If you are with one of the Direct Sales companies and trying to build a portion of your business online, it is very important to get involved with popular online social media networking sites like Twitter.com. When new business professionals start marketing their businesses on Twitter, they often make a big marketing mistake by tweeting out massive amounts of business spam messages instead of trying to network and get to know their followers.

When people join social media networking sites, they don’t want to be spammed 24/7 with business messages. They do want to learn more about the company or business they are following along with the products you are marketing…but…they also want to engage in meaningful conversation with that company’s consultant who is doing all of that Tweeting. In the case of Direct Sales…that means they want to engage in meaningful conversations with YOU.

When it comes to marketing your business on Twitter, here are a few important tips that you should know.

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“Ideas are like rabbits. You get a couple, learn how to handle them, and pretty soon you have a dozen.” ~John Steinbeck

Looking for an idea for your next 10 (or more) articles? Find them hiding one of these 5 places:

1. Your Blog Reader

What blogs are you subscribed to and following? Check out the latest headlines and hot topics for inspiration.

Ask yourself these questions:

• Do you agree with the the post or have a different take?
• Is there an idea or concept within the post that you could write about?
• What else comes to mind as you read?

2. Books You’re Reading

Always be reading new things and you’ll always have new ideas to write about.

Some ideas:

• Share a short quote from a book and share your thoughts.
• Write a review of the book and share your biggest takeaways.

3. Blog Comments

Take a look through your recent blog comments to find:

• Questions readers have asked that you could answer in more detail.
• Topics that caught their interest and got them commenting.
• Replies you’ve posted that you could expand into a complete post.

If you don’t have many comments on your own posts yet, use AllTop.com or Technorati.com to find popular blogs in your niche and see what their commenters are talking about.

4. Social Networking Sites

Visit some popular Facebook groups or fan pages, search for a #hashtag on Twitter or browse groups on LinkedIn and see what the hot topics and questions are that you’ve got information on or opinions about that you could share.

5. Question Sites

Search sites like quora.com or answers.yahoo.com for your topics or keywords and see what questions people are asking.

Michelle Shaeffer is a trainer and consultant, showing online business owners step by step to harness the power of technology and internet marketing to build successful businesses . She teaches her clients how to save hours and hours of frustration and shows them how to make their online presence work quickly to attract traffic, generate leads, and build authority. Get your free checklist to make your blog more awesome at http://michelleshaeffer.com/51

Being a full time work at home mom (regardless of what you think or believe), does have it’s thorny roses. It’s like anything else and also like an outside the home job. No matter what, there will be challenges in whatever you do.

The various social networks are always a great help. If you use the social platforms correctly, YOU too will establish your home business and also build your brand. It takes some hard work and determination to make it in the WAH niche.

When I say correctly, I mean be polite and courteous by putting aside all differences you have with others. Really, it takes a lot less energy than being negative with your social audiences. And it sure don’t help promote your business.

The Tips Below Include positive and social skills that lets you promote your website or affiliate links more effectively.

1. Use Social Networking – There are literally boundless opportunities to connect with the right people that will benefit you the most. Take time to get to know every one of your connections. It just makes good business sense!
2. Keep Up With Technology – Now for a lot of work at home moms, new technology is a foreign language. However, if you’re going to be working on the Internet, you definitely need to keep abreast with all things tech. For example; will a smart phone, lap top, or Ipad help you with your business? In most cases, all the above would be excellent assets with keeping in touch with your contacts and other work at home professionals.
3. Thinking About a Partnership – Now sometimes this is not even feasible due to close friends or family members being involved. However, it may be a perfect work solution and no foreseeable problems are waiting to strike. A partnership business all depends on the various parties involved and their attitudes. The determination to always work hard (for all parties), needs to be practiced. There also needs to be some sort of agreement signed by all parties on how business should be done and also know upfront what’s expected of you at all times. Take time out for some careful thought before getting your feet wet with a partnership business.
4. Stay Away From Bullies – Yes there are indeed a ton of bullies online just waiting to belittle you! What do these bullies want? Most times folks that bully gets a false sense of security. And they sure don’t think much of themselves if they do. It’s called getting their kicks; which is a twisted way of making themselves look good. Stay away from bullies and stick like glue to positive people that will respect you just as you respect them.
5. Seek out friendships and help buddies – For most people, having friends you can rely on and help give you feedback (when you need it) is a necessity. Online friends helps with the work at home isolation or (blues) is sometimes what it’s referred to. Also, it’s always a good motto to treat your online (and offline) friends and buddies the way YOU would like to be treated.

The best time to be social is NOW! Hopefully the 5 tips above helps someone along the way reading this article. Be sociable ! Be successful!

