The more ways there are for someone to interact with your product or ideas, the better. I’ve included ways to network your writing here, but go beyond writing, and be creative.

In two examples from the publishing world, these cyberpunk authors built popularity in the online environment, creating buzz for their book releases.

A query for the Neal Stephenson new work, Anathem, shows the author allowing online fans to ask him questions about his new book, adding to the extensive buzz for the release. Stevenson leveraged his cred with the internet culture to get others to promote his work.

William Gibson Enters Cyberspace

Penguin’s promotion of William Gibson’s latest book, Spook Country is an even better example. Gibson gave a interview in the virtual world Stephenson conceptualized in one of his books.

1. Create buzz in communities.  It’s good to re-post your article on other blogs or forums that already have a large readership, as one way of gaining popularity with the community there. Here are just a few examples, but find ones of your own.
 

• If you’re a tech person, find sites that print articles in your area of expertise, e.g. Wordpress Hacks.
• Biznik and BNet. Publish your business advice to business networks, and also tech sites like the FreelanceSwitch to make sure your advice reaches its audience.

 
2. Be grassroots. Once you’ve posted, search for other people posting on the same topic on Google Blog Search and Technorati, and join the dialog. This is a great way to gain popularity in your niche.

 3. Build up your popularity on social networking sites and forums before you launch your endeavor. That way you become a productive part of the community, rather than a spammer, when you link your ideas. Link-baiting is another blogging technique and an art. It is to be used wisely. Not for N00bs!

4. Also, you’ll be surprised at how quickly your new online friends who share your interests will support your endeavor.

5. Publish any place you can get free blogs (Wordpress, Livewriter and LinkedIn all offer directories), and co-publish there. You can also add a feature to your wordpress blog that allows it to update your twitters when you come out with a new post.

Doubtless you’ve heard of podcasting and streaming video if you are reading this blog. Since the field exploded a few years ago dozens of commercial hosting providers have arisen, each offering a different flavor of the same basic service. The Freemium model is prevalent. The free packages limit your disk space and bandwidth as a way of enticing you to pay for a premium account.

Typically you get 100-500mb of server space and 1-5gb of bandwidth, although a few offer unlimited bandwidth for free.

• Podomatic (500mb space / 2gb bandwidth)
• SwitchPod (450mb space / unlimited bandwidth)
• Pod-Serve (no longer offering free accounts)
• PodBean (100mb space / 5gb bandwidth)
• Technochild (50mb per file but more if you ask nicely / unlimited bandwidth)

However all of these commercial offerings do not compare with what you get from the Internet Archive. It’s only for Creative Commons licensed media, though, so if you have dreams of becoming a digital publishing mogul you should look elsewhere.

Internet Archive hosting is available through two channels.

• If you need a full hosting service use OurMedia.
• If you just need disk space and bandwidth use ccPublisher. This is my preferred choice.

First, you’ll need an account on archive.org before you can upload anything. Then you will need to download the ccPublisher desktop application (available on Windows, Mac, and Linux) and install it on your system.

Going this route isn’t as convenient as using a service that does it for you, but hosting on the Internet Archive almost guarantees  that your media will be permanently available, rather than disappearing when the commercial services themselves disappear for lack of revenue.

8 Keys to Instant Charisma: Little things make a big difference in how others perceive us. Most geeks are only dimly aware of this, usually as a vague anxiety that chokes them whenever they get involved in an unfamiliar social situation. This terse list of eight keys to instant charisma will help in a pinch. [via thinksimplenow]

1. Mirroring.
   

   Mirroring happens naturally in social interactions, but when you are conscious of it and are aware of its affects, it can be used as a tool in effective communication for generating rapport. Next time you’re engaged in a conversation with someone, try mirroring body language, posture, and facial expressions. You will find that the conversation suddenly feels very friendly and open.

2. Names.
   

   Always make an effort to remember people’s names. 

3. Feigning Interest.
   

   Ask questions that the other person will enjoy answering. If it’s a complete stranger, start with the basics and dig deeper. Rephrase their words to make sure you really understand what they’re saying. You can think of this technique as verbal mirroring. By asking questions about their interests or feelings, you are mirroring their interest in themselves.

