Running an internet marketing business is much like running any other business except that it is usually less tangible – there are often no premises or other physical manifestation of the business beyond what appears on screen – and it can often involve very little in the way of real (face to face) human contact. This sense of isolation means that finding a mentor to help you progress is one of the vital ingredients to moving your business forward.

When you’re first starting out, you can use forums and Facebook groups as surrogate mentors and some people find that these work well throughout their internet marketing career.

One problem with forums is that you rarely know the person behind the avatar unless you attend a conference or happen to live locally to them.

This means that it’s often not easy to work out whose opinion you should trust versus who is offering advice that sounds plausible but doesn’t actually work in the real world.

Facebook groups are maybe easier – it’s not easy to hide in a Facebook group where near enough every post is viewed by a lot of members and the group’s moderator – but you’re still likely to be mainly exposed to people’s opinions and you still often have very little idea of how much they actually know and how much is just regurgitated theory.

Of course, you could say the same applies to finding a mentor for your internet marketing business.

That’s where your due diligence comes in.

You need to research your potential mentor, that’s just common sense. But you’ll be doing that once you’ve worked out what you want from your mentoring.

And that’s probably the most critical part in finding the right mentor for you.

Start with the end goal in mind – you’ll have a much clearer picture of who is likely to do the best job of mentoring you.

If you need help getting over a particular problem in your business, you should be looking for someone who has a proven track record in that particular field.

For instance, if you wanted help getting more of your videos ranked high in the search results, you could choose someone with SEO experience or you could choose someone who had SEO experience specifically related to videos. There are plus and minus points with either of those options but they would both stand you in better stead than someone whose expertise lay in getting clicks to CPA offers, unless one of their techniques involved videos.

On the other hand, you might decide that you need someone to help you with the big picture and who will get you through to achieving the goals that are on your one or five or even ten year plan.

The skills you’d be looking for in this instance would be different. You’d probably be looking for someone who was almost a “jack of all trades” and who knew enough about any given approach to be able to steer you in the right direction and who would tell you when you needed to bring in an expert.

The main reason is that internet marketing is an incredibly broad business. In the same way as a retail shop would sub-divide the roles needed – cashiers, book keepers, display, stock ordering, equipment maintenance, etc. – you have a similar range of things to look after with internet marketing – website design and hosting, payment processors, SEO, pay per click, etc.

Narrow down your search to around 3 possible mentors.

Then research them and interview them in much the same way as you would a regular employee. Although you probably won’t be hiring them full time, they are still an important part of your business and should be treated as such.

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