I just published a brief, basic, social networking tutorial on infobarrel.

Info Barrel - A well moderated content submission site.

InfoBarrel is a content publishing site that allows helpful “do-follow” backlinks. They also offer profit sharing on their advertisements. What does that mean to you? Well if you publish on the site, you’ll be able to build your site’s search engine clout by linking back to your site with relevant keywords. You’ll also make residual income off any ads that are clicked while people are reading your article. InfoBarrel pays a hefty 75% share of each click so get writing!

Just make sure to have an adsense account set up and ready to. And be sure to have a handy list of keywords ready to use to link back to your page.

Infobarrel uses 100% genuine human eyes to review your first 10 articles. They don’t allow duplicate articles so don’t just copy and paste a recent blog post of yours. Write something original and informative for the site every now and then and you’ll be on your way to improving traffic to your site and building residual income!

In our last several articles we’ve gone over the different, free social networking tools there are out there. We’ve explained how and why you’d want to use them as well as techniques and tips for the best results.

Today I just wanted to write a brief overview to sum up everything we’ve gone through over the last several weeks.

Step 1 – Have something to promote and a target demographic in mind.

Step 2 – Prepare a website (a free blog, forum, html or flash based site).

Step 3 – Sign up for Facebook, Twitter, Myspace, Zannel, linkedin, youtube, and any other social networking site you happen stumble upon that looks promising.

Step 4 – Build your network using the sites listed in step 3 by seeking and adding contacts.

Step 5 – Consistently publish good, valuable content on your website and share links to your info throughout your social network.

Step 6 – Consistently interact with the people following you within your social network.

Step 7 – Repeat steps 4 and 5 indefinitely.

It’s really that simple. For more in depth information, have a look through our archives and read up.

The 2 great things about blogging are that you can create one for free and you don’t have to know anything about html, css, javascript or website creation at all to start one. That isn’t to say that your free, generic wordpress blog will do exactly

How to Have a Blog

as well as one that’s been set up with a customized look and SEOd to perfection (in fact it won’t, at least not right away), but at least it gives you a place to start getting the hang of blogging with no monetary investment.

Here is how you do it:
1) Go to Wordpress.com go through the sign up process and make sure that “gimme a blog!” is selected at the bottom of the sign up form. Click “next ->”.

2) On the next page you’ll choose a blog domain. For SEO purposes, try to choose a domain name that is related to what you will write about. I won’t go deep into this but, you know that term you’re always hearing: “Search Engine Optimization” or “SEO” for short? Yeah, well, one of the easiest ways to SEO your page is by choosing a title that is also a good “keyword”. A keyword is a word that people use in search engines like Bing and Yahoo. Go to wordtracker.com to see what I’m talking about. Just enter a keyword in the field there and see the list of “keywords” related to your term that people search for. I’ll get a little more mileage out of the blend-o-matic 5000 for now and see what keywords related to “blenders” come up. I get results ranging from “blender magazine” to “frog in a blender”. And you know what, I think “frog in a blender” could be a fun way to represent a blog about blenders so I’m going to see if I can use that for my Blog Domain and Blog Title. Next, choose your language (English most likely, unless there is a different one you prefer to write in…) and then be sure the check mark in the “privacy box” is checked (this way your blog will appear in search engines.). Then click continue and you’ll be on your way!

3) Login to your blog (by clicking the log in button) and then get started by clicking on “appearance” toward the bottom of the left side of the page. Here you can select a pre-made, professional looking theme for your blog. I won’t go into detail about creating your theme here. You’ll need to poke around or read an online guide for more info. Suffice it say that it’s very self explanatory. Just pick one that you think looks good.

4) Lastly, and most importantly, you’ll need to begin blogging! That is, you need to post an article. Think of a topic related to the theme of your blog that you want to write about and get to it. We recommend writing your article in a text document such as notepad on a PC or textedit on a Mac. This way, you can easily save your work in a file on your computer as you go along. Many a blog post have been lost to cyberspace by writing an article directly in the text field of a blog. Don’t ask why, just trust me .  Once you’ve completed your blog post, sign into your blog and click on “new post” (this button is located along the top left of the page). Copy and paste your work into the field for the body of your text and enter a creative title that has something to do with what you’ve written about. Then click the “publish” button (you’ll find this button on the right side of the screen, it should be blue)

You now have a voice in the crowd. The most important part of blogging is to do it often. If you can post daily, do it. Just try to establish a routine. Post every Monday or every other day. Whatever you do be consistent so that the people who find and are interested in reading your blog will know when they can expect to find new posts. If your writing is good, helpful, fun, valuable, etc… you will slowly start to become a part of people’s daily routine. When you’re a part of someone’s routine, you have gained their trust. When you have gained someone’s trust, they are now a potential customer. Blog long enough and you’ll have a following of hundreds, thousands or hundreds of thousands to market yourself to!

Next week’s article will go over some tips to spread the word about your every blog uttering via your social network and handy system called “social bookmarking”.

Until then!
-Sensei Brian

The goal of creating your SN (social network) is to compose a free list of people to send information to. The reason having a SN is so important is that the media (writing, picture, or video) you send out to the people in your network can

Your Social Network is like a giant pimple...?

become “viral”.  The term means exactly what it sounds like, ie, that the information can be spread all over the internet in the same way that a virus can spread. One person sees it and sends it to his friends, who send it to their friends and to their friends and so on. When your media is viewed by many people consistently over a period of time, search engines like bing and yahoo will begin to index it better (more on indexing in a future post). This makes what you’ve created snowball, gaining more and more internet clout until it’s so massively popular that it can be considered “viral” and will be viewed by millions upon millions of people. And when millions are interested in something, there is money to be made! Whether it’s with simple yahoo or adsense ads or the sale of your product, once you’re viral you have a captive audience with which to market your wares.

There is no magic button to push, no special thing you can write and no miraculous coding you can use to make something go viral. All you can do is offer it to the massive contingent of users that is the internet via your social network (using the methods described on this blog and elsewhere) and keep your fingers crossed.

One thing to know, your social network is like a massive pimple. Yes, you read correctly. Social Networking isn’t a pyramid scheme, it’s a pimple formula. And at the top, of the pimple, is your white head of a headquarters. Your network contacts branch out from there, and their contacts branch out from them. Your social network needs a HQ, plain and simple. You need a place where you can store and offer media that you’ll promote with your social network. This hub of your social networking empire will be your website which will either be a blog, a forum, an simple html site or whatever you want it to be.

The easiest, free way to create a HUB for your social network is to start a blog. The term “Blog” is short for “Web Log” and that’s essentially what a blog is. It’s your own spot on the web where you can write info that other people will read. This gives you the opportunity to communicate with them through the use of comments that they will post on your blog.

Look for our guide next week to help you start your blog. Until then, read this article on Search Engine Optimization from internetpoop.com.