Referring to my Paper.li Twitter Newspaper my friend Michaele asked me …“Where do you find the time to catch so many great stories every day?”

My answer was simple…”Once you’ve set it up, it’s pretty much on autopilot.”

You can read about how to set up your own Twitter Newspaper here…

It is really THAT easy!

I published my first issue back at the end of May and have enjoyed sharing the stories of my friends and followers ever since. If you come across great content and valuable information why wouldn’t you want to share it with your followers?  Paper.li provides the perfect platform for this with its visually appealing magazine-style layout. Statistics say that people are much more likely to read a story with pictures than one with text alone.

So how do I find that great content I share
in my “Twitter Newspaper” every day?

Well, most of it is generated by the tweets of the people I have added to one of my Twitter lists. Paper.li monitors your content sources and then updates your newspaper automatically.

Whenever the people in the Twitter list I have connected to my Paper.li send out a tweet, Paper.li picks it up and puts it in a matching category. For example, if the tweet is about technology then it goes into “Technology.” If it is health related, then it will be filed under “Health” and so on.

Note: You can also add Facebook and Google+ keywords and add an RSS feed.

There’s really not that much I have to do.

However, lately I started to use great resources such as Mashable, Social Media Examiner and Google News to add even more valuable stories.

Google News is a great source of valuable content.  As you can see in the image below you can choose from a variety of categories and find the top stories to post. (This works also well on Facebook.)

To spread the articles out over the course of the day I use Buffer. Every time I find great content I drop it into Buffer which then automatically shares it for me on Twitter (and is then picked up by Paper.li.) By the way, Buffer has recently integrated with Facebook so you can also use it there now.

There you have it … plain and simple and pretty much on autopilot.

Thinking about publishing your own Twitter Newspaper?

Why not? It’s easy to set up. You can publish it daily, twice a day or weekly. You can also publish a paper for different niches you might be interested in. (Just set up different Twitter lists for different papers.)

Paper.li is a great way to give
your content more exposure.

Since I have started “The Ilka Flood Daily” I have seen an increase of re-tweets, more (targeted)Twitter  followers and also more traffic to my blog.  People  have the option to subscribe to your newspaper,  +1, tweet and/or like it on Facebook, which I think is really cool. And just think about the reciprocity factor. You share mine, I share yours. If you publish great content that people love to read your little Paper.li can go viral.

So, go ahead and have some fun with it!

Oh, and by the way, if you are publishing your own Twitter Newspaper already let us know in the comments below so we can subscribe to it.

To Your Success!

Ilka Flood
The Enlightened Networker

A BIG P.S….

I had to add this comment by Kelly Hungerford of Paper.li here to make sure you don’t  miss it…Thank you so much Kelly for leaving your great feedback! ….

Hi Ilka, Hi all,

Ilka, thank you for sharing your experience with Paper.li I work for Paper.li and am always truly excited when I see that our service is providing value to community members.

Shared content adds value in so many ways and helps to build and, or, strengthen new communities around topics and interests.

I have a couple of useful tips that publishers often overlook:

1. The editor’s note. This is such a great feature that allows publishers to say something about themselves. You can add hyperlinks to your own site or blog and to add a word about what, or why you are publishing. Great value for the reader!

2. Edit the title to reflect what you are publishing about. The title is searchable on the newsstand. So if you have a paper about fly fishing, but your title is the Burt Beeber Daily, your Paper.li will not come to the surface as quickly when someone performs a search on the newsstand.

3. Promo tweet: take the time to personalize your Promo Tweet by using the Tweet button at the top of your Daily. Many publishers don’t realize that this “manual” tweet is available! It is such a great way to personalize your tweet or add your own @mentions. ( Just be sure you turn off your auto-tweet so you don’t double tweet!)

Will be launching some cool new features in the near future such as embedded Paper.lis and preview before publishing. I hope that you enjoy them!

