want to accomplish during the day. A day on the Internet can be so distracting that you have to remain disciplined everyday not to get side tracked and get your goals accomplished. If not, you can waste so much time in many of the activities that we talked about above. If this is your business, treat it like such. Set goals and complete goals. This is the bottom line and the only way to make your Internet marketing business come alive and generate the income you desire.

1. Doing everything themselves – I know outsourcing can be a dirty word to those that have an old fashion thinking process, but come on people. This is the 21st century and outsourcing is the best way to make yourself more effective, save time, and get more done that you could do by yourself.

Most new Internet marketers think they can save a buck or two by doing everything themselves, but never consider that if they turn over those mundane task that can be completed by skilled monkeys, they can free themselves up to work more on their business instead of in it.

Task like article writing, site set up, backlinking, answering emails and more can easily be outsourced to someone that you trust or hired through sites like elance, Odesk, even Digital Point. Do yourself a favor and consider taking your business to the next level by hiring someone else. Not to mention, there actually might be things that you want to do, but don’t have the skill to get it done. Outsourcing could quickly solve this problem and keep your business as an Internet marketer rolling in the right direction.

If you’re still living under a rock without an Internet connection, you’ve probably never heard of social networking or Facebook.  But, for the rest of us, Facebook is an important aspect of Internet marketing for your business.

What? You thought Facebook was for college kids looking for poker games or teenagers looking for the latest photo of the Jonas Brothers?

If so, you’re sadly mistaken and you need to get your buttocks over to Facebook pronto and start mingling!

Here are the top ten reasons you need to be using Facebook to promote your business online:

10. It’s Free - Facebook has paid advertising available, but creating an account and using it to your advantage is absolutely free! If you interact with people and engage in regular activity, you will get more traffic, more subscribers, and…you guessed it…more money.

9. Laser Targeted Advertising – Facebook Advertising gives you the ability to test out your niche with laser targeted ads in a very specific group at an affordable price.

8. Increase Visibility - You don’t want to be the one left behind and you definitely want to be where all the eyeballs are. Facebook has millions of eyeballs daily. Are you there? Can they see you?

7. Google Loves Facebook – You can create both a personal profile and a “Page” for your business. Google happens to love Facebook and you will likely see your business Facebook Page indexed and ranking well in a short amount of time because Google is always sending out their little spiders to that neighborhood.

6. Research Your Niche – Take a look at Facebook profiles and Facebook Groups. Facebook users give up mass amounts of information about themselves. You can research your niche demographics easily and free just by surfing Facebook!

5. Brand Yourself – You’ve likely begun to realize that a business profile and a personal profile have started to become equally important. The ones who personalize their brand will be the leaders in the niche in the years to come.

4. Networking - It’s called Social Networking for a reason. be social and network! Engage in conversations, groups, and use private messaging to connect with your peers and customers. Building relationships online is crucial for the success of your business.

3. Easy Ice Breaker – Facebook was built to connect with people, and unlike the real world, it is much easier to find and approach highly successful people and actually have them reply to you. It really levels the playing field and more and more people are becoming less “untouchable”, regardless of their success level.

2. Meet Business Contacts – There’s more than 250 million active users on Facebook right now. It’s not just “friends” anymore. People are making deals, creating joint ventures, gaining new customers, and increasing business in general using Facebook on a regular basis.

1. Your Competitor Is Using Facebook – Maybe you don’t see this as important enough to be number one, but read the first line of number two again. How many people in your niche are on Facebook? If you’re not getting in front of them,  making connections with potential customers, subscribers, etc., then who is? That’s right, your competitor! Stop fighting it. Join Facebook.