At last the ladies are up there with the super-stud marketers who have dominated internet network marketing. More women than ever seem to be gaining in popularity for offering coaching in branding and relationship marketing via social media and web 2.0.

Katie Freiling, Mari Smith (to whom I owe thanks for the inspiration for this blog), Ann Sieg, Tanya Outridge, Lena Bjorna, Zoe DeLuca, to name but a few phenomenal online bloghers are putting their feminine energy and wisdom to offer great information on how to monetise social media and have fun growing your network marketing business.

For the most part, the ground rules are pretty common sense. Why I believe women are gaining the edge with social media, such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc is that women business owners have strong communication skills and understand the fundamentals of effective communication. Arguably, it’s a survival strategy.

But perhaps more importantly, the success of these women online marketers confirm what women have always known, i.e. that communications and relationship building is key to network marketing business longevity. The difference now, is that a number of factors are coming together now.

Firstly, women entrepreneurs have the confidence of watching the men dominating the internet marketing world and seeing the success they have by building leadership skills and networking. Secondly, there is now the technology available to facilitate stronger networking via the likes of Web 2.0 tools. Thirdly and perhaps most importantly, women see that they no longer have to compete in traditional business structures which more strongly favour men. They can work from home and achieve a better work-life balance with an online or network marketing business model.

So what skills and qualities are women bringing to the table and coming to the fore in online marketing? We know the importance of the following ways of working and apply them in network marketing:

• Use people’s first names. Whether face to face, on the phone, or when communicating with our new ‘friends’ on Facebook or sending tweets, using a person’s first name communicates an acknowledgement of them as an individual and that you are paying attention. People become more relaxed and are receptive to you in return, which opens the way to getting to know each other. For those of us with poor memories and find themselves unable to picture Katherine as a cat or to see Paul with a halo and stay focussed, when someone tells you their name, if you hear yourself repeat it out loud back, half the battle with your own internal panic about forgetting is over. A statement as simple as: “Jennifer, pleased to meet you” goes a long way to smoothing the path to a good conversation.

• If you are making a phone call to someone whether you have never spoken to before, or you just struggle to remember their name, or even if you don’t have a problem with remembering names, having your diary or day book to hand with their name written down before picking up the phone allows you to refer to them by name as you talk. This is a good habit anyway, as you may also be wanting to make notes of your conversation anyway for future reference.

• If you are writing to someone, spell your customer or team member’s names right. Check and double check when sending messages. It’s about caring enough to find out about them and even where they come from. Taking the trouble to spell foreign or unusual names communicates respect and recognition of someone. Not only that, if you remember the spelling of their name, it makes it easier to track them down if you do ever lose your notes, diary, phone, etc

• If someone sends a friend request on Facebook or wants to follow you on Twitter, take the trouble to check out their profile and find out something about them. Look at what they post and make a comment in reply to their friend request which shows you are interested enough in them to find out about them as a person.

• Special Dates: Birthdays, Anniversaries: Special events allow an opportunity to strengthen business ties and talk about what is important to people in their personal lives. The old artificial divide between personal and professional lives has thankfully got fuzzier since the breakdown of traditional relationship boundaries, in which social media has been a catalyst, thank goodness. The getting to know your customer principle allows you to build bridges to some of what you have to offer them. Facebook makes it really easy for you to see and remember all the birthdays of your friends, or special anniversaries of groups or communities. Facebook allows you to receive a weekly email notification of all upcoming birthdays.

• Systematise your relationship building wherever you can for more effective time management. Half an hour, chatting on Facebook or Twitter will not earn you money. So for instance, for significant dates, such as birthdays: pre-write about 10-12 greetings for you to select from. (This job can then also be contracted out). Facebook’s monitor excessive duplicated messages, so be aware of duplicated copy during a single session here. People like personalised message with a human touch. There are multiple applications Facebook offers, such as sending cakes or glasses of virtual wine and flowers. As a copywriter and lover of languages, be they foreign or digital, I like Alt Code to add images E.g. Hit Alt 14 Happy Birthday Alt 14 to decorate your message with musical notes either side; alt 15 gives people the sun; alt 1 or alt 2 show smileys; alt 3 gives special people a heart.

• Do a Google search for automation software for Facebook and Twitter. I’m a fan of Tweetdeck and Hootsuite. It allows me to manage my messages and see what my followers are doing in a range of windows. Hootsuite allows you to schedule messages.

