It isn’t surprising news to say that Facebook has been growing rapidly over the last several months. When they first started out with just a college audience the growth potential was in the millions of users – thousands of colleges and all you needed was a college email address to register on the site (basically). Today it has grown into a mega social network as it is open to the public allowing young teens and up to join.

Before we had Facebook, Myspace was the the only major social network that existed (in it’s field). There were many small competitors but nobody could touch Myspace at the time. Now, it’s a different ball game all together.

Looking at the below chart we see three dominate players; Facebook, Myspace and Twitter. All three are in the top websites in the world and compete with one another. Though, despite the success of Myspace, things are changing. They are losing the battle. Twitter and Facebook are rising while Myspace is slowly declining over the past year.

You can see that Twitter is just starting to gain a curve like Facebook but only over the past couple months. This is expected since it has only recently gained serious attention. Major news networks, newspapers, celebrities and even politicians are using Twitter to connect with their audiences.

Tonight Alejandro Reyes, creator of SuccessFool TV, presented a topic that was quite truthful…no pun intended. If I’m not mistaken he first started off talking about faking RSS feeds. Unknown to me bloggers have been found to mislead their readers by manually changing the code in their blog which displays the number of RSS feed subscribers. You may be asking why that matters and the reason is because it’s a dishonest approach to getting more subscribers.

There seems to be some phenomenon that people believe website/blog visitors are ignorant or stupid. Manipulating the number of people that appear to be following your blog posts so that you look “Cool” and popular is disgusting. In this Internet marketing industry we’ve had trouble with new people in the industry getting ripped off. The notion that making yourself more popular is unethical and should not be condoned. Do you think it’s OK because you haven’t got caught? Here’s some news for you, it’s really not hard to figure out if you’re “cheating” the numbers. Have you ever been on a website, “viewed the source” of the page and checked out the code? That’s all it really takes to expose those faking their popularity and “coolness” as Alejandro put it.

That lead to Alejandro discussing the “Fake it ’til you make it” strategy which I brought up to him during his video cast tonight. You see, there are “fakers” and there are those who act the part – a big difference! Donald Trump probably didn’t lie, cheat, make-up stories, or just tell people want they wanted to hear when he was starting his business. Did he act like he was a professional? Probably. Was he making the right steps to appear to have lots of experience? Most likely. Did he learn, read and study other business professionals to understand what to do? Chances are, yes!

When you’re starting out a business the last thing to do is lie, be dishonest, cheat, and make-up stories. It is one thing to sell yourself but it’s another thing to tell people what they want to hear so they’ll listen to you. Imagine if you lied to get 1000 subscribers to your newsletter and then all of a sudden 500 of them figured out you made up a story about your success. What do you think would happen? I’d bet money that news would spread faster than a flash flood…and on the Internet it would be nearly impossible to reverse.

Case in point, be careful what tactics you take to appear as a “big wig” in this industry, especially on the Internet. When you tell people things that aren’t true which is purely to gain their trust and belief, you’re making a big mistake. Nobody likes a liar, at least anyone with decency.

What baffles me is the lack of guilt. If I were to fake something for popularity sake (and especially get caught) I’d feel extremely guilt, broken, torn, and I know it would hurt my integrity…even if nobody explicitly said it. Is it just me or is this truly a sign of lack of respect?

Several minutes ago I finished listening and watching a recorded webinar between two networkers. One of the messages has really stuck as it’s probably quite accurate regarding how people use networking in their business and even their lives. Unfortunately by human nature we’re greedy – we put ourselves first.

Networking on the internet has become a career for many people. Additionally, even more people dream in becoming financially successful through network marketing. There’s a fundamental issue staring those people right in the face and the majority of them probably don’t even realize.

While I was listening to the webinar, one of the marketers said that you need to be willing to invest in someone else. How many times have you heard that? Personally I thought the saying was “You need to be willing to invest in yourself”…not “…invest in someone else”!! This CAN’T be right…

To my surprise this concept is way more powerful than I would have ever thought. Chances are I wouldn’t have thought like that anyway but it makes a lot of sense. In theory you’re not just investing in someone else but also yourself, at the same time. Now, we’re not talking about money necessarily so don’t freak out too much on me.

One of the great powers of networking is the blossom and even viral effect it can create for you. To do so you can start by asking people how you can help them. I know, it sounds pretty basic…and it is. Providing people with a value that they need is THE item of importance. Again, providing someone else with something they feel is valuable can drastically improve your networking success. Yes, it’s a very simply concept but makes perfect sense.

Let’s take an example of the above and put it into context.

You know John who is an internet marketer. John already makes $40,000 a year in his online business. Great! Just because he makes more money than you do (and in this example we’ll pretend it’s true) doesn’t mean anything. You contact John and simply ask if their is anything you can do to help him. Of course, that is done with a slight introduction of yourself. John gets back to you and says he needs help designing a better website and you reply back saying you can help him get a great new design for his site.

At this point John has already welcomed you to help as well as told you what he needs. Now you can do one of two things; give him that value he’s looking for or not, it’s that simple.

You then contact a couple web designers after taking a look at their samples and connect John with one of the designers. You’ve now provided John with value, not trying to sell him something without knowing him. Do you think John is going to stay connected with you? Chances are he will as you did something FOR him at no cost on his end.

This type of networking can get even better. Imagine applying similar principles to marketers who are more successful than John. Don’t think it could happen? Think again.

As a networker you want to connect with people by earning their trust and providing value to them. This can be done several ways but the above is a powerful idea that I’ve just learned about. Put other people’s needs ahead of yours like the example explains. It’s easy to say “What do I get out of it?” and if you think about the example, you’ll understand how quickly you can connect with very successful people for almost nothing.

Most marketers are aware that social networks have tremendous value in growing their business, at least most businesses. More social networks scatter the internet like a severe plague – there are several dozen social networks you could join right now. However, doing so might be a bit counter-productive.

The two most popular social networks and social media sites are Myspace (existed first) and Facebook (newer to the market). Both networks have huge followings with millions of users but the user interface for each is quite different.

Now, Facebook allows you to create “Fan pages” which are perfect for companies who want to broaden their internet traffic and presence. Corporate companies are beginning to take advantage of this which is a good move to keep up with internet trends. Additionally these pages can be indexed by Google and allow you to post website links, articles, videos, etc. – it’s like having your own web page, kind of.

One of the best benefits to using Facebook is that your “Fan page” or even profile can become viral. I was talking to someone from a company who created a Fan page, started off with about 35 “Fans” (people) who were all employees at the company, and their popularity grew to over 600 “Fans” within a few months…yet they don’t actually know 95% of those fans. Additionally, it has increased their website traffic which you probably know is always a plus.

Did I mention Facebook is free to the user?

• Make it a part of your daily marketing efforts.
• Take advantage of the networking tools.
• Create a profile as a marketer
• Connect with other marketers be being their “friend”
• Have fun and be creative!