In my opinion the answer is yes it is very important that you establish yourself an identity if you want to do business on the Internet and if done correctly people will eventually listen to what you have to say and, once they listen and you prove to them you know your subject they will follow you.

If you go around blowing your own horn and intimating, if not out right saying, you are "God’s gift to Internet marketing" you may get some attention to start with, but people will wise up eventually and then you will be back to square one.

Even if you know your subject back to front and up side down shouting it from the rooftops will not impress many. You have to work at it and prove to others you know your subject.

The reason for establishing your identity is that you need to earn the trust of others. If you do not build a trust relationship then others will not take you seriously and they will not take any interest in what you are doing or recommending.

Here in APSence you have an excellent vehicle to do this, so take advantage of it, use APSence correctly and you will establish yourself in your chosen field, without having to shout it from the rooftops. Others will start recommending to those they know that they should check you out and gradually your following will grow.


So what steps are needed to do this?

One of the first things to do is establish who you are. You can do this by writing a bio about yourself. Give some general background information.
As an example where you were born, how old you are, a brief overview of what you have done off line.
Note: I know many of the ladies don't like giving their age so don't jump on me ladies :-) these are general guidelines.

Add to this a general summary of what you are doing online.
Rather than do a full sales pitch though it will come over better doing a short summary of the things you are doing.

Use a real picture of yourself where you have the opportunity to use an image. It does not make a good impression if you use a picture of your favorite pet, a program or product logo, or a picture taken from something you found on the Internet or scanned in from a magazine book or other literature.
It is in fact illegal to use a picture of another person, no matter what the source is, unless you have the written permission of that person to do so.

If you want to use a logo then incorporate your own picture into it, this way you make it personal. However if the company who’s logo you use should for any reason go out of business or for some reason you decide not to continue with that company then you will have to restart with a new image.

Having said this I feel I need to add a word of caution.
You will note I have said "General" background information. The reason for this may be self evident to many but not so evident if you have not been on line for very long.
I do not recommend giving too much detail due to the very prevalent problem of identity theft.
If you look at my Bio you will see I give you enough to give you a good idea of who I am but I have not given any vital personal information away that anyone could use to steal my identity.
Also as my Bio is a bit long I have posted a brief intro in my profile with a link to my Bio, which I have posted in my group.

So once we have our Bio ready what is the next step?

Well you can either start your own Group or if you feel you are not ready to take that step then you can join and taking part in other groups.

Lets take joining other Groups first.
Here in APSence when you log in you are taken to your account page.
At the top of it there is a tab called Brows Groups.
Use this page to look around and see what groups there are and see what you are interested in. when you find something that looks interesting to you, go to the group and check it out.
Firstly read the group description, this is where the group creator will have posted a general description with any guidelines they want the group members to follow.
Next see what is being posted and if you like what you see you can click on the join group, or if you have something of substance to add to something that has been posted then post a reply, this will automatically make you a member of the group.

You will also get notified through the APS Express when anyone makes a post to that thread so you can follow it.
Be interactive with the other members of the group, answer questions if you know the answer, pose questions if you want more information about the subject.
One thing you should not do is read the first post and then dive in and make a post yourself. First read all the replies then if you have something of substance to add go ahead and do so. Avoid one syllable posts such as "good information", or "thanks for the info".

We all want good rankings in search engines and they will be crawling this site, where there is good content they will pick it up so the better the content of your post the more chance the search engines will pick it up and add it to their records. Remember they will not only pick up the post but also who posted it. This will help you in establishing your identity on the Internet.
The main thing to remember is, its not quantity but "QUALITY" that counts.

Another word of caution here

Do not be a plagiarist. If you find an interesting article you would like others to see then first look for any copyright rules, some sites will say the article may be republished providing a link is given to the original.
If you cannot see any thing about copyright then you MUST contact the site owner and ask permission. It is important you remember anything you find on a site is by default the intellectual property of the site owner unless otherwise explicitly stated. Contact the site owner and ask if you may post it on another site.
Failure to do this can leave you open to prosecution and fines of up to $150000 per offence.

Another thing that you need to be careful of is not posting advertisements for what you are doing in someone else’s Group unless they have specifically invited people to do so in their Group description. If you do it where you should not your posts will end up being deleted and you will also run the risk of being removed from the group and if you are a persistent offender you run the risk of being removed from APSence all together.
I think you will agree this is definitely not a good idea.


So now you are ready to start your own Group.

Once you have selected a title for your group you then need to write a brief description laying out what the Group is about and the rules that you want people taking part in the group to follow. Don't be shy. If you do not want people posting ads in their posts say so. If you do not want controversial posts say so. It is after all your Group and you need to establish the guidelines, because you are going to be responsible for keeping order in your Group.

Here are a couple of pointers on keeping order in your group.

We all hope that everyone here has enough common sense and are adult enough to follow basic rules, but if someone gets out of hand and starts a fight then you must be prepared to act immediately and remove the offending post(s) and the responses right away, not sit and wonder what you should do. While you are thinking it could escalate and get completely out of hand. You have the ability in your Group to remove threads as well as individual posts. The same goes for posts that are blatant advertisements. If you say no advertisements then enforce the rule.
You must also be totally impartial, you cannot allow your best friend to break the rules you establish either, you must be seen to treat everyone equally.
How you deal with offenders will be up to you, although I would recommend that on a first offence you delete the post and then send a contact to the person explaining why it was deleted. If the person concerned takes no notice and continues to offend then you will have no option but to remove them from the group.

Group subjects or threads

Try your best to make your threads interesting and helpful, rather than pure advertisements copied and pasted from a program site. Again I come back to the point of content. There is an established saying that "Content is King" however this is only partially true, it should read "UNIQUE Content is King".
If you are not sure what to say, or you are not the best of writers, then read and study the subject first. I have produced this article out of my head but I wrote it first in word. I have gone over it several times adding something here and removing something there or placing it in a different order to try and improve the flow.

If I have to do something on a program I will read what the program says and then I will write it in my own way giving it my personal touch but being very careful to keep to the facts and not embellish things. You might think reading this, "all very well for him to say, but doing is another thing". Well believe it or not it has taken me 3 hours to produce this article. I have had to spend a long time getting it into a decent order so no its not easy for me either.

It may also interest you to know I had a major dislike of writing in school and I could not spell to save my life. I am still very poor at spelling and if it weren't for the spell checker in word I would not even think about posting this, and that is another point to note. If I am in a hurry and reply to a post I guarantee that if I don't spell check it then its got at least a couple of errors in it. So remember to run your article through a spell checker.


to be continued

Bj
feed back welcome.