Wednesday

A Holiday Savings Tip - Be Prepared to SHOP!

Have You Ever Experienced This Scenario?

It's a week before the holidays, your list is getting longer and longer, and your funds seem to be fewer and fewer...

How to cope? Who to cross of the list? Do I buy everyone something small? I don't want to get something cheezy that people can't use... HELP!



Here is a helpful holiday tip that I LOVE to use! Pick your favorite store to shop, one of those stores where you can get something for anyone, my choice, Target!

I go to Target once a week, and every time I go I load cash onto a gift card. With my purchase I ask the cashier to simply add $20, $40, etc... to the balance of the card. Now imagine the balance on the card doing this for 3 months, how about 6 months? What if you started this the very first trip to Target after the holidays and had a whole year on the card?

Pretty exciting isn't it? It's a savings account, away from the savings account. Utilizing the 'out of sight, out of mind' scenario, you are less likely to use this cash, if it's not in the bank and not greec cash in your wallet. The best part, NO credit card fees involved!



So get started today, you still have time to $hop and $ave for the holiday season!

Alethea Anderson
Savvy WAHM

Tuesday

The Good Ship Lollipop, it's a SWEET time to start a Home Business


The Fact is, the People of the United States are in a PANIC

The economy appears to be crumbling around us, and many are feeling the squeeze.

When there is a 'recession' or when financial strife seems to be everywhere there is one thing we have to remember.

The money is not GONE, it has simply SHIFTED. It may not be stimulating the same areas it was stimuluating before, but it is stiumlating other areas now.

Many seem to think that all the money went POOF and vanished off the face of the Earth. The News Media gives the impression that we are a poor country running 'out' of money and that our walls are crumbling in on the economy that holds us in place.

The reality is, the same amount of money is circulating around the United States, it is just swirling around in different sweet circles!

For Network Marketing and the Home Based Business arena, this is indeed SWEET news! People are running in droves to the Good Ship Lollipop because they are seeking change. They are exploring the possibilities and reaching towards higher stars.

Many whom before shrugged off 'opportunity' are now embracing it. Once confortable in their lifestyles, many have now seen the shift and want to take the bull by the horns (lollipop by the stick) and be in control of their lives. In control of their money. In control of their future.

When a J-O-B (just-over-broke) dictates your life (when you can take vacation), dictates your money (paycheck to paycheck) and dictates your future (stuck in a dead end job until you retire) some people are trapped in the rut.

But when this J-O-B dissapears, there is confusion. "What do I do now? I had it all planned out!" People start looking for something, a 'way' to change their life for the better.

"When one door closes, another door opens..."

They have a choice at this point, and many are opting for the Good Ship Lollipop!

Alethea Anderson
USS Lollipop

Monday

Twitterology - Twitter, How to choose people to Follow and attract Quality Followers

So you have a twitter page, and you have tweeted your first tweet, but who is reading it?


One of the most common twitter questions is "How do I get followers?"

There are a few ways, your first step is to follow people, now, how do you choose who to follow and how many people do you choose to follow?

Some people out there follow everyone. They will add, add, add and add people. So they are following like 10,000 or 20,000 people. They do this in hopes that those 10,000 or 20,000 people will follow them back.
There is a major flaw in this.
  1. If you are following 10,000 people, you simply do not have enough time in the day to correspond and participate in the tweet conversations that are happening.
The point of twitter is to take part in the tweet conversations that are in your message feed. If you are there simply to harvest twitter people in hopes of them seeing your spam message, your time on twitter will be short lived because you will either A) get kicked off of twitter from the tweet powers that be OR B) you will find you are having zero success and leave twitter.

This is what I do, and it has worked amazingly! I only follow 50 to 60 people at a time, and I choose whom I follow carefully. I follow people that are local to me, within my zip code or a 50 mile radius. I follow public figures. I also follow people of mass interest, Network Marketing gurus, political figures, famous figures, top news stories and more. I follow people that I am genuinely interested in like people providing valuable content to my life.

For instance these are people I have followed for months because I simply enjoy what they have to contribute:
  • @yehudaberg Yehuda offers important and valuable messages that I enjoy as a positive, spiritual being.
  • @joebruzzese Joe is an author of a book relating to tween and teens entering the Middle School Years. As a parent of a tween middle school er, his tips are valuable to me.
  • @jenlovelady Jen is a fun Mom who really resonates with me and how I am as a Mom and a home business owner. She's the type of gal I'd love to be local friends with!
  • @google As a webmaster and SEO expert, I like to stay in tune with the current www trends.
Whenever I choose a new person/thing to follow, I get new followers! How? People are always looking at people's follower list, and if you are showing there, odds are, people will see you on the list and start following you!

Now do not feel obligated to follow people just because they follow you, major twitter faux paux. Many people follow solely in hopes of getting the follow back. If you follow them, they stay your follower, if you don't follow-back, they bong you from their list within 24 hours.

NOTE: Be prepared to see your followers go UP and DOWN constantly, as many are playing the twitter-game of just getting followers!

I ONLY want followers who are really interested in what I have to say. If someone follows me and leaves, that's OK by me as evidently I did not hold their interest. What is important to me are those who chose to follow me and stay following me.

As of the date I wrote this I am hovering around 500 followers and this fluctuates between about 490 and 520 daily.

Also, I am only following 55 people and once a week I go through the list of people I am following and delete people whom are not actively tweeting. I want my 50-60 people I follow to be active on twitter like me.

I also shift people too, I'll hop on a Verified Account Celebrity page like @Oprah for a couple days, to see if I gain some new followers, then I'll unfollow. Honestly, most celebrities are not that 'active' and they hide all the tweets from their followers so their pages are not that fun to watch. In many cases it is a publicist tweeting and not the celebrity them self. The odds of getting a response or a re-tweet are slim to none! (if you choose to follow a celebrity, make sure it is a verified account as there are many posers out there!)