4. Listening before Talking.
   

   Next time you’re engaged in a conversation, practice not saying anything after asking a question. This might mean not speaking for several minutes. Even when the other person appears to be finished, practice maintaining your silence for 30 seconds. Often times, the person is still thinking, is actually pausing, and will start speaking again. By doing so, you will get a lot more depth from that person. Listen.

5. Intentions.
   

   Send out the intention that you would like to get to know this person better, to really listen to them and to be there for them. Or make a wish for the other person. Send out a positive intention for your interaction.

6. Helpfulness.
   

   When others genuinely offer their help, we feel particularly fond of them. Why? Offering help is a kind gesture that implies a respect and admiration for you. And when we put ourselves in their shoes, wouldn’t it be advantageous to offer help to others?

7. Smiling.
   

   Smile genuinely. Smile with your eyes. Feel it genuinely and it will come out naturally.

8. Authenticity.
   

   When you are completely honest and speaking from your heart, you will exuberate a kind of energy that people cannot help but to connect with.

““The question for the past decade was, Is this real?” says Yale law professor Yochai Benkler. “The question for the next half-decade is, How do you make this damned thing work?” Benkler is a leading prophet of today’s gift economy, and he fits the part: his bounteous beard resembles Kropotkin’s. He was treasurer of a kibbutz, a cooperative farm, in his native Israel. He doesn’t mind being called utopian. But neither does Benkler dream of a world without capitalism. Instead, he has become an unlikely business guru, with a shop at the intersection of Commerce and Cooperation. “It’s very cool,” he says. “I find myself talking to all sorts of weird hackers one day and chief economists of major corporations the next day, and they’re all interested in similar things.””

- Getting Rich off Those Who Work for Free - TIME

“What’s social proof? It’s the psychological term for looking for confirmation from the crowd when you’re unsure whether to act. See ten people staring up the sky and most likely you’ll stop and stare up too. Why? Social proof. Business leaders can harness the principle. A classic example is a recent program written by Colleen Szot that shattered a nearly twenty-year sales record for a home-shopping channel. Szot simply replaced the classic call to action– “Operators are waiting, please call now”– with “If operators are busy, please call again.” Rather than imagining bored operators filing their nails, home shoppers pictured phones ringing off the hook. The implicit message: others must be buying, so should you.”

- Lessons in Effective Persuasion and “Social Proof” | BNET1 | BNET

Sales and marketing are lagging in seeing the potential here [in social blogging]. When I used all these services to tell the world that my wife and I were expecting a child in September, I anticipated hearing from the world’s largest consumer-products companies begging me to try their latest diapers, food, car seats, and financial instruments. What came back? Nothing. Where was Procter & Gamble? Given what it and other companies spend acquiring new customers, there’s an untapped gold mine in Twitter and Facebook because we’re volunteering so much information about what we’re doing right now, whether it’s working on a project or eating a chicken-salad sandwich. Learning how to tap it correctly—both to sell to me directly and in seeing major trends in the millions of daily public posts—will be the next major challenge for these companies.

- The Next Email | Fast Company

Flock is a variant of the Mozilla Firefox web browser, one that comes packed with features that the social media crowd finds irresistible. On Earth Day the makers of Flock released the Eco Edition of the browser. It’s suave dark green styling is staying with the zeitgeist; you can also feel good just by using it, because

" Flock Eco-Edition donates 10% of search proceeds to the environmental charity of choice, as deemed by the voting of the community of Flock’s Eco-Edition users at the end of this year. Flock makes money when people search through the browser. So the more you search via Flock Eco-Edition, the more we’re committing to give back."

WordPress suits the purpose because it provides a person-centric way of coming online, offers an extensible architecture, and already has some features — such as an OpenID and a blogroll plugin — that can be pressed into social networking service. And its users represent exactly the sort of audience that might appreciate the permanent, public identity.

-Anne Zelenka

In the wake of Facebook’s impressive implosion, social media experts are publicly announcing their search for the Next Big Thing. The “walled-garden” business model of the Facebooks and MySpaces of the world have been exposed, and the technological elite will no longer be happy to play along as they once were.

This leaves the field open to a new generation of contenders that pride themselves on Openness and easy access to personal data. Like Ning.

Even they are but a waypoint on the road to a truly decentralized social network service, running on self-hosted servers running something like the WordPress set up Anne described above.

thinkingSage launched on this date.