If you are using Social Media sites in your marketing efforts, do you use Twitter?

Twitter seems to be an acquired taste; not everyone likes it!! It is a social media giant, becoming more and more successful everyday!  But still people are saying ‘I don’t get it’, ‘I don’t like it’.  What’s not to like? You can get as many FREE accounts as you like, you can brand them to your or your companies name, and you can get out there and put your name and business in front of thousands of people in a very short space of time.

If you don’t know what to say, look at what other people are saying!  Take a Twitter course; there are hundreds out now for just a few dollars.  Or just type it into google; Twitter tips!  You will be amazed about how much you can find out quickly!  And then get started.  If you don’t get it right first time, so what!  It’s a learning curve, and you will soon learn from your mistakes!

To give you some help here are a few Twitter tools I personally couldn’t do without:-

1  Buzzom is a wonderful tool for unfollowing those who do not follow you back.  Although you have to do it one at a time, it’s really quick and easy.  You can also use it to find new people to follow and to follow back anyone who is following you!

You can also reply, retweet and tweet from buzzom.  As well as the free version, you can also upgrade to the paid version for lots of extra features.

2  Backtweets is a great service to find out who has been RTing your tweets.  It’s always nice to thank anyone who retweets your tweets and to reciprocate.

3  Socialoomph is also a biggie.  I think by now probably everyone already uses Socialoomph, (it used to be called TweetLater) but I thought I had better mention it for anyone who has missed it.  Socialoomph lets you send an automated direct message to anyone who follows you, saying thank you or whatever you want it to say.  Don’t just send your new followers to a sales page.  Just don’t do it! It’s like asking a girl to marry you on your first date! Just thank them for following you, and if you must send them a link, make it your blog or facebook page, not a sales page.

Socialoomph does much more than that though!  You can schedule tweets, follow those people who follow you, view your messages and lots more.  If you upgrade, you can even schedule status updates on Facebook!

One great tip, if you are using Twitter for your business and have the link to you website or blog showing on your Twitter Bio, is to drop the www part of your URL.  Because Twitter only gives you a short space to put in your URL, more of your website name will show up on your bio.   This makes people more interested to see where your link takes them and you will get more clicks as a result!

And one BIG mistake I see alot of people doing on Twitter is that when they start a message with a person’s name (eg @soocee), only you and the person you are sending the message to will see it!  It will not show up in other peoples stream unless you write something in front of the @ sign!! As we are in business and want every tweet to show up in as many people’s twitter streams as possible, it means alot of people are missing out!  This is something I missed for a long time!

Hope these tips and tricks help!  And if you are still not using Twitter, grab a free account quickly because you are missing out big time!!

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I didn’t really understand LinkedIn when I first joined this social media site!  I didn’t feel it offered much opportunity in the way of generating leads for my business in the way that Facebook or Twitter does.  But slowly and surely LinkedIn has gone up in my estimation, not just because of the very high calibre of the large majority of  people who use LinkedIn.  Indeed the annual salary of the average LinkedIn user is $109.00, so there are many ‘big fish’ out there in LinkedIn.

If you are looking for a job, creating a profile with all your previous work experience and a smart profile photo could be a very wise move.  You can even upload your resume!  It is believed that 80% of companies looking for new personnel use social media sites to do this, the majority of them using LinkedIn.

If you wish to become known as a leader in your niche or industry there are several things you can do on LinkedIn to become known.  You can update your status or ‘share an update’ as it is known on LinkedIn everyday or as often as you can.  Once you have shared your update, you can click on ‘share again’, and share the same information with the groups you have joined.  Join as many groups as you want to within your niche.  This means that any information you share is being shown to every member of every group you are in, which can be a very large number of people, as well as everyone you are connected to.

You can become a ‘thought leader’ by creating your own group on LinkedIn within your industry and regularly sharing information and answering questions.  This will establish you as the ‘go to’ person for your industry, because your name and website will be there for everyone who joins the group to see.

Another way to become known is to answer questions in your niche.  Under the ‘more’ tab at the top of the page, you will find ‘answers’.  There you will find lots of questions from people in your network.  By answering these questions on a regular basis, you will be listed as a ‘Top Expert’, which of course will get you seen!

