Following on from my first Twitter Tutorial this next tutorial shows you how to add your picture.

(I know these tutorial are basic, however the basics are often overlooked. So… if you’re new to Twitter please follow along and you’ll be really pleased).

Once you have your Twitter account, the first thing to do is add a picture of yourself. People see this picture when you tweet, so it’s really important to have the picture of yourself, preferably with a smiling happy face:-)

1. When logged into your Twitter account, look up at the top right hand corner and click where it says “settings”. See the diagram below to show you where to select settings.

2. To add your nice face picture on Twitter, click where it says “Picture” (on the menu down a bit from the top of the page), then click the button.

3. After clicking on the Browse button, a box pops up listing the files on your computer. (if you don’t have a nice pic of yourself ask someone with a digital camera to take one, and copy it over to your computer) From the pop up box, select your picture and click the “open” button. These instructions are for a PC, the Mac is slightly different.

Look at the picture below to see a similar view of what your screen will look like.

After selecting your picture, click on the Save button. If the picture is too large, you’ll require some photo editing software to make it smaller.

Next tutorial – how to easily get a nice background picture for your twitter page.

Just in case you don’t know how to sign up for Twitter, go to http://twitter.com and click on that big green button that says Sign up now – the button that looks like this:

After clicking that big button to sign up, you’ll see a form to fill out, asking for your full name, username, password and email.

Use Your Name for Your First Twitter Account
I strongly recommend using your name – First name and last name (all one word with no spaces) as a Username on your first account.

If your name is taken, then try putting the initial of your middle name in there. It’s better Not to include numbers or underscore characters in your username.

Set up your Page before Following Other Twitterers
After saving your details, you’ll come to a web page similar to the one below:

I suggest going to the next step – click on the “next step friends” button and skip the next step also – click on “Next step others” button and “Next step you’re done” button.

Before following anyone, set up your Twitter page. I’ll show you how to do this in my next Twitter tutorial.

In the meantime Have fun!

So many people sign up for Twitter then abandon their account, and it’s such a shame.

I’m going to run a series of posts with tips for Network Marketers to use Twitter.

I’ll be covering the following topics, and please tell me if there are any others you would like covered:

1) What to put on your Twitter page, including a really easy way to get a nice picture for the background.

2) How to send direct messages automatically to followers (and what to send).

3) Where and how to find new followers.

4) What to use as a name for your page – your own name of course, so you can brand yourself.

5) Whether to have more than one twitter account.

6) Where to find content to post on Twitter.

7) How to automate some of the tasks on Twitter.

Mari Smith knows a lot about Facebook and how to use it, she’s a consultant in Social Media and in “Social Networking for Fun and Profit. She’s done a wonderful job of explaining how to add a custom landing tab to your Facebook fan page, and gives away other tips and details for using Facebook pages in this post.

So, if you want a little more advanced instruction with graphical details, here’s where to look: Mari Smith Facebook Modifications

The Online Media daily reports on some Forrester research of social computing prediction for 2010. Research found that “marketers will need to start justifying social marketing plans with business cases, objectives and metrics” reports the ONLINE Media Daily on Tuesday Dec 22, 2009. 2010 is going to be the year when Social Marketing gets really serious.

Another recent report from MarketingSherpa also believes that social marketing will blossom a lot more next year. Their report ranked “an increase in Website traffic” as the number 1 objective, with “improving brand or product reputation” as number 5 objective. You can read more on these 2 reports here

It will be interesting to see if Network marketers start getting more serious about social marketing. For network marketers to have success with this kind of marketing, you really need to have an understanding of building relationships online and also some patience in attracting people to business rather than “selling” to people in the more traditional way.

So…. what’s your opinion on the way Social Marketing will be used for Network Marketing in 2010?

Merry Christmas to everyone who sees this post!

I wish you a Safe, FUN and Happy Holiday!

We are spending Christmas down in a small city called Port Pirie in South Australia this year, where my parents live. It’s very warm (40 degrees C) today, and luckily it will cool down by Christmas day!

