Hey y’all,

So, I’ve been quiet over the past few weeks…  I’ve been going through some personal stuff and I’ve also been taking some much needed unplugged time. I’ve also been working on something new that I can’t tell you about yet. It’s a bit of a different direction from this blog but don’t worry this will still be my main focus .

I’ve kinda been taking a little break from this blog and also from social media which I think has done me the world of good. I haven’t completely ignored it but I’ve just spent waay less time especially on Twitter.

…You see, I think I’d started living my life around Twitter …so I’d try and get a good photo especially to tweet, or I’d be in the middle of a fun time with my friends and I’d be thinking ‘I need to tweet this’ (how sad!?) !!

And really, I don’t want to live my live that way, I want to share things on Twitter but I don’t want to be constantly thinking of my next hilarious tweet (!).

At first I felt really really guilty and like I was missing out, but then I started to realise that if I carried on spending as much time on social media then it was REAL LIFE that I’d be missing out on. And I sure as hell don’t want to do that!

I’m also working on not feeling so guilty about taking some time off. As entrepreneurs (especially women entrepreneurs) who work from home we often feel pressure to keep going even when we really need a break, and honestly, that’s just stupid!

We keep going until we feel completely overwhelmed and we’re never going to be particularly productive if we have a million things on our mind.

“The time to relax is when you don’t have time for it.” Sydney J. Harris

So this is just a reminder to not be afraid to take a break once in a while, it’ll make you feel heaps better and you’ll be all the more productive for it.

As for me.. I’ve had my break and I’m coming back with a vengeance!!!

With passion,

Louise

“Take rest; a field that has rested gives a bountiful crop.” ~Ovid

If you choose to unfollow people who don’t follow you back on Twitter like I do, then you’re probably aware that it can be a pain in the bum to physically unfollow people directly within Twitter.

There are plenty of tools to be found that will do your unfollowing for you, but since the Twitter Gods have made most of these programs remove their ‘bulk unfollow’ buttons many tools can take too much time and effort because you have to unfollow each person separately.

Buzzom enables you to quickly unfollow people who don’t follow you. You still have to click to remove each one but it usually only takes a few seconds.

(If you want to view the video in full screen mode click the bottom right-hand corner icon.)

Let me know what you think – Have you used Buzzom before, or do you have other tools you prefer? Thanks for watching, and if you found this video useful I’d love it if you’d share it for me!

Recently I was asked this question by one of my followers on Twitter and because trying to understand how to use these sites can sometimes be overwhelming, whether you’ve been using them for years or you are a complete newbie to them, I wanted to provide a breakdown of the main three: Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn and why each one is useful and how you can leverage each one.

Key Points on Social Media:

• Social Media is now the number one online activity, beating porn and personal email to the top spot.

• Two thirds of the global internet population visit social networks.

• Online, including social media, has become the most influential source in helping consumers make purchasing decisions.

Personally I would say that I find Twitter most useful. This isn’t because it is necessarily the most useful social networking site, but because I enjoy using it and because it is the easiest to use, I probably see the most benefits from it because of the time spent on it and the relationships I have built there. With Twitter the thing you spend the most time doing is directly communicating with people. Whereas there is a lot more to Facebook and LinkedIn and therefore there is more to learn and understand to use them effectively.

I think Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn can all be super useful for driving traffic to your blog and finding people to network and connect with. They all have their advantages, so it really depends what you are looking for. I recommend using all three, but at the same time it is sometimes hard keeping up with all of them especially when things are changing so fast within them. However, once you have learned the basics, it does get a lot easier to keep up with any new features.

Twitter

Twitter describes itself as, “a service for friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?” It is used by millions of people, and thousands more are signing up every day. Twitter believes that by 2012 it will have 1 billion users.

It’s no secret that I love Twitter. Once you have taken the time to understand how it works, it is really easy to use. It is a lot more basic than Facebook or LinkedIn, but it still gives you the ability to post valuable information, interact with people, build relationships, drive traffic to your blog, and share other people’s content that you like and find relevant.

Twitter gives you the ability to quickly build up a network of people in your niche. You can easily follow people you are interested in, without waiting for a friendship to be approved by the other person, like on most sites, and it’s really good for finding leaders in your industry to follow and learn from.

