I’ve found it just doesn’t pay to crow too much about what I’ve accomplished.

Sure, I celebrate when things go well. But I’ve found that talking too much about my achievements leads not only to criticism, but to disappointment.

There’s always going to be someone who’s done more or worked harder. And until they carve my name into the side of the moon, I see no reason in puffing myself up. The minute you get a big head is the same minute that reality smacks you and you realize that you aren’t as cool as you think you are.

So self-adulation is something I try to stay away from. But self promotion? That’s a whole different story.

If you take a look at the most successful (or talked about) people in any field, you’ll almost always see someone incredibly talented in the art of self-promotion.

Robert Kiyosaki, author of the Rich Dad Poor Dad books, mentioned at one point that he’s a “bestselling author” and not a “best-writing author.” Dean Karnazes, known as “The Ultramarathon Man,” is not the best athlete in his field, but he is by far the best at self-promotion.

So what’s the difference?

The reason that self-promotion works and self-adulation doesn’t is because self-promotion is the art of spreading ideas, concepts, and a greater vision. Self-adulation is just the promotion of accomplishments, deeds that have already been done.

When you promote ideas, you give people something to cheer for. You give people a cause to support. People, in many ways, are selfish. They promote the things that make them feel good. Your accomplishments aren’t likely to make them feel good, but your ideas do.

Your ideas might inspire hope, thought, or action . . . but as a general rule, good ideas inspire something.

People promote Chris Brogan because he makes them feel good. His ideas inspire thought and that warm fuzzy feeling we all get when we make a sincere connection.

On the other hand, you and I aren’t going around bragging about how many books he’s sold or how many speeches he’s given. We don’t care about that because it’s the ideas that inspire . . . not the achievements.

How to create a self-promotion platform

1. The first step is to be confident. If you aren’t inspired by your actions or ideas, no one else will be either.

Look at Muhammad Ali, one of the greatest self-promoters in history. We loved him not just because he truly was “the greatest,” but also for his integrity and the boldness of his ideas.

If you think Ali’s success was only about his athletic ability, compare your feelings about Ali to your feelings about Mike Tyson. Tyson’s accomplishments were magnificent, but he never communicated a greater vision that made us cheer.

2. The next step is to start spreading your ideas. You can’t be wishy washy . . . you have to stand for something.

Make your vision as clear and as concise as possible. Brand yourself and your ideas as unique. (Remember, although few ideas are genuinely unique, your expression can be.) Seth Godin does this exceptionally well.

3. Once you have a platform, start your campaign. Use strong, descriptive language when explaining your ideas and plan of action. Build a tight and loyal community that believes in you, then inspire and empower them to take action.

Make it cool to be a fan, like Gary Vee did with his Vaynernation wristbands or like Lance Armstrong did with his yellow bracelets. Having a symbolic identifier like this is extremely powerful.

4. Lastly, don’t be afraid to talk about your ideas and spread the message. Just remember that it’s not about your world . . . it’s about how others can fit into it.

Creating buzz is essential, so reach out to power brokers and tell them why they should promote you. If they won’t, create power brokers from within. Build others up until they have the power to build you up. This last part is something that Oprah excels at, and it’s how she’s built a billion-dollar empire.

Your ideas need you

If you implement this plan successfully, you’ll probably take some flak. People might label you over-confident or cocky.

That’s good. Define yourself in such a way that people either love you or hate you.

There are fans out there for every self-promoter. Your task is to find them. That, and to make it easy for them to bring a friend.

Your ideas need you. If you have a vision, don’t let anyone stand in your way.

I know it sounds a bit “out there,” but I firmly believe that ideas are living things. They need you to get over your self-adulation, to get out there, and to fight for them. Are you ready?

About the Author: Nathan Hangen is the co-founder of Beyond Blogging, a resource that draws on some of the web’s most successful bloggers to tell you the truth about what it takes to get to their level. He writes about social entrepreneurship at NathanHangen.com.

In my recent post on One Way Link Building, I mentioned interviews and guest blogging as 2 of the 7 ways to get one way links. I included specific examples of each to give you an idea of how it’s done, and what it looks like.

I’ve often joked about being a “lazy affiliate” – but the truth is, I do prefer to do things the easy way if at all possible. That’s the reason that blog interviews and guest blogging are my two favorite methods for easily getting high quality inbound links. And no – you don’t need a blog of your own to make this work for you…

Nervous? Don’t be!

If you’re nervous about pitching a guest blog post to bloggers in your niche, or pitching an interview idea – don’t be! Sure you need that solid inbound link, and it almost feels like begging. Or at best, that you’re asking for a favor.

But the reality is that bloggers have needs to: they need constant, relevant, interesting content for their readers. You are actually doing them the favor!

Finding The Right Bloggers

Your first step is to find the bloggers in your niche that are reaching your target market. Search Google.com, Google Blog Search and also Technorati.com for your topic or your keywords. Use a Feed Reader and add these niche blogs to your reader so you can keep up with them.

And no, I can’t possibly keep up with dozens of blogs every day, but I do scan through them once or twice a week

If you’re on Twitter (and you should be!), use the Twitter search feature to find bloggers in your niche. Follow them and get involved in conversations with them. Twitter is one place where I find the majority of my guest blogging opportunities.

You can also ask for recommendations on your favorite discussion forum, and ask them which XYZ blogs they read and like the most – and why.

This should give you some great starting points…

Pitching Your Content

Start by switching your mindset like we talked about above, keeping in mind that you have something of value to offer them: unique content.

Your first step is to figure out your angle, and how you want to frame the offer when you contact the blogger. This is all going to depend on who you are, what you do, and how you can work that into their blog.

