Starting ventures or projects online have their rewards and difficulties.  One of the major hurdles is to create a space for oneself amongst all the competition.  How to get noticed when there are literally billions of websites out there?

The subject of this entry is not to discuss how, but “when.”  Most projects start with a hope.  A hope to make it someday…  That hope, however, becomes reality when from “soliciting” attention, people come to you to offer partnerships or to present themselves.  Of course, your responsibility as the owner or webmaster is to always increase the visibility of your site, but as people came to me, that was the triggering point for me in telling myself… “well, this project of mine is starting to show potential.”  Potential because others, in addition to myself, are starting to see “something.”

When you receive validation, that is a real morale booster.

BlogRush launched its service recently, allowing bloggers to cross-promote their blogs. Some bloggers gave their approval to this service while others resisted the temptation. Amongst the few that added the widget to their site are: John Chow and Shoemoney. That being said, ProBlogger opted not to display the widget. What’s the rationale for their decision?

Note: Out of the three, John Chow is the only one to use MyBlogLog.

This goes to show that “online blog promotion” also depends on the personality of the blogger. For most bloggers, blogging also has a personal component to it. Promoting a blog online therefore is not the same as promoting a website. There is not that same emphasis on staying true to your image/ vision of things when promoting a website.

Also, different people have different perspectives on things. These three bloggers must not see the same advantage or benefit in using BlogRush/ MyBlogLog.

Networking is about building connections. There are two aspects to networking:

1. expanding your network; and
2. strengthening your network.

A good and sustainable online campaign is about more than just building links. In fact, when you think about it, building links is part of networking. Why need a strong network? Because it will increase your presence on the Web and your credibility amongst other bloggers. Take this scenario for instance: You have an announcement to make, but have no connections online. You probably will have to issue a press release. Press releases only reach so many people. The other scenario: You have a strong online network and send an e-mail to all the members of your network asking them to spread the word. What happens? You tap into their readership. Want to go further? How strong is your network? If it is very strong, you can ask them to forward your e-mail to their network and so forth. That’s how a “word of mouth” campaign is built online. Add this to your press release campaign and you have a better/ far more reaching online marketing campaign.

So for those focusing only on “link exchanges,” this is not the way to go. And, as a last note, nothing bothers me more than someone suggesting a link exchange and not following up on it or suggesting a blatantly unfair/unreasonable/unjustifiable exchange (i.e. home page link vs. resource page link)… duh!