Toronto Affiliate Marketer & SEO Consultant Lorne Fade

Etiquette online is an important factor to your business existence online, and if you’re looking for a job in the corporate world-offline as well. More and more the an online presence is meshing with the offline corporate world. How? Why? I’ll try to explain.

1. Internet Etiquette and Off-line Jobs

Your conduct online is important. If you have information on MySpace, or on a website, or even in a forum and it doesn’t paint you in a positive light — and you are attempting to get a job offline-the prospective business may know about it. There are some companies and employment services that now have people who do research online for any information about you – be it good or bad — to determine what type of person you are.

So yes, your online conduct and words, are important to prospective employers. If you put yourself in a vulnerable state online — it may prevent you from getting an interview. If you get the interview, a question to your online presence may be asked. So be prepared with the answers if these types of questions arise. And, it has been suggested that honesty is the best policy when these questions do enter in on the conversation.

2. Email Etiquette

Do not use capital letters in an email — unless, of course, you are angry. With caps you are shouting, and in the Internet culture it is considered rude. A better way to get a point across without shouting is by highlighting it between stars or quotes. You can use an underline on each side, but personally, I find that somewhat confusing.

And remember, emotions and their meanings are really hard to transmit in an email. Choose your words wisely, so they are not misinterpreted.

3. Forum Etiquette

In many forums, mailing lists, newsgroups, etc. there is a thing called archiving. Stated differently, if you don’t want your words to follow you around for years, then don’t send or write the message.

4. Respect the Copyright of Others

When you copy an article be sure to give the author the respect and the acknowledgment that he/she deserves. Their name and their signature blurb should be available at the end of the article, with all links active.

In addition, never change someone else’s work; one word change can change the whole meaning of a given paragraph or sentence. And this innocent change can possibly have unexpected unpleasant results — though innocently done.

5. Research before Inquiring

Research your facts before inquiring about a possible transgression. Yes, I know you may be upset, as I would be, and granted, the great software you are using is tracking your articles, scripts, etc., with accuracy-BUT- they do have limitations. Sometimes they can pick up the name of the individual that wrote the article and not the individual that may have overstepped his/her bounds. That seemly innocent mistake, can lead you to accusing an innocent person of a transgression, when in fact you are looking for the webmaster where the article resides. This can lead to a very messy situation on your end. Thus, research. Don’t ever assume that the tracking software is completely right.

To conclude, with information technology now at the forefront, the online culture is intertwining with the offline culture. What does that mean for you? Simple. When you are in the public domain be it online or offline, you must be aware of your actions and words and how they affect others, as well as, how your online actions are going to affect you at a later date.

Print media is very expensive these days. All small magazine ad in a well published magazing could easily cost you upwards of $500 a month. That could be for an add the size of 2? x 1?. A full page ad can cost thousands monthly. So, should we disregard major print media as a possible source of advertising? Try this alternative instead.

If you have a forum providing excellend discussions and information that people are in need of, spend some time accumulating a list of print media contacts in your field. So if you have a computer related forum, build a list of contacts from computer related publications. Try to find the email addresses of writers, which is normally quite simple to do. After you compile a decent list of maybe 20-50 email addresses, write a BRIEF yet compelling email that you can send out to these writers. Obviously most attempts will be ignored, but it may only take one for you to get some free advertising. Maybe you can build a relationship with a writers and be used as a future source of information.

I mention this only because I have seen it happen first hand and with several that I work with. I wish you all the best!

As most of you now know Google Analytics is freely available. With more than 243,000 sign ups within the first week, you can really see a value in a true “analytics” program such as this. Urchin already had a real name in the analytics marketplace and their developers, teamed with Google’s people made a truly amazing product here.

So, do you as a forum admin really need this much information? I sure think so! Google analytics will share bits of information, such as Geo tracking, that good ole webalizer and awstats only dreamed of doing. If you have plans of doing a bit of advertising through Google Adwords, I strongly advise you to use the ROI tracking utility with Google Analytics.

From Google.Com:

Integrated with AdWords.
If you have an AdWords account, you can use Google Analytics directly from the AdWords interface. Google Analytics is the only product that can automatically provide AdWords ROI metrics, without you having to import cost data or add tracking information to keywords. Of course, Google Analytics tracks all of your non-AdWords initiatives as well.

Implementation Made Easy.
Simply paste the Google Analytics tracking code into each of your website pages and tracking begins immediately. No purchase process. No need to download anything. If you don’t edit your own site, your webmaster, designer, or hosting provider can probably do it for you in under five minutes.

It is safe.
Google takes the trust people place in us very seriously, and is pledged to safeguard the privacy of your corporate data. We understand that web analytics data is sensitive information, so we accord it the ironclad protection it deserves. Read our industry leading privacy policy.

For the typical forum admin, search engine marketing is a foreign concept. The what-to-do’s and what-not-to-do’s are but a blur. I have found a thread worth checking out and following. It depicts the common SEO (search engine optimization) myths, the things you have heard work but really don’t. I hope this thread is helpful. With insight in to these SEO myths, maybe the blurred vision will be a bit more clear.

Hello, my name is Lorne Fade, I am an internet entrepreneur/affiliate marketer, I do consulting, design, programming, websites, graphics and marketing all in one.  People seem to think that making money online is some sort of impossible thing to do.  I am here to prove to the world otherwise.  So join me for a ride on SEO, marketing and advertising strategies and hopefully at the end of the day you will have learned something new at bare minimum from reading my blog.