John Dilbeck Musings

For the last few months, I’ve been looking at quite a few social networking sites. Some are friendly to business and others are not. Each has its place.

I really don’t have a lot of time for just socializing, but when I do, I tend to go to MySpace.

I like to combine my socializing with work, so I’m continuing to look for business social networking sites that offer a variety of features for meeting new people, talking to friends, advertising my products and services, blogging, and joining groups of like-minded people.

There are a couple I’m almost ready to recommend, but not quite yet. I want to spend more time on them before I make up my mind.

I’m not going to recommend something to you that I’m not going to use myself.

Today, I ran across a business social networking site I’d never seen, and I found it while surfing one of my favorite traffic exchanges.

Take a look at APSense.com and see what you think.

You can join for free and have almost full access to all the features of the site.

Here’s part of how they present their service:

Apsense in a Nutshell…

Apsense is a social network where people come together to share their business. We enable users to share their business through networking, discovering and creating quality business content. The development of new networks and constant exchange of information is happening everyday at Apsense. We are changing the way people build their businesses online.

Meet other business individuals…

In its purest nature Apsense is a web 2.0 enabled social network. We promote the exchange of business networks by providing tools for users to easily communicate, create interest groups and even build their own private social network. Ultimately our goal is to make it simple for you to connect with other business individuals.

Find valuable business contents…

All contents on Apsense, from business blogs to business discussions to product and service listings are collectively rated by the users (that would be you). Top rated contents are pushed to the top of our content listings so you can find the most popular and trusted business information quickly. So if you are looking for valuable business information online to help you build your business, don’t waste time searching for it anywhere else!

Create your own business contents…

While all types of contents on Apsense are being viewed and rated by the users, these same type of contents can also be created by you. Why create your own contents? Everyday millions of people are searching for contents related to your business by using search engines and web 2.0 enabled websites like Apsense. So by creating your contents on Apsense, you are enabling millions of people to find contents about your business. For us, content is your business interests, your products & services, your business experiences, and anything else you would like to share about you and your business.

I’ve only had a couple of hours to look over the site, and I’m impressed with it.

I’ve joined a couple of groups, started one of my own, started building my business website on Apsense, and will be creating a new blog there in the next day or so.

Of course, my group is about Site Build It and I urge you to come join APSense.com, add me as your contact, and we can help each other present our businesses and offers.

Now, if you’re a relative beginner to this sort of thing, I want to ask you, please, do not spam everyone with your advertising. There are places where advertising is appropriate, and places where it isn’t.

Get to know people. Participate in the discussions. Learn something new. Teach someone something you’ve learned.

Don’t just start posting ads everywhere! That’s not what social networking (business or not) is all about.

Have some class, don’t be crass!

Come on over and join APSense.com. It’s free, and you can take your time to decide if you like it or not.

There are a couple of upgrade options, but frankly, I haven’t even looked at them or the affiliate program, yet.

I’m too interested in the system they’ve set up, and too involved in learning how to use it, to even think of any of the ways to spend or earn money there.

If you do join and add me as a contact, please don’t spam me. I want you as a friend, and not someone I would rather hide from, or block.

Let me know what you think about Apsense and other social networking sites. Are they effective and a good way to spend your time? Or, do you think they are a big time and energy drain?

Act on your dream!

JD

Perhaps I didn’t read the MySpace terms of service closely enough, or maybe they were changed in October, but I just realized last week that it is against their terms of service to use MySpace for commercial reasons, and they specifically prohibit using affiliate links. Since my main purpose for being there was for low-key marketing, the site is not nearly as attractive to me as it once was.

I’ll continue doing some non-commercial networking there, but not as much as I was.

Fortunately, there is a new business-friendly social networking site that opened around the first of November: BizFriendz.

I’ve taken the time to develop my BizFriendz profile.

Over the next few days, I’ll open several new groups on the site, too.

Since it is a brand-new site, there are some rough edges and some features have not been implemented, but they are making good progress and I think I’m going to be happy participating there.

If you want a good place for business-friendly social networking, come on over and join me at BizFriendz.

Now that Groups are active on Squidoo, I have been inspired to start some new lenses.

For the Country Music Fans group, I just created a new Dolly Parton lens. Pigeon Forge is only a couple of hours from here and I’ve been a Dolly Parton fan for decades, so it seemed like a good lens to build.

For the Addicted to Squidoo group, I started a Marketing With Squidoo lens. I have some ideas for more content on that lens, but I’ve run out of time today to work on it.

I plan to start a new group that I’ll announce in a few days. I created a couple of lenses for adding to the group when it is created. They include:
Success With Power Blog and Success With Blogging. They may fit into groups that also include Home Businesses and Marketing. I have an idea that we’re going to see a lot of overlap in groups since anyone can start whatever group they want.

In fact, I plan to create a few more groups to cross promote lenses I’ve already created.