Finally, the most effective way to gain new followers is to POST! The more active you are, the more people will see you, the more people will re-tweet (RT)* your posts. Your goal is to be SEEN on people's pages and in the main feeds.

Make it a point to utilize the Trending Topics key words to contribute too. BUT only contribute valuable posts to the trending topics, don't spam your ad with a Trending Topic key word!
The more you participate on twitter, the more you'll learn. Remember, no one will bite you and yes there is a learning curve.

The question is, are you ready and willing to take a technological step towards advancing your online marketing techniques?

Alethea Anderson
Home Business Twitter Tweeter

*Re-tweet RT is when someone takes your post and shares it with everyone that follows them giving you the credit creating potential new comments and followers.

Sunday

What is Twitter? And how to use it for Web Marketing!

Twitter, twitter, twitter ~ it's all the rage, but what IS twitter?



There are many network marketers that are afraid of a twitter, they think it may bite, hurt or sting. They hear about it. The stars are doing it. The news is doing it. But is it dirty, mean and nasty?



"What's a 'tweet'?" they say wide eyed and curious...



Let me explain! Twitter is a micro blog. (now if you are wondering what a blog is, well, THIS here that you are reading http://www.multimediamom.com/ is a blog!) The twitter micro blog is a blog format in which you can post (aka tweet) 140 characters of text at a time. Mini, aka 'micro' sentences about your day, your business, your ANYTHING!



It is educational, amusing, sad and interesting. You choose people to 'follow' and when you follow them you will see their 'tweets' (micro blog posts) on your twitter page. And people may choose to follow you, in turn, they will see your 'tweets' on their twitter page.



Some people use twitter just to update interesting points about their day. Some people seem to live on twitter telling every moment...sometimes...they...say...too...much!


Now, utilizing twitter for marketing your business online can be an amazing tool to gain new customers and/or recruits. And, it can also be damaging to your business career, if you are not careful!


Twitter is another Social Networking site (tool) like Facebook and MySpace, where you connect with people you do know and also reach out to a potential audience of millions of people you don't know.


Twitter Online Marketing Don'ts You do not want to over do your marketing! The best rule when marketing is "DO NOT DO TO OTHERS WHAT YOU DO NOT WANT THEM TO DO TO YOU!" A few of the most important ones are...
  • Don't tweet your opportunity over and over and over.
  • Don't use the DM private message feature to push your opportunity.
Twitter Online Marketing Suggestions Remember, you are casting a light (or shadows) upon you and your character. You may want to re-think a few of these before doing them...
  • Tweeting twitpics of yourself drunk or engaging in embarrassing acts.
  • Taking 'surveys' and posting the info of things that shadow you as a person.
Twitter Online Marketing Do-s You are on twitter to socialize. People become your 'followers' on twitter because they are curious about you.
  • Utilize twitter to sprinkle bits of who you are so people can get to know you.
  • Occasionally tweet your business, i.e. was it in the news, is there a new product out?
Use your good judgement! Remember, if you post something it is instantly sent in feeds to the Internet. Even if you delete it, it could already be OUT on the Internet and that comment is frozen in time. When you delete it from twitter the site, it is NOT deleted from other places twitter feeds to.

People get to see 'who' you are and by the tweets you show and some will become curious about what you do. I have generated many, many leads from my twitter page. I sprinkle information about what I do, adventures I have and more!

Check back tomorrow for strategy on following and gaining followers, the right way!

Alethea Anderson
Twitter Tweeter

Saturday

Why did you STOP believing? A Pause in Your Network Marketing Career...

Why did you STOP Believing?



You must believe in YOU in order to achieve the realization of your dreams...



What stopped you?



The moment you clicked 'enroll', you were so fired up, so excited, you just KNEW this was the thing that was going to be the ONE to make you financially free! But, you stopped believing.



Some one or some thing made your mind start spinning and the end result was you hit the brakes and you screeched to a halt; your dreams became smoking tires.



All of a sudden your engine was at a mere idle and you had no desire to press that gas and move forward. The longer you sat at an idle, the more likely the vehicle of success was to run out of fuel. You feel safe at a stop, nothing bad can happen here, right? Once the vehicle was out of fuel, that was your perfect excuse to quit, right?



"I'm out of GAS, how can I go ANY farther?"



Well I'm here to tell you to light up those tires, burn some rubber and MAKE those dreams become reality!



As the Tao Te Ching says, "A journey of 1,000 miles, begins with a single step" Now if you are not willling to move forward, how are you going to get where you want to be?



Everyone, let me repeat, everyone has paused in their home business. We have all felt moments of loss and confusion. We have all felt an instant of "I QUIT". We have all been frustrated. We have all been angry. BUT those of us who refused to run out of fuel, have slowly stepped on the gas, because we know that forward motion will create momentum and once momentum kicks in there is no stopping you!



There is a LAW to prove it, Sir Isaac Newton and his first law known of motion as the Law of Inertia.



"An object at rest will remain at rest unless acted on by an unbalanced force. An object in motion continues in motion with the same speed and in the same direction unless acted upon by an unbalanced force."



What does this mean? Well basically that there is a natural tendency of objects to keep on doing what they're doing. All objects resist changes in their state of motion. In the absence of an unbalanced force, an object in motion will maintain this state of motion.



So think about what is the unbalanced 'force' making YOU STOP your forward motion towards success? Then realize, once you start moving toward success, you will KEEP moving in the direction you choose (success), unless some unbalanced force stops you.

So it's time to make a choice, STOP and run out of gas, or, move towards success!

Alethea Anderson
Moving Forward