Keeping the memory in good condition is a vital part of the brain’s function. Every now and then, our actions greatly depend on a lot of information we retrieve from our memory bank. Such information can either be short term (such as specific tasks that we have to do) or long term (such as the ability to drive a car or repeat an instruction we read from a book). While long-term memory may come spontaneously without too much effort when the need arises, short-term memory requires recalling information from the accumulation of things stored in our memory. This is why you need to keep your memory in great shape to achieve efficiency in your daily endeavors:

- Keep your attention focused on the needed information to be stored in your memory bank. Even with distractions around you, stay focused on the subject. The more concentrated you are on the information, the better the chances of retaining it in your memory.

- Utilize the most ideal sense or senses when gathering the information. This is what we call acuity in sensing our environment. Be aware of the color or details of a picture, or the particular sound or smell of the thing involved. All our bodily senses are attuned to collect information depending on the circumstance at hand. While our sense of vision may be the most used in gathering information, our senses of hearing, smell, taste, and touch are equally important and helpful in remembering things, situations, and information about something or someone.

- When you’re not sure that the information you are about to remember would really be retained by your brain, it would be better to write the information. This could be proven effective especially in gathering very long and tedious information like lecture notes or a personal interview. Just be sure you don’t forget that you have a note at hand; and of course, don’t misplace the note.

- Maintain a balanced diet. A well-proportioned diet will result to a conditioned memory. Oily and sweet foods may cloud the memory. If you cannot completely eliminate a bad diet, gradually cut down your intake of these memory-inhibiting foods. Doing it gradually cushions the effect of withdrawal symptoms and you’ll get adjusted to the new lifestyle you are creating. This is not only beneficial to the memory, but we can say you’re on your way to a healthy life. Drinking lots of water brings lots of advantages to your overall health, and memory is not an exception.

- Don’t deprive yourself…get enough rest and sleep. Having enough sleep does not condone laziness; oversleeping does. So don’t feel guilty resting or sleeping as long as it is not overdone. You need it badly to keep you revitalized from the tiresome demand of work.

- Take time to relax. Breathe deeply if you must. Keep your thoughts organized before acting on them. Keep away from stress and anxiety. It may be impossible to completely eliminate stress since it is part of our challenging generation, but try to keep it down as much as possible. Stress may bring your memory into its inefficient level. Avoid the habit of saying to yourself that you might forget things, because you’re more likely to if you do. This just builds your anxiety level up to its panic mode.

- Stay positive, creative, and energetic. Your memory needs to be within a circle of various things. Things that come in various shapes, sizes, and colors can motivate your creativity. This is a positive way of discovering your surroundings in all its variations and diversities. Avoid being enclosed within the four walls of your room just like you’re a prisoner. The only time to be enclosed is when you have to rest or sleep. Don’t be a couch potato. There’s a very exciting world out there waiting to improve your memory.

The very best way to improve your memory is between infancy and adolescent. As we grow old, memory starts to fail. But a strong memory that we can develop during the prime years of our lives will definitely enhance us to be good thinkers. This can be done by continuously exercising our memory through reading and other cognitive activities like the habit of solving crossword puzzles. The more you do these, the better memory retention is developed.

Becki Noles is the virtual business manager and online marketing dynamo of the Virtual Accuracy Companies. She and her associates work with the top business and marketing coaches in the United States and the world over providing SEO, Pay Per Click, website development and technical virtual assistant services. Get the free 9 part series “How to Market Your Business” by visiting The Selon Group (a division of the Virtual Accuracy Companies).

Twitter doesn’t sound like much. It suggests that you tell the world what you’re doing in 140 characters or less. So what? How are people using this social marketing tool to make more money online?

What You Need To Know: Follow and Be Followed!

The key to twitter is to follow and be followed. If you’re on the site talking about what you’re doing to nobody and not finding what anyone else is doing, it’s sort of useless and rather boring. Once you get a few followers and start following a person, that’s when the buzz starts. You can update your status on the web, via instant messaging client or via a third party tool like Twhirl that lets you use twitter from your own desktop. You can follow and be followed on your cell phone as well and be plugged in to the Twitterverse on the go.

