Facebook Fan Page Marketing Lesson #4

re-posting lesson #4 because it dissapeared! The wonders of modern
technology eh?

Facebook has many widgets and applications available for your fan/like page.

One interesting application is FBML. FBML is a special language that your
web designer can use to make your page stand out from all of the generic,
standard pages.

Just like you can personalize a website, you can now personalize your fan
page. At this time, there is no editor for FBML like there is for building
an HTML website.  If you do not know FBML, you will need to either take the
time to learn it or hire someone to do it for you.

Hire someone???

It won't be expensive. You can locate a pro on eLance or Rent-A-Coder to do
it quickly for less than $50. They can set up your basic template ready for
you to put in your content.

Need help finding someone to do it? Just email roxanne@fortunenow.com for
help.

You want to have a page customized to your business. You want to stand out
from the crowd.

Here is your chance to put your personality in front of your best prospects
- and you can control your look.

Facebook Fan Page Marketing Lesson #4

re-posting lesson #4 because it dissapeared! The wonders of modern
technology eh?

Facebook has many widgets and applications available for your fan/like page.

One interesting application is FBML. FBML is a special language that your
web designer can use to make your page stand out from all of the generic,
standard pages.

Just like you can personalize a website, you can now personalize your fan
page. At this time, there is no editor for FBML like there is for building
an HTML website.  If you do not know FBML, you will need to either take the
time to learn it or hire someone to do it for you.

Hire someone???

It won't be expensive. You can locate a pro on eLance or Rent-A-Coder to do
it quickly for less than $50. They can set up your basic template ready for
you to put in your content.

Need help finding someone to do it? Just email roxanne@fortunenow.com for
help.

You want to have a page customized to your business. You want to stand out
from the crowd.

Here is your chance to put your personality in front of your best prospects
- and you can control your look.

Facebook Fan Page Marketing Lesson #10

Interact with your fan base. A KEY, KEY POINT!!

This is one of the most important reasons to have a facebook page.
People do business with, buy from and join in business, people they know,
like and trust.  Use your business page to build that know, like and trust.

Set aside a few minutes each day to go in and reply to your fans.
Even clicking the "like" link under their comment goes a long way.
Answer their questions.  Let them know that you are a real person and you
are helpful.

Interaction with your fan base will be a huge factor in the difference
between success and failure on facebook.  I've seen many businesses crash
and burn on facebook because they forget to interact with EVERYONE who
comments on their page...good or bad.  If someone has a complaint, address
it right away.  If someone has praise, thank them right away.

This is the final lesson in the Facebook Fan Page Marketing series.

If you are adopting a social media strategy you need to be consistent.
devote a small amount of time each day towards posting interesting
content and replying and interacting with your audience.

For more pointers join our FREE Webinar this Saturday morning at 10am
Pacific Register here, now http://bit.ly/eO0ISz Space is limited!

Facebook Fan Page Marketing Lesson #10

Interact with your fan base. A KEY, KEY POINT!!

This is one of the most important reasons to have a facebook page.
People do business with, buy from and join in business, people they know,
like and trust.  Use your business page to build that know, like and trust.

Set aside a few minutes each day to go in and reply to your fans.
Even clicking the "like" link under their comment goes a long way.
Answer their questions.  Let them know that you are a real person and you
are helpful.

Interaction with your fan base will be a huge factor in the difference
between success and failure on facebook.  I've seen many businesses crash
and burn on facebook because they forget to interact with EVERYONE who
comments on their page...good or bad.  If someone has a complaint, address
it right away.  If someone has praise, thank them right away.

This is the final lesson in the Facebook Fan Page Marketing series.

If you are adopting a social media strategy you need to be consistent.
devote a small amount of time each day towards posting interesting
content and replying and interacting with your audience.

For more pointers join our FREE Webinar this Saturday morning at 10am
Pacific Register here, now http://bit.ly/eO0ISz Space is limited!

Facebook Fan Page Marketing Lesson #9

Integrate content into your facebook page.  There are many apps that allow
you to automatically update your facebook page when you post on your other
sites (blogs, twitter, etc...)  Using these apps is a great way to
automatically stream content into your page.

Don't forget, however, that you will still have to visit your page.
A huge mistake many people make is to set these things up and forget them.
Then, when one of their fans comments or asks a question, they never receive
a reply.  That's not a good policy.  People will feel neglected and go
elsewhere to get their questions answered.

I use www.hootsuite.com even the basic free service is soo easy to
use. I f you have even more platforms the upgrade is well worth it.

Facebook Fan Page Marketing Lesson #10 will be on its way shortly.

Facebook Fan Page Marketing Lesson #9

Integrate content into your facebook page.  There are many apps that allow
you to automatically update your facebook page when you post on your other
sites (blogs, twitter, etc...)  Using these apps is a great way to
automatically stream content into your page.

Don't forget, however, that you will still have to visit your page.
A huge mistake many people make is to set these things up and forget them.
Then, when one of their fans comments or asks a question, they never receive
a reply.  That's not a good policy.  People will feel neglected and go
elsewhere to get their questions answered.

I use www.hootsuite.com even the basic free service is soo easy to
use. I f you have even more platforms the upgrade is well worth it.

Facebook Fan Page Marketing Lesson #10 will be on its way shortly.

Facebook Fan Page Marketing Lesson #8

Contests

A contest on facebook is a great way to get more fans for your page.
The more fans you have, the more people you can get your message in front
of.

Think of a great prize you can give people who enter your contest.
It can be something like an electronic item, a package of your product or
service or anything of value.  Make sure that the people who are already
your fans as well as those who will see the contest and may become your fans
will really love this prize.

Make the prize consistent with the entry.  For example, if you are asking
people to submit a video, audio or essay in exchange for a free report,
chances are not many people will enter your contest.
Be careful not to make it too easy to enter...remember...you are building a
list of qualified people, not just people.  Think of something that will
make your contest entrants qualified.  For example...have them make a video,
audio or essay telling you what they would do if money were not an issue
(their why) in exchange for $200 worth of your product or service.  This way
you get people who already have a strong why flooding into your contest.

There are many different apps you can use to run a contest on facebook.
Unfortunately, unless you spend $10,000/mo in advertising on facebook, you
can not make "liking" your page a condition of entry.
You can, however, capture email addresses and send follow up messages
suggesting they like your page.

So here we go add a comment to this post on my Facebook page or even
just like it and I'll give you a FREE FIX Tea AND I'll throw a ticket
in the draw for next months iPad. Same if you retweet it!!!

Facebook Fan Page Marketing Lesson #9 will be on its way shortly.

Facebook Fan Page Marketing Lesson #8

Contests

A contest on facebook is a great way to get more fans for your page.
The more fans you have, the more people you can get your message in front
of.

Think of a great prize you can give people who enter your contest.
It can be something like an electronic item, a package of your product or
service or anything of value.  Make sure that the people who are already
your fans as well as those who will see the contest and may become your fans
will really love this prize.

Make the prize consistent with the entry.  For example, if you are asking
people to submit a video, audio or essay in exchange for a free report,
chances are not many people will enter your contest.
Be careful not to make it too easy to enter...remember...you are building a
list of qualified people, not just people.  Think of something that will
make your contest entrants qualified.  For example...have them make a video,
audio or essay telling you what they would do if money were not an issue
(their why) in exchange for $200 worth of your product or service.  This way
you get people who already have a strong why flooding into your contest.

There are many different apps you can use to run a contest on facebook.
Unfortunately, unless you spend $10,000/mo in advertising on facebook, you
can not make "liking" your page a condition of entry.
You can, however, capture email addresses and send follow up messages
suggesting they like your page.

So here we go add a comment to this post on my Facebook page or even
just like it and I'll give you a FREE FIX Tea AND I'll throw a ticket
in the draw for next months iPad. Same if you retweet it!!!

Facebook Fan Page Marketing Lesson #9 will be on its way shortly.

Facebook Fan Page Marketing Lesson #7

Facebook Ads Part 3.

When running a Facebook ad, consider creating a tab within your Facebook
page using FBML. Link to this tab instead of linking to an external website.

* Your cost per click tends to be lower when directing people to a page
within Facebook.

Not sure if this will always be the case and it's not a published fact. It's
just an observation from people who have done extensive ad testing on
Facebook.

Use this special tab page that you create of make some type of special offer
to get a high conversion rate on your leads. Maybe offer a book, a report, a
sample, a review ... something of interest to the visitor.

Facebook Fan Page Marketing Lesson #8 will be on its way shortly.

Facebook Fan Page Marketing Lesson #7

Facebook Ads Part 3.