With the groups I’ve created at MySpace and Squidoo, I’m starting to think that I don’t want to over-extend into another direction! It’s a lot easier to join a group and let someone else manage it than it is to find the time to visit all the groups and forums I’ve started here and there every day. Some days I have other priorities and just don’t have the time and energy to visit all those sites to make sure things are staying on track.

I just added another 17 lenses i want to create to the file where I keep all my information about my existing lenses. I found I wanted a comprehensive list of all the lenses, their URLs, RSS feeds they publish, and any notes for further development. Otherwise, I don’t think I’ll be able to keep up with all of them and what I want to do, even if the Squidoo Dashboard does keep a list of all our lenses.

By the way, I just discovered a neat tool for promoting your lenses. On the bottom right of your Squidoo lenses dashboard, there is a section called Lensmaster Tools. At the bottom of that column is a link to Spread The Word. On that page, there is a nice tool that helps you create image links to your lenses. An example is shown below:

So, who else has been creating new lenses?

I’ve never paid much attention to MySpace until the last couple of weeks.

When I looked at it last year, the people and their interests that I found there were not at all what I was interested in.

However, recently, there is a lot more business networking going on and I’ve started to invest some time there.

Come visit my MySpace John Dilbeck profile page.

If you have a MySpace account, come visit my page and - if you are interested - invite me to be your friend. If you don’t have already have an account, you can join for free.

From my page, you can link to some of the best online marketers I’ve been able to find and can expand your network as you want.

Some of the reasons I decided to invest some effort there is the built-in audience that numbers in the millions, good blogging tools, bulletins to keep in touch with friends and associates, the forums, and groups that you can start and moderate.

I’ve started new groups at:

Site Build It Webmasters

Success With Power Blog

Success With Affiliate Marketing

At the moment, I’m feeling rather lonely in these new groups and I hope you will join me there. I’m open to suggestions on how to make the groups better for all participants.

If you are going to use affiliate links, post it to your blog or profile page and link to it from the group forum. Please, do not post affiliate links in the forums.

I hope to see you there. Come be my MySpace friend!

The Power Blog is a brand new, hands-off, affiliate marketing service which combines the simplicity of dynamic internet marketing with the power of a search engine optimized blog needed to create a real profit pulling internet marketing campaign.

Join free or see all the benefits of pro membership.

After I discussed the idea with Peter Dobler, creator of the Power Blog, I set up a Success With Power Blog group on MySpace.

I’m inviting you to come and participate.

The more we discuss the Power Blog, the more we can succeed with it.

As long as I was promoting the Power Blog, I also created a lens at Squidoo, Success With Power Blog on Squidoo, to present it to new potential members.

I have a MySpace page, John Dilbeck, and I invite you to come view my profile.

I invite you to get a MySpace account if you don’t already have one. They’re free.

Sign in to your MySpace account and visit my profile page. Invite me to be your MySpace friend, if you want.

Then, come join the Success With Power Blog group and let’s spread the word.

A week ago, I didn’t know who Kimberly Dawn Wells was, and now I’m running across her lenses and groups everywhere I look!

That’s a good thing.

About Kimberly Dawn Wells

Kimberly is very active on Squidoo, CafePress, MySpace, and probably other places, but I’ve been concentrating on those three for the last couple of days. She has an outstanding lens about herself on Squidoo and an equally impressive page about herself on MySpace.

Activities on Squidoo

Kimberly is a Citizen Squid at Squidoo and has been creating groups on Squidoo to make it easier for lensmasters to group a bunch of lenses together on a common topic. While this is a pre-release feature at the moment, it looks like it won’t be too much longer before it becomes at least a beta release.

I’ve added a couple of my lenses to the Country Music Fan and Totally Awesome Tees groups, and I’ll be participating in more groups as they become available. I think this is going to be a very important addition to Squidoo.

She offers helpful advice

Kimberly is very helpful and offers her advice on a number of topics.

For example, she offers some very helpful tips on her MySpace Made Easy lens to help us improve our experiences at MySpace.

Activities on MySpace

Kimberly has several groups at MySpace, including Success with Squidoo and Success with CafePress. Groups on MySpace include the ability to discuss topics of interest on forums associated with the group and the optional ability to post bulletins which seem to be used to post news or ads.

I’m new to MySpace, so my limited knowledge of the community may not allow me to fully appreciate the nuances of membership and participation there. I’m open to being educated on the subject.

I created two groups at MySpace for Murphy NC Business and Site Build It Webmasters, which was an outgrowth of my Site Build It lens at Squidoo.

Free to participate

You can participate free at Squidoo and MySpace and I think both are great places to create content and tell about your activities and interests.

On MySpace, this is done through conversations on the forums, posting of bulletins, blogging, and leaving comments on your friends’ pages.

On Squidoo, you participate by creating lenses (one page keyword focused pages with out-pointing links) and joining the groups as they become available.

Both of these sites work well with other communities where I participate, including Ryze.com, PowerfulIntentions.com, AdlandPro.com, MySpace.com, and others.

I look forward to meeting you on one or more of these communities.

Feel free to tell me what you think. Correct me where I’m wrong and educate me where I’m ignorant.