• Send real cards in the mail where you have addresses. Snail mail is a far more powerful way to send good wishes than digital cards. It shows that you have made an effort. Automated systems are out there in order for you to manage your time more effectively: SendOutCards. For just over $1, including postage, you can create and send a real greeting card in the mail. This service also offers gifts and gift cards (e.g. for Starbucks, Gap, etc.) and the opportunity to pre-program regular campaigns, upload birthdays and anniversaries, send to groups of people, or all your contacts at Christmas, Passover, Eid, or Thanksgiving, etc.

• Share links to issues you care about. Tweet links to videos, articles or campaigns on your Facebook account or on Twitter. Remember, these are social media, where you want to be part of a party atmosphere. People interact at parties about stuff they care about and have fun doing it. Personally, I’m growing a little weary of endless inspirational quotes. I like philosophical meals, more often than fast-food sound-bites. If you are a passionate campaigner for one charity or another, more often than not, they offer wallpapers or e-cards with some great images to share with people you know. Without going over-board here, there is a growing acknowledgment that those businesses with an ethical bent, will have the edge over companies and businesses who only seem to operate for profit. Of course, there is a fine line here with slipping into the dangerous world of alienating potential customers, but there are plenty of customers to go around and if they are put off by your allegiances, then this potential dilemma of how far you compromise your beliefs is for you to resolve.

• For those of you looking for some great video webinar training for finding out why and how social media is a killer medium for increasing your customers exponentially, sign up to some of these ladies blogs and get their e-newsletters. I have watched most if not all of Katie Freilings’ Social Media training and found it to be totally excellent. I’ll be revisiting to implement soon. Zoe DeLuca is an emerging Gal Guru in the field. Check out her fantastic webinar on Facebook recently below.

Fellas, if you have read this far, in the UK at least, you have a reputation for being rubbish at birthdays and special occasions, chances are you can afford to apportion some of your marketing budget to delegate this work to a freelancer or a member of your team if you can feel sweat breaking out already! You have no excuses to get the basics right. Chances are your women customers will love you for being in touch with your feminine side!!!

(For more reasons to listen to Guru Gals voices, go here).

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Yesterday, the funniest thing happened… my site finally felt like it was happening! People were reading my blog and digging what they read… but for some techy-hitch-y reason, I had had no idea I have had about 40 comments awaiting my approval for some time… Gotta love da machines! : )

Reading your comments, I felt like I was at some kind of rock concert or banquet laid out in my honour. All of a sudden, I must have hit a button in a way I’d never hit it before and there was all this appreciation from you guys out there either for information I was providing or for how I write. It was a truly amazing and wonderful experience. So for all of those people who kindly commented: Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! One thousand times. You folk lifted me up. Truly!

The recent few weeks have been a bit of a quest to focus myself professionally again, after running around in the wilderness for a little while and tripping over and accidentally jamming my head into a very dark place as I tumbled over myself and met myself coming! Suffice to say, you all swelled my head so much, it miraculously popped out into daylight yesterday and in the light of day, I saw that great mirror of life in front of me… and there across it were written digitally all these words like: “We want more”, “Keep it up”, “At last, I found what I was looking for”! And even “I believe!”

OK OK! So there’s a little of a Messianical hysteria creeping in here on my part! But, allow me my moment of sheer joy and pleasure to bask in success here! : ) It’s just, that in the past 24 hours there have been some of my greatest Eureka moments, thanks to the generous sharing of comments by readers of my blog, (for which I am eternally grateful to you all… especially the lady who was inspired enough to go off and start to write her own afterwards).

Here’s the thing… I have written the odd piece on how to write a good article or about compelling copywriting, but I have not particularly focussed on the subject. In fact, reading and writing have actually been life long passions, yet the subject of writing copy is not something I talk lot about. If the truth be told, in all these years of using my ability to connect to people with words, compelling them to take actions they had never considered previously, or writing promotional material for employers and getting little or no appreciation for it, experience of using my communication skills has made me feel like one of those people who amaze the crowd with some seemingly impossible feat and then stands there after-wards saying, “What’s the big deal?”.

Don’t get me wrong, I am not one of your (hugely) attention seeking, insincere types who fishes for compliments with feigned humility (unless my tongue is planted firmly in my cheek). Nor am I a person who feels particularly unworthy. No, in spite of some of the rubbish I have had to deal with in life, I feel pretty blessed and lucky by comparison to others’ lives. The point is, I simply do not believe I am THAT special… There are so many great writers out there!

Then, this morning, I went online, to find that my work has been syndicated by another copy-writer onto their sales pages. Within hours, Tanya, my business partner, whose opinion I highly value, told me that my writing skills were actually quite rare. Now I am feeling like, not only did someone turn on all the lights for me yesterday, (perhaps to read someone else’s book better), but then they proceeded to take me out into the blinding sunshine today to show me all the pretty colours and tell me to wake up and smell the garden and “Now go write about it, woman!” (Nature always does it for me, more than coffee ever could!)