When running a Facebook ad, consider creating a tab within your Facebook
page using FBML. Link to this tab instead of linking to an external website.

* Your cost per click tends to be lower when directing people to a page
within Facebook.

Not sure if this will always be the case and it's not a published fact. It's
just an observation from people who have done extensive ad testing on
Facebook.

Use this special tab page that you create of make some type of special offer
to get a high conversion rate on your leads. Maybe offer a book, a report, a
sample, a review ... something of interest to the visitor.

Facebook Fan Page Marketing Lesson #8 will be on its way shortly.

Facebook Fan Page Marketing Lesson #6

Facebook Ads Part 2.

As this writing, all Facebook ads must have an image.

Before you choose your image, look at other ads that are running.
See what types of images would catch the eye of your target market.

You do not have to use a photo.

==> This image can be created using text. This will allow you more words in
your ad.

However, the words in your image are not "search engine friendly"
as they show up as an image.

Think of your image as your "headline" for one important reason:

If the Facebook user doesn't notice your image - they won't ever click on
your ad. Make your image and eye-grabber.

Ads are limited to 25 characters in the title and 135 characters plus an
image for the body.

Facebook Fan Page Marketing Lesson #7 will be on its way shortly.

Facebook Fan Page Marketing Lesson #6

Facebook Ads Part 2.

As this writing, all Facebook ads must have an image.

Before you choose your image, look at other ads that are running.
See what types of images would catch the eye of your target market.

You do not have to use a photo.

==> This image can be created using text. This will allow you more words in
your ad.

However, the words in your image are not "search engine friendly"
as they show up as an image.

Think of your image as your "headline" for one important reason:

If the Facebook user doesn't notice your image - they won't ever click on
your ad. Make your image and eye-grabber.

Ads are limited to 25 characters in the title and 135 characters plus an
image for the body.

Facebook Fan Page Marketing Lesson #7 will be on its way shortly.

Facebook Fan Page Marketing Lesson #5

Facebook Ads Part 1.

There is one major difference at this time between Google ads and Facebook
ads.

Facebook ads are reviewed by an actual person. Be cautious when writing your
ads. Some of the rules are:

   *  No Using ALL CAPS
   *  No abbreviations or symbols
   *  No false or misleading claims
   *  No hype
   *  No incorrect spelling, grammar or slang
   *  No incomplete thoughts
   *  No use of irrelevant images
   *  No offensive ads

For example, if you say "free" in your ad, but the offer you link to is
"free plus shipping", that is misleading and will most likely either not get
approved or get removed if/when someone reports it.

Facebook allows users to remove ads and then tell Facebook why they don't
like the ad. If someone marks your ad offensive, repetitive, or any of the
things listed above, it will be removed.

Good ad copy, just like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. Know your
audience and know what they want.

Facebook Fan Page Marketing Lesson #6 will be on its way shortly.

Thanks again to Tom "Big Al" Schreiter for this series of lessons. For
more of his stuff check out http://bit.ly/gdATFi

Facebook Fan Page Marketing Lesson #5

Facebook Ads Part 1.

There is one major difference at this time between Google ads and Facebook
ads.

Facebook ads are reviewed by an actual person. Be cautious when writing your
ads. Some of the rules are:

   *  No Using ALL CAPS
   *  No abbreviations or symbols
   *  No false or misleading claims
   *  No hype
   *  No incorrect spelling, grammar or slang
   *  No incomplete thoughts
   *  No use of irrelevant images
   *  No offensive ads

For example, if you say "free" in your ad, but the offer you link to is
"free plus shipping", that is misleading and will most likely either not get
approved or get removed if/when someone reports it.

Facebook allows users to remove ads and then tell Facebook why they don't
like the ad. If someone marks your ad offensive, repetitive, or any of the
things listed above, it will be removed.

Good ad copy, just like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. Know your
audience and know what they want.

Facebook Fan Page Marketing Lesson #6 will be on its way shortly.

Thanks again to Tom "Big Al" Schreiter for this series of lessons. For
more of his stuff check out http://bit.ly/gdATFi

Facebook Fan Page Marketing Lesson #3

Almost half of Facebook's users report signing in at least once per day. You
should update your status and give your readers great content on a regular
basis.

This way, you stay on their minds.

Very few people will come to your page to see what you are up to. Vary your
posting times to get your status updates in front of the most people.

Those who have "liked" your page will see your updates in their news feed
when they log in. Give them a compelling reason to visit your page and/or
interact with you.

Want more activity and popularity?

Ask questions that your readers will be likely to respond to.

Whenever someone who likes your page comments, all of their friends see that
they commented on your page and can click a link to see the conversation.

They, however, will also need to like your page if they want to join the
conversation :)

Facebook Fan Page Marketing Lesson #4 will be on its way shortly.

Facebook Fan Page Marketing Lesson #3

Almost half of Facebook's users report signing in at least once per day. You
should update your status and give your readers great content on a regular
basis.

This way, you stay on their minds.

Very few people will come to your page to see what you are up to. Vary your
posting times to get your status updates in front of the most people.

Those who have "liked" your page will see your updates in their news feed
when they log in. Give them a compelling reason to visit your page and/or
interact with you.

Want more activity and popularity?

Ask questions that your readers will be likely to respond to.

Whenever someone who likes your page comments, all of their friends see that
they commented on your page and can click a link to see the conversation.

They, however, will also need to like your page if they want to join the
conversation :)

Facebook Fan Page Marketing Lesson #4 will be on its way shortly.

Facebook Fan Page Marketing Lesson #2

Setting up Your Fan/Like Page.

Be sure you choose the proper category for your page.
Different tabs are available based on your category.

Choose wisely. This can not be changed later!

The correct category will help others find you in Facebook's page directory.

After you have 25 people who "like" your page, you can get a vanity URL
linking to your page.

Once you reach 100 people who like your page, you can't change the name of
your Fan Page.  Think of it this way...

If people "like" a page titled BLUE and all of a sudden, it's name changes
to PINK, quite a few of them may not be happy. This rule is in place to
prevent "bait and switch".

Choose your Fan Page name wisely :)

Facebook Fan Page Marketing Lesson #3 will be on its way shortly.

Don't forget Big Al's Fortune now website - http://bit.ly/gdATFi

Facebook Fan Page Marketing Lesson #2

Setting up Your Fan/Like Page.

Be sure you choose the proper category for your page.
Different tabs are available based on your category.

Choose wisely. This can not be changed later!

The correct category will help others find you in Facebook's page directory.

After you have 25 people who "like" your page, you can get a vanity URL
linking to your page.

Once you reach 100 people who like your page, you can't change the name of
your Fan Page.  Think of it this way...

If people "like" a page titled BLUE and all of a sudden, it's name changes
to PINK, quite a few of them may not be happy. This rule is in place to
prevent "bait and switch".

Choose your Fan Page name wisely :)

Facebook Fan Page Marketing Lesson #3 will be on its way shortly.

Don't forget Big Al's Fortune now website - http://bit.ly/gdATFi

Facebook Fan Page Marketing Lesson #1

This week I'm posting a series of Facebook tutorials courtesy of Tom
"Big Al" Schreiter. For more great stuff find him on Facebook
http://on.fb.me/dNYU68 Make sure you "Like" him and check out all his
great content on his Fortune Now website http://bit.ly/gdATFi

So begins lesson One

Facebook Fan pages are an excellent way to promote yourself and your
business. There are many advantages of a fan page.

Let's look at the basics:

What is the difference between a personal profile and a "fan/like" page?

Personal Profile Page - You are only allowed 5000 friends per profile.
Fan Page - You are allowed an unlimited number of friends.

Personal Profile Page - You are expected to interact socially with others.
Fan Page - Business related content is expected.

Personal Profile Page - You are only allowed 1 profile per person. If you
have more than one and Facebook finds out, you will lose them all.
Fan Page - You are allowed multiple fan/like pages.

Personal Profile Page - Not much customization allowed.
Fan Page - Many different applications are available for customization.

Personal Profile Page - You can NOT message all of your friends at once.
Fan Page - You CAN message all of your fans at once.

See the advantages?

Use your imagination of how this could make prospecting
and promoting easier for your business.

Facebook Fan Page Marketing Lesson #2 will be on its
way shortly.

Facebook Fan Page Marketing Lesson #1

This week I'm posting a series of Facebook tutorials courtesy of Tom
"Big Al" Schreiter. For more great stuff find him on Facebook
http://on.fb.me/dNYU68 Make sure you "Like" him and check out all his
great content on his Fortune Now website http://bit.ly/gdATFi

So begins lesson One

Facebook Fan pages are an excellent way to promote yourself and your
business. There are many advantages of a fan page.