The best way to connect with alot of people on LinkedIn is to join the Open Networkers groups.  These are people who are willing to connect openly with large numbers of people.  Generally LinkedIn does not let you connect with just anyone in the way that say Facebook does.  You can only connect with someone you have done business with or a friend.  However, most of the Open Networkers offer their email address, so it is possible to connect with them using that.

If you want to be found in the search facility on LinkedIn, you need to ensure that you have your keywords in your profile.  You will need to have them in your title, your current and past work experience, your summary and in your specialities if you want to rank on the first page!

To Your Success

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When you first open up your blog for business, you hope or expect lots of people to find it and leave you lots of comments and feedback.  Sadly, this rarely happens, unless you are a celebrity!  So you plug away, writing article after article wondering how other people manage to succeed in getting lots of comments when you are lucky to get one!  So you cheat a bit and retweet your own post a few times and ask your friends to retweet it too!

But unless you get very good, very quickly you are not going to get many comments.  I tried putting the odd comment on other people’s blogs, but rarely got any reciprocation!  Then I started to hear about syndication!  I looked into it and discovered that people were getting together into little groups to leave a little ‘love’ on each others blogs and other content all over the internet!  Wow, I thought, great idea!

I looked into one system that everyone was talking about, but decided against paying to have someone read my articles.  They aren’t THAT bad!!  Then I joined a forum called ThatMLMBeat!! And started to hear about two syndication groups that were in the process of joining together!  And you could join FREE!

So with some trepidation, I joined their ranks.  It all seemed simple enough!  You were put in a particular colour group each week; around 10 to a group.  Each person puts their own details on the system, their social media sites and their blog.  Then each day of the week, Monday to Friday only (which suits me) you syndicate a couple of people out of your group.

You comment on their blog, you like them on Facebook, add them on Linkedin, watch their videos on YouTube or whatever.  Then one day a week, they all come to see your work and suddenly your comments start to rise.  You get more friends on your social media sites and more retweets!!  Wow, you have got to love that!

And another great thing is that if people don’t do the syndicating they are meant to do, they slowly fall down the charts and then fall off the end.  So they no longer get syndicated!  If you do not feel that the article you are reading is up to standard, you do not have to comment or syndicate.  That keeps standards up!

The benefits of syndication go well beyond the extra traffic I am getting on my sites! I always found it difficult to comment on other people’s work.  Probably scared of saying something that someone didn’t like!  Now, I am typing a comment before I even put my mind in gear!!  So that’s great.  Syndicating also keeps me on my toes! I know by Sunday usually what day people are going to syndicate me, so I work on making sure there is something new for everyone to read or listen to!  Which again is always good for the search engines.  Regularly updating your blog gets you higher up the rankings!

And another thing!  Before I started syndicating, I had somewhat lost interest in Facebook, which considering the numbers of people logging on everyday, was a bit like business suicide!  I found it difficult to know what to say.  Well syndicating lots of other peoples blogs has put an end to all that.  I have a plethora of interesting material to put out on Facebook, so my name is appearing on the news stream regularly.  I’m rocking Facebook again!

And I am meeting some incredible people and finding out more awesome stuff everyday! I have to admit my first thought was ‘will this be worth the effort of reading all these peoples blogs??’  Well I have to tell you that ‘yes’ absolutely it is worth every minute I spend syndicating.

So, of course, I must give a great big shout out to TSA Tribes for being absolutely awesome.  When you give, you receive, and I am receiving such alot from you guys.  Thank you, everyone!

Email Marketing is a brilliant method of marketing your business if you get it right. Of course everyone’s take on getting it right is different. To be honest I had never put much thought into my Email Marketing until recently. I seem to have suddenly been shown the errors of my ways, and I do mean errors, plural, because I have been making several apparently!

Oh well, as Robert F Kennedy once said “Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly“. So I have failed, and now I am going to achieve!!

And I know you are waiting for the number 1 secret, so here it is!

