Twittering Tips to Build Your MLM & Network Marketing Business

Happy New Year to all of you! I got a bit distracted by all the holiday festivities. But I'm back in gear and ready to move this Basic Guide to Thoroughbred MLM and Network Marketing along briskly this year.

In social media, it really is all about building your relationships with others. And Twitter is a great place to start. It's your billboard - a great vehicle by which you can attract people to you and direct them to other sites and, most importantly, to your blog.

I found a great general resource that has helped me get started on Twitter. It's Joel Comm's book, Twitter Power - How to Dominate Your Market One Tweet at a Time, published by John Wiley & Sons in 2009. You can purchase it on Amazon.com (new or used) for under $20, some used versions are around $10 (it retails for about $30+ in bookstores). I strongly recommend it.

As you get started, remember that your goal is to be a quality Tweeter. So use your own name and brand yourself. Set your profile and background up with careful thought - and make sure you have your key link there (your blog or website). Start tweeting with real, personal information about you - you can tweet about your location, what you like to do, food that you like (recipes are great), childhood memories, dreams and goals, pets, music/art/movies/books/politics. Find things about which people are talking and get involved (a good site to use to see what is attracting the most interest is popurls.com). Most important, be yourself and talk back to the people with whom you connect - that's key to relationship building.

Finding targeted people to follow is important and it's easy to do (but keep in mind that you shouldn't follow more than 50 people a day to start and then keep your additions to 10% of the number of your followers each day - Twitter will shut you down if it thinks you are spamming). You can do a general search on Twitter, for example, on mlm, or network marketing, or any area of interest to you. Click on the tweeters who come up and follow them - most people you follow will automatically follow you back. Also, when you follow people, you can see who else is following them and add those people as well.

And start to retweet other people's tweets that you find interesting or informative - that's hugely important because you can get many people to retweet your crucial messages to their followers (it's sort of reciprocal) - it's an incredibly effective way to expand your own reach.

You'll want to be able to shorten and your links on Twitter because of the 140 character limitation to all tweets. Bud.url (open a free account) is a simple tool that will enable you to shorten your links - there are many others that you can also use that also track clicks. Twitpwr.com is one which Joel Comm cites because it not only shortens urls, tracks all clicks and also ranks accounts according to their power. Twittergrader.com is another site I like because I can see my ranking readily.

And you'll want Tweetdeck (to group tweets and followers by subject) and Social Oomph (formerly TweetLater), which allows you to set up automatic follows to people who follow you and to schedule your tweets in advance. One word of caution on Social Oomph, Twitter has discontinued allowing recurring tweets, so all of your scheduled tweets need to be original.

You can get a bit lost wending your way through all the stuff on Twitter, which is why I recommend Joel Comm's book as a starting point. It's got a ton of detail and you can work through it steadily and easily.

Managing Your Time in Network Marketing

Managing your time can be a real challenge in MLM or network marketing. But it's a key element of successful business development. The massive amount of information on social media sites is just plain overwhelming. And you'll be buried if you don't take charge right away.

I build a very simple schedule. It's basically two by two by all. Every Sunday night, I select two things that I absolutely MUST accomplish on Monday. Then I note two more things that really need to be done as soon as possible. After that, I prioritize and list all the things I'd like to get done that week. And I factor in some learning/information review time. So when I get started on my work week, I review my mail, answer what requires attention (I never spend more than an hour on this in the morning) and then I move on to those two things that MUST get done. And once I've finished those, the next two tasks become my priorities, and so on.

That schedule gives me a sense of accomplishment each day. And that's really important to your success. It allows me to manage my available time efficiently. It doesn't matter whether I have two hours or eight hours to spend working each day. I can build a schedule that will fit into my life and keep plugging away without feeling overwhelmed and burning out from trying to do too much. I can always do more if my schedule permits.

And what about the information glut in network marketing? I allocate some specified time, maybe two or four hours per week, to review information that's interesting to me and to spend some time on training. And I limit myself to one or two webinars. I can't read everything that comes in, so I'm pretty stringent about what I look at. I've selected two mentors that I always read and then look only at other things that I think might noteworthy.

This schedule works for me. And I recommend you try something similar, based on the amount of time you have to put into your business. Keep your tasks from being burdensome and you'll soon realize that you've accomplished quite a bit - and done it without making your life miserable and burning out before you can achieve your goals.

Building Your Foundation in Network Marketing with Patience and Persevance

You wouldn't build or buy a house with a flawed foundation, would you? So why would expect your MLM or network marketing business (or indeed any business) to produce instant results? It takes time and some money to get things started. And if your foundation isn't sound, you're not likely to get anywhere

Your foundation is YOU, not your business. So how you develop yourself is crucial in social media. First, you need to present yourself as a valuable, trustworthy person - a leader with concrete ideas and guidance. And you want to present yourself on your social media sites with a professional picture and a good (short) bio. That's really important because before I even think about discussing your business, I want to see who you are and what you're about. I want to know that you are sincere.

Second, you need to apply patience and perseverance to develop and hone your skills. And that means you need to take the time to go through the necessary training and learning. Too many people just don't seem to realize that business development takes time. Think about it. Doctors and lawyers are in school for years. Your kid took a year to walk and talk. So what's wrong with investing a few months in training to get your MLM or network marketing going the right way. Everything you go through adds to your store of knowledge and builds your ability to lead. And if you share your training/learning experience and thoughts with others, you will really establish yourself as someone with the qualities that people need when considering a business venture.

Remember that even after one day of training, you'll be ahead of every newbie. Multiply that day by a month, and you'll have passed a lot of people and developed a real foundation for your network marketing business, making it one at which you can really be successful. And you'll have plenty of insight that you can share with others. And that's what social media is about - information and the exchange of ideas.

Branding and Blogging in Social Media

OK, so it's a cute picture of Remy and Martin as kittens. But, as I wrote to my fan page today, why in the world would I want to use it as my profile picture. Network marketing is all about branding yourself as a person of value, a trustworthy colleague, and someone of interest. So it always puzzles me a lot when I see people put up pet pictures, logos, group photos and what I call squiggles and wiggles for their profile pictures. That tells me your interested in social media, but not for business development. I love cats, dogs and horses, and cute logos are neat, but I don't do business with them. I want to see who you are. I'll look at your photo albums to see your family, friends, and pets.

Yes, the 'social' part is what social media is about. It's not the place for business promo. But most of us are there for exactly that purpose. What you need to do in network marketing is to draw people to your business site. And that's where your blog comes in. Blogging is one of the fastest-growing segments of this industry. It's where the action is now. And your blog(s) can be the central hub for your business activity. People come to your blogs to see who you are in detail, to evaluate your content and to look to see if your opportunities are of interest to them. You can develop both a personal blog to put up good content or elaborate on who you are and also create a business blog to promote your activities and add your links. Start by writing simply in your blogs. Write about what you know and love and maybe explain a bit about why you're in the business you've chosen. Let your enthusiasm show. It will pay great dividends.