Twitter really is changing people’s lives. However, not many people actually tell you how it’s changed their life.

There is one exception – a lady named Lynn Serafinn recently posted an article telling exactly how it’s changed her life.

She launched a book last year and sold it on Amazon. Then, a lot of people she had met on Twitter, helped her promote the book, and tweets and RTs (retweets) went viral.

Someone from Twitter contacted her to be on a radio show, and all sorts of other things happened which helped promote Lynn and her book even more.

You can read the rest of Lynn’s article by clicking here:

I just came an amazing article on personal branding. The author of the post, Lisa Barone, describes what branding really means by looking at how her belly dancing instructor “brands herself”.

I must say, I hadn’t really looked at branding like this before. Thinking back to when I learnt to scuba dive, my instructor has branded herself.

Being yourself, that lovely human being that you are
Have you ever wondered how to brand yourself, when there’s so many others blogging and wanting attention and branding themselves. There are all these “leaders” on the internet who’ve branded themselves. People like Ann Sieg, Mike Dillard, Mike Klingler and lots of other network marketers we see as leaders.

Sometimes, it seems like they’ve done it all, so why should you bother? Well, here’s why I think you should bother – because there’s no-one else like YOU, and only you can be you!

Like my scuba diving instructor, she loved diving so much, and she wanted all her students to be good divers so they could enjoy themselves.

She was always there when I needed her. Like one night when I went on my first night dive, and my buddy and I got lost (because it was so dark), she found us while making sure everyone else stayed with her as well.

Your Niche could be belly dancing or scuba diving or just YOU
My scuba diving instructor doesn’t teach people to swim, even though they need to be able to swim before they can learn to dive. She limits herself to teaching people how to dive underwater because that’s what she knows and loves best.

You can’t be known for everything, so stick to what you know and love. Or, stick to something you really want to know and love.

Create your Persona
My scuba diving instructor is pretty funny and sometimes scary underwater. One time there were about 8 of us diving together and we came across this rather large stingray. It was not long after Steve Irwin had passed away, and we all kept our distance, even though we were in awe of this magnificent creature.

Our diving instructor went pretty close to it, and afterwards she told me she was going to get really close, but she thought we might all freak out.

Anyway, sometimes on the internet, it’s not easy to just be yourself, so as Lisa says in her article, it would be easier to create a persona that mixes who you are and who you want to be. That way you may find it easier to magnify the personality traits needed to attract the right people.

As Lisa says:

We fall in love with those who are brave enough to do what we think we can’t. As long as you’re basing your character off who you really are, you’ll be able to keep it authentic and still look great naked.

Finding Your Voice
My scuba diving instructor talks and laughs with all her students, just like she’s one of them. She never looks down on anyone even when we do something really stupid underwater like getting caught in some fishing line and not being able to get out. She just helps you out, and we get on with having fun on our dive.

So, it’s all about being genuine and showing people that you are one of them. Sometimes we try to teach people things and sound more authoritative thinking our audience will trust us more. Instead of that, it can alienate you from the people you’re trying to connect with.

Another tip in the article is to:

Make your brand accessible

My scuba diving instructor creates a community around herself. She has social barbecues and social dives, and makes herself available. People can go down to her shop and talk to her whenever they want.

When you make your brand accessible, you become part of your community. If you answer questions and praise those who are doing well.

Lisa says

Your personal brand is you. It’s who you are, what you believe, and what you want to put out there to others.

You can read Lisa’s article here at Copy Blogger

Building an MLM business on the Internet is all about leverage. Leveraging your time and your money, so if you can automate something without losing your identity, this is a good thing.

Be Wary of Scheduling in Advance
HootSuite.com is a good tool for scheduling posts in advance. However, please use it carefully, and don’t use it to send continual advertisements. If you do that, you’ll turn off your followers, and they will stop following you. Besides, your business will not grow if you advertise all the time.

Send Useful Stuff to your Followers
The idea of Twitter is to send things to your followers that they can use to grow their business. Or, send them information that will help them decide on what kind of business they want (if they’re looking for a business).