Your profile section gives you the option to add one website which means that you can drive traffic to your website automatically. As most people do not have a high number of followers, when someone new follows them, they are likely to click on their website link to see what they are about.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn has over 60 million users and it also has the highest average household income per user over the top social networking sites.

I think one of the reasons people don’t bother with LinkedIn, or sign up and never finish completing their profile, is because it takes a bit of time to learn how to use it efficiently.

I haven’t been using LinkedIn properly for very long but I have quickly built up lots of connections and I am quickly starting to see it’s power. Having given it a chance, I no longer see it as the stuffy social network that I couldn’t see the value in.

Thanks to LinkedIn expert Lewis Howes I’ve learnt that LinkedIn can be incredible for connecting with high-profile people and you can quickly establish yourself as an expert in your niche with some of the features LinkedIn has built in.

Here are some of the reasons why LinkedIn can be so powerful:

• You can have a massive network of millions who can view your profile whilst only being directly connected to a few hundred.

• Groups – LinkedIn allows you to create your own groups, these are targeted connections – allows you to potentially become a thought leader of that group’s niche, build your tribe, create leads, drive traffic to your site, allows you to send a free weekly email.

• Google Love – LinkedIn usually comes up as one of the top results when we search our own name.

• Recommendations – You can get Testimonials from people who have worked with you which provides great social proof and credibility.

• Traffic – You can drive traffic to your site through links in your status updates, links on your profile and the WordPress application that you can add to your profile.

• You can build up a database, export your contacts and email them without paying for an autoresponder.

• If you spend more of your time on Twitter you can add more followers there by having your link on your profile.

• If you run events you can attract a lot of attention via LinkedIn and consequently get a lot more people to attend.

If you want to get serious about LinkedIn I recommend checking out Lewis Howes’ ebook LinkedIn Master Strategies to learn everything you need to know about taking your LinkedIn profile to the next level, helping you build your business, and achieving your professional goals. I didn’t really have a clue about how to use LinkedIn before I came across Lewis on Twitter.

LinkedIn is a powerful platform to help you grow your business and I recommend really taking the time to better understand and use it. It really is too powerful to overlook.

Facebook

If Facebook were a country it would be bigger than the USA and 3rd largest in the world. It added 200 million new users in less than a year, adds half a million users every day and is on target for ½ billion users by December 2010.

5 billion – The number of minutes spent on Facebook each day.

1 billion – The amount of content (web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, photos etc.) shared each week on Facebook.

25% of all USA internet page views are on Facebook

54% of all USA internet users are now on Facebook

These are no small numbers. Yet, millions more will join this platform in the coming months and years, and the vast majority will be seeking to use Facebook primarily for business purposes.

Here are some big reasons to use Facebook for business:

• Facebook is no longer just for college kids. Users are typically older and more mature than on some other sites, and there are more affluent and more educated white collar users.

• Finding business contacts – With so many active users, this is where your prospects, your customers, and, of course, your competitors are.

• Building relationships – By engaging in conversations with your prospects and customers, you can better adapt your marketing and business services to meet their needs.

• Raise your visibility – By posting regular status updates and relevant information, and becoming a thought leader, you can increase visibility and credibility as the expert in your niche.

• Targeting your niche – Users volunteer lots of information about themselves that you can readily access. This kind of information would previously have cost fortunes to access.

• Google Love – ’Fan Pages’ are indexed for optimal search engine positioning and viewable to the outside world – so someone doesn‘t have to be on Facebook to view them.

• Targeted ads – With Facebook Social Ads, you can test out extremely targeted advertising for very low costs.

Last week Facebook made some pretty huge announcements. 8 social plugins were released, namely: Like Button, Activity Feed, Recommendations, Like Box, Login with Faces, Facepile, Comments, & Live Stream. Facebook calls them, “the easiest way to add Facebook to your site.” Pretty soon, every site on the web will be Facebook-integrated. Every brand that uses Facebook, and every Facebook user, will be affected by these changes.