Kelly

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Did you know that over 50 million active users log in to Twitter every single day? That’s a lot of eyeballs that potentially could turn in to a lot of traffic for you.

I have been on Twitter for a couple of years now, but I still don’t know all the little tricks, but here’s a cool one I just learned about …

A cool little Twitter trick I learned
from Amy Porterfield recently
can drive even more traffic to your website.

As you may already know you can add your website link to your profile. But did you know, that you can also add another hotlink right in your bio? I sure didn’t.

So, I spend some time today to edit my profile to implement this Twitter trick as you can see from the picture below.

Here’s how you do it…

Once you are logged in to your account click on “Edit your profile“ and then under your “Settings” scroll down to “Bio” and make the necessary changes.

It’s pretty easy!

Just make sure you start your link with the http:// or it won’t be a click-able hotlink.

What do you think? Pretty cool little Twitter trick isn’t it? (This works best if you link to an opt-in or squeeze page.)

Here’s a couple of more Twitter tricks you may or may not know about…

Send a Tweet to a Specific Person Using
the @ Symbol.

If you want to tweet to someone specific you would start your message by putting the @ symbol in front of their username. So for example, if you wanted to tweet something just to me than you would do it like this — @ilkaflood and then type your message — that way that message only goes to me and nobody else.

Use Hashtags # to Start or Follow
a Certain Conversation.

You can use hashtags to start or follow a certain conversation. Have you ever seen a hashtag (#) with a certain word behind it? For example, I often use it when I tweet quotes.  So if you do a search for #quote or click on the hashtag related tweets will pop up.

These are all the little “Twitter tricks” I’m going to share with you today. Didn’t want to overload you with too much information.  Now as you may know knowledge is only powerful if you use and implement it. So, put what I just shared with you to good use.

Your turn… Did you know about these Twitter tricks or do you know of any you would like to share,  then it would be awesome if you could share them with us in the comments below. Thanks so much!

To Your Massive Success!

Ilka Flood
The Enlightened Networker

Twitter Bird curtesy of http://www.chethstudios.net/

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Have you ever wondered what the person who’s email you are reading looks like? Where they live? If they are on Facebook, Twitter or any of the other major social networks?

Well, wonder no more!

Check out some of the cool features of Rapportive

Now you can…

• See there smiling face and know exactly whom you are dealing with.
• See if they live close to you so you can interact on a local basis.
• See their job, company or LinkedIn profile.
• See their latest tweets.
• Connect with them in Facebook or other social networks right from within your Gmail.
• Like and comment on Facebook posts right from your Gmail inbox. (Now, this doesn’t help your EdgeRank because Facebook gives more weight to interaction right within Facebook, but it’s still cool.)
• Set up your Rapportive profile and add your favorite sites. (Click the “Help” section for details.)

Now isn’t this pretty cool?

I find this little piece of technology extremely useful. What do you think?

Why should I install Rapportive?

Here’s why, because it’s all about getting to know your contacts and establishing rapport.

Let’s face it, we online marketers are all very busy. And anything that makes our job a bit easier growing our network is very welcome. Don’t you agree?

I mean, wouldn’t you rather want to have the information of a person you are interested in connecting with right there at your fingertips as you are reading their email versus having to hunt for it in the different social networks?

Well, I do! And I also like to have a face for the people I am corresponding with. I like to know more about them. That helps build that all-important know, like, trust factor.

Rapportive makes that very easy.

Why don’t you give Rapportive a try?

It’s very simple to install. Just a few clicks and you are ready to roll just minutes from now.  Get that little app right here: Rapportive.com

Well, there’s a lot more I could share. But that would be just words. The best way to find out how cool this service is, is to experience it yourself.

So, what are your thoughts? Let’s hear your feedback in the comments below. Especially if you are already using “Rapportive” yourself.

To Your Success,

Ilka Flood
The Enlightened Networker

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What? Me? Busted for breaking (any kind of) rules? No way!

Okay, so maybe my halo got a bit tarnished over the years. But most of the time, whenever I did something wrong it was totally unintentional.