You see, I have always asserted the adage that ‘there is nothing new under the sun’ and so how could anything I have to write about really be that special anyway? All I am doing by writing articles and copywriting is ONLY re-packaging what other people say and I am not so bright, so nor can I be truly original either.

To some degree, I would maintain that I am right, but now I am forced to believe that actually, I can take unoriginal, tired and worn material and recycle it into something of value and perhaps more’s the point is that HOW I do this is actually pretty unique. Hell, that’s why people like me laugh at Oscar Wilde’s ironic quote about liking to take his diary on long journeys, so that he always had something interesting to read!

So, now that the doors to my perception are well and truly busted open right now, I want to open a dozen doors to nudge some of you through into finding your ‘thing’ and having the conviction to just go ahead and do it. So this blog is a somewhat long-winded getting-it-off-my-chest pre-amble to my latest witch’s dozen doors to better article writing (which, incidentally I stole and re-packaged as my own from Suite101.com (who incidentally binned me yesterday too, just to keep my feet firmly planted on digital terra ferma):

Witch’s Dozen Doors Through To Amazing Article Writing

1. Take a deep breath. Seriously… If writing is not your strength…remember no parent is born with the gifts of being perfect parents automatically; we learn by doing… So just be as ready as you can be by staying calm and not listening to all the doubts and questions you might have running around your brain about your ability to put pen to paper / fingers to keyboard and produce amazing results.

2. Write / type in some key words and ideas you want to talk about. The write a sentence or two about what you are going to talk about, so folk know what to expect from you.

3. By now, you will have some idea of what your heading or title is going to be. Make your article heading as informative about the subject as possible; your headline needs to reflect the key search terms or phrases people might be using when searching for answers about your subject. Alternatively, generate curiosity by intentional ‘oblique hints’ at your material; make people want to find out what the heck you are being so cryptic about! Use comedy to entertain or provoke and invite your reader in; folk love to laugh or at the very least have a crooked smile!

4. Get to the point in the first paragraph and offer an insight into what you will be writing about and what the reader can hope to gain by choosing to continue to read your article rather than something else; be compelling and convincing. You have to get past their cat miaouwing around their legs for food, their children demanding to know where their clean socks are, the phone ringing, the bills on the mat… you get my drift… Grab their attention as QUICKLY as you can…

5. Stick to the point. Write highly focused, concise articles, that demonstrate your authority on a subject and acknowledge your sources. Showing you have done your research and quoting others, gets you quoted in turn; but never shoe horn in authoritative research for the sake of looking good. Content should not be repeated unless necessary, least of all other peoples’. You neither impress or convince anybody. Your readers smell lack of panache and integrity and hit the back button or turn over the page faster than you can say, “Was it something I said?”

6. Ensure your copy style is unique, fresh, balanced, and pure opinion or free of sales pitches – unless you explicitly acknowledge, the content is merely your perspective and that you may benefit from what you write. Or, depending on your audience, perhaps you can be more whimsical and opinionated. Being yourself and ‘spilling a gut’, as the King of Copy, Craig Garber, says, allows people to connect with you.

7. Spell It Out. Assume a reader’s basic knowledge of your subject, but write for the layperson to understand WITHOUT patronising them. Just because a person does not know all about your speciality does not make them less clever than you. However, do not assume that everyone knows what you are talking about either. If you must use jargon, explain its meaning. (Personally, I love a bit of jargon, but then I confess to being slightly geeky like that… but if I ever inflict it on you unnecessarily, I expect a strong comment of discontent in my inbox here!)

8. Write in the third-person, in a neutral style; this maximises potential for syndication because it’s what academic and theoretical types can use for discussion. Any personal anecdotes can be shared in your blogs or if you write for certain magazines or keep a column in newspapers and journals.

9. Break It Down. Make it easy and enjoyable for the reader. Bite-size chunks allow your messages to get through all the reader’s daily distractions competing for their attention. Use 50-75-word paragraphs maximum. Use bold subheadings, and bulleted lists for easy reading on screen. Break text up with graphics.

10. Link to up to 5 related on- and off-site articles, if writing online, do this with keyword ‘anchor text organically embedded’. This particular techy jargon for the uninitiated is choose some particular word or phrase that links directly with copy written elsewhere on that topic. If using hyperlinks with anchor text, make sure you do this by making your hyperlink html code generate a NEW pop up page, which sits above the page they got the link from, versus taking the reader away from your site to someone else’s.

