The creation of a free reputation-building traffic exchange was warmly received by the Internet marketing community. ThumbVu is already receiving rave reviews from blog marketers as a system that allows people to take traffic exchange campaigns seriously. The system is designed to build reputation for marketers by providing community voting on advertising, incorporating social networking features, and providing premium members with list-building offers built right into the surf bar. From the review linked above:

“I can’t say enough about how much better this system is than any of the ones I’ve seen (and that includes really well-run manual exchanges). John and his team have leapfrogged the competition and created an incredible product that gets the nature of reputation and trust in today’s Internet.”

This brave new world of traffic exchanges as reputation economies demands that you become a PR Team of one. Even in traditional manual exchanges, the opportunity now exists to forge relationships with users, rather than merely slap up an ad. As Google continues to ban AdWord accounts at a feverish pace, the writing is on the wall for marketers. It’s time to create unique, personal connections with the audience, whether that’s in pay-per-click advertising, blog marketing, or on something like a traffic exchange.

So how do you create connections? It has always been simple: give stuff away. I don’t just mean free offers, I mean revealing things about yourself. Show warts. Admit failures. Be human. And then provide a free offer. In order to create a tangible relationship with people, you need them to listen. That means offering to teach them something they didn’t know before.

No one can argue that a good autoresponder is a marketer’s best friend. But what ThumbVu points out is that you have already built lists. Your Twitter followers are a list. Your Facebook connections and fans are a list. People who read your blog? List. So expand your notion of what signing up looks like. And treat those channels appropriately – don’t treat Facebook like free advertising – you wouldn’t treat your mailing list that way! By all means, continue to invite people to sign up for an e-course or a mailer, but also realize that you can create campaigns on your social networking sites.

Moving forward, it’s only going to become more important than ever to present a personality and a reputation that people can trust. Let 2010 be the year that you decide to build your brand online, in every marketing endeavor. You’ll be happy you did.

Tags: blog marketing, brand building, reputation marketing, traffic exchanges