Rule Five: Win Friends to Influence People

Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People is one of the bestselling self-help books ever published, and for good reason. But as the web gets more social, winning friends alone can make you immensely influential.

It all goes back to that basic truth about building authority: What others say about you is more important than what you say about yourself.

So, make friends with influential people in your niche or industry who can vouch for you and your content. Make friends with social media power users who can promote your content on Digg, Reddit, and Delicious. Make friends with people on Twitter who can retweet your content to their followers. Once that happens, your own readers and followers will start doing the same, and the benefits of authority get truly sweet.