Finding Success On The Internet

September 21, 2009
Interview with Julien Smith co-author of Trust Agents: Using the Web to Build Influence, Improve Reputation, and Earn Trust

www.juliensmith.com

_____________

Mike Carruthers:
Being successful on the Internet seems to come easy to some – not so easy to others.

Julien Smith:
First of all, it’s an attitude of, “Yes I can!” It’s okay to fail in small ways on the Web because nothing really happens if we fail. We just try it a different way.

Julien Smith co-author of Trust Agents says achieving success on the Web isn’t really much different than achieving success in real life.

Before you can sell to or get involved in a community or in a neighborhood, they have to know who you are, they have to get an idea of what you’re about. They’re not just walk into your store and start buying stuff off the shelf.

So you have to go out and find where the people are that you want to attract. And let them get to know you by leaving comments on their website and basically engaging in the conversation.

You can’t just expect people to come to your site. It needs to be more like, “I’m going to spend time over there. I’m going to comment on these people’s websites. They’re going to get to know me and over time things will happen.”

And web tools like Facebook and Twitter allow you to reach out to lots of people to allow them to get to know you.

The Web is a very big place and there are lots of little communities. If you’re the connector between those communities – you become like the elbow of every deal. The ability to become sort of cited by everyone means that you’ll  gain a great deal of trust from all sorts of people as being somebody who is able to get things done.

To hear the complete unedited interview, click here.