If you are interested in joining a social networking website, the first thing that you will need to do is find a network to join. You can easily find a number of networks by performing a standard internet search. For the best search results, you may want to search with the words social networking or social networking websites.  In your search, it is likely that that you come up with a fairly large number of different networking sites.  Popular sites that may be included in your search results may include, but will not be limited to Twitter,  MySpace and Facebook.

Once you have made the decision to join a particular social networking website, whether or not it is one of the ones mentioned above, you will need to need to register with the site.  Even free networking communities require that you go through the registration process. Once you are registered, you should be able to start communicating with other community members.  Before you start communicating, you may need to develop your online profile or profile page, depending on the networking site in question. Although it may seem easy enough to create a profile, there are many internet users who are unsure exactly what they should and should not include.

Perhaps, one of the most important things to include in your online website is your picture. While a personal picture is optional, it is ideal. Many internet users enjoy taking to someone that they can see in their minds, without a picture this is difficult.  If you are looking to use social networking websites just to meet new friends you may not necessarily need to post a private picture, but you may need to if you are looking to find love online. When it comes to internet dating, many individuals will not even view an online profile if a picture is not included.

In addition to your photograph, you may want to include your name.  Now, when it comes to your name, you need to be cautious.  You are advised against giving your full name, especially if your profile or profile page contains a personal photograph of you.  In addition to your name, you may want to put down your location.  As with your name it is important to display caution.  Your picture, your address, and your full name can be dangerous, especially if it falls into the wrong hands. As much as you would like to fill your social networking profiles with personal information, you are advised to think about your safety before anything else.

You may also want to include information on yourself. This information may include your hobbies, issues that are important to do, your likes, and your dislikes.  With many social networking websites, including MySpace, you will find that there are preset profile fields for this information. In addition to preset questions or categories on your likes and dislikes, you may also find additional information, including fun questionnaires.  Many social networking websites will ask that you describe your favorite color, your goals in life, your most embarrassing moment, and so on. As with your other personal information, it is important to stay as vague and possible and not use any full names, especially real ones.

By keeping the above mentioned points in mind, you should not only be able to create an online social networking profile that is filled with valuable information, but you can do so while staying safe at the same time.  Your safety on the internet is in your hands, that is why it is important to think about safety, as well as internet popularity.

Many people come to internet marketing wanting to make some money or thinking it is something extra they can they can do in their spare time. Most, if not all beginning internet marketers don’t have any SMART goals when they get started.

What’s wrong with not having a goal?

Nothing if you are just playing at marketing online, but if you want to create a successful business and a full time income online you’re going to have to have a goal. This doesn’t mean you have to start with a huge overwhelming goal, but you’ve got to have some way to measure your success. Internet marketing can be kind of demoralizing at times, and lonely at others. You work alone, at home, and you end up relying on yourself to keep you motivated and moving forward. This is where a goal comes in.

What kind of goal should I set?

It depends completely on you, but here are a few tips for setting S.M.A.R.T. goals.

Specific. Make sure you know the who, what, where and why of setting this goal.

Measurable.  Make sure you can measure when you’ve succeeded, ask how many or how much. Recently someone said to me the main goal for them was to “give away one CD a day”. That is very measurable and you’ll know when you are accomplishing that goal.

Attainable: Make sure you can actually reach your goal ~ make it a stretch, but don’t set your goal so high there’s no chance you’ll reach it. You’ll most likely get discouraged and quit. Is it attainable to set a full time income from home as your goal, sure!

Realistic: This means you actually believe it is possible to reach the goal you’ve set yourself. Setting a goal for a full time income from home may be attainable but you have to be realistic, it’s not going to happen in a month ~ set realistic expectations on your goal.

Timely: A goal that is just floating out there really isn’t a goal at all. You need a time limit on your goal, a time frame to know how long you’ve got to work on this goal. This will not only give you a deadline, but help motivate you to keep moving forward.

If you realize you’ve jumped into internet marketing without a goal, it might be time to start over. You can create goals in any and many areas of your business, your traffic levels, the number of articles you submit, how many CDs you give away, how many RSS subscribers you get, how many products you sell. There are many ways to go about creating goals, but once you do you will find you have a much more concrete feeling of what you have to do to be successful and that is what can keep you in the game.

What is Twitter?

Twitter is a micro blogging site. What?? Basically it’s a place where you can tell people what’s going on in your life. The only catch is you have to do it in 140 characters or less.

What’s the point of Twitter?

The point of twitter is to create relationships and build bonds with people. You can connect with people on Twitter that you would never meet in your “real” life.  When you connect with people, they begin to know like and trust you. When it comes to business these are three key ingredients to making sales, as well as building a raving fan base.

