Right now the business of selling people on Internet business is hot. There are tons of fantastic web sites and communities, including this very site that people can visit to learn and share. It can be overwhelming as you try to sort out the experts from the idiots, the gurus from the snake oil salesmen. That can be a difficult task because many these are real shysters. Online, willing to share or sell their wisdom, there are indeed some brilliant Internet marketers living in palaces made of rubies and gold and riding their pet unicorns in the California sunshine (one can only assume!). There are also portly chaps working 4 hours a week at Blockbuster who have figured out that some poor schmuck will pay them for just about anything if they lie right.
This brings me to my point. People will see you how you present yourself. We all have to manage our online personae, and with so much of our activity now online, we are finding ourselves with multiples. This is not some new Internet schizophrenia because it is in our “real” life too. You are a slightly more polished version of yourself at work than at play, are you not?
As you seek to build or grow your online business, you will join different communities at different stages of your development, and how you position yourself is going to impact what you get out of them. With a few exceptions, unlike in the “offline” world, the people with whom you interact online are not privy to you as a whole. As such, they don’t get to see much of your development and growth and you may be viewed like the “newbie” you were the day you first awkwardly asked what AdWords was for a long time. Go into any discussion forum, the less professional the better, and look how the “noobs” are spoken to. Gaming forums are the best for a good laugh. The number of their post are listed right under their names, looking like some bizarre numeric measure of their value to the world.
I have always found this amusing. You could have a wonderfully successful attorney looking to try something new being called down by a 16 year old basement dweller for asking what they considered a stupid question. Somehow the culture surrounding these forums supports it, and even I find myself deferring humbly to someone who just happens to have the time to spend 12 hours a day posting and responding to forum topics regardless of her knowledge of the subject.
I will give you a personal example. I joined a few online communities over the past year or so. Being relatively new at much of the “techie” parts of Internet business I was careful and somewhat self-deprecating in my communications. The people I deal with are great and helpful, and I didn’t get any of the guff I mentioned earlier, but I have noticed that I did myself no favors by tripping over myself to be humble. To my frustration, that persona remains among those who I don not speak with regularly despite considerable development. You run an even more severe risk by doing the opposite of course. No one likes dealing with a blow-hard.
So my suggestions are these:
- Respect what you have accomplished so far. Despite how you might feel undertaking something you are not flush with experience in, you have a history that does uniquely qualify you.
- Don’t get intimidated by the people who appear to be experts just because they know much more about a certain subject than you. Sure Bob might know PHP inside out, but he’s not likely to be, say, a chartered accountant too, and you are. Keep that in mind.
- Sell yourself. Because online interactions are decidedly myopic, it can be quite difficult to show you know enough about something to be taken seriously, and even if you have a Maserati in your driveway that got there because of your expertise in the very subject you are discussing, nobody can see it my friend! Don’t be shy.
- Relating to the above point, try to be diplomatic. Bear in mind that many of these people are successful in their own right as well. I do not fully subscribe to the popular belief du jour that you do not need to actually be an expert to be as good as an expert online. I think that is a slippery slope. But in any event, communicating with other passionate people in these online business forums should be conducted professionally, and beating someone over the head with how much you know is a great way to not be listened to any more.
Keep these thoughts in mind as you navigate around the plethora of resources available to the new Internet business person. Hopefully it will save you some frustration and foster some excellent fruitful relationships.
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