11. Proof read for spelling and punctuation errors, lazy words which do not reflect your intention, or general / weak statements that are throw away and have no basis in fact, or you simply cannot be bothered to back up with necessary information. This is a must for all you busy professionals out there who may already have an eye to your next task on your to-do list. Me? Yup… I hold my hands up to this one… (I blame it on my A.D.H.D. and the lack of prescription Ritolin in the UK for us struggling adults! But I digress)

12. People love images. Attach clear and appropriate colour images, properly credited and captioned. Images are both light relief and can sum up a lot of words and help to imprint your messages.

13. (It’s a witch’s dozen remember reader! )Summarise your main points and come to some conclusion. If your writing has a business purpose, offer some call to action by giving your reader a simple next step to take, like asking them to DIGG what you say, or comment on what you have been talking about and being so kind as to share their contact details with you, to keep the communication going.

And breathe… Easy… Just takes regular practise and LOTS of consistent, habitual reading of quality material or addictive listening to the BBC! Now stop worrying about what others may think or even judging yourself. Learn from my mistakes and go write something inspirational of your own, even if it’s only a job specification for a copy-writer to do it for you! (For any British readers: “Gizza Job!”)

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For those of you blessed with loving and supportive partners or with money to invest in your business and fall back on, I salute you. For those of you out there struggling to juggle the innumerate demands on your time and energy and occasionally despairing at ever getting everything finished, you have my fullest sympathy and compassion.

Even those of you who can leverage their time with supportive family set ups, however, will still appreciate that time is a precious commodity and potentially every hour spent in the rest of your life outside of work can cost you dearly, if not in dollars, in terms of angst associated with separation from that lynch-pin in your life.

So why is it that so many would be women business owners are still not ‘making it’ on a par with their male counterparts? Well, rather than start to analyse societal barriers to success here – I talk about this at length in my supportive networks (meet me in WarriorForum.com) – today I want to fess up about a habit to which I am chronically prone and against which I battle on a daily basis… that being the spectre of Procrastination.

I am out of bed at 6am every morning, ablutions, sartorial arrangements and breakfast being complete on the hour, I am ready to set myself and pooch features up for the day (yes he is four-legged – I am single!) with our morning constitutional.

I find myself then ready to complete ironing my face and arranging my war paint for the outside working world by 8am. Shocking as this may seem to some, this two hour preparatory time is essential as a single working woman without means yet to make alternative dog-walking arrangements.

By 6pm my working day is finished and it seems that by the time dinner is over with and dishes are dispensed, twelve hours have already elapsed.

I look forward to the day when I return to merely working for myself in order to create the kind of leverage that I need to effectively delegate some of the domestic responsibilities to an employee. Meantime, like so many women who are self-employed part-time, who do not have children and receive state support, or are unfortunate enough not to have means to not work for another for the mainstay of the day, my energies for my own enterprise are depleted somewhat by the taxes on my time imposed by financial commitments which have to be met to maintain domestic stability.

Something has to give and more often than not, the risk is that I let my dreams of financial freedom and power over my time slip in order to pay my bills consistently. This wage slavery is common and added to by those other factors which determine womens’ days are made shorter.

At such times, I feel it to be both a blessing and a curse to be single; right now I at least get to determine freely what time I do have, albeit this is tempered by the need for me having to under-take all of the domestic responsibilities, which could so easily be shared (even if not completely evenly!)

My determination to break free of drudgery and mediocrity keeps me tapping away here and edging forward with my internet dreams… little by little. I feel so close to that fresh grass on the other side, I can taste it on this side of the fence!

My naps and pottering around the home is in decline, my television gone, my family responsibilities and guilty pleasures are coming back under control. It’s time to press ahead once more. It’s Summertime almost and I have been working at my internet marketing for a year now.

My results are not as great as I would have them, but I am still learning and very close to earning. It’s a matter of decision and remembering my reasons why I chose my radical departure from my past professional life.

I have been re-reading T. Harv Eker again (Secrets of the Millionaire Mind). He’s right, this past few months I have allowed procrastination and excuses to creep into my habits and have stood in the way of progress. Well I am declaring here again today that my persistence is about to become stronger again, because I have re-found my purpose and belief.

And here’s the real clincher people… Remembering one’s reasons why. Here’s what I mean… Last year I wrote 66 reasons why I wanted to become rich… I was on my way to writing 100 reasons, when I put the book away because my drive had become so strong by then. Since then numerous personal challenges have chipped away at my persistence at building my business.

I am one year on from deciding to go independent… as good a time as any to take stock.