Let's look at the basics:

What is the difference between a personal profile and a "fan/like" page?

Personal Profile Page - You are only allowed 5000 friends per profile.
Fan Page - You are allowed an unlimited number of friends.

Personal Profile Page - You are expected to interact socially with others.
Fan Page - Business related content is expected.

Personal Profile Page - You are only allowed 1 profile per person. If you
have more than one and Facebook finds out, you will lose them all.
Fan Page - You are allowed multiple fan/like pages.

Personal Profile Page - Not much customization allowed.
Fan Page - Many different applications are available for customization.

Personal Profile Page - You can NOT message all of your friends at once.
Fan Page - You CAN message all of your fans at once.

See the advantages?

Use your imagination of how this could make prospecting
and promoting easier for your business.

Facebook Fan Page Marketing Lesson #2 will be on its
way shortly.

Spreading the word - going viral

Best tool for managing content over multiple platforms bar none is hootsuite. Just go to hootsuite.com. Just set up the Free account for now. When you max it out it is worth the $5.99 a month to manage all you platforms content from one place.

 

Basically I can enter my message once and tweet it to all my twitter accounts, Facebook pages Fan pages LinkedIn and Blogs.

 

So I can sit down at hootsuite on Monday morning and schedule content throughout the week or month. Announcements for conference calls & webinars. Special promotions, contests, even content for blogs. I can post research on our product's ingredients efficacy, post recent scientific studies and findings, share stories and testimonials on products. Link to videos and video blogs on YouTube and Vimeo etc. etc. etc…

 

It lets me upload a series of up to 50 tweets in bulk and it lets me schedule posts well into the future. I have used this to put up a series of daily invites to join me on Facebook or LinkedIn and post that to all my twitter and Facebook accounts. They all have to be slightly different but I put together a spreadsheet in Excel which worked really well. If you like I can forward it to you. Just drop me an email to mark@naturelinesolutions.com or DM me on Twitter or Facebook.

 

Content is key and there really is no shortage. I’ve put up tons of stuff Natureline and product related you can use, comment on share etc etc. It is so easy to look up relevant content for any of our product ingredients or articles about the size of our market or techniques to use to achieve success in our business. To find stories of success, to find users experiences of the products that can inspire people to give them a try.

 

You may find videos on YouTube or blogs with great content. I have used Google reader which is a great tool to subscribe to the information streams of different blogs. If you find a great blog with content on matcha or green tea or the environment. Rather than bookmarking and going back to see if they have new content simply click the RSS icon and it will add the feed to your reader account. Even easier use Google reader to search for relevant content and compile your own central repository for interesting relevant content you can share with your friends and followers. Click Browse for stuff then search & Search by keyword and you will be spoiled for choices…

 

Paper.li great new tool. It allows you to aggregate the content from a list of your favourite twitter contributors and automatically compiles their content into a daily newspaper that’s tweeted out to your entire audience. Simply add your chosen twitter accounts into a list with a nice newspaper sounding name and use that list to generate a daily paper. 

Follow the instructions at www.paper.li  Your audience get daily relevant content, including a compilation of your own stuff if you include it, delivered to their inbox and twitter feed every day. I use content from industry gurus who I respect and know that my followers will get benefit if they’re exposed to it. Here's my daily paper http://paper.li/fixteas/natureline-networker-5 why not subscribe?

 

Blogs. You’ve heard the name you don’t know what they are or where to start. They are simply a list of articles you write or compile or want to share with people on whatever topic you want. Same idea as twitter and facebook but more customizable to your own look and  feel and not limited to a certain number of characters. You don’t need to set up your own website and program web code anymore though some still do that.

 

The simplest is to use standard free templates that already have all the tools you need.

My favourite is Posterous. It lets you run multiple blogs from the same account. Let’s you customise the look and feel of each so it suits the audience. Shows you how many read and subscribe to the info AND most importantly lets you repost the exact same content to other platforms. I use it to send an article I think my audience will find interesting that I may have found in my Google reader feed I send it to my gmail account and from there I can post it to one or several blogs. I may find a neat article on green tea I forward it to fixteas@gmail.com edit it and then forward to post@fixteas.posterous.com. Posterous is set up so when it receives it it will automatically post that article to multiple Facebook and Twitter accounts as well as to two other blogs I use which you may prefer Wordpress (which apparently, according to some is better for search engines optomization) and Blogspot which is Googles Free Blog software.  So we have http://fixteas.posterous.com http://natureline.posterous.com http://naturefx.posterous.com we have http://fixteas.blogspot.com  and http://fixteas.wordpress.com you get the idea.  

 

Most importantly of all with your content is that it be relevant to your audience and tries to engage your audience in the conversation. Everyone’s asking what’s in it for me? They are tuned to WII FM Radio. You need to add value and talk benefit to your audience.

Make it easy; Share stories – stories sell. KISS Keep it super simple.

Make it accessible put it on different platforms venues and formats.

Think about using YouTube for a video blog

Some people like picture and videos some like text. I’ve already covered most of this stuff on interactive video webinarss on Vimeo www.vimeo.com/natureline check out he latest one from this Saturday on Bi-Tron and Social media

Record videos and take pictures. Twitpic is a great iPhone App. Take a picture of your new customer, a FIX Tea or Natureline presentation and share it on twitter. Take a 1 minute video on your iPhone or Smart Phone of a satisfied customer's experience and  post it to YouTube instantly and share it across Facebook and Twitter.

Engage your audience: Ask thought provoking questions; Reply  to messages; Mention the products; provide solutions too problems

Recognize and celebrate achievements within your team

Join the conversation, respond, comment, friend,  like, retweet, engage with other people in and around your audience and subject matter. Pique interest in what you’re doing. If you do that effectively your audience will ask you for more info especially if you’re not overtly selling or spamming. 

Lastly you can measure how effectively you are doing this using your Klout score. Go to www.klout.com enter your profile and see how you're stacking up and what you can do to improve your social impact - you'll find it's mainly about how engaged your audience is, how often your retweeted, Liked commented on and shared.

Let me know how I'm doing? Ask me a question, retweet me with a link to your own site, comment on my content or just say hi. I'd love to hear from you on Twitter @fixteas &or @markwrightmba

I don't know if you'll go viral, generate a quarter million leads, get a story or video or offer picked up and spread like wildfire but, unless you try some of this new media and social networking, I can guarantee one thing; you wont go viral! 

Oh, unless you're reading this on you're phone in a mall and aren't watching where you're going http://bit.ly/eoq4lf ;-)

 

Cheers,

Mark Wright

Spreading the word - going viral

Best tool for managing content over multiple platforms bar none is hootsuite. Just go to hootsuite.com. Just set up the Free account for now. When you max it out it is worth the $5.99 a month to manage all you platforms content from one place.

 

Basically I can enter my message once and tweet it to all my twitter accounts, Facebook pages Fan pages LinkedIn and Blogs.

 

So I can sit down at hootsuite on Monday morning and schedule content throughout the week or month. Announcements for conference calls & webinars. Special promotions, contests, even content for blogs. I can post research on our product's ingredients efficacy, post recent scientific studies and findings, share stories and testimonials on products. Link to videos and video blogs on YouTube and Vimeo etc. etc. etc…

 

It lets me upload a series of up to 50 tweets in bulk and it lets me schedule posts well into the future. I have used this to put up a series of daily invites to join me on Facebook or LinkedIn and post that to all my twitter and Facebook accounts. They all have to be slightly different but I put together a spreadsheet in Excel which worked really well. If you like I can forward it to you. Just drop me an email to mark@naturelinesolutions.com or DM me on Twitter or Facebook.

 

Content is key and there really is no shortage. I’ve put up tons of stuff Natureline and product related you can use, comment on share etc etc. It is so easy to look up relevant content for any of our product ingredients or articles about the size of our market or techniques to use to achieve success in our business. To find stories of success, to find users experiences of the products that can inspire people to give them a try.

 

You may find videos on YouTube or blogs with great content. I have used Google reader which is a great tool to subscribe to the information streams of different blogs. If you find a great blog with content on matcha or green tea or the environment. Rather than bookmarking and going back to see if they have new content simply click the RSS icon  and it will add the feed to your reader account. Even easier use Google reader to search for relevant content and compile your own central repository for interesting relevant content you can share with your friends and followers. Click Browse for stuff then search & Search by keyword and you will be spoiled for choices…

 

Paper.li great new tool. It allows you to aggregate the content from a list of your favourite twitter contributors and automatically compiles their content into a daily newspaper that’s tweeted out to your entire audience. Simply add your chosen twitter accounts into a list with a nice newspaper sounding name and use that list to generate a daily paper. 