All my life I’ve been trying to live by the rules, not break them. Gosh, my kids even tease me because I don’t even cut the tags off of pillows. (You know the ones that say …”Do Not Remove Under Penalty of Law!” …or something like that.)

But it was true. I indeed, although unknowingly, had done something I shouldn’t have.

Bummer! Seems like…

 Twitter doesn’t kid around if you break

the Twitter Rules.

There was no warning and there is no “3 strikes and you’re out” either. You mess up ONCE and you’re outta there!

You will…“Go directly to jail. Do not pass go. Do not collect $200.”

So what happened?

According to “TheCaptain,” who kindly responded to my plea to please release me from Twitter Jail (I don’t look good in stripes)  and let me have my account back …

>>>“It appears you might have signed up for some third-party services which are posting affiliate links through your account. The Automation Rules & Best Practices page has more information about our policies surrounding affiliate advertising.”<<<

Huh? Really? Wow!

Though yes, I was guilty as charged!

I admit, I had used third-party services (such as HootSuite and SocialOomph) to automate posting and I had thrown in an occasional affiliate link here and there. However, I had no idea that this would violate Twitter Rules.

In the meantime I have read the “Automation Rules and Best Practices” page three times and a lot of it is still a bit fuzzy or gets “lost in translation.”  As some of you may know, English is my second language and I continue to have trouble comprehending legalese.

So, if by chance, you are using third-party services to automate your posting on Twitter, you may want to go ahead and read this part of the Twitter Rules yourself. Just to make sure you are on the safe side and not at risk of getting your account suspended.

Trust me, I will definitely do my very best to keep out of trouble on Twitter from now on. Because the last thing I want to happen is to get my account suspended again. Or worse yet…terminated!

In the past I have always tried to live by the 80/20 rule and give 80% value compared to 20% of promotion. Maybe I should change that up a bit and go with the 90/10 rule instead. It can’t hurt to over-deliver on value. And…I will definitely be more careful with automation.

It probably wouldn’t hurt to read ALL of the Guidelines and Best Practices either to make darn sure I won’t be breaking any more Twitter Rules in the future.

What do you think?
To Your Success,

Ilka Flood
The Enlightened Networker

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There are many ways you could get your old content back out to new eyeballs. For example you could use a plugin that fetches related posts from your blog and attaches them to any new content you publish. You could tweet out your older posts manually or use automated systems like SocialOomph to schedule them. But that still takes time and we are all very busy.

Tweet Old Post, does it all automatically for you.

You set it and forget it. Your posts will be randomly picked by the system and tweeted out to your Twitter followers.

This benefits you in several ways. It keeps your Twitter feed active with new updates and it also brings new visitors, new comments, new interaction to your blog. This turns into more activity on your blog which in turn is seen favorable by the search engines resulting in higher rankings. So it’s really a win-win situation. (There is a lot of chatter about Google starting to include social media into their algorithm.)

Tweet Old Post’s top features….

• You can set a custom tweet prefix. If set, it will show as: “{tweet prefix}: {post title}… {url}
• Add post data to tweet. If set, it will show as: “{tweet prefix}: {post title}- {content}… {url}
• You can choose to have the plugin fetch a URL from a custom field or let it generate a shortened URL from the post link. You can even choose which URL shortener service you would like to use.
• You have the option to add hashtags. (Hashtags are used to categorize tweets around certain topics on Twitter.)
• You can choose the interval between tweets, the minimum and maximum age of the post.
• You can even choose which categories to tweet from and which to exclude. And if there are posts you’d rather not re-tweet you can choose to exclude those as well.

Tweet Old Post is very easy to set up…

It is also highly customizable as it lets you decide what you want tweeted and when.

You can get the Tweet Old Post plugin by going to Plugins >>> Add New and searching for “Tweet Old Post”  when you are logged in to your WordPress blog, or just click HERE to download it.

