One issue I’ve had since going fulltime with IM is with efficiency. Seems like sense I now have more time to work on my Internet Business, I’m not as effective as I was when I had less time since I had to spend 70 hours a week at my day job. This is very strange, but it is a problem. Perhaps the reason is I’m not under the gun as much and so I’m not as focused.

I’m sure this is a problem that a lot of people have. In fact I know it is since I see it on forums all the time. I’ve been working on methods to keep myself on track and ensure I spend my time effectively and I thought I would share them with you.

The first thing is actually going to work. I no longer sit around in the bedroom slippers and work on the laptop from the sofa. Instead I get up and actually get dressed. I’m even getting dressed in work clothes just as if I was going out of the house to an office environment. This includes shoes, but it does not include a tie. Just can’t make myself do that again.

Another couple of things I’ve done is to create recurring task lists which I must accomplish every day before a certain time. This is very easy to do with Outlook and it has really helped my focus.

Of course even thought I have my tasks setup, there is always more to do than I really have time, so I’ve been working on efficiency too. One of the most time consuming tasks in my business is writing content. I do outsource some of it, but even if you get the cheapest writer around who still produces legible content you are creating an expense for your business, so I try to do as much of this as possible as it directly affects my bottom line.

One thing I did was to buy another monitor for by desktop computer. This additional monitor allows me to have my research up on one screen and write on the other one. This allows me to work a lot faster since I don’t have to switch back and forth between applications. This may not seem like much, but I’ve found that I’ve almost doubled my efficiency since making this change.

Another item is to really start using Dragon Naturally Speaking. For a long time this software would not work for me and my Southern English, but since version 10 it is very easy for me to train the software to my voice. Nuance claims the software can improve your output three times and I believe them. I have not ran controlled tests of this, but it does help quite a lot.

So do you have any tips for improving efficiency when working on your IM business, if so I would love to hear them.

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Go big or stay small is a question which has been on my mind for a while. I could not verbalize it until yesterday but this pretty much sums up a lot of things with Internet Marketing. Its really a question we all should be asking ourselves in this life. We all have choices in our life and our businesses and those choices come down to this one phrase.

So do you grow big or stay small. Its really a simple question, but many people never answer it. And if you do answer it are you prepared to follow through on that plan. For example I don’t know anyone who would not say they wanted more traffic or more revenue in their internet business, but are they prepared for the more work. Most people are not prepared for this and in my opinion its the reason many people do not reach their full potential in Internet Marketing or in life in general.

I know this has been a problem of mine from time to time. When  I was in college I had some courses in psychology and sociology one term that was introduced in these courses was the concept of reference groups. According to the terms we all have reference groups of people we strive to become like. These are the people we admire and want to become part of. One of the easiest ways to achieve this is to hang out with the groups we want to become a part of in hope that the group will accept us.

Now in the Internet Marketing world this is not as straight forward. Many times the groups we wish to become a part of are not really part of our lives. We see websites or web businesses that we see are successful and we desire to accomplish what the people behind those web properties have accomplished. I see this on forums all the time where someone asks how someone created a specific site. People will even reverse engineer a site’s design or programming in hopes of creating the same type of site, but the design is only one piece of a web business. The keywords they use or the way content is presented is not the whole site. You may can reverse engineer these items, but you can’t reverse engineer the thought process behind the original idea. Even if you could figure out what they where thinking then you would not be 100% the same as we all have our unique experiences in life which have brought you to this point in your life.

So what is my point? My point is when making decisions for your business don’t try to copy someone verbatim, put your own spin on the plan. And decide from the start if you want to grow big or stay small. There is nothing really wrong with either choice, but each path requires a different path to accomplish. Anyone can stay small, but to grow big takes planning and investment.

Do you really want to be just like one of the big gurus, do you want to own a site like Amazon.com or Ebay. What ever your reference group is or in this case reference site, then pull it apart and figure out how they got that way. You won’t be able to duplicate them 100% but you would not want to anyway as you want to make it your own.

So do you want to grow big or stay small? Don’t answer big unless you are prepared to do what is required to create a big site and in term create a big business from that site. The money is there for people who are willing.

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I just attended a stompernet webinar on Twitter and there was some great information shared. I came out with 50 tips that are great for social media in general. Most for the tips are for twitter thus the title, but there are some for other social media sites such as facebook.

Of course you can always follow me on twitter as I will be following these tips too http://twitter.com/nononsenseIM

I wrote this list out very fast as it was gone through and i have not edited this at all, so there may be typos and parts may nto be clear but I’m tired and wanted to go ahead and get it posted for you guys as this information is great. If you haven’t joined stompernet yet, then do it as its great content. I don’t even have an affiliate link to send you, but if you want to earn money online then you need to get in on this product and just come up with the 199 bucks a month.

1. Earn the right to self promote. So you have to give good content all the time and then you can do a limited amount of self promotion.

2. To get the most out of twitter you need to fill all 24 hours with interesting and valuable content

3. Give 20 pieces of valuable content in order to make one self promoting tweet.

4. Tweets should be interesting to your audience. Add value to increase your reputation.

5. Identify your audience and then find out what they want. Find a picture that represents the type of person you want to connect with. Write down list of things that target audience is interested in, 4. Take 8 minutes and write twenty twitter posts to connect with that audience and then keep on topic. Stay on topic.

6. Followers ride on the coattails of interesting retweets. Log into stomper social and then retweet one interesting thing from one of the faculty members to get your tweets to share.

