The Virtual Hammock

Welcome back!

I just received this email from my sister, Nicola Cairncross, as I’m on her mailing list for The Money Gym (of course!)

I feel I have to share it here as I’ve followed the link and had a look at Karen’s blog and was totally inspired by it.  I’ve also sat in many internet marketing ‘free’ seminars – given up my time and avoided being lured into buying (mainly as I’m broke!) but always come away with something of value.

Karen, however, has come away and is taking action – I would say, MASSIVE action.  Read about it in Nicola’s email here:

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01 October 2009

Dear Sarah

Can I tell you Karen’s story?

When talking to people who want to get started in Internet Marketing, there are two fundamental problems that come over:

1.  I don’t know where to start, or the right thing to do first

2.  I’m overwhelmed, too much info, too much to do, too far to go, so can’t even get started

So I’m always on the lookout for tools, tips and even tricks that might help get people moving. Because once moving, they get the most important thing working for them, and that’s momentum.

Once you get some momentum working with you, you can improve things on the move, work out what’s working and what’s not, change things, test things, and keep it all going.

I was lucky enough to be sent this powerful value statement that really resonated with me. It came from the rather wonderful Gratitude Log website that I’m using now as part of my Social Networking activities (connects with your Twitter account).

** Aim for a 1% improvement every single day **

That’s it!  I think all of us could agree that a 1% improvement is something we are capable of.

Well, the power of this is that if you do this every single day, then you will completely transform yourself and your life in less than 1 year.

In fact, if you will be 3,700 times better by the end of this year.  This is also why Einstein used to say that “the power of compounding is one of the most powerful forces in the world.”

Now, please don’t take this example literally.  Why?

Because a 3,700 % improvement is impossible!  If I could do that, perhaps I could fly. 

The key idea that I am trying to communicate is this:

* Aim to be better today than you were yesterday

QUOTE ENDS

But one thing’s for sure.  If you don’t start, you won’t get any momentum going.

I always say to our clients, please just do one thing, one thing each day to move your business forward.

So I want to share with you the story of inspirational story of Karen, someone who was on Mark Anastasi’s Speed Cash Workshop at the weekend.

She’s very, very young.  She knows nothing about the internet.

But she sat in the audience just this last weekend gone and now she’s taking action, just one step, one day at a time.  Three days in, she’s got a blog, a YouTube channel, a Twitter account and she’s only bloomin’ doing it!

(I tell you, I wish I could bottle what Karen’s got and give it to some of our Money Gym members, still procrastinating about domain names and which blog platform to use months later!)

Watch her three short videos and get inspired.  Here s the first one. Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve just read with interest an article by Sheamus from Twittercism (picked up via Twitter) about mass unfollowing – you can read the article at http://ow.ly/s623

Basically he talks about the phenomena of people with a HUGE number of Twitter followers, coming to their senses and un-following people they’ve subscribed to merely as a way of building up their own fans.  A trick people have used and one I’ve never really subscribed to.

I mean, WHY bother?  These people must be completely dumb if they think you really are following them back… and if they are following several hundred or even thousands, they are obviously not reading what you’ve got to say anyway.

I only ever follow people I’m interested in hearing from.  I don’t expect them to follow me back.. unless they are my sister of course *grin* and that way, with the help of the very handy Seesmic desktop application, I can stay on top of what interests me and share it with people who are interested in hearing about it.  And well, if they’re not, they can always unfollow me – I’m not going to die in a ditch about it.

Because my interests are varied, I have created separate Twitter accounts so people can choose what they want to hear about from me.  I have my general one:  @sarahcairncross which shows ALL my tweets and includes some personal stuff occasionally.  Then there is my @rawrrrlife for my RawRRR.com blog about eating more raw food and generally getting ‘out there’ more.  My @classicminiclub which is not used much at the moment as it is another of my good ideas which will get attention at a later date… but will revolve around classic mini cars. And last but not least, @virtualhammock to support this blog which is based around my interest in the internet, social media marketing and making money online (hopefully sooner than later).

The people I follow on each of those is very tightly niched to each specific interest so I’m not overwhelmed and can choose to focus on one thing at a time.. this in theory will stop me getting distracted but I’ve still got to work on this

So if you’re just starting out on Twitter, my advice to you is to build up your following by using the application regularly and tweeting stuff that is relevant, fun and informative with the odd random curve ball in there. Add links in your email signatures, on your blogs, websites, other social media apps and stick with it.  A good guideline is to ask yourself, ‘would I be interested in reading this?’ and remember, your @ replies appear in your timeline too – so use direct messaging if it will annoy your readers or cause you to blush *grin*