I have used it for many months now and I love it. I’ve seen an increase of traffic to my older posts as well as comments left on them.

Do you use Tweet Old Post already and what is your experience so far? I always love to hear your feedback so please share it with us in the comments below.

To Your Success,

Ilka Flood

The Enlightened Networker

P.S. Sharing is caring, so if you found this post of value please make sure to share it with your friends and followers on the social networks and bookmarking sites. You find easy buttons to do that in the sharebar to the left of this post. Thank You! I appreciate you!

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I couldn’t really recall when it started, but I was amazed to find out that the first email was sent 40 years ago. Can you imagine it’s been FORTY years?

Wow, that totally blew my mind.

Now there are rumors that email will be a thing of the past pretty soon.

Really? C’mon.

But think about it, everyone is texting now on their iPhones and smart phones. How many people are still sending out emails to communicate? Texting is so much quicker and the response can be immediate.

I often find my son watching a movie on his big screen TV, following sports on his laptop and texting his friends on his smart phone… all at the same time. Who said men can’t multi task?

Social Media is going to change how we do EVERYTHING!

There’s a social media revolution going on and it is gaining momentum and it will be changing the way we do anything and everything forever.

I don’t watch much TV but lately I have noticed that many companies have the line “Visit us on Facebook and YouTube” attached to their commercials.

Dr. Denis Waitley said it best…“You’re either online or in the bread line.”

Where would you rather be?

That goes for us network marketers too. If you want to stay in business you better be online. You better include social media as part of your business strategies.

Now, I understand with the constant changes, and they seem to happen faster and faster, it really can get overwhelming .

Social Media: How do you keep up?

You don’t have to join every social network that pops up or you get an invite too. But I would strongly recommend being at least part of the top 3. …Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn…and probably the new Google+. And I’m saying this, because you never want to underestimate Google. Google wanted to become part of the social media scene for a long time and after some flops may just have found its vehicle with the new Google+ and Google +1.

Here are some of the reasons you want to include social media into your business strategies.

• Facebook – launched in February 2004 and at the time of this writing (July 2011) has more than 750 million users. Everybody and their grandma is on Facebook.  Founder Mark Zuckerberg, who together with his college roommates and fellow computer science students created this social networking platform to keep in touch with each other, probably could not in his wildest dreams have envisioned where his journey would take him as Facebook quickly took on a life of its own. It is still a social network where people stay in touch with friends and family, but more and more businesses join to get information out to their customers and keep in touch.Just to give you one example of how social media will be changing the way business is done. When Netflix recently announced its rate hike customers went onto their Facebook page to express their outrage. News, especially bad news, goes viral very quickly online.
• Twitter – a social networking and micro-blogging service which launched in March of 2006 has long since evolved from a place where people tweet about what they had for lunch to a place where businesses stay in contact with and get feedback from their customers. More and more online marketers as well as traditional companies are using twitter for business. As of this writing the 200+ million users are generating over 200 million tweets a day.
• LinkedIn –launched in May of 2003 and often called “the forgotten social network” quietly snuck up on Facebook and Twitter and now has more than 100 million users in over 200 countries. LinkedIn is more of a business social network. 95% of companies who are using social media for recruitment are using LinkedIn. It’s a network of professionals where the average income of LinkedIn members is around $110,000 dollars a year.

Is Social Media part of YOUR Business Strategies?

“We don’t have a choice on whether we DO social media,
the question is how well we DO it.”
_Eric Qualman.

I happen to agree. How about you?

I believe any business that is brushing off social media as part of their business strategies is missing the boat. You need to go where your customers, clients and prospects are, and that’s online.

What are your thoughts? Are you including social media in your business? I always love to read your feedback so please make some noise in the comment section below. Thanks!

To Your Success,

Ilka Flood
The Enlightened Networker

P.S. Sharing is caring! I would really appreciate it if you could share this post with your friends and followers. You can do that easily by using the buttons in the sharebar to the left or the TweetMeme and Facebook buttons on top of this post. Thank YOU!