One of these new plugins – the ‘Like’ button, enables visitors to ‘Like’ a post on your blog (if you have the plugin installed). When a visitor to your blog clicks the ‘Like’ button it shows up on their Facebook profile – potentially spreading your content to all of their Facebook friends. It’s a simple yet powerful feature, and one that could prove to be really valuable to marketers.

Now I have to admit Facebook had kind of lost it’s sparkle a bit for me. Maybe because I have been on the platform for so many years, and I’ve found that it has become quite spammy via the email inbox and the constant invites to groups and applications. However, I can’t ignore the power that it has, particularly with these new features, and I’m quite excited about the massive potential this platform has.

Conclusion

I think Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn all have their place in the social media world and they each have many positives, it’s up to you to learn how to utilise them so that you can get the maximum potential out of each of them. You can drive a lot of traffic to your website by leveraging these sites and the best thing is it’s all for free! I advise you to join and leverage all three and give them all a chance. The great thing is you don’t have to spend loads of time on each of them to see the benefits, 10-20 minutes a day on each one can be enough to see the benefits of using social media for business.

What do you think – Do you find one of these sites more useful than the others? Do you spend more time on one particular social media site? Are you happy about the new changes to Facebook, or do you wish these sites didn’t change so much? Let me know by leaving a comment below.

You may be at the beginning of your Network Marketing journey and are sick of the constant criticisms from family and friends alike. You may be thinking “It’s ok, once I start earning some money they’ll understand and start believing in Network Marketing the way I do… I’ll show them”.

Well, I’m afraid I may have some bad news for ya!

A Network Marketing business will most likely always bring criticism and judgement. Later on, when you have become successful, it may come from a different place, your spouse may now support you (you’re making more money than they are – how can they not?!), but the MLM industry is one that doesn’t have a great reputation, and of course people always associate it with ‘Pyramid Schemes’ which doesn’t help much.

Things are starting to change, however, with people like Robert Kiyosaki and Donald Trump endorsing MLM’s, and in the latter’s case starting his own company. This doesn’t mean however that we will no longer face criticism. As Randy Gage has recently talked about in his blog, just because you are a success doesn’t mean that you will no longer face negativity…

“I earn millions of dollars in the business, destroyed my alarm clock, and have a dream lifestyle. And still have people that look down on me when I approach them because they think MLM isn’t a “real” business. I even get some snarky comments or ridicule.” Randy Gage

My advice to you therefore, is to accept NOW that you will ALWAYS be judged as a Network Marketer, however successful you are, no matter how much money you make. You need to embrace this but DO NOT let it get you down. I know from personal experience that it can be tough, especially when you are just starting out, when your partner doesn’t support you and doesn’t have the same vision you do.

Luckily my Mum is in the same business so I have her to talk to, but if you don’t have someone, I’d recommend finding other people in the industry, in forums for example, to talk to so you can get the support you need. If you don’t have anyone supporting you , then all of the ridicule will bring you down and you are more likely to quit.

That’s what I love so much about building a business on the internet – there are always people around to support and encourage you and it’s easy to find others who are going through the same things you are.

As long as you interact with people on social media sites such as Twitter, then you will eventually have people supporting you and celebrating your accomplishments with you without you even asking them to, and that is a lovely thing.

What do you think…. Do you think Network Marketers will always face criticism? Is there anything we can do about it?

If you’ve been trying to master online marketing so you can generate leads, you’ve probably run into a few problems. Is “information overload” one of them….?

Trying to learn everything there is to know about internet marketing all at once can be incredibly overwhelming. There is constantly new information coming out in the internet marketing world, and particularly when you are new to the industry, it is a constant battle trying not only to keep up with it, but also to sort out the hype from the truly useful stuff. It’s easy to feel overwhelmed with TOO much information.

It’s not only newbies that feel this way though – Mike Dillard recently said:

“Over the past year or so, I’ve been getting overwhelmed by all of the new, (and awesome), information coming out in the internet marketing world… Courses on PPC, Video, CPA, Facebook ads, Gmail ads… The list of stuff to learn just keeps getting bigger and BIGGER…”

And staying stuck feeling like this only leads to more confusion, lack of productivity, and NO results.

If you could just skip all the fluff and go straight to the stuff that actually works, imagine what that could do for your business.

