Engaging in flame war on a forum; or personally attacking a blog reader will not make a good impression.

In addition to creating enemies, flaming will also make your business look unprofessional; and it will make your existing customers questioning your integrity.

2 points to think about:

1. Never start criticizing and bashing others publicly.

2. Be very conscious when others start a nasty discussion with you. Don’t react emotionally. Instead think about the best possible repoonse. Sometimes it might be not reacting at all. Sometimes it might be keeping calm, laying out facts, or just expressing that you don’t value fights.

In an earlier post in the ‘Web 2.0 Marketing’ Series, I said that you can use incentives like contests to get people to become a new “follower” at Twitter or a “fan” at Facebook.

But even if you’re too lazy to do that, there are much simpler things that you can do to draw in new people to your social network.

To get started, you can simply ask your readers to tell others about your Twitter page or your Facebook fan page.

All it takes is including 2-3 lines of encouraging text on your profiles that directly says that your readers should tell their friends about your profile if they find it useful.

If you want to build it up you can incorporate tools like tell-a-friend scripts, or direct links for social bookmarking, pre written e-mail copy, facebook comments, pre-written tweets and so on.

Will it bring in a gigantic surge of traffic to your internet business profiles and sites?

Probably not – but if you combine many of these tiny steps (they take very little time to implement) you will reap a combined result that’s certainly worth it.

For instance, one thing you can do through your Facebook fan page is offer your “fans” a behind-the-scenes look at what goes on with your business on a daily basis.

You could use status updates to announce the various stages of a product launch; or you could announce new product ideas you have.

This will do two things for you: 1) it will increase customer engagement by exposing them to your thought process and daily business happenings; and 2) it will show them how much thought and work goes into the products you create, so that they grow to appreciate your brand as a result.

One way to save some time while maintaining your presence on both Facebook and Twitter is to link the two accounts. This will allow you to have Facebook automatically update your status using your Tweets.

Doing this is pretty simple and can save you the hassle of moving between the two accounts and re-posting the same messages multiple times.

If this sounds like a good idea to you, go to the following URL: http://apps.facebook.com/twitter/.

Once you’re there, all you have to do is click the button to allow Twitter to post your Tweets to your Facebook account. After that, your Tweets will automatically be posted to your Facebook account.

Aside from the large networks, such as Facebook, Myspace, and Twitter, there are smaller niche networks. For instance, www.activerain.com is a social network exclusively for real estate professionals. There are also networks for Internet marketing, aviation, golf, and virtually any topic you can imagine.

One of the biggest benefits to joining these niche networks is that everyone on them is a potential customer. This is especially true if you sell business-to-business products or services.

Again, all the same rules apply if you plan to use these niche sites. Don’t spam members with commercial advertisements, but instead, try to offer something that is truly valuable for free; and then use that to draw in other members and to eventually sell them your products.

At the end of the day, your goal for all web 2.0 projects should be to earn some type of return. Now, this return might not be immediate; and it may even take months or even a year to realize. But with that said, your goal should still be a return.

With that in mind, think about how you can make your web 2.0 marketing ventures more profitable.

One way you can do this is to cut down on the amount of time you spend doing things that aren’t profitable.

For instance, on a daily basis, you might receive Facebook friend requests, Twitter follower requests, and other requests; however, rather than processing each one as it becomes available, you should think about doing it on a weekly (or at least daily basis).

Alternatively, you might consider using social networking sites with your phone. This will allow you to make requests, accept requests, and perform updates when you have free time, but are not near a computer.

When it comes to social networks, there are usually influential individuals who have hundreds or thousands of friends/followers; and who many people pay attention to. Of course, there are movie stars and politicians who Tweet, but I don’t mean these people in particular.

Rather, identify the important people in your niche who use Linkedin.com, Facebook.com, Twitter.com, and other social networks. Become friends with these people; and then solicit their help in discrete ways.

Again, the same principle applies that I mentioned before: instead of directly pitching to them, make them pay attention to you by providing useful information and insightful commentary. On Twitter, this might buy you an influential retweet; and in the blogosphere, this might buy you a link to your site from a high-traffic blog.

Whatever you do, don’t try to spam the influential people you contact. They probably receive hundreds of similar pitches; and have grown accustomed to simply ignoring them, so don’t expect them to do different for you.

Forums are a good place to get noticed and to build relationships.

If you’re like most people, you probably “lurk” on a few forums; and possibly post on a few yourself, too.

In this short forum marketing article I talk about:

• How to get traffic from forums
• How to build your network on forums

It’s important to keep in mind …

… that all the usual web 2.0 marketing rules are still in force when it comes to forums.

For instance, just as you wouldn’t make shameless pitches on Facebook, you also shouldn’t do that on forums. Except when a forum has a section dedicated to promoting products, like, for example, the WSO section in the warrior forum.

How to get traffic from forums

Forums offer great potential when it comes to capturing visitors for your site.

The best way to do this is to post useful information; and then send readers to your site via a signature at the bottom of each post.

The more interesting your posts are, the more likely people are to check out your web site.

Thus you avoid high-pressure sales situations; and it can be one of the easiest ways to draw in new site visitors, who then might turn into subscribers and customers.

How to build your network on forums

You’ll find that your network builds naturally if you contribute a lot of useful posts to the forum. Instead of you trying to push yourself onto specific people, people start noticing you based on your contribution to the forum.

The  natural style of a forum thread encourages conversations, make good use of it. Respond to what other forum members are writing, and give answers to whatever they might respond to your posts.

Today’s action steps:

• If you’re not active on forums yet, your first step is to use google and find a few forums that relate to your niche.
• From any forums you find through search, or you already are a member of, you must now decide which ones are the best to spend your time with. Prefer the busier and bigger forums; they will give you more exposure and more contacts.

Rather than using your Twitter and Facebook accounts in total isolation from the rest of your internet business, think about using them as complements.

It’s likely that your web 2.0 accounts and your web sites and blog were created at different times.

So you probably did not have the big picture in the beginning, and you did never plan how to interconnect these different ‘points of contact’ for your prospects and customers.

It is a good idea, though, to do exactly this: connect all your sites and web 2.0 profiles in a useful way. Deepen the connection with your visitors by giving them more ways to stay in touch with you.

For example, it has become common on news channels to refer watchers to company and reporter Facebook profiles and Twitter profiles.

The reason for this is simple: by getting people to follow them through social networking sites, those news stations gain yet another point through which they can advertise and engage watchers.

You can cross promote too:

• If you do print advertising, you might consider using it to channel traffic to your social networking site profiles.
• You can add a badge for your Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, or whatever account to your web sites and blog.
• You can pull your blog’s newsfeed to your web 2.0 accounts.
• You can add links to your web sites and blogs to your web 2.0 accounts.

If you use this strategy, you can significantly boost the results from your marketing campaigns by sending visitors to your network of web 2.0 properties.

This will allow you to capture visitors by getting them to join your network, so that you can repeatedly pitch to them (rather than only once) in a low-pressure atmosphere.

One of the best uses of you LinkedIn.com profile is to generate organic search engine traffic for your business.

How can you do this?

By getting your customers to review you on LinkedIn.com.

With each positive review, your profile’s search engine ranking position will improve.

Getting better rankings for your profile will do two things for you:

1) it will send people looking for products or services in your niche to your linkedin.com profile; and

2) it will get more people to find your website through your Linkedin.com profile.

In either case, you have the potential to capture a great deal of extra traffic from individuals who are highly-targeted; and who are already interested in purchasing a product or service in your niche.

Next step for you:

Send an email (or phone your customers) and ask them to review your business on your LinkedIn.com profile.