It's all about Me.

It's all about Me.

If this headline makes you wince, I'm sorry. It's not all about me in the way you think. No I'm not conceited or stuck up. It's all about me is really all about you.

That's confusing right? Good, I want you to use your noggin :)

We are all here in Apsense because we want to grow our business. Sure the social aspect is nice to but the bottom line is our business. Or else we'd be hanging out on Facebook or myspace. Apsense, while still a very social place to be, is about building a network of like minded "business" people. People that you would like to do business with. That being said, we will and do accept everyone and everyone as a customer for our services and/or products.

So what is all about me. It's all about making you and your brand more effective.

The best way to get people to know your brand know is to promote it in every where and in every way possible. That is why the big companies sponsor both high profile events, as well small local events. So if have "Facebook" money, meaning you are a billionaire and can afford to donate $100,000,000 to a poverty stricken school district, then you can stop reading this right now. BUT, if you are a regular business owner, a small or home based marketer, or you just want to get your brand out there, then please read on.

I posted an answer on Apsense regarding the question "How many *Social Networks* on average should a Networker belong to in order to establish himself online?"

In my humble opinion (IMHO), many read the question wrong. While the advise given was genuine it did miss the point. Most answered the question from a time point of reference. The question had nothing to do with time, it had to do with "establish himself online." It really was a question about branding. The person asking the question, cosmic1der, wanted to know how best to brand herself in order to be a successful marketer.

I tend to be lengthy in my writing, and this is both good and bad. Good because I can express my thoughts and explain them. Bad because most people are so busy, so consumed, that they tend not read what is written.

Anyway, going back to It's all about Me. And if you are reading this cosmic1der, I hope you take away something positive.

It's all about me could and should be all about your brand. In prior post and comments I often talked about making yourself the brand. You can sell yourself better than you can sell any product because you know yourself better than you know any product. After all, you have know you all your life. If you think of yourself as the brand and do everything to protect that brand then you are on your way.

This is what I do to brand everything and make it work for me. I know me, so I use me. If you like me it is easier for me to recommend something and have you actually listen to what I am saying than if you don't like me. If you don't like me you will not even listen to what I have to say, you may be polite and pretend to be listening but in your mind you are thinking of other things. That does not mean not being "untrue" to yourself or your values. You can be blatantly blut, just don't be brutally blunt, and still get you message across. What it does mean is being honest, open minded and genuine.

People disagree all the time can and still live in harmony. Some even marry each other. For example here in the US there are several highly political people from very opposing trains of thought yet they are happily married. One such example is James Carville, Liberal Democrat and his Conservative Republican wife of 17 years, Mary Matalin. So it has nothing to do with ideology, it has more to do with being honest, open minded and genuine.

A good way to get people to know you is to participate in social networks. Unlike most that commented on cosmic1der's question, I belong to almost every single social network online. However, I am only active on one, Apsense. So why would I want to belong to so many social networks. The answer is simple, but I'm afraid many will not get it. Hopefully you are one of the few that does.

If I am my brand, and my brand is Gilberto Cintron, and I join every single social network using my brand as the user name that means that no one else can use that user name. And, since my user name is my brand, which is also my name, my name is all over the place. I am "Branded." Now in order to stay relevant and not have my account shut down for lack of participation, etc. I login once in a while and poke around to see whats going on, and then I move on. But more important than physically logging in is utilizing the tools available to me to remotely 'log on" and post comments, articles, blogs, etc. That is the key.

I would venture to say that more than 50% of the members on any given site make full use of the tools available to them. Many people jump from site to site thinking that this is the way to riches. Well, IMHO all that does is get you burned out. Want proof? Read everyone's answer to cosmic1der. Like I said, her question had nothing to do with time it had to do with establishing her self as a marketer, but all the people with that jump from place to place chasing the elusive "ONE", the one magic site that is going to bring them (chose one: fame, fortune, happiness, friends) and are so tired that there only advise is "don't join to many".

I say join every single social networking site you can and make sure you set up a profile in each. If you refer to my answer to cosmic1der's question you will know that I recommended that she create a generic profile. One that covers every single aspect about her. Then that she extract from that very generic and elaborate profile small parts that she can compile into a short business profile and that she go a little further to create a "social" profile.

So that now she has three profiles on hand ready for use as needed. Then when you join one of the various social networks, depending which one and what the focus is, you would use the appropriate profile. I also suggested that if you have a main website (hopefully it would be your brand), for example http://gilbertocintron.com you include it into each of these profiles. This creates instant backlinks to your site.

Another thing that you must do is to take advantage of the tools that google makes available to us for free. Google has many useful tools, but I will simply refer to three of them here. 1) gmail and 2) google profiles 30 google buzz. You are going to need an email account in order to join these social networks anyway so why not use a gmail account? Yes, for some places it looks so much better, so much more professional to have an email associated with your website, xyz@gilbertocintron.com, but for some things, and signing up to social networks you can, and really should, use gmail.

Now that you have a gmail account you can easily avail yourself of all the google tools, like google profiles. So you create a wonderful profile on google, which is free and gets all sorts of traffic. The wonderful thing about this google profile is that you can add links to all of your social networks. That's right, you can add each and every social network you belong to talk about backlinks, this is the best.

Now if you use my strategy and use your name as your login name/user ID, you will have alist similar to this to put on your google profile:
http://digg.com/gilbertocintron <br>
http://www.socializr.com/gilbertocintron <br>
http://www.google.com/profiles/gilbertocintron <br>
http://www.apsense.com/abc/gilbertocintron <br>
http://youtube.com/user/gilbertocintron <br>
http://www.linkedin.com/in/gilbertocintron <br>
http://www.facebook.com/gil.cintron <br>
http://friendfeed.com/gilbertocintron <br>
http://vimeo.com/gilbertocintron <br>
http://gilbertocintron.tumblr.com <br>
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Now, these are not all of the networks I belong to but I'm sure you get the point. So yes, it took me a little while to sign up with all these, and many other social network sites but that is a very small price for doing business. (Sometimes I use giltron as my user name, but most of the time I use my full name).

Of course I have a blog or two, and I use wordpress (to me it is the best). I use several plugins, but there is one plugin I would be remiss if I didnt tell you about. It is a free plugin called AddToAny. This plugin serves the very same purpose as the app used on Apsense that allows one to bookmark or to post my comments, answers, blog post etc, to each and every single social network I belong to. Amazing. right from Apsense, or whatever other site I happen to be on, I can post to all of my networks with the click of one little button.

So does it require a lot of my time to participate in all of the social networks I belong to? No not really, it does not. I hardly ever actually go to them. No need to because I make use of the tools available to me.

Now you may say this is pie in the sky. So here is the proof. Go to google and search for gilbertocintron or gilbert ocintron and tell me what you see. Go ahead, I'll wait.

I'll tell you what you found, the first 3 pages are all filled with my listings. My social network profiles, my blogs, etc.

THIS JUST IN, I joined SWOM late last night, but look http://swom.com/people/140042-gilberto-cintron here it is.

Need help setting this up, let me know.