Exposure makes everything much easier, because friends can write and talk about you, letting other people know you exist. So try to make as many friends and connections as you can, work hard on this and it will help you on long term.

Most of you who started a company or website are trying hard to promote it and get it in front of the others and that’s not pleasant at all. What if you launched the site and got tons of traffic from the first days ? That’s what known people in the industry do, like Shoemoney with AuctionAds??????, JasonCalacanis with Mahalo or Danny Sullivan with Sphinn.

I have faced this problem for a long time and now, after I raised a decent number of connections, I feel much comfortable to launch a new site and promote it, with their help.

From my experience I will try to offer you a few tips to make connections and friends faster.

1. Use all major Instant Messaging platforms ( Yahoo, Gtalk, MSN, Skype, AOL ) to interact with people.
2. Build social media profiles and try to keep them updated as soon as possible, but only with interesting stories. Don’t spam, don’t exaggerate, do it naturally. You will raise fans that will help you promote your own stories. Always keep in touch with some of your fans and they might help you more. Choose the ones in the industry.
3. Help others and they will not forget you. Offer to help even if the person doesn’t request it, he will like you more.
4. Act nicely. Don’t argue, don’t start flames, because your reputation will suffer and you don’t want this. At least be sure you are right if you have to fight with someone and the others will agree with you.
5. Make relevant and interesting comments on other blogs, so the blogger and readers to be curious who you are and visit you.
6. Get in touch with your readers, they can prove very useful sometimes, interact with them.
7. Use the better social network of the moment - Twitter. This microblogging platform is great to interact with others and socialize. You can get to everyone and see how they do it, ’steal’ their marketing ideas.
8. Make a brand out of you. Use the same avatar and nickname on every website and messaging platform, so people can find you easier.
9. Link to you and your social network profiles from everywhere you can. And most important, interlink them, because some friends from one social network might also be on other and add you. Every extra connection counts.

If you follow this nine tips, you should start gaining exposure and ease your job. Along with the exposure, you can talk with your connections, exchange tips and tricks, become a better marketer.

Add me on Twitter, Stumble, Sphinn or Digg.

Image Credit: VoicesNow

To prevent this from happening anymore, I made an exact scheduled and imposed me some rules that I will try to follow and see how much this helped me. Here is what I though of:

1. Make a well defined daily schedule and try to respect it. Do exactly what you proposed to, in the exact order. Make sure to make the schedule as reliable as possible.

2. Laziness is keeping a lot of us away from working, but if you really want to achieve your goals, this has to go. Be sure to include enough rest in your schedule, so you won’t be tired and lazy, because this can be an important factor in decreasing productivity.

3. Use instant messaging and emails only when you really need to. I figured that this was keeping me away from working and that I was spending a lot of hours with no sense, chit-chatting. The best option is to keep them closed while working, but if you need to talk with someone, stay invisible for the others or set a ‘Busy’ status. If it happens and someone disturbs you, try to keep the conversation as short as possible and get back to work. Even if you are disturbed for a very short time, it can distract you and you might lose your ideas.

4. You probably won’t want to put your cellphone on ’silent’ mode while working, because there might be someone that really needs to get to you, but like the instant messaging, don’t spend too much time chit-chatting and follow your schedule.

5. Try not to let anything on the other day and do everything as scheduled. If you start doing this, it’s a step back and you won’t reach your target on time.

6. Take short breaks. If you work for too long without a break, you get bored and tired, so take short brakes, but not while working on something. Finish what you currently have to do and relax doing something you like, then get back to work.

7. If you feel tired, take a short nap of a few hours, because it’s very important and could decrease productivity.