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Manage and Automate Twitter in 5 Minutes a Day – The 5 Best Tools and Strategies

by Zachary Smith

Do you want to know the fastest way to get more Twitter followers and how to Twitter your strategies automatically? Here is how to build a highly targeted list of real people and how to Twitter automatically including the process of targeting, following, setting up automated alerts whenever someone mentions you, and the best Twitter tools to organize and manage Twitter followers.

True Twit1. Truetwit.com is a great way to automate following real people. One of the problems with Twitter is the fact that there are a multitude of spammers using fake Twitter bot (robot) accounts. If you want to get some of the best Twitter followers, you need to sign up for Truetwit which is a free service. Many Truetwit users require Truetwit validation or they will not follow you. These are the type of people I want to follow me. So I signed up, verified that I was a human, and I set my account to auto-follow all Truetwit accounts that followed me.

2. Do you want to receive a quick update when anyone @ mentions you on Twitter? Just sign up at Twistra.com and they will send you an email whenever anyone mentions you.

3. TwitterCounter.com is one of the best Twitter tools to see who the most influential Twitter users are. The default view shows the top users by total Twitter Followers but you can sort by the number they are following and total tweets. You can look up your own Twitter Stats and global follower rank. Rank is the total number of Twitter followers against all active Twitter users as wells as track growth of your account and make your own Twitter count widget for your blog. I want to discuss one very practical discovery I made with this site.

When I first started using Twitter, I used this site to find some of the most influential Twitter Business users by follower to see how they use Twitter for business so I would know how to Twitter like them. What I found is that most of the business users with the highest follower count were quite famous and did not build their following through social networking expertise. They already had a huge following from their books, email list, RSS feed, etc that they just transferred over to their Twitter account. The one takeaway I did see was that these business celebrities were very active on Twitter. If you want to succeed on Twitter then post regularly.

Tweet Adder4. Tweet Adder excels at building a highly targeted list of Twitter followers and users and doing it automatically. Once you build the list of highly targeted Twitter users with the Tweet Adder search engine, you can download the entire list so Tweet Adder can automatically follow your targeted list for you. Here are the ways you can find a targeted list for your niche with their powerful and simple search engine:

  • Keyword
  • Location
  • Location and Keyword

If you have found some specific Twitter users who are leaders in your niche, and you have a global business, Tweet Adder can also automatically download the Twitter followers of a specific user and then follow them automatically. You can configure how many Twitter followers it follows at a time by number or ratio. Then you can set up times to run these tasks in the background. If you want to build up a highly targeted list of real Twitter followers and you are not a celebrity already, Tweet Adder is indispensable. Tweet Adder also automates unfollowing those who do not follow you back, scheduling future tweets, and many more features. Tweet Adder is one of the best Twitter apps and the only application I recommend that you will have to buy. But it will pay you back the first day you use it by automating hours of your time and building a large list or real, targeted followers in weeks.

Social Media Knife5. Are you overwhelmed or confused as to how you should manage your Twitter followers, see only the updates you want, and tune out the noise? Seesmic is the easiest way to start using Twitter today. And since it integrates all the major social networking sites into the application interface, you can manage Facebook, Google Buzz, Google Reader, Evernote, or post updates to all these sites plus many more (including all of the Ping.fm social networking and bookmarking sites) all from the Seesmic application.

I use the Seesmic desktop and Blackberry web apps to manage Twitter and all my social networking accounts in one application. The reasons I use Seesmic instead of Tweetdeck are:

  • Seesmic has Blackberry, iPhone/iPod/iPad, Web, and Desktop easy-to-use applications. Tweetdeck does not offer a Blackberry app.
  • Seesmic integrates all social networking into one application seamlessly primarily because they own Ping.fm. You can manage Twitter, Facebook, Ping.fm, LinkedIn (post to dozens of social networking sites automatically), save to Evernote, use Google reader, and any social networking site you need either directly from Seesmic or via Ping.fm.
  • Seesmic just runs faster than Tweetdeck.

In summary Seesmic is the fastest, easiest to use, and most comprehensive Twitter and social media management tool available, whether you are using Twitter for business or personal tweets. I still cannot believe it is a free application. Go to seesmic.com and start using it to simplify your Twitter management. Enjoy using Twitter in their intuitive interface and when you are ready, you can start viewing, posting in one click, and integrating Twitter with all of your other social networking and bookmarking sites in one application.



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Filed Under: Twitter Marketing Tagged With: how to twitter, social networking, twitter account, twitter apps, twitter bot, twitter followers, twitter for business, twitter tools, using twitter

7 Essential Marketing Rules For Twitter

by Aaron Zitzer Leave a Comment

Rule #1: Planning Matters

Twitter NetworkOne of the best metaphors for Twitter is that it’s a bar. Unlike Facebook where you interact with ‘friends’, on Twitter you can engage with almost anyone. There are millions of simultaneous conversations happening on thousands of topics. It can be overwhelming. It can also be enlightening.

The open nature of Twitter is what makes it so compelling as a potential tool for business. However, businesses that think they can create an account and start marketing with Twitter (or: spewing sales pitches) are in for a rude awakening. Not only will that strategy fail, the Twitter community could turn on the company and create a public relations nightmare for the business.

Marketing isn’t about pushing products. It’s about understanding market needs, analyzing competition, identifying the positioning ‘sweet spot’, building awareness and credibility, developing and supporting a community of loyal customers and more. One can use Twitter for business marketing as stated. In fact, one of Twitter’s unique strengths is its ‘discovery’ capabilities.