Tammy is a passionate blogger. You can find more grandparenting tips and articles by Tammy Here

You can also find Tammy on Twitter

The internet is a great thing when it comes to reaching out to people outside of your community, but it’s also important to remember what you say will reach the masses quickly and easily. It doesn’t matter how many people see what you say, word of mouth will carry it even further.

When you use Facebook or Twitter to promote your business, people see what you say. When you have customers or potential customers that follow you, they watch and read what you post and that can be a good thing or it can be detrimental to your business. Here are a few things to think about when you’re posting on the web.

1. Remember who follows you and don’t say anything you may regret later.

2. Think about the topics you discuss online because you may offend someone if you say the wrong thing.

3. Don’t talk politics unless your business is political.

4. Don’t tell your life history.

5. Don’t talk about your medical history online.

6. Don’t talk about your health.

It’s crucial when you market a business online to be careful what you say. Offending a customer may mean the end of your relationship with them and that could ruin your business. While we all know we have the freedom to speak about anything we want, if you choose to talk about the wrong thing it could hurt someone’s feelings or it could make them angry enough to stop working with you.

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Let’s face it, a viable, well-thought-out marketing plan needs to be circulating your work at home business throughout the holidays. For a lot of businesses like these, the holidays slow them down and also of course the income isn’t flowing as easy.

If this is you, do you give up easy and walk off with most of your pride swallowed? This should NOT be the case! Every business goes through slow times, whether it’s the holidays or any other time. And yours shouldn’t be an exception.

For your holiday marketing to be successful, you need to start thinking about ideas and networking techniques that will make YOU stand out from the rest way before December. The beginning of fall or September should be sufficient.

You should be writing articles, blog posts, sales pages, email messages and newsletters, as well as setting up promotions way ahead of time so they’ll be ready when the time comes so you can enjoy the holidays with your family. Christmas time is family time.

With all the social networking sites that are well established today online; the marketing techniques are essentially right in front of you. Think about it, there is no charge to join these social medias. However, there are learning curves to them.

For starters, you definitely need followers by the time the pre-holidays hit your virtual neighborhood. So to be a success; you need a couple of years of tweets (and followers) under your belt so you’ll have a niche audience to pitch your ideas and marketing leads to.

So, finally let’s get into the various social media marketing tips that will get you the results, traffic and sales you’ll need in order to make a nice sized income.

* First thing…fill out all profiles for each social networking website and make them as appealing as possible. You need to make them good enough to make a reader want to click to read more about you and what you’re all about and what you have to offer.

* Be festive and use a nice holiday background on your Twitter, Facebook, or Linkedin page. Now there IS such a thing as too much gaudiness! Don’t make your pages so busy that all your content gets lost in the designs. However, a simple festive touch will make you more appealing and will make most social networkers want to click to find out more about you and your home business.

* Offer promotions and sale specials, as well as some nice freebies. Everyone loves free stuff! It could be anything from free marketing reports, ebooks, graphic designs and logos, to perhaps a free blog design and set up.

* If you are in direct sales, make the shopping experience easy for customers. Create a nice sales page along with all your products, and include a page with Paypal buttons. This makes getting clicks and sales less difficult. Shoppers are more inclined to buy from you if your Paypal purchase buttons are there in front of them.

* Make a review and testimonial page. As you grow your clientele, you can start up a review and testimonial page for your clients to read. I know for me personally; if I read positive reviews and testimonials about a specific product I’m interested in, I usually bite the bullet and make the purchase.

* And finally have certain goals set in mind for the holiday season. Set goals on growing your customer base and products, as well as size of income each year. Of course it’s suggested to keep your goals realistic and something worth striving for to make your business better and stronger as each year goes by.

It’s really never too early to work on holiday content and promotions! It needs to be done anyway you look at it, so why not start early?

Article Written By: Tammy Embrich

Tammy has been successful in the work at home job search industry for many years. She is an Internet marketer, article marketer, and ghostwriter. She offers free job leads for the job seeker, as well as other free resources, work at home articles, tips, and more at www.onestopwebemployment.com.

You can also find Tammy at her Grandparenting Articles and Tips blog, offering grandmother’s experiences, brags, recipes, tips, photos, and more.

The Wordless Wednesday post I shared yesterday was for the social networking site, YouTube. This site is a good way to listen to what other business owners have to say about their business and you have the ability to learn things from others. If you missed the picture, click here to view it.

YouTube is a site that’s used for a lot of different things. People use it to learn things, listen to music, and many other things. You can use it to introduce people to your business or you can use it to teacher others how to do something.

There are many things you can record and add to YouTube that will benefit your business, but the first thing you need to do when you decide to use YouTube is create an account. Having a profile is a great way to network with others and promote your business.

The first thing you need to do is record an introduction video for your site. Then you can record any type of video that would be beneficial to both you and your market. It’s important to add these videos to your website and share them on the other social networking sites we’ve discussed this last month.