I always thought that your subject headline is what would get your email opened.  But it’s not!  But what really does it is You! Your Brand! If you are building your social media or online presence properly, your name should start to ring bells to the people you are sending emails to. Because if they have seen your name and picture constantly on Facebook or Twitter over a few weeks or months, when they receive an email from you, they will recognise your name, probably even picture you in their mind, and they will want to open your email because they feel they know you, like you and trust you! This is another reason why you need to brand yourself!

You could use the header from your blog at the top of your emails so people recognise your ‘brand’. You could have your own signature from mylivesignature.com which will help to brand you. And you must make sure you inject some of your own personality into your emails.

Try to keep your emails light; don’t get to heavy. Make sure you have plenty of new paragraphs. Look at your finished email. Would you read it? If you have one solid chunk of text it may look boring and then it won’t get read! And try to keep it reasonably brief.

I have had several emails recently where the writer has just used a short line of writing, making a small column down the left hand side of the page and I must admit these do seem easier to read! And remember to put the important bits in bold or italics so they stand out! Because there is so much information on the internet nowadays that we are all learning to ‘scan’ read. And if the important bits don’t standout, they will be missed!

Recently I had a complaint from someone on my list complaining about me sending them information. They had obviously opted-in for some training I offered, not realising that they would in fact be getting emails from me once they had opted-in. My answer to this was to put a disclaimer at the TOP of my emails, saying that they were receiving my emails because they had opted-in on one of my sites, and if they did not wish to receive help in building their online business, they could opt-out easily at the bottom of the page!

I panicked a little when I sent this out the first time, but actually only got a couple of people opting-out and actually got more click-throughs than usual. Probably because I was making it clear what the emails were about and injecting a little bit of my personality into it. I was actually saying, if you don’t want my emails, fine, no problem, goodbye!!

Remember you are sending emails to communicate with your list. You must be giving value to your potential buyers before they will become customers. Give them information that will help them, tips, how to’s, special offers, in fact anything that will bring them value. Consider what they are searching for and try to help them in their quest, and you will become invaluable to them.

Remember, people only do business with people they know, like and trust!!

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Hope you are learned something from this article on Email Marketing! If you want to learn how to use Attraction Marketing to Brand Yourself on the Internet grab the system that Sue uses to cut your learning curve in half!!

Can you believe that if Facebook was a country it would be the third largest country and bigger than America?? That is amazing.  It actually took 4 years for the internet to reach 4 million users and yet Facebook reached 100 million within 9 months!!  This growth is incredible especially when you consider Facebook is free! Incredibly the fastest growing segment on Facebook is woman aged 55-65!!

The opportunities for small business on Facebook and other Social Media sites is incredible and people are making alot of money building their business with them!

YouTube is actually the second largest search engine after Google! This is another incredible fact.  Everyone knows that Youtube has grown at an incredible rate and is very highly trafficked.  Google actually now transcribe every video that is uploaded onto their site, looking for keywords to use in their search engine.  So putting keywords in both the video and the description is now key.

LinkedIn, although far behind Facebook in numbers, is way ahead in the calibre of the users.  LinkedIn is used very much by company CEO’s, Management and other high flyers.  Actually 80% of the companies on LinkedIn use it to find employees; another incredible fact!  Leads from LinkedIn are going to be some of the best leads you could get on the internet!

Twitter is also growing incredibly fast.  Celebrities use it to keep fans updated on what they are doing, companies use it to keep in touch with their customers and friends use it to chat.  Twitter is growing and changing constantly as new apps are made for it.  Twitter is evolving!  Because it is so different to Facebook some people do stay away, but the constant buzz surrounding it means that droves of new people are signing up everyday.

There are over 200 million blogs on the internet today.  Over 50% of these have new content posted everyday!  Basically if you are in business today you need to have a blog to keep your customers up to date with your products, services and special offers!  Well you need a blog and you need to be doing YouTube videos, and you need a Facebook page!  Welcome to the future!!

Any business that is not on social media, I seriously believe is going to be losing out immensely.  I am aware that alot of people out in the ‘real’ world consider it to be something of a fad and not something that they need to be involved in, but I think they are definitely missing something massive.  The figures speak for themselves.