Using HootSuite

1. Sign up for a Free account at HootSuite.com
2. While you’re logged into HootSuite, click on the Settings button (it’s at the bottom left corner of your dashboard page). You’re looking for buttons that are similar to those in the figure below:
   
   Figure 1. HootSuite Buttons
3. Fill out your details for Account settings, then click on the Social Networks Tab, and click on Type in your Twitter username and password and click on the “Submit” button.
4. Now, you’re ready to Schedule a few Tweets, so here’s how to do that. Go up towards the top of your dashboard screen, where it says “Schedule” – it looks like Figure 2. below and click on “Send Later”:
   
   Figure 2. Send Later button
5. Click on the calendar (see Figure 3. below)
   Figure 3. Send Later Calendar
6. From the calendar, Choose a date and time when you want your tweet sent. In the empty box above where it says Send type your tweet, and click on the Schedule button.

That’s it! Now your tweet will go out on the day and at the time you scheduled it.

Suggestions for Scheduled Tweets

• Inspirational Quotes that you like
• Share other people’s high quality content that’s relevant to your prospect’s needs
• Tweet about events that are coming up in the future
• Highlight your downline’s achievements
• Share content that makes you laugh
• Tweet about products just arriving or just arrived (not too much though).

Have fun with your twittering..

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Once you’ve followed just a few people for about a week, and noticed what they are tweeting about, then it’s time to find some more tweeters. Take things slowly at first, if you’re new to this. Learn the basics, then ramp things up.

When you start following people, most of them will follow you, so the best way to get followers, is to Follow people yourself.

An easy way to find followers, is to Follow another Tweeters’ followers. Here’s how to do that.

1. Look at the Image below – it is Mari Smith’s Twitter page (find it at www.twitter.com/marismith ) On the right hand side under her Bio, you can see there are 60,693 people that she is Following. And, she has 62,257 followers.
2. Once your logged in to Twitter, go to Mari Smith’s twitter page and Click where it says “followers”.
3. Now you will see a list of all of Mari Smith’s followers. To the right of each follower you will see 3 buttons, hold your mouse over the first button, which will look similar to this:
4. Now, just click on that button – the one that says “Follow…… ” when you hold your mouse over it. Now you’re following that person.
5. Follow a few people on the page if you like the “sound” of them (you can always unfollow them if you don’t like them).

Image showing where to see Followers on a Twitter page

If you don’t have a lot of time to follow people like this, Contact me here and I can offer you a service which will make this quicker for you.

Now that you have Twitter set up the next thing to do, is follow just a few people, to see how they use Twitter.

Take it slowly and see what these people tweet about over the next week or so. There’s no rush, just get a “feel” for what others do before you rush and follow a lot of people.

Below are a few people I recommend following, so you can see how they use Twitter.

People Worth Following On Twitter

• Marie Smith (Social Marketing Celebrity)
  http://twitter.com/marismith
• Julieanne van Zyl (me:-)http://twitter.com/julieannevanzyl
• Chris Knight (CEO of www.EzineArticles.com)
  http://twitter.com/ChrisKnight
• Paul Colligan (Internet Marketing Trainer) http://twitter.com/colligan
• Ann Sieg (Network Marketer & Founder of Renegade Attraction Marketing ) http://twitter.com/ann_sieg
• Mike Klingler (Network Marketer & Founder Marketing Merge training) http://twitter.com/MikeKlingler

You might be wondering how to use Twitter for your MLM business, and I’ve come across 80 different and very helpful suggestions. Twitter is a great way to find new prospects, build relationships with prospects and customers, and market a business in a cost effective manner.

An article on Small Business Trends blog suggests 80 ways a small business owner can use Twitter to build and market their business.

I’ll copy a few of these suggestions here, and leave you to look up and print out the rest here.

“Build Credibility

• Answer common customer questions
• Share insight and opinion
• Pass on interesting links/posts
• Tweet links showing your company featured on other Web sites or mainstream media
• and more……

Market Your Business

• Talk about company culture and values.
• Let people know the events your company will be attending this year.
• Offer discounts, coupons or special offers to customers who find you via social media.
• and more….

Grow Ears

• Track conversations about your brand for online reputation management
• Track your most important keywords and subscribe to an RSS feed.
• Listen in on conversations about your general industry.
• and lots more….