Follow the instructions at www.paper.li  Your audience get daily relevant content, including a compilation of your own stuff if you include it, delivered to their inbox and twitter feed every day. I use content from industry gurus who I respect and know that my followers will get benefit if they’re exposed to it. Here's my daily paper http://paper.li/fixteas/natureline-networker-5 why not subscribe?

 

Blogs. You’ve heard the name you don’t know what they are or where to start. They are simply a list of articles you write or compile or want to share with people on whatever topic you want. Same idea as twitter and facebook but more customizable to your own look and  feel and not limited to a certain number of characters. You don’t need to set up your own website and program web code anymore though some still do that.

 

The simplest is to use standard free templates that already have all the tools you need.

My favourite is Posterous. It lets you run multiple blogs from the same account. Let’s you customise the look and feel of each so it suits the audience. Shows you how many read and subscribe to the info AND most importantly lets you repost the exact same content to other platforms. I use it to send an article I think my audience will find interesting that I may have found in my Google reader feed I send it to my gmail account and from there I can post it to one or several blogs. I may find a neat article on green tea I forward it to fixteas@gmail.com edit it and then forward to post@fixteas.posterous.com. Posterous is set up so when it receives it it will automatically post that article to multiple Facebook and Twitter accounts as well as to two other blogs I use which you may prefer Wordpress (which apparently, according to some is better for search engines optomization) and Blogspot which is Googles Free Blog software.  So we have http://fixteas.posterous.com http://natureline.posterous.com http://naturefx.posterous.com we have http://fixteas.blogspot.com  and http://fixteas.wordpress.com you get the idea.  

 

Most importantly of all with your content is that it be relevant to your audience and tries to engage your audience in the conversation. Everyone’s asking what’s in it for me? They are tuned to WII FM Radio. You need to add value and talk benefit to your audience.

Make it easy; Share stories – stories sell. KISS Keep it super simple.

Make it accessible put it on different platforms venues and formats.

Think about using YouTube for a video blog

Some people like picture and videos some like text. I’ve already covered most of this stuff on interactive video webinarss on Vimeo www.vimeo.com/natureline check out he latest one from this Saturday on Bi-Tron and Social media

Record videos and take pictures. Twitpic is a great iPhone App. Take a picture of your new customer, a FIX Tea or Natureline presentation and share it on twitter. Take a 1 minute video on your iPhone or Smart Phone of a satisfied customer's experience and  post it to YouTube instantly and share it across Facebook and Twitter.

Engage your audience: Ask thought provoking questions; Reply  to messages; Mention the products; provide solutions too problems

Recognize and celebrate achievements within your team

Join the conversation, respond, comment, friend,  like, retweet, engage with other people in and around your audience and subject matter. Pique interest in what you’re doing. If you do that effectively your audience will ask you for more info especially if you’re not overtly selling or spamming. 

Lastly you can measure how effectively you are doing this using your Klout score. Go to www.klout.com enter your profile and see how you're stacking up and what you can do to improve your social impact - you'll find it's mainly about how engaged your audience is, how often your retweeted, Liked commented on and shared.

Let me know how I'm doing? Ask me a question, retweet me with a link to your own site, comment on my content or just say hi. I'd love to hear from you on Twitter @fixteas &or @markwrightmba

I don't know if you'll go viral, generate a quarter million leads, get a story or video or offer picked up and spread like wildfire but, unless you try some of this new media and social networking, I can guarantee one thing; you wont go viral! 

Oh, unless you're reading this on you're phone in a mall and aren't watching where you're going http://bit.ly/eoq4lf ;-)

 

Cheers,

Mark Wright

Spreading the word - going viral

Best tool for managing content over multiple platforms bar none is hootsuite. Just go to hootsuite.com. Just set up the Free account for now. When you max it out it is worth the $5.99 a month to manage all you platforms content from one place.

 

Basically I can enter my message once and tweet it to all my twitter accounts, Facebook pages Fan pages LinkedIn and Blogs.

 

So I can sit down at hootsuite on Monday morning and schedule content throughout the week or month. Announcements for conference calls & webinars. Special promotions, contests, even content for blogs. I can post research on our product's ingredients efficacy, post recent scientific studies and findings, share stories and testimonials on products. Link to videos and video blogs on YouTube and Vimeo etc. etc. etc…

 

It lets me upload a series of up to 50 tweets in bulk and it lets me schedule posts well into the future. I have used this to put up a series of daily invites to join me on Facebook or LinkedIn and post that to all my twitter and Facebook accounts. They all have to be slightly different but I put together a spreadsheet in Excel which worked really well. If you like I can forward it to you. Just drop me an email to mark@naturelinesolutions.com or DM me on Twitter or Facebook.

 

Content is key and there really is no shortage. I’ve put up tons of stuff Natureline and product related you can use, comment on share etc etc. It is so easy to look up relevant content for any of our product ingredients or articles about the size of our market or techniques to use to achieve success in our business. To find stories of success, to find users experiences of the products that can inspire people to give them a try.

 

You may find videos on YouTube or blogs with great content. I have used Google reader which is a great tool to subscribe to the information streams of different blogs. If you find a great blog with content on matcha or green tea or the environment. Rather than bookmarking and going back to see if they have new content simply click the RSS icon  and it will add the feed to your reader account. Even easier use Google reader to search for relevant content and compile your own central repository for interesting relevant content you can share with your friends and followers. Click Browse for stuff then search & Search by keyword and you will be spoiled for choices…

 

Paper.li great new tool. It allows you to aggregate the content from a list of your favourite twitter contributors and automatically compiles their content into a daily newspaper that’s tweeted out to your entire audience. Simply add your chosen twitter accounts into a list with a nice newspaper sounding name and use that list to generate a daily paper. 

Follow the instructions at www.paper.li  Your audience get daily relevant content, including a compilation of your own stuff if you include it, delivered to their inbox and twitter feed every day. I use content from industry gurus who I respect and know that my followers will get benefit if they’re exposed to it. Here's my daily paper http://paper.li/fixteas/natureline-networker-5 why not subscribe?

 

Blogs. You’ve heard the name you don’t know what they are or where to start. They are simply a list of articles you write or compile or want to share with people on whatever topic you want. Same idea as twitter and facebook but more customizable to your own look and  feel and not limited to a certain number of characters. You don’t need to set up your own website and program web code anymore though some still do that.

 

The simplest is to use standard free templates that already have all the tools you need.

My favourite is Posterous. It lets you run multiple blogs from the same account. Let’s you customise the look and feel of each so it suits the audience. Shows you how many read and subscribe to the info AND most importantly lets you repost the exact same content to other platforms. I use it to send an article I think my audience will find interesting that I may have found in my Google reader feed I send it to my gmail account and from there I can post it to one or several blogs. I may find a neat article on green tea I forward it to fixteas@gmail.com edit it and then forward to post@fixteas.posterous.com. Posterous is set up so when it receives it it will automatically post that article to multiple Facebook and Twitter accounts as well as to two other blogs I use which you may prefer Wordpress (which apparently, according to some is better for search engines optomization) and Blogspot which is Googles Free Blog software.  So we have http://fixteas.posterous.com http://natureline.posterous.com http://naturefx.posterous.com we have http://fixteas.blogspot.com  and http://fixteas.wordpress.com you get the idea.  

 

Most importantly of all with your content is that it be relevant to your audience and tries to engage your audience in the conversation. Everyone’s asking what’s in it for me? They are tuned to WII FM Radio. You need to add value and talk benefit to your audience.

Make it easy; Share stories – stories sell. KISS Keep it super simple.

Make it accessible put it on different platforms venues and formats.

Think about using YouTube for a video blog

Some people like picture and videos some like text. I’ve already covered most of this stuff on interactive video webinarss on Vimeo www.vimeo.com/natureline check out he latest one from this Saturday on Bi-Tron and Social media

Record videos and take pictures. Twitpic is a great iPhone App. Take a picture of your new customer, a FIX Tea or Natureline presentation and share it on twitter. Take a 1 minute video on your iPhone or Smart Phone of a satisfied customer's experience and  post it to YouTube instantly and share it across Facebook and Twitter.

Engage your audience: Ask thought provoking questions; Reply  to messages; Mention the products; provide solutions too problems

Recognize and celebrate achievements within your team

Join the conversation, respond, comment, friend,  like, retweet, engage with other people in and around your audience and subject matter. Pique interest in what you’re doing. If you do that effectively your audience will ask you for more info especially if you’re not overtly selling or spamming. 