So jump in!  We’re waiting for you:)
If you are amazed by this Facebook Fact and want to start promoting your business on Facebook, grab this FREE Facebook Training before it’s taken down!

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— @ WiseStamp Signature. Get it now

HIT THE TWEET BUTTON===>

Are you building an MLM home business? If so, are you using social media sites for your business?  Facebook, Twitter, MySpace?  Over 350 million people are on Facebook alone!!  And almost half of them go on everyday.  That’s an incredible number of people.  And that’s just one social media site.  It is like a new community. Instead of us all spending time with our neighbours, we spend time online talking to our counterparts all over the world.

Social media has opened the doors to connecting with people you could not have connected with in the past.  This has had massive repercussions on the MLM industry, as it is now possible to enrol people into your Network Marketing business on the internet, without ever having met the person before!  MLM is now in the information age, with business owners showcasing their opportunities in videos and webinars which can be seen all over the world.  Instead of having a home meeting with around a dozen people, you could be showing your presentation to thousands at a time.

But we all also move around in our home community as well, so it is important to still be able to recruit people locally too.  We still go to the local shops, to the local garage, the hairdressers etc.  And social media has given us a brilliant way of reaching out to people we meet locally!  If your business is mainly online nowadays, it can be difficult to mesh the two together.  So if you meet someone in the local shops, and want to talk to them about our business, but don’t want to launch into presentation mode (as we would have done in the past!!) we now have the answer!

Quite simply, the answer is to have our social media contact details on our business cards!  So if you have had a chat with someone, and in your mind you are thinking, ‘they would be great at this business’, it is quite simple to say “I’ve really enjoyed talking to you, are you on Facebook or Twitter?  Lets keep in touch!”  And then give them your business card.   Its a friendly way to stay in touch with them, and once they become friends on Facebook (or other social media site) you can connect with them and slowly introduce the idea of your business to them!

I have already used this idea with someone who showed an interest in what I was doing online, and it works!  Because it’s laid back and not pushy.

More and more Network Marketing companies are using the internet to grow their business.  Those that are slow to implement the internet are already lagging behind. Because if you have someone from the other side of the world who really wants to join your business and it can’t be done online, that’s pretty much it. Posting application forms half way across the world is really not an option.  But for those MLM companies who have it all ready on the internet, this is not a problem.

You can sign up online, take trainings online or over the telephone or use skype.  And with the help of social media, you can now comfortably talk to anyone who lives locally.  The best of both worlds!

Twitter is very misunderstood. I hear so many people say that they do not understand it, or they dont see the point of it.  And it is difficult to put your finger on why it works so well, but it clearly does!  Twitter is now the 13th most visited site on the internet, globally.  There are several million users, although no official number has been released by Twitter as yet. Whatever the number, Twitter features almost daily in the news nowadays, whether it is a celebrity tweet or on the bad side a murder, following a dispute on Twitter, which is in the news this morning.

Twitter is the latest social media site to be used regularly for businesses.  At first no-one understood how a business could gain from being on the site.  Now it is well known that they can study what customers are saying about their brand and take action to keep on the right side of customers.  They can also announce events and generally give good customer service by being available and approachable.  In Network Marketing, many business builders are getting leads everyday from Twitter using Attraction Marketing.  You need to have a good clear photo, information about yourself in your bio and of course a link, usually to your blog for anyone to go for more information.

 Then you have your 140 character comments, or tweets. So what do you say?  Well the question Twitter asks is ‘What are you doing?’ and whilst many people actually answer that, others may send out lots of other information.  Inspirational or motivational quotes, jokes, photos using Twitpic or other services, or they may share something they have come across on the internet that they think other people may be interested to see.  If you are a Network Marketer you can put out links to your blog when you have up-dated it in order to drive traffic to it, or maybe links to YouTube to a new video you have posted.  It is all about getting more traffic to your blog.

 And obviously the more followers you have, the more traffic you can drive.  So you need to add more people to your followers everyday.  You can put your name in Twellow, which is the equivalent to the Yellow Pages for Twitter.  If you see a tweet which you find interesting and want to tweet it to your followers, you can Re-Tweet it.  Just click on the button at the right.  You can also Favourite any tweet that you see that you would like to keep, maybe like a saying you may want to remember.