How would you like to have someone go out and gather ONLY the best marketing tactics that are proven to work, and pass them on to you in a simple newsletter?

Well, this is exactly what Mike Dillard has done…

Mike is an absolute genius. He is one of the most successful Internet marketers today, making over $10 million In the last 24 months alone!  If there’s one person I would recommend you follow and listen to in this industry it is Mike.

He’s brought together the most successful and highest earning Internet marketers, and compiled together all of their best marketing strategies, what’s actually working for them RIGHT NOW, and packaged it up in a nice simple newsletter for us, to help simplify and cut through all the crazyness out there.

Last night I found out that for all of this game-changing information, Mike is only going to be charging 10 dollars!!!! When I first heard this I was totally shocked and incredibly excited. This makes it a product that is accessible to almost everybody in the industry who needs it (let’s be honest, we all do), including those who are new to the industry and can’t necessarily afford to spend thousands of dollars buying all sorts of programs to see what works and what doesn‘t. I only wish this had been around when I first started marketing online.

Another amazing thing about this, is the fantastic way this product is going to be delivered to us. The newsletter will be delivered via a USB in the mail! We’ll get a little USB Stick sent to us with all of this incredible cutting-edge information on it through the mail! How cool is that?!

I can’t wait for Monday and I know I’ll be sitting by the computer waiting to hit ‘buy’ as soon as it is launched (and I don’t buy a lot of stuff, but I just think this is going to help us all so much).

“What’s Working Now” will be launched on Monday 29th March (next Monday!)

Click HERE now to get access to Mike’s entire newsletter for only $10 when he launches it on Monday.

Please feel free to ask me any questions you have…

Hope you have a great weekend!

Follow me on Twitter @LouiseCollier

Follow me on Twitter @LouiseCollier

Twitter is great for attracting prospects to you, but if you’re still struggling to generate leads you can find out how to ATTRACT an ENDLESS stream of new distributors and customers TO YOU  in this free 7 DAY VIDEO BOOT CAMP

“I am Me. In all the world, there is no one else exactly like me. Everything that comes out of me is authentically mine, because I alone chose it — I own everything about me: my body, my feelings, my mouth, my voice, all my actions, whether they be to others or myself. I own my fantasies, my dreams, my hopes, my fears. I own my triumphs and successes, all my failures and mistakes.

Because I own all of me, I can become intimately acquainted with me. By so doing, I can love me and be friendly with all my parts. I know there are aspects about myself that puzzle me, and other aspects that I do not know — but as long as I am friendly and loving to myself, I can courageously and hopefully look for solutions to the puzzles and ways to find out more about me.

However I look and sound, whatever I say and do, and whatever I think and feel at a given moment in time is authentically me. If later some parts of how I looked, sounded, thought, and felt turn out to be unfitting, I can discard that which is unfitting, keep the rest, and invent something new for that which I discarded. I can see, hear, feel, think, say, and do. I have the tools to survive, to be close to others, to be productive, and to make sense and order out of the world of people and things outside of me.

I own me, and therefore, I can engineer me. I am me, and I am Okay.”

~Virginia Satir quotes (American Psychologist and Educator, 1916-1988)

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“A well-known speaker started off his seminar by holding up a $ 500 note. In the room of 200, he asked, “Who would like this 500 note?” Hands started going up. He said, “I am going to give this note to one of you but first let me do this”. He proceeded to crumple the note up. He then asked, “Who still wants it?” Still the hands were up in the air. “Well,” he replied, “What if I do this?” And he dropped it on the ground and started to grind it into the floor with his shoe.

He picked it up, now all crumpled and dirty. “Now who still wants it?” Still the hands went into the air.

“My friends, you have all learned a very valuable lesson. No matter what I did to the money, you still wanted it because it did not decrease in value. It was still worth $500. Many times in our lives, we are dropped, crumpled, and ground into the dirt by the decisions we make, by the people around us and the circumstances that come our way. We feel as though we are worthless.

But no matter what has happened or what will happen, you will never lose your value. You are special. Don’t ever forget it! Never let yesterday’s disappointments overshadow tomorrow’s dreams!

“Value has a value only if its value is valued by you!””