Lastly you can measure how effectively you are doing this using your Klout score. Go to www.klout.com enter your profile and see how you're stacking up and what you can do to improve your social impact - you'll find it's mainly about how engaged your audience is, how often your retweeted, Liked commented on and shared.

Let me know how I'm doing? Ask me a question, retweet me with a link to your own site, comment on my content or just say hi. I'd love to hear from you on Twitter @fixteas &or @markwrightmba

I don't know if you'll go viral, generate a quarter million leads, get a story or video or offer picked up and spread like wildfire but, unless you try some of this new media and social networking, I can guarantee one thing; you wont go viral! 

Oh, unless you're reading this on you're phone in a mall and aren't watching where you're going http://bit.ly/eoq4lf ;-)

 

Cheers,

Mark Wright

Prospecting on Autopilot - Get 2500+ new followers a week!

I don't want you spending & wasting a bunch of money on social media, websites etc...  You are investing your most important asset, your time, into building your online social media presence. Use it wisely.

 

Again I’m not a guru but I’ve been doing it for a while now and have found out some stuff worthy of sharing. There’s a ton of hype, a ton of people selling stuff out there but there are only a few tools I use regularly and fewer still that I’m willing to pay for.

 

As you are starting out building a Twitter following one free tool worth getting hold of early in the process is www.socialoomph.com This lets you set up a couple of neat features.

 

The one I used first is to set up an automated Direct message system (DM for short) Basically when anyone follows you it sends them a Direct message privately, outside of a public Tweet.

 

Put what you want in there. A “Hey how are you?”, “thanks for following me check out my blog www.bit.ly (remember that free url shortner with the tracking and statistics built-in!)

 

Some more engaging ones I’ve seen “Hey how’s the weather there now?” or you can offer them a free trial sample by sending them to your website http://bit.ly/fnSNyV The objective is to attempt to engage someone in a conversation, to pique their interest…

Don’t spam, it’s kind of like a first date, get to know them first.

 

There are a ton of other tools in Socialoomph I won’t dwell on yet, tools that vet your followers automatically or will auto followback, schedule queues of tweets in the future etc… Have a poke around when you have time.

 

In my previous post I mentioned www.justunfollow.com which I use religiously to unfollow those who haven’t followed back within 24-48 hours. That’s the longest I give people just simply because my purpose is to build a larger audience more quickly and I'm not prepared to wait if they don't followback promptly.

 

I’ve “whitelisted” some of the people I want to follow even if they haven’t followed me so I don’t keep unfollowing them every time I purge my non followers.

 

I use justunfollow to monitor my organic growth by seeing how many new fans my different strategies generate.

 

When I’m purging my non followers, if I’m taking the time to be selective in my unfollows, I will give those with larger audiences 5000+ followers longer to follow me back than someone with less than a thousand; anyone with only tens or hundreds of followers is an automatic unfollow.

Unless they are following at or around 2000 accounts in which case I assume they are in an aggressive building mode and are more likely to follow me back shortly.

 

I prioritize as unfollows those who have more followers than friends or who just don’t follow many people. I talked a bit about ratios of followers to friends in the previous piece. I certainly prioritize those who follow more people than they have friends but a ratio within 10% below is still worthwhile following. More than that, unless there is a connection or special reason, it’s probably not worth having them clutter your unfollower count as they are less likely to ever follow you back. 

Follow those who will, or are more likely to, follow back.

 

This is especially important when you are at a smaller number of followers  if you are at or around 2000 followers you can only follow an additional 200 people. You should make sure those 200 people are following you back quickly or replace them.

 

I found a really neat new tool a couple of weeks ago which I am still evaluating but seems to be doing what I want it to. www.tweetbig.com gives you a 7 day trial for $1 then costs around $20 a month. Which is steep but it has added 2500 followers to my account in a little over a week.

It lets you pick 15 relevant key words and searches twitter for those tweeting about them. You can then choose to follow those with the most followers or the best follower ratio or most recently added or the most current activity.  Even more clever it lets you follow 15 of your most effective competitors or whose following you like and want as your own. It searches amongst them and recommends people for you to follow.

I log on each day and see who it’s recommending and within ½ an hour can choose 500 people to follow for each of three twitter accounts based on who has the most followers and best ratio.

What has been working for me is following everyone with more than 20,000 followers irrespective of ratio. Less than 20,000 if they have an 85%+ followback ratio less than 10,000 I will only add them to my queue if they are at 95% or better. I then go and look at the sort by ratio and follow everyone down to 95% ratio. I also look at the activity report and follow anyone over 95% and similarly with date added.

 

Tweetbig follows people slowly over the course of the day and seems to follow up to 500 new people a day if you keep your queue topped up. As you hit your follower ratio cap at 10% more than follow you it stops following. So I go into justunfollow each day and priority unfollow enough to keep it ticking over which doesn’t take more than 5 minutes.

 

Tweetbig does have some other tools like auto unfollow time bomb but I think justinfollow is way easier. Auto-followback doesn’t seem to work but I think justunfollow works better anyway.

 

That’s probably enough to chew on for now. Next post I’ll show you how to manage your content most effectively and efficiently…

 

Got any questions tweet them to me @fixteas or @markwrightmba - Hey why not add me to one of your follow lists &/or add these accounts to tweetbig see who of my followers it recommends for you??!

 

Cheers,

Mark 

Prospecting on Autopilot - Get 2500+ new followers a week!

I don't want you spending & wasting a bunch of money on social media, websites etc...  You are investing your most important asset, your time, into building your online social media presence. Use it wisely.

 

Again I’m not a guru but I’ve been doing it for a while now and have found out some stuff worthy of sharing. There’s a ton of hype, a ton of people selling stuff out there but there are only a few tools I use regularly and fewer still that I’m willing to pay for.

 

As you are starting out building a Twitter following one free tool worth getting hold of early in the process is www.socialoomph.com This lets you set up a couple of neat features.

 

The one I used first is to set up an automated Direct message system (DM for short) Basically when anyone follows you it sends them a Direct message privately, outside of a public Tweet.

 

Put what you want in there. A “Hey how are you?”, “thanks for following me check out my blog www.bit.ly (remember that free url shortner with the tracking and statistics built-in!)

 

Some more engaging ones I’ve seen “Hey how’s the weather there now?” or you can offer them a free trial sample by sending them to your website http://bit.ly/fnSNyV The objective is to attempt to engage someone in a conversation, to pique their interest…

Don’t spam, it’s kind of like a first date, get to know them first.

 

There are a ton of other tools in Socialoomph I won’t dwell on yet, tools that vet your followers automatically or will auto followback, schedule queues of tweets in the future etc… Have a poke around when you have time.

 

In my previous post I mentioned www.justunfollow.com which I use religiously to unfollow those who haven’t followed back within 24-48 hours. That’s the longest I give people just simply because my purpose is to build a larger audience more quickly and I'm not prepared to wait if they don't followback promptly.

 

I’ve “whitelisted” some of the people I want to follow even if they haven’t followed me so I don’t keep unfollowing them every time I purge my non followers.

 

I use justunfollow to monitor my organic growth by seeing how many new fans my different strategies generate.

 

When I’m purging my non followers, if I’m taking the time to be selective in my unfollows, I will give those with larger audiences 5000+ followers longer to follow me back than someone with less than a thousand; anyone with only tens or hundreds of followers is an automatic unfollow.

Unless they are following at or around 2000 accounts in which case I assume they are in an aggressive building mode and are more likely to follow me back shortly.

 

I prioritize as unfollows those who have more followers than friends or who just don’t follow many people. I talked a bit about ratios of followers to friends in the previous piece. I certainly prioritize those who follow more people than they have friends but a ratio within 10% below is still worthwhile following. More than that, unless there is a connection or special reason, it’s probably not worth having them clutter your unfollower count as they are less likely to ever follow you back. 

Follow those who will, or are more likely to, follow back.

 

This is especially important when you are at a smaller number of followers  if you are at or around 2000 followers you can only follow an additional 200 people. You should make sure those 200 people are following you back quickly or replace them.

 

I found a really neat new tool a couple of weeks ago which I am still evaluating but seems to be doing what I want it to. www.tweetbig.com gives you a 7 day trial for $1 then costs around $20 a month. Which is steep but it has added 2500 followers to my account in a little over a week.

It lets you pick 15 relevant key words and searches twitter for those tweeting about them. You can then choose to follow those with the most followers or the best follower ratio or most recently added or the most current activity.  Even more clever it lets you follow 15 of your most effective competitors or whose following you like and want as your own. It searches amongst them and recommends people for you to follow.