If you haven’t set up a profile on YouTube and if you haven’t recorded your first message, you need to do it. You’ll see the benefits when you continue to record messages and market them on social networking sites. Click here to join today.

The Wordless Wednesday post I shared yesterday was for the social networking site, Facebook. This site is a good way to catch up with others, but it’s also a good way to grow your business. Read on for more information on this great social networking site and how it can help you to grow your business. If you missed the picture, click here to view it.

Reaching the masses can be a difficult thing to do, but when you do you’ll find you’ll have the ability to grow your business. There are numerous ways to reach the masses, but one of the best ways to do that is to use Facebook.

Facebook is a good way to reconnect with old friends, but it’s also a good way to grow your business. You can do this through posting your articles to your profile page or posting your blog posts to your profile page or fan page. You can also place ads on those pages and have the ability to grow your business.

If you aren’t using Facebook to grow your business, you need to consider giving it a try. You’ll find when you do you’ll increase the traffic to your site and you’ll begin to see growth in your business.

If you haven’t joined our Facebook fan page you should. We post tips and more, so you won’t want to miss it. Click here to join today.

The Wordless Wednesday post I shared yesterday was for the social networking site, Twitter. This site is a good way for people to share what they offer, communicate with others, and meet potential customers. Read on for more information on this great social networking site and how it can help you grow your business. If you missed the picture, click here to view it.

Growing a business online is not as easy as some people may think. It’s difficult to build trust when people can shake your hand and meet you face to face. Since those important things aren’t possible, you must build trust in other ways and one of the best and easiest ways to do that is through Twitter.

Twitter is a messenger type platform. It is much the same as Yahoo Messenger or Skype. What you type into the box and send is immediately visible by your followers. This is good because it gives you the ability to put messages out there that may be time sensitive.

When Twitter is used properly you’ll find it will be easier for you to grow your business. If you only make business related posts you are wasting your time and that’s not good. It’s important to build trust and that’s done when you communicate with your followers and you show them you’re not all about business, but you care about others as well.

When you use Twitter for both your business and personal needs you’ll find your business will grow and you’ll see success. When you do this people will see you’re a real person and really needs, wants, and desires. That’s the best way to grow.

If we’re not following each other, let’s do that now. My profile on Twitter is @WAHMArticles and you can share your profile link in the comments if you choose.

The Wordless Wednesday post I shared yesterday was for the social networking site, LinkedIn. This site is a way for people to share their resume’ online. Read on for more information on this great social networking site and how you can use it to grow your home business. If you missed the picture, click here to view it.

LinkedIn is a resume’ type site that was thought to be for professional people looking for jobs, but it’s now much more than that. It can be used by anyone and everyone. It doesn’t matter if you used to work a job and now own a home business, if you’ve never had a home business, or if you’ve never worked a job, but have always had a home business. You still have the ability to create a profile and include your information.

Growing your business is easier to do when you use LinkedIn to show off what you currently do and what you’ve done in the past. You’ll have the ability to list all of the tasks you can perform, you can have people recommend you, and you can link your blog to your profile so they have the ability to see what you’re doing.

If you’ve never used LinkedIn or set up a profile only to let it go because you weren’t looking for a job outside the home, you need to go and update it and then use it to your advantage. You can use it to grow your business and the best thing about it is it’s FREE to do.

One of the hottest ways to market any type of written online product review is to promote that review over on the social media networking site Twitter. As a product review blogger…I can tell you first hand that I get a slew of traffic by marketing my reviews on Twitter. With that said, there is a right and wrong way to promote your review on Twitter. Let’s take a look at the correct way of doing it.

1. Set up a professionally looking profile page. This page should include an avatar of either yourself or your site’s logo. Your profile should state that you are a reviewer and it should have a link to your web site. There are company’s and brand ambassadors who cruise Twitter looking for PR bloggers to get involved with. When they stumble across your profile page you want it to look professional and you want it to be filled out correctly.

2. When you write up your Tweets to send out to those who are following you, the message should include the name of the product and it should state that it is a review. For most of us who have been doing this a long time, we will put “Product Review for XYZ Company” at the beginning of our message.

3. You should include the hashtag of #productreview some where within your message (Tweet). There are people and company’s who will search out that hashtag keyword on Twitter so make sure you use it.

4. Don’t bombard your followers with too many tweets in a short amount of time. You should spread out your messages over several hours. You can do this by downloading various Twitter approved tools such as TweetDeck or HootSuite and pre-schedule them to send out when you are not online. You should never send them out less than 3 minutes apart because people can’t read them that quickly. Furthermore, you should not pre-schedule Tweets to go out 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

5. You need to get chatty and converse with your followers. If you do nothing but advertise your reviews and never chat or try to connect with those who are following you, you will be labeled as a spammer. Folks do want to read what you Tweet but they also want to converse with you.

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