Back in the ’80s the Bee Gees crooned “Staying Alive.” In today’s parlance, that would be “Staying Online.”
Corny reference aside, the point is: building a web presence is one of the most important things you can do for your personal and professional life. But what does that actually mean? Is it just getting an email address? Putting up a website? Something about your online conduct? It’s all of those things and more. It’s closer to creating an identity — the online version of who you are.
The internet gives you platforms to express yourself, interact, argue, and learn. Some are easy to find. Others require you to spend time with the people who already inhabit them. The upside is enormous.
So how do you do it? What counts as good online conduct? How do you put up a site without going broke? These are the questions running through your head. Don’t worry — we’ll work through them.
The Internet and You
Life in cyberspace is already a reality. Whether humans will live on Mars is still up for debate, but the virtual world is here, and it’s populated by real people. Like anywhere else, your reputation matters. You need to build it, maintain it, and treat it with the same care you’d give your offline reputation.
Creating Your Online Presence
Cyberspace is a vast sea of people — real people pretending to be other people. Trust is hard to come by. The key to creating your online presence is declaring honestly who you are.
There are many ways to announce yourself: email, instant messaging, your own website or blog, or by joining a community that matches your interests. The challenge with forums and communities is finding one you actually care about, then slowly making your presence felt. Treat it like a new college. You’re apprehensive because you don’t know anyone. You walk around, get familiar with the campus, learn what’s offensive and what isn’t. An online community is just that — a campus. Take your time.
As you spend more time, members start noticing you. You make your first friends. From there, it’s up to you.
Instant Messaging
Instant messengers have evolved into a proper communications and business tool. You need to sign up for a particular service — Yahoo! Messenger won’t talk to a Hotmail account and vice versa. There are some third-party clients that bridge the gap, but they’re rarely the best option.
So you’ve got two choices: sign up for everything, or pick one and stick with it. We recommend the first. It costs nothing, and having an ID around doesn’t hurt even if you rarely use it.
IMs are great for keeping in touch with friends across time zones. They let you share files and photos while you chat. To be honest, you’re almost there — just virtually. An IM can also be a solid business tool. Including your ID on a business card is a good idea, whether you’re self-employed or working for someone else. Instant messaging happens in real time, so coordinating with a client in another country can save you on long-distance calls.
MSN Messenger and Yahoo! Messenger are the big ones. Sign up for either and you get an email address too. MSN gives you a Hotmail account with 25 MB of storage (about 250 MB if you’re in the US), and Yahoo! gives you 1 GB. Yahoo! looks like the obvious winner on paper, but check which one your contacts actually use first.
Email is a great tool for keeping in touch and widening your reach. But there’s a fine line between being persistent and being spam.
Spamming is illegal in most countries. If your account gets flagged, you could be blocked by the recipient’s mail server, or worse, your own provider could cut you off.
The widely accepted definition is “the use of any electronic communications medium to send unsolicited messages in bulk.” While this usually means indiscriminate bulk mailing, the term has expanded to cover any commercially oriented, unsolicited mail that feels excessive or undesired.
Over the years, spamming techniques have spread across media: email spam, IM spam, Usenet newsgroup spam, search engine spam, weblog spam, and mobile phone messaging spam. Desist from all of them. Understand what qualifies before you send out a mass mailer about your business.
The entry barrier for spamming is so low that the volume of unsolicited mail has created costs borne by the public — lost productivity, fraud — and by internet service providers, who have to add capacity to cope with the deluge. Spamming is reviled. The US passed the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 to deal with it.
Netiquette
When communicating online — whether in email, chat, or on a bulletin board — follow these basics. They’re common sense, but people forget them constantly.
1. Don’t type in all caps. It’s considered yelling. People who type in all caps come across as lazy and inconsiderate. Studies show it’s harder and takes longer to read all-caps text.
2. Fill in the subject line. A brief, concise description of your email’s content helps recipients organise their inbox. Avoid all caps, vague terms like “Hi” or “Help,” or using the recipient’s name — you’ll get flagged as spam and deleted.
3. Skip the formatting. Coloured text, background colours, and images make emails hard to read and harder to reply to. People don’t want to convert your email to plaintext just to respond. Large background graphics that take forever to download are inconsiderate, especially for dial-up users — and plenty of people still have it. If you must format, do it sparingly.
4. Use BCC for group emails. When sending the same email to multiple people, put their addresses in the BCC field. This keeps everyone’s email private. Listing all recipients in the To or CC field is a sign that you’re either a newbie or don’t care about people’s privacy. Email addresses are like phone numbers — only the owner should decide who sees them.