I log on each day and see who it’s recommending and within ½ an hour can choose 500 people to follow for each of three twitter accounts based on who has the most followers and best ratio.

What has been working for me is following everyone with more than 20,000 followers irrespective of ratio. Less than 20,000 if they have an 85%+ followback ratio less than 10,000 I will only add them to my queue if they are at 95% or better. I then go and look at the sort by ratio and follow everyone down to 95% ratio. I also look at the activity report and follow anyone over 95% and similarly with date added.

 

Tweetbig follows people slowly over the course of the day and seems to follow up to 500 new people a day if you keep your queue topped up. As you hit your follower ratio cap at 10% more than follow you it stops following. So I go into justunfollow each day and priority unfollow enough to keep it ticking over which doesn’t take more than 5 minutes.

 

Tweetbig does have some other tools like auto unfollow time bomb but I think justinfollow is way easier. Auto-followback doesn’t seem to work but I think justunfollow works better anyway.

 

That’s probably enough to chew on for now. Next post I’ll show you how to manage your content most effectively and efficiently…

 

Got any questions tweet them to me @fixteas or @markwrightmba - Hey why not add me to one of your follow lists &/or add these accounts to tweetbig see who of my followers it recommends for you??!

 

Cheers,

Mark 

2000 Twitter followers in 7 days Guaranteed or you get a free FIX

What will you do if I show you how I can pretty well guarantee you an audience of 2000 followers in a week. 

What if I fall short and you’re not quite there in 7 days? You’ll still have well over a thousand and be well on your way and have the skills you need to build on the foundation you've created.

 

Bear in mind that with an audience of only 1,000 I had a single tweet get picked up go viral and generate 150,000 customer leads! But we’ll talk about what and how to communicate later. First let’s start building your audience – cool?

 

I don’t want you spending a huge amount of time and effort on this (1/2 hour a day max!) and don’t overthink this.

 

Twitter has some simple rules. You are allowed to follow a maximum of 1000 people a day. You can follow up to 2000 people before you hit a cap. Beyond 2000 you can only follow 10% more people than follow you. So if you had 2000 followers  you could follow 2200 people. 10,000 followers you can follow 11,000 people.

 

The goal as I defined it was to get a large audience of somewhat relevant people. Who are relevant people? That’s the million dollar question. We’re in the network marketing business, we’re looking for fellow entrepreneurs, we’re looking for customers and business partners. We have products that save money, reduce carbon footprint, reduce harmful pollutants in our environment, help us age more gracefully and keep us healthy, help us lose weight. Who could we really exclude?

 

What I did, for what it’s worth, was to think about relevant topics, individuals who speak to those topics, companies and competitors who sell to our potential audiences AND who have large twitter audiences themselves. I would follow those individuals AND follow the individuals that follow these people AND more particularly follow those people who follow those people who themselves have large audiences.

 

An example of this crazy “logic”: If I believe that entrepreneurs and those interested in bettering themselves and their current situation might be a good audience for me who could I follow?

 

How about Tony Robbins, the self help guru? @tonyrobbins

 

Well, if I look him up on who to follow in twitter and do a search for him, there he is, click on his profile and lo and behold he has 1.9 million followers all (or most) presumably interested in his content.

 

I’m going to click to follow Tony, If I like his stuff at this point I may want to add him to a separate list of inspirational stuff so I can easily access his content later on. (click on the first little box and a drop down menu lets you create a new list like self help, motivation, MLM… or select one you’ve already added.)

 

Now, here’s the laborious bit. Click on his followers and follow the people following Tony. They are listed in the order they followed so those at the top of the list are most recent. Which means they’ve been on Twitter lately and followed Tony as well.

 

I work down the list and follow everyone who looks faintly relevant to my pretty broad demographic. I don’t follow those with no logo, with Cyrillic, Arabic or Chinese script. Not an overtly  discriminatory tactic, merely I can’t communicate in their language of choice. When I started out I was very selective who I followed. I of course wouldn’t follow porn (which rules out an awful lot) I don’t follow overtly political and religious sites. I’d even go as far as to open up their profile and only follow them if they had a large audience of followers themselves, tweeted regularly and had a “good follow back ratio”. I quickly found this tactic way too time consuming and made little difference to my follow back growth. In fact if my assumptions were wrong I’d probably rule out perfectly good candidates!

 

Whoa! What is a follow back ratio all about! Well take a look at Tony Robbins as a great example. He has a huge audience. 1.9 million people receive his tweets. BUT he only follows 483 people. Until I really am a guru who appears on his radar who he deems it worth following it is unlikely that he will follow me back. So he will not add to my audience. So, wheras he is a good source of the demographic I’m looking for if I follow him, he will add to my follower count but not to those that follow me. Given that I am limited to follow 10% more than follow me he will not likely help that ratio.

 

However, a peculiarity is that if I follow Tony, other people, much like myself, searching for Tony’s demographic will find and follow me in the hopes that I will in turn follow them back.  

 

As a rule I always follow back those who follow me. And most do the same (Unless your Tony!) If you look at the list of your followers as it grows you’ll notice a large number who you follow. You will also see a bunch you aren’t who have found you because of who you follow (or they like your photo)

 

So, action plan.

Day 1 follow 1000 people using some of the above strategies. On each of the Tony Robbins type accounts you choose to follow the audience of I tend only to follow the first 4-5 pages – 50-100 people. That way, given my odd kind of logic, they are more recently on Twitter and more likely to follow you back quickly.

 

Day 2 follow another 1,000 people, or as many as it allows you to.

Day 3 follow as many more up to your 2,000 person cap.

 

You will probably find by day 3 that you have several hundred and maybe as many as 1,000+ followers. This is going to depend somewhat on the types of people you’ve followed. Now you are being limited by the 2,000 person cap. You are following a thousand or so people who have as yet not followed you back. Don’t take it personally, sure some may hate your content, your logo or your photo but mostly they haven’t been on twitter since you found them or haven’t noticed you following them.

 

How do you make room to follow more people and grow your audience? You unfollow those who don’t follow you back. This is a time consuming and labour intensive process on twitter.

 

There are several 3^rd party tools unaffiliated with Twitter that can help. My current favourite is www.justunfollow.com A basic account is Free but a full feature account is $5 a year (well worth it – and I have zero vested ineterest). The FREE tool let’s you list your non followers and unfollow 100 people per day (24 hour period). So if you have 1000 non followers it’ll take you 10 days to unfollow them all. Each time you unfollow 100 you can follow 100 more new people.

 

The pro version will let you unfollow everyone who didn’t follow back. It also has a priority unfollow feature which lets you unfollow only those with the least likelihood of following you back (like Tony for example). It also lets you whitelist Tony if you want to keep following him because you like his stuff or because lots of quality new people are finding you among his followers. I sometimes get greater return by unfollowing  and following back so I appear higher up his new follower list – just saying.

 

The other cool feature is that it lists your new fans – people who are following you who you aren’t yet following back. It is so quick to follow fans back and unfollow non followers using this tool vs Twitter & I’m all about efficiency!

 

So, if you follow these instructions for your new Twitter account for a week, especially if you go justunfollow premium, you will have approaching 2000 followers hopefully largely targeting towards the chosen demographic profile that fits your goals.

If you've followed my advice and your not happy with your results tweet me and claim your free FIX

 

Next article I’ll show you some more cool tools that help you further automate this process and talk about communicating with and engaging your audience.

 

  

Cheers,

Mark Wright

 

2000 Twitter followers in 7 days Guaranteed or you get a free FIX

What will you do if I show you how I can pretty well guarantee you an audience of 2000 followers in a week. 

What if I fall short and you’re not quite there in 7 days? You’ll still have well over a thousand and be well on your way and have the skills you need to build on the foundation you've created.

 

Bear in mind that with an audience of only 1,000 I had a single tweet get picked up go viral and generate 150,000 customer leads! But we’ll talk about what and how to communicate later. First let’s start building your audience – cool?

 

I don’t want you spending a huge amount of time and effort on this (1/2 hour a day max!) and don’t overthink this.

 

Twitter has some simple rules. You are allowed to follow a maximum of 1000 people a day. You can follow up to 2000 people before you hit a cap. Beyond 2000 you can only follow 10% more people than follow you. So if you had 2000 followers  you could follow 2200 people. 10,000 followers you can follow 11,000 people.

 

The goal as I defined it was to get a large audience of somewhat relevant people. Who are relevant people? That’s the million dollar question. We’re in the network marketing business, we’re looking for fellow entrepreneurs, we’re looking for customers and business partners. We have products that save money, reduce carbon footprint, reduce harmful pollutants in our environment, help us age more gracefully and keep us healthy, help us lose weight. Who could we really exclude?