On Twitter you can become the “go to” person of your industry. No matter what that industry is. Whether you’re a planting purple holly hocks expert or helping work at home moms keep their kids entertained people will begin to associate you and your niche and think of you when they need what you offer.  People will also remember  you and when they hear someone talking about needing what you offer they will think of you and send the person your way. All from little messages of 140 characters or less ?!  It’s really quite amazing.

How does Twitter work?

Twitter works by reading other people’s tweets and getting other people to read your tweets. (Tweets are those little messages of 140 characters or less). You can read other people’s tweets by “following” them. When you follow someone all the messages they post throughout the day will show up on your page for you to follow along. You can then reply to the person ~ to do this you use the @ symbol followed directly by their name. So if you were replying to me you would use @momtohanna and then the message you want to send me. This will show up in the “replies” area of my account where I can see it easily.

For other people to be able to see your tweets they have to follow you. When they follow you all your messages will show up on their page (also called a twitterstream), which means each time you send out a message you have the ability to connect with everyone who is following you.

Who should I follow?

There are many different “twitter strategies” but here’s the one I use and it works quite well for me. I follow people who I find interesting. I follow people who I think might need my help. I follow big names in my industry. I follow other people who are like me, both in business and personally.

This philosophy allows me to be interested in the tweets I’m getting. It allows me to form relationships with possible clients, it also helps me keep up with new things going on in my industry, and it also helps me form relationships and stay in touch with people I would probably like in the real world, if I could meet them.

How do I get followers?

There are many ways to do this as well, but you have to be careful about how you get followers. You don’t just “get” followers, people have to actually follow you. They have to hit the button and consciously choose to follow you. The best way to get followers is to follow people you are interested in and then provide informative, helpful and interesting tweets.

Followers often check people they are following as a place to meet new people. As your tweets show up in other people’s twitterstream the people that follow them will enjoy your tweets and follow you themselves so they can get all your tweets to their pages.

Should I follow back?

When someone follows you, you have the option to follow them back. There are a lot of programs that will just autofollow anyone who follows you. I suggest, even though it saves tons of time to use software, that you do this manually. Remember, Twitter is all about connections. When I get a notice someone is following me I go to their page, look at their bio, and read their tweets. I like to get to know the person a little bit before I choose to follow them or not. If the person fits into one of the categories I have for “who I follow” I will generally follow them back.

Many times you will find that spammers are just out there grabbing names and following anybody (yes, there is software that will do this for you as well, but I don’t recommend many of them), if you just autofollow the spammers you are going to end up with a LOT of spammy tweets in your twitterstream (believe me I started off that way lol). Then you have to go through all your followers and find the ones you want to keep and the ones you want to unfollow ~ that’s a huge pain, much easier to just start off on the right foot.

How does Twitter help my business?

You can not only tweet about what goes on in your life, but you can tweet about what’s going on in your business as well. You can talk about new articles you’re putting out ~ which gets more traffic to them when they get published. You can talk about the process of putting together a new site/product, whatever. Once you have people’s attention they will start asking you questions and be LOOKING for whatever it is you are putting out there. You can have all your blog posts automatically publish to twitter to get more traffic to them. You can run contests through twitter. You can ask questions to get a better handle on what your market wants or needs. You can run polls to get some opinions of things. You can ask questions. You can answer questions ~ you can become the person people think of when they need what you have.

How am I going to fit this all in my day?

That last paragraph seems a bit overwhelming. There is soo much twitter can do for you and your business, but you may be thinking I don’t have time to twitter away my whole day!!

Believe me, it does not take much time to make Twitter an effective tool in your business. You can have some things post automatically, so it’s as though you are tweeting when you really aren’t even there. You can also set up schedule for yourself to use Twitter. Some people do it between tasks, just a quick break to jump in and tweet a bit. I plan in 3 times a day to get on twitter and interact (usually setting the timer for 15 minutes so I don’t get “lost in twitter”). It doesn’t take a lot of time ~ you can make Twitter an effective business tool for yourself in less than 30 minutes a day.

The key with Twitter is to be consistent. The twitterstream moves really fast. If you aren’t out there on a regular basis getting involved in the conversation, being part of the community then people will forget you. It’s as simple as that. Twitter is not a business tool you can use once a month for 5 minutes and expect to pull huge rewards. It’s a tool where a little bit every day will bring huge benefits.

If you’re ready to get started, but still just don’t quite get how it all works, here’s a great step by step video series that will help you create your twitter account, show you how to get followers and start promoting affiliate products the right way with Twitter.