Here in Australia, we don’t have white Christmases, except on the beach if the sand is white.

What are you doing for the Chrissy holidays?

Bye for now, Julieanne and John van Zyl

Seth Godin is giving away a book called “What Matters Now”. It’s a compilation of seventy different authors who’ve put their dominant thoughts on a particular subject onto one page.

They’ve spoken about things like Generosity, Fear, Facts, Dignity, Meaning, Ease, Connected and many more…

Ease is my favorite – Elizabeth Gilbert talks about Easing up, pumping the brakes and stepping back, take a walk. It’s something I should do a lot more:-)

Which chapter is your favorite?

Did you see the new Facebook privacy changes? According to an article on Computerworld today, these will make a difference in what kind of information gets publicly shared on Google.

There’s a lot of controversy around this, because a lot of people originally joined Facebook because of its privacy aspects. People could safely use Facebook among their friends without their discussions being “spread out” to the wider internet community.

Facebook says that their new settings are going to simplify the way privacy is set up. With these new changes, all users have to go through a privacy configuration wizard to set their preferences.

What happens to your information on Facebook depends on whether you’ve already selected your own privacy settings and whether or not you now go with Facebook’s default settings. It’s a good idea to have a look at your privacy settings and to make a decision whether or not you want your status messages and discussions to be public.

You can read the article in Computerworld here

No matter what anyone says, these are VERY interesting times!! Love to hear your opinion on this!

Most network marketing companies give (or “hire out”) to their distributors a marketing website, to show prospects the business, and to allow others to sign up as distributors and to purchase the products as customers. And, these websites will be the same for each distributor, except for an extra name or number on the end of the URL. For example, our company gives us this site: vanzyl.vemma.com The “vanzyl” at the beginning is the only thing that makes it different from everyone else’s site.

If I put the assigned address (URL) on my business card, signature at the end of email messages, on Social Network sites, give it to people or advertise elsewhere, it has the following disadvantages:

1. It looks unprofessional because it’s not a top level domain name ( www.vemma.com is a top level domain )
2. When people want to look at my website, they might start typing in part of the URL and leave off the “vanzyl”. That means they will go to the company site. If they sign up from the company site, the company won’t know who they meant to sign up with, and will allocate them to one of the members.
3. Instead of typing in “vanzyl”, they could type in any other name and sign up with another person (this happens numerous times).
4. That URL doesn’t look good when advertising on a car or a poster.

So, the best and easy thing to do is to get a domain name. Here’s some recommendations when selecting a name:

1. Use a different name from you company name in the URL because most companies don’t allow it.
2. Choose as short a name as possible.
3. Try to get a name that has a well searched keyword in it.
4. Try to get a name that will be remembered easily.
5. Try to get a name that represents the products or the business opportunity in some way.
6. If you’re wanting to brand yourself, which is a great idea, use your own name in the URL, along with some other meaningful keyword

Here’s an example of a name we chose – if you’re not sure what a domain name does, click on this one, and you’ll see that it “re-directs” to our company website (for the Verve Energy drink product)

www.energydrinkhealthy.com/

The best place I know of, to purchase a domain name, is www.godaddy.com

At GoDaddy, be careful to avoid all the advertising. It’s not necessary to purchase anything else when buying the domain name. At this time, new domain names only cost $9.99 a year.

Have you thought about using the internet to find people local to you, who are interested in joining your business?

And… I’m not talking about going down the street talking to everyone you meet:-)

I’m talking about using the Search engines and Social marketing to attract people to you that are interested. There may be people looking to start a home based business, who live in your town or city. And… they may be looking for someone who lives nearby to help them get started.

I reckon it would be a lot more fun to help a group of people who live nearby. You would be able to meet up every now and again, and show them how to do exactly what you’re doing to get leads online.

If you’re interested in doing some local marketing, have a look at this f’ree webinar (below)

Free Webinar for Local Businesses Only!

Just put your email in the box below and click “Free Instant Access” 

Email

 You will immediately get taken to a 20 minute VIP video that will show you how to use the Internet and free social media to explode your profits now!