You have a profile page that lets you manage the tool and lets people look you up to see what you’re all about in a few lines and with a URL. It’s the “What are you doing” section that counts.
Your Twitter friends or peeps (a.k.a your Tweeps) all carry on conversations with or without you and when you pop in and chime into various conversations, it gets rather lively. People ask questions, answer questions and share URLS of what they’re doing, what they find interesting and what they want opinions on.

There’s also the public timeline that tells you what other people are doing and you can search on that for more followers or conversations to eavesdrop on. It’s like a virtual water cooler that you can stop into during the day and check in with your tweeps.

Use Twitter when you:

-Post an update to your blog

-Want answers to a technical question

-Want to vent

-Want to tell people what you’re having for lunch (seriously, that can sparks some very interesting questions)

and more.

You can also send direct private messages as well as respond to people both directly but also publicly. The more interesting of a Tweet you post, the more likely people will follow you and re-tweet. A re-tweet is when you post a URL and someone likes it so they share it by tweeting or re-tweeting it to their followers. Do you see how it can become a benefit to you in an area like affiliate marketing, product launches and technical challenges you need help with?

You can also post Twitter feeds on your website so that people can follow you, read your conversations, see who you’re following and visit their posts or URLS so it becomes a very viral way to share and communicate and even to collaborate.

The downside to Twitter

Not only is the tool currently growing at such a fast rate that it goes down regularly but there is another downside and that’s productivity. Sadly there’s almost always a downside to social networking and bookmarking tools and as with many others, Twitter can be a time waster if you’re not careful so it’s important to use it and have fun but also to set limits for yourself.

About the Author
Matthew Bredel
To learn more about how social marketing tools can help you and your online money making efforts, visit TheWebReviewer; a resource for making money online, affiliate marketing and more.

Twitter is in the lead of the popularity board when it comes to social media sites.

Now twitter serves the basic purpose of every social site and virtual community out there, and that purpose is to connect the users, or to provide the hub or gathering place for its members to communicate.

Twitter specifically gives your friends a way to keep up with what you’re doing immediately. Your friends and fellow members of twitter subscribe to receive updates about what’s going on in your daily minute by minute life.

There are countless ways you can use this tool other than to just let buds know when you’re off to the salon, or hopping on a plane. I figured the best way to show all the capabilities of Twitter would be to just list them for you. So without further explanation here are some amazing possibilities of Twitter:

1. Of course, you can use it to keep up with what your friends and competition are up to

2. You can use it to update your friends on every little thing

3. To announce a special event - like a child’s party or a business seminar

4. To announce special offers - like a discount on one of your products or services

5. To do a pre-release campaign for a product or service your about to launch

6. To request feedback on a new site, product or survey

7. To direct traffic to an opt-in page

8. To build a relationship by giving a free offer like a contest or give away or free product

9. To build a network of business partners

10. To recruit for a charitable cause

11. Or to collect donations for a cause

12. To build your friend-base by directing to a myspace or facebook page

13. You can update you status in many ways including your IM program or cell phone

14. To make connections for a joint venture project

15. Add it to your blog or other social site profile page to have automatically updated content

16. Use the twitter wiki to keep up with applications and other advancements made by the twitter community

17. And many more

Those are just some of the ways my friends and I have discovered to use twitter in business and in life. This is a fantastic resource and I recommend you take a look, and test a couple options on this list. Here’s to your success!

About the Author
Melissa Mangrum
I am a seventh year internet marketer with my wonderful husband Jason, and our 3 little, irresistible noise makers. I have a life-long background in acting, music, and writing. I have written a salesletter that generated a quarter of a million dollars in less than two weeks. Also I put a product in the genius book of world records as the highest price auction ever ran on ebay. For more information on the many uses of Social Sites you can check out the new book at: My Social Marketer