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What is Paper.li?

In simple terms, Paper.li is a free Twitter service that organizes tweets from people you follow on  Twitter into a magazine-style newspaper for easy reading.  It’s appealing layout lets you see at a glance what articles interest you and what you want to read first. Topics include Headlines, Stories, Technology, Business, Arts & Entertainment, Education, Living, SEO and more.

Setting up and publishing your own Paper.li newspaper is very easy.

Just create your free account. Once logged in you can add content streams to add articles to your Twitter newspaper. For example, you can add a stream for a single Twitter user, yourself and people you follow, a Twitter list, or you can add Twitter keywords, #tags or keywords on Facebook.

You can publish your Paper.li newspaper daily, twice a day or weekly and you can even set the controls to automatically publish your newspaper. You can also change the appearance of your paper by adding a custom background.

Other great features of Paper.li

Editing Controls – lets you decide which articles you want to show on your Twitter newspaper.  Delete unwanted articles or change the featured article

Article Tracker – lets you view the article profile, article source and what other Paper.lis are featuring a particular article.

Pretty cool, huh?

It’s a great way to share your tweets and those of your friends in style.

For a sampling visit “The Ilka Flood Daily” or “Top Bloggers Daily”

For more details please visit my friend Ileane Smith’s video on the subject.

As always I would love to hear your feedback in the comments below. Are you already a publisher of your own Paper.li Twitter newspaper or thinking about publishing one in the future?  Let’s hear your thoughts.

To Your Success,

Ilka Flood
The Enlightened Networker

P.S. Sharing is caring. So please share this article with your followers and friends using any of the share buttons. Thank You!

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Now there’s a simple question. Are you? Because, if you are not using Twitter for business, you really should consider it.

Think about it…

There are 200 million people on Twitter. It’s the #10 most visited website in the world. If you are not using Twitter to build your network marketing business you are really missing out on a great marketing tool that could help you get more leads.

Remember, the more fishing poles you have in the water the more fish you will catch.

Just in case of the very unlikely event that you don’t know what I am talking about. Twitter is a free micro-blogging platform that lets you quickly share information in 140 characters or less.

While you can tweet (share information) about your company or products I would recommend that you build a relationship with people first and then keep promoting your products or services to a minimum. Because, Twitter is first and foremost a social media tool just like Facebook.

But first things first – Setting up your  Twitter profile

If you are using Twitter for business, your profile should look very professional. It’s best to use your real name if it is available or a variation of it when you set up your profile. Write a short bio about yourself, make it fun and personal, so people can learn a bit more about you and include a link to your website. (Tip: Twitter displays only 17 characters of your website. The rest is not visible to your visitors. So in order to show as much of your website address as possible omit the “www.” Example: http://yourwebsite.com)

What should I tweet about?

Always share value first. A good example would be inspiring quotes. Send these in the morning. People like to start their day on an uplifting and positive note. By the way, quotes get high re-tweets too. You can also share links to great websites, marketing tools or techniques that have worked for you or your own blog posts.

Share engaging tweets. Questions work very well to engage your followers. Ask for book recommendations or the latest movie reviews. If you need help with your business ask questions about that. Start a discussion about something. Make it interesting and fun.

Remember that only 10% – 15% of your audience will be online at any given time. For example if you tweeted your blog post in the morning, send it again in the afternoon as many of your followers may have missed it. Choosing different headlines may get you more click throughs.

Stand out from the crowd by re-tweeting other people’s content. This is not only a nice gesture but also helps in building relationships with other networkers. Remember the 140 characters limit. So to make it easier for other people to re-tweet your content, keep your message under 120 characters. That way people can include your name as the original author.

Apropos name … putting the@ symbol in front of a name alerts that person that you are directly talking to him or her.

Whom should I follow on Twitter?