Grow your Online Network

• Connect more personally with contacts from other social networks
• Use relationship building instead of cold calls and cheesy flyers
• Use Twellow or Listorious to find people with common interests.
• and more…..

Grow your Offline Network

• Hold tweetups and introduce your community members in real life.
• Find new customers by using the Advanced search to track down local conversations.
• Use Twitter Search to track when potential customers mention a competitor …. and then reach out to them.
• and more…..

Have Fun

• Share content that makes you laugh
• Find content that inspires and motivates you
• Learn new things, related to your industry or not.
• Make friendships, not just professional relationships.
• and more….”

There are lots and lots of ideas for using Twitter to promote your business. However, don’t be in a rush to “judge” Twitter or any other social media communities.  It takes time and patience to get this going.

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After Setting up Twitter here’s the next thing to do before getting followers.

Set up an Automatic Reply so people who follow you are sent a message from you immediately they follow. The best place I know of to do that is Social Oomph

1. Go over to Social Oomph, and sign up for your free account.
2. Add Twitter to your Social Oomph account Once you’ve logged into Social Oomph, go to the menu on the left, and select, Social Accounts, Add New Account, Add Twitter (see the diagram below if you’re not sure where to find those things on the menu).

   
   Figure 1. Add Twitter Account to Social Oomph

3. From the menu, select Social Accounts, then Manage Accounts, then select Edit. You will see a screen similar to Figure 2 below, where you can enter your message.

   Make sure and Press the SAVE button after check the 2 boxes indicated in Figure 2 and Adding your message. See Figure 2. below to see what to do.
   
   
   Figure 2: Set up Automatic Reply for When people Follow you

4. NOTE: Make sure your message is friendly and doesn’t advertise your products or services. This message should be a greeting to new followers, otherwise, they may just un-follow you immediately. The best message to write is a greeting, then a question that’s likely to get a response from your new follower

It won’t be long before you can start finding followers. In my next post, I’ll give you some ideas for where to find followers.

Following on from the last Tutorial about adding a Twitter background picture now it’s time to fill out all your other details.

Of course, you could’ve filled out these details before adding your pictures, it doesn’t matter which order you complete your Twitter settings.

So… log into Twitter, and go to “Settings” on the menu.

Make sure and put the URL to your blog or Facebook page, because this will eventually create a powerful “backlink” back to your blog or Facebook page.

Check the little box next to where it says “Enable geotagging” if you want people near where you live to find you.

NOTE: ONLY check the box next to where it says “Protect my tweets” IF you want your tweets kept completely private and only seen by your followers.

If you want your tweets found on the internet, leave that box UNchecked.

Make sure you click the “Save” button when you’re finished filling out the page.

Now, you are all set up and almost ready to tweet, then find some followers. Next tutorial, I’ll show you how to send an automatic message to people who follow you on your Twitter account.

In the last Twitter tutorial I showed you how to set up your picture – the one that people see everytime you tweet. So… people will see all these little faces, something like the picture below:

Next step is to add a great background picture to your page. A lot of pages have customized backgrounds. And… there’s a real quick of getting a nice picture that takes up the whole background, if you just want to get started quickly. You can always get a customized background later on, with your name and other things written on it. Best thing to do first though, is to get started.

So…. here’s one easy way. Find yourself a large picture of something you really like – you’ve probably already got one on your computer or on your digital camera.

1. Use your favorite Picture editing tool to make sure the picture is about (doesn’t have to be exact) 1,747 pixels in width and about 724 pixels in height.
2. Change your picture (image) to a “gif” format, and when you do that reduce the resolution of the picture. This will make it smaller so that Twitter will upload it.
3. Log into Twitter and go to “Settings” (from the menu) then select “Design” from the sub-menu.
4. Scroll right down and click on the button that says “Change Background Image”
5. Click on the “Browse” button (like you did when adding your picture in the last lesson), then from your computer files, select the picture that you just modified.
6. Click on “Save Changes” (don’t select tile background)
7. Now you should have your picture covering the whole background of your page, similar to the one on Julieanne van Zyl Twitter page. See picture of the page below…

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.