 One great way to have lots of tips and ideas on how to use Twitter is to download the Twitter Toolbar onto your web browser.  This comes complete with 50 tools and resources for Twitter, and 100 Twitter Tips, by Dan Hollings, so you can get lots of ideas for how to use the site.  And all that is free!  And dont forget to put your Twitter address on everything you send out or subscribe to, because you will get lots of followers that way.  You can link your blog to Twitter, so that a tweet is sent out everytime you post a new article, using the Onlywire service.

 One last great tip!!

 Sometimes it is difficult when you are offline, to bring your business into the conversation without slapping someone across the face with it.  So if you meet someone and would love to approach them, ask them if they are involved in any social media sites and give them your contact details, such as your Twitter name, and ask for theirs so that you can connect.  Its subtle, does not scare them away and it works!

If you would like more great tips and advice on how to generate leads from Social Media Sites like Twitter, grab my #1 Attraction Marketing System NOW!!

If you want Free Leads for your MLM business online because you are building your business on a budget there is one thing that you will need alot of!

  And that is TIME!

Free Leads come at the price of your precious time; this is a fact.  To market online you need one of two things, time or money.  If you have money you can learn pay-per-click and pay for advertising, but for the majority of people this is not a viable option when they first market online.  Your time is valuable, but once you have set up and mastered the skills needed to create free leads, the process will be much quicker.

Article Marketing is probably one of the biggest ways of producing free leads.  At the beginning it may seem like a long-winded way of going about generating leads, but writing does get easier the more often you do it. When you publish your articles in directories on the web, you get the opportunity to put in your links to your blog or other page, so someone who reads your article and finds value in it will click on the link and arrive at your blog, where you can request their details in exchange for say a newsletter or a freebie.

Social media sites are another hot-bed for free leads.

Facebook, for instance, is the second most visited site on the internet at the moment!

So how many Network Marketers, or would be Network Marketers do you imagine log into Facebook regularly?  An enormous amount!  It is so easy to connect with people, put up your contact information and start to befriend them.  You can join groups and get involved with discussions about the MLM industry, but try to remember not to thrust your opportunity at everyone as soon as you connect with them.  Marketing on the internet is different from offline marketing.  It is more about Attraction Marketing, whereby you attract people into your business by showing value and giving respect.

MySpace and LinkedIn  are two other social media sites where it is easy to make contact with people and find free leads.  MySpace is often connected with young people, or with dating, but is now very well known for making good connections in the MLM industry.  LinkedIn is much more professionally based, and therefore more difficult to find leads, because you cannot just add friends the way you do on other social media sites.  Having said that, a number of people are getting good numbers of leads from LinkedIn, and the quality of these leads is much, much higher than other social sites as many high-ranking professionals use it.

Twitter is rising rapidly through the ranks of important websites, although totally different from other sites.  It is very easy to build up a following of thousands of people on Twitter and also to have several accounts.  Many Network Marketers are building up a loyal following and can broadcast as many 140 character comments or ‘tweets’ as they like.  The secret is to make sure you are adding targeted people to your list, either by searching for keywords, or by following the followers of famous networkers or authors in the industry.

Video Marketing is another way to generate free leads for your business.  YouTube ranks as the third most visited site on the internet.  It is free to open an account, so you can upload as many videos as you can make!  You then subscribe to other peoples videos, or add them as friends and you will find large numbers of people will then subscribe to your channel and watch your videos.  It is easy enough nowadays to record yourself; most modern digital cameras will record a short video easily enough.What you need to do is make your video of value and ensure you put a link to your blog in the description box when you upload it.

These are just some of the ways to create free leads.  As I said at the beginning of this article, what you need most with these methods is time.  And you need to stick to it!  Rome wasn’t built in a day, and leads are not going to come chasing you in a week or two.  When I said time, I meant time to do these methods of lead generation and time to see the results.  Just keep on keeping on and the results will come!!

For even more ways to generate leads both free and paid for,  jump into the marketing system I use!  Trial offer of $1 for first 14 days!! Sue Collier’s Prime MLM