Follow people in your niche, your company, and/or leaders that you look up to and want to learn from. If you follow people with larger followings your follower count will jump up as well if they re-tweet your content. Think quality before quantity though. It’s better to follow and be followed by 500 quality people than 5000 who have absolutely nothing to do with your niche or industry. A great tool to find people in your niche, even locally in your neighborhood is Twellow.com

Some of the benefits of using Twitter for business.

Keep up with the latest news in your niche. Monitor what is being said about your company, products or people you know. Meet like-minded people and share ideas and build a relationship of know, like and trust.

You can also link up your Twitter account with Facebook, LinkedIn and Plaxo just to name a few for updates and additional exposure.

Do you see the advantages of using Twitter for business?

If you have not been using Twitter for business so far I highly recommend incorporating it in your marketing strategies because you can generate and endless flood of quality prospects for your business for free.

To Your Success,

Ilka Flood
The Enlightened Networker

P.S. If you are using Twitter as one of your marketing tools please share your experience with us in the comments below. This is a Do-Follow blog so you will get some link juice back.

P.P.S. If you found value in this post, please share it with your friends on Twitter, Facebook, etc. Thank You!

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Create a Twitter List in Hootsuite

I had created a twitter list for different groups on TweetDeck and it worked great in keeping everything organized, but for some reason I never got around to do the same on Hootsuite. Well until today that is.

If you have been on Twitter for a while and you are following a lot of people, you know that it can be hard to keep up with everyone and chances are that you are missing a lot of tweets. Creating a twitter list for different groups helps you keep things organized.

Frankly, if you use twitter for business marketing you want to make sure to keep in touch with your contacts. You probably remember the” know, like, trust” factor. Building a relationship with your contacts, customers and business associates is so very important. Twitter helps you keep connected.

Why would you want to create a twitter list?

The main reason would probably be so you can filter the tweets of people you are following into categories. By creating shorter lists you will be better able to monitor them. You can create a list for family, friends, customers, people in your company, gurus you follow, etc.

So how do you create a twitter list within Hootsuite?

It’s quite simple actually. Just follow the three simple steps below.

1) Log in to your Hootsuite account and click on “Add Stream” just like the picture shows below.

2) Make sure “Twitter” is selected (highlighted in green) and then click on “Lists.”

3) If you have multiple Twitter accounts select the profile you want to use to add a new twitter list. You can either use an existing list or create a new one. Choose if you want it to be public or private and click “Create Stream.”

Congratulations,  you are done! You just created a new twitter list in your Hootsuite account.

Wasn’t that easy?

Have fun adding lists to your account!

Ilka Flood
The Enlightened Networker

P.S. If you liked this short tutorial on how to add a twitter list to your Hootsuite account leave your feedback in the comments below and please re-tweet and share it with your friends on Facebook.

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Most social networking sites (if not all of them) let you upload a profile picture. Usually that is very easy and in the event you should get stuck there should be a help menu that will guide you through how to do it. Or just ask one of your friends on the site how they did it.

But not only on social media sites you find them, even the blogosphere has its share of people without a face. I used to be one of them. Not because I didn’t want my picture out there on the comments I left, but because I had no clue how to do it. Well, if you don’t know how to do something … just ask. So I did ask Jason just shortly before he posted about the ‘Invasion of the Face Snatchers.’ He told me about a little site called  Gravatar.com

Don’t worry, you don’t have to be a techie to set it up. It’s really easy and they even have a little video that shows you how. In just a few minutes you can ‘have a face.’

Put your face out there. Especially on your profiles. People are much more likely to connect with you and accept your friends requests when they see your smiley face.

Just think about this scenario…

You go into a store and there behind the counter stands a clerk with a ski mask asking how he could help you. You’d be out the door in a split second.  Wouldn’t you? I get shivers down my spine just thinking about that. Pretty creepy!

Remember, people do business with people they know, like and trust.

Looking forward to see your smile.

Oh, and by the way, moosey on over to Jason Better’s Blog you will find some great information and meet some cool people there.

To Your Success,

Ilka Flood
The Enlightened Networker

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