 

What I did, for what it’s worth, was to think about relevant topics, individuals who speak to those topics, companies and competitors who sell to our potential audiences AND who have large twitter audiences themselves. I would follow those individuals AND follow the individuals that follow these people AND more particularly follow those people who follow those people who themselves have large audiences.

 

An example of this crazy “logic”: If I believe that entrepreneurs and those interested in bettering themselves and their current situation might be a good audience for me who could I follow?

 

How about Tony Robbins, the self help guru? @tonyrobbins

 

Well, if I look him up on who to follow in twitter and do a search for him, there he is, click on his profile and lo and behold he has 1.9 million followers all (or most) presumably interested in his content.

 

I’m going to click to follow Tony, If I like his stuff at this point I may want to add him to a separate list of inspirational stuff so I can easily access his content later on. (click on the first little box and a drop down menu lets you create a new list like self help, motivation, MLM… or select one you’ve already added.)

 

Now, here’s the laborious bit. Click on his followers and follow the people following Tony. They are listed in the order they followed so those at the top of the list are most recent. Which means they’ve been on Twitter lately and followed Tony as well.

 

I work down the list and follow everyone who looks faintly relevant to my pretty broad demographic. I don’t follow those with no logo, with Cyrillic, Arabic or Chinese script. Not an overtly  discriminatory tactic, merely I can’t communicate in their language of choice. When I started out I was very selective who I followed. I of course wouldn’t follow porn (which rules out an awful lot) I don’t follow overtly political and religious sites. I’d even go as far as to open up their profile and only follow them if they had a large audience of followers themselves, tweeted regularly and had a “good follow back ratio”. I quickly found this tactic way too time consuming and made little difference to my follow back growth. In fact if my assumptions were wrong I’d probably rule out perfectly good candidates!

 

Whoa! What is a follow back ratio all about! Well take a look at Tony Robbins as a great example. He has a huge audience. 1.9 million people receive his tweets. BUT he only follows 483 people. Until I really am a guru who appears on his radar who he deems it worth following it is unlikely that he will follow me back. So he will not add to my audience. So, wheras he is a good source of the demographic I’m looking for if I follow him, he will add to my follower count but not to those that follow me. Given that I am limited to follow 10% more than follow me he will not likely help that ratio.

 

However, a peculiarity is that if I follow Tony, other people, much like myself, searching for Tony’s demographic will find and follow me in the hopes that I will in turn follow them back.  

 

As a rule I always follow back those who follow me. And most do the same (Unless your Tony!) If you look at the list of your followers as it grows you’ll notice a large number who you follow. You will also see a bunch you aren’t who have found you because of who you follow (or they like your photo)

 

So, action plan.

Day 1 follow 1000 people using some of the above strategies. On each of the Tony Robbins type accounts you choose to follow the audience of I tend only to follow the first 4-5 pages – 50-100 people. That way, given my odd kind of logic, they are more recently on Twitter and more likely to follow you back quickly.

 

Day 2 follow another 1,000 people, or as many as it allows you to.

Day 3 follow as many more up to your 2,000 person cap.

 

You will probably find by day 3 that you have several hundred and maybe as many as 1,000+ followers. This is going to depend somewhat on the types of people you’ve followed. Now you are being limited by the 2,000 person cap. You are following a thousand or so people who have as yet not followed you back. Don’t take it personally, sure some may hate your content, your logo or your photo but mostly they haven’t been on twitter since you found them or haven’t noticed you following them.

 

How do you make room to follow more people and grow your audience? You unfollow those who don’t follow you back. This is a time consuming and labour intensive process on twitter.

 

There are several 3^rd party tools unaffiliated with Twitter that can help. My current favourite is www.justunfollow.com A basic account is Free but a full feature account is $5 a year (well worth it – and I have zero vested ineterest). The FREE tool let’s you list your non followers and unfollow 100 people per day (24 hour period). So if you have 1000 non followers it’ll take you 10 days to unfollow them all. Each time you unfollow 100 you can follow 100 more new people.

 

The pro version will let you unfollow everyone who didn’t follow back. It also has a priority unfollow feature which lets you unfollow only those with the least likelihood of following you back (like Tony for example). It also lets you whitelist Tony if you want to keep following him because you like his stuff or because lots of quality new people are finding you among his followers. I sometimes get greater return by unfollowing  and following back so I appear higher up his new follower list – just saying.

 

The other cool feature is that it lists your new fans – people who are following you who you aren’t yet following back. It is so quick to follow fans back and unfollow non followers using this tool vs Twitter & I’m all about efficiency!

 

So, if you follow these instructions for your new Twitter account for a week, especially if you go justunfollow premium, you will have approaching 2000 followers hopefully largely targeting towards the chosen demographic profile that fits your goals.

If you've followed my advice and your not happy with your results tweet me and claim your free FIX

 

Next article I’ll show you some more cool tools that help you further automate this process and talk about communicating with and engaging your audience.

 

  

Cheers,

Mark Wright

 

Social Media First Steps

In the immortal words of Nike “Just Do It!” Take the plunge. You may not immediately go viral and be inundated with prospects. But, just like playing the lottery, unless you buy a ticket you are guaranteed not to win anything.

 

Where do I get started? What should I do?

 

I’m no guru, I’m a fairly intelligent business guy, So I’ll share what I’ve picked up along the way. Take it or leave it! There may be some diamonds buried in here somewhere.

Most of this stuff doesn’t cost a great deal of money. I do recommend some time saving tools that charge a small fee but I do so only because this will take up your most precious resource, your time!

 

If you want to make some quick money in your network marketing endeavor, any endeavor talk to your warm market first and foremost and then to their warm markets. Do this social media stuff concurrently but be extremely conscious of the time your spending and the rewards for it. It may take some time to pay dividends but I believe in time it will.

 

First Pick your platforms. I recommend Twitter as a way to build an audience and Facebook as a way of more meaningfully communicating with a smaller tighter knit group.

There are lots of other platforms you can integrate later on such as Youtube, Vimeo, Wordpress, Blogspot, Posterous, LinkedIn etc. etc… but first things first.

 

I will begin posting a series of articles over the coming days from Tom “Big Al” Schreiter, a fantastic Networking trainer, with advice on setting up Facebook pages.

 

What I’ll talk about first is Twitter as a potential prospecting tool.

 

If you haven’t got a twitter account yet, go set one up. Go to www.Twitter.com  & pick relevant username. Maybe the same one as your natureline username??

 

Once you set up your account you should customize it. Upload a photo or a suitable image. Make sure you do this! Rightly or wrongly I tend to ignore users who leave the standard egg image up, I assume they can’t be bothered, not the demographic I’m pursuing.

 

Personalize your account; add your name, location, website address (I’d pick your blog or replicated site or the request a sample of FIX page) You can always change it whenever you want based on your current marketing message.

 

Add your bio. Put something relevant, catchy., intriguing, professional (or not) you may want to link to your website in your bio or cross promote to Facebook and or LinkedIn. You are limited to 160 characters. Use them all, your bio will take up more room on the page when people view it.

 

Shorten your website addresses or urls if your using them as they just take up more of your limited room. I use a website called http://bit.ly to do this. It’s FREE for a start. Plus it gives you some neat insights into how many people click your links. You'll be able to tell if you use different shortened links even for teh same destination how many click through from your bio vs a tweet vs a blog entry...

 

One final piece of advice in the setup process, I tend to uncheck the notices. If you are building a large following you may not want to receive notices every time someone new follows you. That can mean 500+ emails a day. Enough to, at the very least, clog up your email inbox and potentially shut it down for a day. If you want to receive notices you might want to set up a new gmail account with the same username you’ve used for your twitter feed (just a suggestion)  this could be a good idea anyway especially if you sync it with the same username you’ve used for your natureline profile you can use it for everything. Keeps everything neat and organized.

 

Now your set up and ready to find an audience. Do you want to have 2000 people following every word you  say? I can pretty well guarantee you that if you read and implement what I’m going to share with you next you will have that many followers certainly within a week or so. Sound cool?

 

Check out the next article

 

 

 

Cheers,

Mark Wright

 

+1 (604) 219-3610  

 

 

 

Have you tried FIX tea yet? Get a free sample here!

See and download the full gallery on posterous

Green Tea & Arthritis - Try a sample of our FIX matcha energy tea for FREE http://bit.ly/fnSNyV

By Elena Popec

5. January 2011 15:49

 

 

Loose leaf green tea may be a delectable way to help prevent arthritis. Green tea comes from the camellia sinensis plant, which is the same plant that white, oolong, and loose leaf black teas come from. However, it is processed in a different way which results in its unique, vegetal flavor. Green tea undergoes less oxidation than oolong tea or black tea and this leaves it with more antioxidants, polyphenols, catechins, vitamins, and nutrients than those types of tea.