5. Don’t forward chain letters. Raise your right hand and repeat: “I will not forward dumb jokes, chain letters, or unimportant emails without permission.” By forwarding them, you fill up inboxes, waste resources, and annoy people who’ve seen these emails a million times. Many of these emails are hoaxes. Before forwarding something with an incredible story, check it on Snopes. If you can’t confirm it’s accurate and the recipient will actually want it, don’t send it.
6. Don’t share personal information. Never give out phone numbers or personal details without confirming you’re talking to a reputable party. Never share someone else’s contact information without their permission.
7. Search before you email. Most websites have FAQ or “About Us” sections with the answers you’re looking for. Don’t waste the site owner’s time with questions that are already answered. If you can’t find what you need, look for the right contact area — don’t just click the first email link you see.
8. Don’t request return receipts for personal emails. It’s intrusive and annoying. The recipient should decide when to open, read, and reply. Reserve return receipts for legal or critical business matters.
9. Accept that you’ll keep learning. The online world changes constantly. If you don’t make an effort to understand the culture of the technology you’re using, you won’t be taken seriously. You might get terse emails from other netizens pointing out your mistakes. Don’t fire back. Use it as a learning opportunity.
10. Don’t respond to nasty emails immediately. People are bolder and more critical behind a screen. Many are trolling — trying to get a rise out of you. If you don’t have something nice or constructive to say, hit Delete.
11. Respect copyright. All private email is copyrighted by the author. If you post private email publicly or forward it to others, you need the author’s permission. Doing otherwise can get you into legal trouble.
12. Compress large files. Many people new to the internet don’t realise how large documents, graphics, and photos are. They fill up inboxes and cause other mail to bounce. Compress anything over 200,000 bytes. Ask before sending large attachments. When sending business files, do it during business hours and always compress first.
Many people still wait 30 minutes or more to open oversized files on dial-up connections. Another option: resize photos to no larger than 600 pixels wide, or upload them to free web space and share the link.
The Benefits of Being Online
Being online is more of a norm than a trend now. Most people — businesspeople and students alike — give their email addresses right after their phone numbers. One of the biggest benefits is reaching the entire world. It’s like putting up your shingle outside an office, except the passers-by include everyone on the planet.
Social Networking
Our lives revolve around professional goals, starting from high school or college. We get swamped by work and drift away from friends. Being online and active means you don’t have to be kept apart. You can catch up with old friends and make new ones.
Sites like Orkut, Hi5, Friendster, and Yahoo! 360 are what we call online social networking sites. They all claim to have the most active or widest network. Check where your friends actually are before signing up — you don’t want to be at the movies while your friends are waiting for you at the coffee shop.
Most sites work on a simple principle: search for people based on shared interests, hobbies, location, or age. Distance stops being a barrier. You can make new pen pals and keep in touch through the same platform.
There are pitfalls, of course. Fraudsters exist who will win your confidence and misuse it. Once you sign up, you can send invites, connect with existing members, and share information. As your network grows, you become part of a community where members share interests. Not having time outside the office is no longer an excuse for loneliness.
Telecommuting
Some consider this a new way of working, but telecommuting has been around for a while. It offers a great option for aspiring professionals — work from home, and often get paid well. Some employers even set up the infrastructure, including internet connections. Having your own site or blog can help in the hunt for these opportunities.
Your Global Office
Every professional and businessman dreams of making it big. But as a startup or small organisation, you won’t always have the finances or manpower to meet all potential clients. Not all of them will be in your city either.
The web lets your business reach new shores. Imagine yourself as a dealer of Indian handicrafts: your biggest market is the western world, but how many mailers can you send? How many phone calls and samples? Countless, to have any impact.
Options like eBay let you list products in English-speaking countries while sitting in India. Other similar services are equally effective. It’s just a matter of getting online and finding the right solution.
Having an online presence helps you eliminate costs, appeal to a wider marketplace, and further your personal and professional goals.
Blogs
Blogs — short for “web log” — are the thing to have. Just about everyone has one, or more. But what are they, and what are their advantages? How are they different from a website?
What Are Blogs?
A blog is a compilation of thoughts, ideas, facts, or news that someone has decided to put online. Each article — called a post — can be connected with the previous one or not. There are no rules and no restrictions. It’s your playground.
Blogs are usually structured, organised by category, and updated frequently — often daily. The owner (and sometimes moderators) controls the content.
The term “blog” was coined in 1999. At the last count, there were roughly 10 million blogs on the internet.
Creating a Blog
You don’t need to know HTML inside out. You just need to know how to browse the internet.