7. Privacy settings on facebook. Make sure that facebook is open so anyone can get to any information you put out.

8. Tweeting upside down text helps with readership. To do this use tool StomperSocial get the plugins from Twitter Twenius to get these plugins.

9. Create pages on Facebook for topics. Build your business on your pages not on your personal profile.

10. Popular Tweets. Followers are fiction, listeners are facts and you need to more readers than followers. Stop looking at the follower county. Increase listenership. S?tick duct tape on screen if you need to.

11. Create pages for each of your business as well as any keywords you are targeting to build your audience towards your particular content target.

12. Develop Twitter or social media style or persona. By a real person not a robot or RSS read. Be more of what every you are. More funny, sexy, etc. but don’t be obnoxious

13. Use videos in your marketing. Do videos in high def. Shoot and work in High Def since this technology has a longer shelf life.

14. Twitter posts if done well, but all your followers will not read every tweet. So repurpose content and retweet content again and again, but do it correctly. Don’t spam, add value.

15. When you put a video on YouTube make sure you put it on Face book to.

16. Don’t tweet unless you are smiling because others can tell.

17. Use your iPhone for social media

18. Twitter favorites has an RSS feed. Tweet favorite posts because it creates a list of bookmarks and you can use this in any RSS feed. So you can get these indexed. Need to pull in using PHP. Twitter.com/favorites/YourUserName/rrs

19. Create facebook app for about 5000 dollars and build in advertising so you can make money

20. To tell who is listening. If you have a 1000 followers, create 4 tweets that are similar with different url in it throughout the day 4 times a day and then run each day for 7 days. Track the clicks on the url, retweets, then count everything up to tell. Do this once a quarter.

21. Don’t link your blog to twitter. Because the header on your blog is for SEO, the posts you make on twitter should be designed to get people to click. Craft twitter posts to target something people on twitter want to read.

22. You want quality followers. Best way to get followers, be interesting, be you, be social, be helpful, engage followers, tweet as often as can but don’t sacrifice followers. Optimum tweet count should be between 10-50 tweets per day, but 24 is a good number to shoot for to get the best results and gain followers.

23. Don’t link twitter to facebook. As this will overwhelm facebook audience because 50 tweets a day is too many. Only send the tweets you really want to facebook.

24. Stumble and Digg your tweets. This can get the users to stumble or dig or bookmark your twitter status page.

25. Selective Twitter to allow interesting tweet to show up on facebook. Get selective app on facebook and then use @feed to put tweet on facebook.

26. To make a viral tweet you can create a link that will already be populated so people can retweet. This is in the Twenius plugin on stompernet

27. Frequently but irregular offer sweet sells to people who are fans on your facebook pages.

28. Links on twitter background as not clickable. Put 800 number on twitter page so people can call and you can offer them an offer. Record free recorded message to get people.

29. Recognize that twitter and facebook success is dependant upon writing great headlines.

30. Use StomperCast Text messaging system to build a database mail list to build a list with a social flair. Allows a mobile keyword you can use to get a text for people to get messages form you.

31. Use numbers in your tweets such as 5 ways to get more tweeter readers. Numbers almost always produce a higher CTR

32. Create optimize tweets, so learn how to make it interesting in less than 140 characters. If your tweet is 140 characters then a person has to remove text to retweet.

33. Once a day pick up a phone and talk to a customer. DM people and ask them if they want to call.

34. Send people Christmas cards to get their mailing address.

35. How to build a email list from your social media efforts. Build in methods to get email optins from the people who follow you on social media. This will help you build your list more.

36. Read 100 twitter tips ebook from Twitter Twenius. Steal from the book and create an ebook that becomes extremely popular.

37. Facebook Events can be powerful and you can have online events. Create a video event for your next killer video and then create and event on facebook to launch video

38. You need go through and read twitter’s FAQ and rules so you can follow the rules and not get banned once you build your readers. Read through parts that may cause you to lose your account.

39. Tie what you do to big news stories. Example if you sell air conditioning supplies, then if there is a heat wave that is getting a lot of attention tie yourself to it. This would be great for Trend blogging

40. Add content to any thank you page to get people to follower you on twitter. Put your twitter id eveywhere you go including any time you speak.

41. Anytime you get in front of an audience give them the ability to follow you.

42. Create tweet sets to help you keep people interested. Create a set of related tweets and then push them out. You can do this for a lot of stuff like blogging tips, email tips. Then you can put them into a scheduler so they run in a syndicated format. This helps you give quality content and saves you time.

43. Linkedin should be used to connect with other people. Answer linked questions so you can help increase your reputation. Make sure these are good because people may offer you a job or consulting opportunity.

44. Make URL intriguing so it best to use a keyword in the URL so people want to click. Can use bud url for this. Plus you get statistics. With some services you can change

45. One thing against TOS of twitter is having multiple accounts for same type of service. But you can have multiple accounts for different types of content as the audiences will be different.

46. Don’t let accounts remain dormant if you are not actively using it. Change the profile and make sure you keep posting some content to each of your accounts. They are removing accounts that are dormant.

47. Creative commons is a way to allow people to use your stuff. Good way to use this is free to use with attribution, so require a link back to your site.

48. Understand that many of your tweets should have a shelf life of more than thirty seconds. Make your content evergreen so people may see it down the road. This allows you to rerun tweets later. Perpetual tweet layering. This allows you to make great use of your time.

49. Recognize that social media has a role to introduce and builds relationship. It’s not for selling. Your blog educates further, your site sells. Social media is not for selling.

50. Watch social media rules and follow them.

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