Tonight I am going to dig out my 66 reasons why I want to become rich and what’s more, I am going to read them out loud to my dear sister and declare my deadline for becoming one of the many online millionaires. Speaking one’s desires commits you to pursuing them… Especially when I know my sister, Sarah will hold me accountable if I let myself down…

Here’s a glimpse for you, reader of three of my reasons for wanting to become an independent woman business owner:

1 I want to be accountable to nobody but myself and the team that I choose to work with.
2 I want to be free to buy whatever personal indulgence I like, whenever I like, without thinking of my budget
3 I want to put all of my skills and knowledge to work and find out what I am really worth

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The British Elections are over… at least for now… Chances are that we are about to enter a protracted period of instability and decline as never experienced before in British economic history. Now these days I understand the power of negative perspective and thinking, every day I choose my glass to be at least half full! But financial instability against an uncertain political backdrop is inevitable.

The middle classes are set to disappear from the map in the next twenty years or even less. For the past thirty years, the post war optimism has been giving way to a trend towards increased polarisation between rich and poor. Twelve years of a Labour Government committed to the eradication of poverty and explicitly legislating to decrease inequality in society has succeeded in merely tinkering at the edges.
The writing is on the wall for those who choose to look and bear the pain and weight of that reality.

Modern gangsters and crooks do not wear stripey vests and wear eye masks or stockings over their faces; they wear the finest Saville Row suits, are financially educated and occupy seats of power. Their risk is spread and tentacles far reaching.

During the electioneering, little was spoken of the depth of crisis Britain and western nations are in. The implications of the economic circumstances of Greece’s bail out by the IMF ($11 billion!), Spain, Italy and other EU nation difficulties are barely understood by the average Joe, but the hunger to know what is really going on has never been greater.

Thatchers’ children are waking up to the reality that individual effort does not guarantee comfortable future prospects. Baby boomers are thanking their lucky stars that their pension schemes are at least guaranteed, even if their cost of living is not and the idealistic left leaners suffer in quiet desperation, wondering if we are all going to Hell in a handcart.

The truth? It is all out there is a giant, messy jigsaw, the pieces of which are scattered, but not irretrievable. Now is the time for you to gather in your scattered energies, spent keeping family, body and soul together during the economic crisis that has brought us all to such a time.

Right now, “the greatest wealth transfer in history” is taking place and those who want true self-empowerment need to know there are steps they can take to not be left behind. You can learn what is really happening in the economy, between the headlines and find out why some topics are excluded from general discussion. Be aware too, that no matter what the bad news is, there are industries which will prosper by working with the trends.

The same mistakes which led to the Great Depression are being repeated as we speak. At that time, the most millionaires that were ever created in history came through. Believe it or not, every minute nowadays, a millionaire is created. You can be one of them too, if you know which steps to take. Staying in the day job is a sure fire way to end up in a pauper’s grave after sacrificing your life to a stream of employers who are unlikely to thrive long enough to value you as a loyal worker.

In the coming years, money is predicted amongst those in the know, to flow away from the uninformed faster than any time ever before and into the bank accounts of those pulling the right strings. Consider for a moment… What you know and understand about money will determine whether you increase your wealth or are consigned to the struggling majority, increasingly in irreversible poverty. Every one of us is but a few thousand pounds from poverty. Any life-crisis can tip the scales forever. Tragically, this is more true now than ever before.

For those of you old enough to have spent many years building your nest egg, for security in your senior years… Avoid your hard-earned money in your retirement account being taken from right under your nose. Find out what the government is planning for your wealth in order to bolster their own legitimacy and avoid potential complete societal breakdown. This is no longer doom-mongering, but realistic projections of those in the know.

The rules of money making are changing forever even as you read this article. The question is whether you are prepared to look into the abyss and brace yourself against the winds of change threatening to blow you and millions of others like you into it. If you are in paid employment now, take a look at how long you are likely to be in that job or ask yourself how secure you feel.

There is only one way to gain control over your financial destiny now and that is to substitute the risks you already run for banking on yourself. Invest in your own future by seeking out businesses to invest in which are countering current trends.

You can certainly do worse than investigate network marketing and online businesses. Forget whatever you have heard about ponzi schemes and pyramid scams. There are truly successful businesses out there, where ordinary people, either by choice or by force of necessity, are learning a whole new skill set or building upon their existing professional experience and achieving incredible results, which fly in the face of the current economic downturn.

If you want to learn more, take a look at an article I have written on the pros and cons of network marketing.

Rest assured… We have not seen the last of the elections in the UK yet… And the longer the instability, the rockier our financial future as a nation… Joining the online entrepreneurial club makes more sense than ever now.

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