There are numerous free tools available. You could use an HTML editor like Dreamweaver or FrontPage Express to create your blog’s look and feel, then upload it via FTP. But if you’re unfamiliar with HTML editors and FTP, there are services that offer free blogging tools. Blogger, Blogsome, and Typepad are some of the more popular ones.
Setting up a blog is straightforward: create a login, pick a template, choose a nickname if you want one, and start posting. You can post whatever you like, whenever you like, as often as you like.
The Benefits of Blogs
Easy to maintain and start. If you don’t know HTML, using a template makes it simple. Most template options are extensive and let you categorise posts. You can link your blog to other blogs or sites to announce your arrival.
Post as often as you like. None of the free blogging tools restrict the number of entries or the length. They even offer free photo uploads now.
Highly interactive. Most posts get comments — sometimes hundreds — soon after they’re published. Blogs may use a TrackBack system that shows who has written about the same topic. Some blogs alert you when new content is added. Blogging gives writers freedom, but remember to be responsible. Readers will comment and expect responses. If you don’t want interaction, disable comments.
No spam filters to fight. Email spam filters don’t block blogs because they’re not email. Newsletters and ezines struggle with delivery these days. Blogs sidestep that entirely. No one can shut you out when people are coming to you.
Limitless. You can create as many blogs as you like on as many subjects as you want.
Search engine friendly. Search engines love fresh content, and blogs deliver that daily. Submit your blog to blog search engines like Technorati, BlogStreet, Globe of Blogs, and Blog Universe to increase your exposure and page rank.
Economical. Many are free. Some require a link back to the service; others charge a small monthly fee. Either way, the costs are minimal.
Educational. There’s a huge variety of informative and educational blogs. The average person reads 200 words per minute, and the speed reading record is 1,347 wpm. Keep things short and to the point.
Syndication. RSS is a great way to expose your writing to a wider audience. Most blogging services include syndication now.
To read a blog, you just need a web browser — Firefox, Opera, Chrome, Internet Explorer. Or use an RSS reader to subscribe to blogs and get notified when new posts appear.
Blogs and Business
Blogs provide supplemental content and direct attention to areas of your business you want to highlight. They can:
- Communicate with colleagues, partners, suppliers, and customers
- Showcase industry news, introduce new products, and provide tips
- Establish a company’s or individual’s reputation
- Improve operations through knowledge sharing
- Demonstrate expertise
- Establish competitive differentiation
- Simplify the publishing process
Blogs can also be strategic tools for newsletters. Articles can link to a blog, extending their life. You can offer a two-way forum to customers for genuine opinions — something no survey with just numbers can guarantee. Company experts can start blogs and become industry authorities. You can layer editorial controls to ensure nothing inappropriate goes up.
The Dark Side
Since the internet has become all-encompassing, we’re more likely to say “Google it” than “let’s check the library.” But we haven’t dreamed of all the ways we’ll use it five years from now. We need to be vigilant about the difference between honest practice and misuse.
Blogs give everyone a chance to offer opinions to worldwide scrutiny. Most people use this to offer their best — interesting opinions, hidden theories, creative thoughts. The passionate and opinionated now have an avenue to vent. We find these people through shared interests, and we feel like part of a community.
But there’s a downside. Some people use blogging for fame and gain, and there’s no easy way to tell the difference between genuine opinions and sleaze marketing.
There are people who believe nothing on the internet is trustworthy — that every comment is self-serving. Like in the offline world, there are unscrupulous elements that hurt the credibility of the internet. But the internet is also a global arena where we can find answers to questions we haven’t asked, ideas we haven’t thought of, and feedback in areas we’d never challenged. It’s our friend, foe, conscience, teacher, and a way to connect with people we’d never otherwise meet.
Blogs are fast, low-cost, and offer an effective publishing and marketing tool. Before adding blogging to your marketing mix, be clear why you’re doing it and what you want out of it.
The success of blogging has given rise to a new industry: blog monitoring. Companies scour the internet to advise brands on how they’re talked about online. There were 130,000 blogs four years ago. Now there are about 10 million. These pages can make or break a company’s reputation. Even if you’re ignoring it, people using your products are blogging about it.
Blogs are useful for companies of all sizes, including small ones. You could start with a private, in-house blog for project tracking, diary management, and document sharing. The key is to pick areas where blogs can solve communication problems, then train the owners to handle issues in advance.
Forums
Forums bring like-minded people together to share thoughts and opinions. They’re the simplest way for people with a common interest to connect without meeting in person.
