The Virtual Hammock

Welcome back!

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*

Probably like you, I get snowed under with email and this week I am slowly going through unsubscribing myself from all the ‘really useful’ stuff I have coming in but NEVER EVER get round to reading!

I’m being ruthless and to be honest, it’s not been THAT hard to do.  One of the few people I’ve decided to continue to follow is Yaro Starak, an awesome blogger who resides in Australia when he is not travelling around the world doing whatever he fancies.

Why Yaro?  Well he is doing what I want to do – living his dream lifestyle and profitably and it hasn’t taken him an eternity to get there which gives me hope that if I could just stay focussed and stop procrastinating I too can get there.

The other biggy of course, is that he DELIVERS VALUE.  He shares what he learns, his viewpoints and has made himself an expert in his chosen field.  He is INTERESTING to read, talks in simple, plain English and is not feeling so scarce that he can’t divulge his opinions, tools and ’secrets’.

Looking through his site, this paragraph from the following article he wrote, really struck home to me:

“Bear in mind I’m saying this from the mindset of running a business of a certain size and living a certain kind of lifestyle. I’m not looking to take on full time employees, get an office and grow to the point where I’m committed to certain things simply because the size of the machine has become more than I can handle.”

And that’s the thing – I just have to get clear on what my ideal lifestyle IS, what it looks like, how my days will be structured and what kind of income it will take to cover that without working my guts out .. ie. become financially free.. and then some.

There are of course a mass of other little gems packed in it too and I hope something kicks you up the bum too x

How To Work Less and Earn More By Leveraging The Synergy Between People And Technology by Yaro Starak

Several years ago when I was…

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