Arthritis and how green tea may help
    
Arthritis is a debilitating condition that causes inflammation of the joints. It can be extremely painful and cause stiffness and weakness. It can interfere with your quality of life and even impede upon basic daily tasks. It can become difficult to climb stairs or even to type, walk, or prepare food. Drinking green tea may help with rheumatoid arthritis. It contains polyphenols that may help to reduce the severity of this condition. Green tea may delay the onset of arthritis and even after the condition sets in, regular consumption of green tea may result in a more mild form of it.

Green tea is not a cure
    
There is no known cure for arthritis, and while drinking tea on a regular basis may help to prevent it or delay the onset, it is not a cure. And it is important to maintain a healthy lifestyle, a healthy diet, and daily exercise. While green tea has many health benefits, it’s not a miracle cure for everything. However, it can’t harm you, and in fact is better for you than other types of drinks. It tastes delicious, and yet has no calories. It is a tasty treat that will help improve your health and quality of life over time.

 

Try a sample of our FIX matcha energy tea for FREE http://bit.ly/fnSNyV

Ten of the amazing benefits of drinking tea.

Tea is one of the oldest and most popular beverages around the world.
Its popularity has a lot to do with its versatility. Tea can be served
hot or cold, and comes in an endless variety of flavors. Even more
important, though, is that tea provides many known health benefits.
Take a look at the list below for some of the most significant ways
tea can improve your quality of life. You’re sure to find at least one
reason to brew up a cup of this delicious drink.

1.    Prevent Cancer

Tea is a great source of antioxidant polyphenols, which, according to
numerous studies, can reduce cancer risk. Drinking just two cups of
tea per day may lower the risk of ovarian cancer by as much as 46%.
Risks for breast, lung, stomach, colon, and other cancers have also
been shown to drop when patients consumed tea regularly. Tea may also
help patients already diagnosed with cancer. In fact, a study
conducted by Rutgers University showed that tea may actually halt
cancer growth. The study involved colorectal cancer cells, which died
when exposed to a compound found in black tea.

2.    Fight Off Heart Disease

Tea, specifically green tea, can work as effectively as aspirin to
ward off blood clots. It has also been shown to lower LDL cholesterol
levels and block the enzyme that causes hypertension. This leads to
decreased blood pressure, which further lowers a person’s risk of
heart disease. One notable experiment showed that heart patients who
drank 4 cups of tea per day improved their blood vessel function by
50%.

3.    Protect Your Teeth

Studies show that tea inhibits the growth of plaque-causing bacteria.
It also reduces bacteria’s ability to adhere to teeth, and can stop
some bacteria from producing harmful acids. Tea also contains
fluoride, a key component in teeth protection. As an added bonus, tea
can also prevent bad breath!

4.    Boost Your Metabolism

Studies at several universities showed that green tea can raise a
person’s metabolic rate. The most recent estimate is that it can boost
your metabolism by approximately 4%. Green tea also has a noticeable
effect on fat oxidation, which is the rate at which the body processes
fats.

5.    Improve Your Mind

Drinking two cups of tea per day may cut your risk of mental
impairment, such as dementia, in half. This is partially due to tea’s
caffeine content. Caffeine in general has been shown to temporarily
improve short-term memory and reduce the likelihood of developing
Parkinson’s disease. Additionally, certain amino acids found in tea
can improve alertness and focus.

6.    De-Stress

A study at the University College of London showed that drinking black
tea can lower levels of cortisol, the stress hormone. Green tea can
also help improve your mood by controlling blood sugar levels.
Additionally, drinking decaffeinated, herbal teas, such as chamomile,
can help you get a more restful night’s sleep.

7.    Protect Your Bones and Joints

A study published in 2002 showed that people who drink tea regularly
have a noticeably higher bone density than their peers who do not
drink tea. This is because tea can help slow bone loss as you age. One
theory is that tea actually mimics the effects of estrogen, a hormone
known to promote bone strength. Another study showed that women who
drank tea were 60% less likely to develop arthritis pain.

8.    Avoid the Flu

Plenty of people drink tea and other hot liquids to soothe cold and
flu symptoms, but drinking tea regularly can actually help you avoid
the flu virus altogether. A study from the United Kingdom showed that
green tea not only inhibited the growth of the influenza virus, but it
actually killed off flu cells. Furthermore, unlike regular flu
vaccinations, the tea had an effect on multiple strains of the flu
virus, not just one.

9.  Get Great Skin

Tea helps hydrate your body, which directly leads to more glowing,
healthy-looking skin. More importantly, though, is that Green tea acts
as an anti-inflammatory agent. This means it can reduce redness and
swelling from acne. Green tea also has anti-bacterial properties,
which can help kill the bacteria that are causing a breakout. Drinking
tea is a great way to reap all these benefits, but many people also
use green tea pills and creams. In fact, the American Academy of
Dermatology found green tea to be just as effective as benzoyle
peroxide (one of the most common acne-fighting chemicals) at ending
breakouts.

10. Live Longer

With all the benefits mentioned above, it is easy to see how tea can
help you live a longer, healthier life. However, if you want more
definitive proof, Japan conducted a study of over 40,000 people and
found that regular tea drinkers had a noticably longer lifespan.

Read more: http://healthmad.com/nutrition/top-10-reasons-to-drink-tea/#ixzz1CviyeqN7

Rooibos has anti-carcinogenic and antimutagenic effects & is used for its anti-inflammatory and anti-allergic properties.

Rooibos Aspalathus linearis

 

Description Rooibos is a member of the legume family of plants. The rooibos shrub can grow up to 2 meter in height. The erects red coloured rooibos stems contain many dark green needle shaped leaves. The rooibos shrub produces small yellow flowers in spring through early summer. Each flower produces a one seeded small bean. Roobos has a long tap root, sometimes up to 2 m in length, enabling the plant to survive periods of drought.  Parts used Only the rooibos leaves and twigs are used. Rooibos leaves are harvested in summer, cut or chopped and are left to ferment. During the fermentation of the rooibos leaves, some chemicals are oxidized by enzymes resulting in the typical red colour and flavour of rooibos. Unfermented rooibos tea is also used and contains more antioxidants. Unfermented rooibos tea has a yellow color rather than the red colour of fermented rooibos. Phytochemicals Aspalathin, Nothofagin, Caffeic Acid, Chrysoeriol, Isoquercitrin, Orientin, Isoorientin, Luteolin, Vitexin, Isovitexin, Luteolin, Rutin, Flavonoids, Quercetin, Polyphenols Medicinal properties Rooibos has anti-carcinogenic and antimutagenic effects. Rooibos tea is used for its anti-inflammatory and anti-allergic properties. Consumption of rooibos tea may relief fever, asthma, insomnia, colic in infants and skin disorders. Rooibos extracts are used in ointments against eczema. In South Africa it is very common to give rooibos tea to babies who suffer from stomach cramps (colics). Rooibos is the only known source of the phytochemical aspalathin. In vitro and animal studies have indicated that quercetin and luteolin help to prevent cardiovascular disease, some cancers and stroke. Rutin has been associated with the maintenance of blood vessels walls.  Because rooibos contains no caffeine, it is suited for babies and children. The low level of tannins in rooibos will prevent problems with iron absorption.  Sasaki YF et all (Mutat Res 1993;286:221-232) showed in their study ' The clastogen-suppressing effects of green tea, Po-lei tea and Rooibos tea in CHO cells and mice' that fermented rooibos tea reduced cancer-associated changes in animal cells induced by the certain mutagens both in vitro and in vivo. Other researchers found that rooibos extracts from fermented rooibos leaves reduced cancerous transformation of mouse cells irradiation with x-rays. They found that extracts from unfermented green rooibos tea did not show this protective effect. Other facts Rooibos is grown only in the Cedarberg area and around the villages Clanwilliam and Citrusdal, which are situated to the north of Cape Town in South Africa. Efforts to cultivate rooibos in other areas or countries with similar climates have failed. Apparently rooibos needs a very specific climate and soil to grow. Rooibos tea has always been very popular in South Africa. To make the popular rooibos tea, the dried rooibos leaves are boiled in water and is often consumed with milk. Rooibos tea is much appreciated because it does not contain caffeine and is low in tannins. Other names Rooibos tea plant, red bush, red tea. Try a FIX for FREE go to http://get.fixteas.com