The Importance of Forums
Forums are easy to use. Anyone who can connect to the internet, open a browser, and type a URL can register and post. Unlike blogs, forums exist because of a group of people and reflect the community’s sentiments as a whole.
A forum is like a school. To an outsider, all students look the same — same uniform, same place. But once you join, you find groups with different interests, and within those groups, people who are intelligent, funny, or plain silly. That’s how forums work.
Take the Digit forum — members from all over India, the US, and the UK, united by a love of technology. Just like in life, there’s a dissenting minority, but they’re welcome because it’s a community where acceptance is essential.
Some say only forums can mimic real life on the web. Others say it’s even better, because people express themselves openly without fear of ridicule. Whether forums build better people is beyond the scope of this piece. But there’s no denying that the right forum can help you develop your skills.
Forum Activity
Forums aren’t just places for people who love to argue. Yes, this happens. Some members are there to build their egos. But they’re not the majority.
Members fall into a few broad groups:
One-time visitors find the site via Google or a friend, visit a couple of times, and forget it exists. They make up about 15% of registered members on the Digit forum. There’s nothing wrong with this, but netiquette says you should check back on your questions and share answers you found elsewhere.
Occasional browsers aren’t particularly interested but come back to see what’s happening. They make up less than 5% of the Digit forum population.
Regular contributors are the backbone of any successful forum. They visit and contribute a few times a week, have a genuine interest in the topics, and enjoy their peers’ company. On the Digit forum, about 60% of members fall into this category. They contribute most to a forum’s growth — word spreads through them.
Addicts post several times a day. They look forward to the forum as much as some people need coffee. But addicts aren’t necessarily the most knowledgeable members. They often post about inane topics, leading to heated discussions and name-calling. They get called “spammer,” “lamer,” or “nOOb.” Just as we hate chatterboxes in real life, forum addicts tend to be disliked.
Troublemakers are the terrorists of the online world. Their only agenda is disruption. They shock, repulse, and enjoy the abuse hurled at them. Anonymity makes them hard to catch. On the Digit forum, troublemakers returned no matter how many IPs were banned. The solution? Ignore them. Nothing hurts more than indifference.
Moderators and administrators are coveted until you actually get the job. “With great power comes great responsibility.” When a hobby becomes a job, it stops being fun. Forum staff reply to every query, resolve disputes, enforce rules, and improve quality. If you want to become a moderator, earn respect when you have no power first. If you start a forum, award power only to the deserving.
Before joining or starting a forum, ask yourself: What are my interests? Do I want other opinions? Will I benefit from meeting people with the same interests? Can I handle criticism? Will I make time to visit regularly?
Conclusion
The rush to get online is over, at least for now. The growth of the public web has plateaued. Maintaining a web presence has become routine — and in many cases, necessary.
Who should you be online? There’s no fixed answer. You are who you are. Depending on which category describes you best, you could be anyone. The best way to contribute is to join a forum that interests you. You should both learn from it and be willing to impart knowledge.
To enhance your skills, gain respect and be polite. Treat a forum and its members as you would in the real world. Read and understand first, ask questions later. Aim to be a Regular Contributor — that’s where you should stay.
If you’re starting a forum or have been given moderator powers, remember how it felt to be new. Exercise patience, lead by example.
Rules matter. The internet thrived because it had no rules, but your forum won’t. Once you join or start a forum for a specific interest, stick with it. Changing focus leads to something that’s neither here nor there. Setting rules is the first step. Enforcing them is the bigger one.
The past five years have validated the web as a proof of concept. Hopefully, the next five will bring equally remarkable progress in expanding the scope of its users and the utility of its content.
Bibliography
Managing Your E-Mail: Thinking Outside The Inbox by Christina Cavanagh
A straightforward guide to taming the email monster. Covers best practices for responding, structuring messages for high impact, legal pitfalls, and when to choose traditional communication over email.
The Weblog Handbook: Practical Advice on Creating and Maintaining Your Blog by Rebecca Blood
The first book to explain how weblogs work and explore their impact on the media landscape. Rebecca Blood draws on three years of experience in the weblog community to share what she’s learned.
Blogging: Genius Strategies for Instant Web Content by Biz Stone
The first hands-on book on building blogs. Includes tutorials for building a blog, adding commenting systems, syndicating with JavaScript, and more.
Essential Blogging by Shelley Powers, Cory Doctorow, J Scott Johnson, Mena G Trott, Benjamin Trott, Rael Dornfest
Helps you select the right blogging software and get your blog up and running. Covers Blogger, Radio Userland, Movable Type, and Blosxom, plus advanced features.