Here’s a bad example – which would get ignored & deleted:

Hi Clicknews,
I really need links to my web site. Can I guest blog for you??

-Jack

Three major problems with that message: 1) they didn’t address me by name, 2) I don’t care what you need, 3) I have no idea who you are or what you do or whether I even want to find out.

Here’s a good example – which would get my consideration:

Hi Lynn,
Love your blog! I’m really enjoying your series on link-building. I have a software product that automates guest blogging – I’d be happy to let you test the program if you’re interested in reviewing it.

I also thought it might be fun to do a Q&A post for you on automated vs manual. If you’re interested just send me your top 3, 5 or even 10 questions about it and I’ll reply back with the answers so you can publish it on your blog.

Best,
Jack Black
JacksDomainName.com

Another good example:

Hi Lynn,
I’ve been reading your blog for awhile now – nice work! I noticed you haven’t written any posts for your Google Adsense category lately. I have several reports on the topic, and would be happy to write a few guest posts for you in exchange for a link back to one of my free reports.

Let me know if you’re interested!

Jack Black

p.s. Here’s the link to one of my free reports if you want to check it out: linktoreport.com

See? Simple enough.

The key is to be personable with the blogger. Address them by name, and let them know you are familiar with their work – and have something of value to offer them that fits in line with their current goals or needs.

As a blogger myself, I have been doing blog interviews (or blog conversations) and guest blogging both ways – publishing them here on my blog, and getting published on other people’s blogs. It’s a great way to create unique content, and to get high quality one way inbound links.

Give it a try!

I’ve actually been doing so many interviews lately that my daughter decided to mock me with a video interview on our way into the city yesterday:

If a 13 year old can do it…

Best,

Getting started in internet marketing can be quite a task if you have never heard of the term. In short internet marketing is the name given when a business promotes their goods and services online. Right now the internet is a fantastic place to market a business and with the right campaigns internet marketing can be profitable.

One of the first things that you should consider is the product or service that you are selling. Doing this will help you to get an idea of your customers buying habits. For example, if you are an internet store it stands to reason that internet marketing will be successful for you. If you do not trade online, internet marketing might not be right for your business. Although even if this is the case you could still advertise your business quite successfully online.

After this spend time researching the different types of internet marketing. There are plenty out there such as pay per click, banner advertisements, email marketing, linking on other sites and so on. It is a good idea to decide on two types of internet marketing to focus on and start from there.

The next stage is to choose who will be responsible for your internet marketing campaigns. Often businesses don’t have the expertise to create and implement their own campaigns and have someone else do this for them. This is called outsourcing and it is useful for businesses who want to market online but don’t have the know how to do so themselves.

Once you have your internet marketing campaigns worked out run them. Make sure that you keep a check on which marketing campaigns are working and which aren’t. Do this by getting customers to select where they heard about your site from a click down box. This method will help you to see, at a glance which methods are working better than others.

When you know which campaigns are getting your website the most traffic create more which are similar. Try to drop any which are not cost effective and instead try out another method. By using this trial and error approach you will be able to hit on internet marketing that works for you and your business.

There are two main goals that everyone who decides to publish a blog will have in common. They want what they have written to be read, and they want their visitors to return to the blog for repeat visits. There is only one way to ensure that you will make money from your blog and that is if you get lots of visits to it. Of course, those people will need to click on the AdSense link on your blog in order for you to make any money.

WHAT DO I MAKE MY BLOG ABOUT?

Every one who blogs knows this feeling all too well. After setting up your blog and placing the AdSense link in the most strategic point you can think of to ensure plenty of clicks, you find yourself staring at the text box and drawing a complete and total blank. We have all been through it many times. You are afflicted by a temporary, although frustrating condition, known as writer’s block. Oh sure, we are more than able too compose a decent few paragraphs by stringing sentences together, but for some reason, when faced with that text block we find we can not think of a single thing to write about. And we may begin to even doubt ourselves as we sit there staring at the screen. We ask ourselves who would be at all interested in what we have to say! But even worse than self-doubt is when you can think of nothing to write about. Fortunately, however, there are a few simple solutions that tackle this very common problem.

Although ad placement on your blog is important it is actually the easy part when you start your own blog. The difficulty comes in when you try to decide what your blog should actually pertain to. The reason for this is because you will need to write about it daily, so it needs to be both interesting and relevant in order to keep your visitors returning for more. If there are no visitors to your blog it cannot create an income.

Taking a child into a large, enticing toy store and telling them they can pick any toy there will invariably result in that child not knowing what to choose. Well, it is the same for you! Telling you to write about anything won’t help you very much, because the choices are simply too varied and overwhelming! You have far too many options to choose from, although it is true, it is your blog and you can write about whatever you want to write about.

You have two choices at the outset that you need to decide about. Either your blog will be one that does not earn money, a personal blog, or it is one that does. It is entirely up to you. You may choose to merely have a blog in which you write about yourself and your day to day experiences, that you intend only for your friends and family to visit. There is not much you would need to do other than to keep it up to date on a fairly regular basis. Alternatively, you may have decided that you want an income to be generated from your blog. In this instance you need to be familiar with both Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and AdSense, as both will also aid you in deciding on your content.

If generating an income from your blog is the way you want to go then you need to do whatever you can to ensure that as many people as possible will visit your blog. One of the ways to accomplish this is to make certain that whatever you have decided to write about will direct visitors to your blog by way of the search engines. As you can see, knowing and understanding something of how search engine optimization will assist you in directing traffic to your blog is important. The same can be said about AdSense as well. Your AdSense ads need to be clicked on by your visitors and so placement of them is also of equal importance. Understanding how AdSense and Search Engine Optimization works will help you in deciding what your blog is to be about but we will go more in-depth about this in later chapters of this e-book

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