What do you want to accomplish? What are your goals and how will you know that you’re successful or going the right direction? You can start Rule #2 before having these fully completed, but you need to have your Twitter objectives nailed down before you start tweeting.

Rule #2: Listen First

Remember how we said Twitter is like a bar? How would people react if you walked into a bar (or coffee shop or other public place for socializing) and you started shouting about whatever was on your mind? Best case they’d ignore you. More likely, you’d be thrown out – and maybe never allowed back.

The same applies on using Twitter for business. Don’t spam. Relevance is essential. The Twitter community is judge and jury. It can be difficult to recover from a bad reputation so it’s best not to get one in the first place.

If you’re just getting started on Twitter, be sure to listen (read) for a while before you start posting or replying. There’s nothing wrong with being a voyeur. Even if you’re already on Twitter, take a step back and just listen once in a while. Do it on a fairly regular basis. Twitter is evolving quickly.

So what are you ‘listening’ for?

– What are the hot topics, most popular links from tweets, or most popular users?
– What are the types of tweets that get re-tweeted most?
– What are the users in your industry or target audience tweeting about?

Rule #3: Find Your Voice

When you were listening in the previous rule, you certainly noticed many different styles of tweets. If you didn’t, you should go back and listen harder.

While there is no right or wrong answer for what your Twitter style or voice should be, there are definitely considerations to make before you start using Twitter for business. You need to make sure that your voice is appropriate for the objectives that you are trying to achieve and the image that you want to portray. You should document the characteristics of your chosen voice and why they are important – this is especially useful if you will have more than one person tweeting for your organization or if you plan to hire ghost writers.

So what are the characteristics that you need to consider? One way to think about the characteristics of your Twitter voice is to map out several vectors with different extremes on each end then decide where your ideal position would be on each vector. For example, do you want your Twitter stream to be fully automated or fully manual? Professional or casual? It’s unlikely that you’ll be at either extreme, but the vector will allow you to easily visualize your voice.

Rule #4: Look Alive

Creating a Twitter account and leaving the default profile photo and background is a sure-fire way to show Twitter users that you’re not serious about Twitter or the Twitter community as a whole. There is no excuse for not investing in the small effort that it takes to create a rich profile page and profile photo.

Have a designer create something that integrates well with the Twitter profile page. The Whole Foods and Zappos examples below should give you some ideas of how to design Twitter for business effectively. Look at your competitors and do something better! If you don’t have the skills in-house, there are plenty of freelance designers that can create something totally custom without spending much. Of course you’ll want to complete the profile information and include a URL – consider a specific landing page on your website.

TwitterZappos Twitter

There are several couple schools of thought on profile photos. Since lots of people use Twitter for business, more and more logos are showing up. In our opinion, logos are not in the right spirit. Twitter provides a unique way for businesses to deliver a human touch. Our recommendation is to use a good quality, properly formatted photo if you can. There are many articles on the topic. Do a quick search to get more information and suggestions.

Now you’re ready to use Twitter for business promotion. Promote your Twitter account on your website, in email signatures, direct mail pieces, business cards, etc. If you are tweeting regularly, consider displaying them on your website or blog. There are plenty of tools that make it easy.

Rule #5: Grow Your Flock

Several strategies exist to help get more followers on Twitter. Some are a bit controversial. We’ll save those for later. Hopefully we don’t need to explain the benefits of having a lot of followers. The real question is, “Are you attracting the followers you need to get to your goals?”

Rule #4 covered the first step. Letting your existing customers and partners know how to find you will get you some Twitter followers. The second strategy is to follow companies and individuals within your industry and/or region. Some will follow you in return. But there are other benefits.

Many tools look at the relationships between users (who’s following whom) and make recommendations based on that information. As a result, following users with certain characteristics can actually help you attract followers. Genuine engagement (Rule #6) is also key to gain followers and builds off of the users you follow. Another totally acceptable way to gain followers is to follow interesting people. If you find someone who tweets interesting things related to your business, see who she follows, and follow her.

Auto-following users based on them following you or using third-party tools  is where you start to get into a gray area. Tools are already starting to show up that look at the ratio of followers to friends for ranking and other purposes. It’s probably not a good idea to get your ratio completely out of whack. “Follow many but don’t auto-follow everyone” is probably the best approach.

Rule #6: Engage Genuinely

Look before you leap when it comes to Twitter. You are embarking on a journey. It can’t be viewed as a one-time event. You have to nurture and support your efforts. If your initial level of activity begins to wane, your Twitter followers will notice and will feel a sense of abandonment. Start with a comfortable, sustainable level of engagement. Engagement on Twitter is like the inverse of product pricing – it’s easy to drop prices and easy to increase Twitter engagement, but doing the reverse is exponentially more difficult.

To get started, use search.twitter.com or another Twitter search method to see who is talking about you, your brand or a keyword related to your industry. Read up and then engage when you have something informative to say. If you are looking for your user name you can only see your replies in Twitter if someone starts a tweet with ‘@(your twitter name)’ but sometimes people will put @yourname in the middle of their tweet. By searching “to:yourname” it will find any tweets that included your user name.

Using common sense combined with Rules 1-5, you should be in pretty good shape. The more time you spend on Twitter, the more efficient and effective you’ll get. Below are some tips gathered from various Twitter users around the web on how to optimize your Twitter time and avoid potential Twitter landmines:

  • Clients like Tweetdeck and Twhirl make it a lot easier to manage Twitter and make you more efficient.
  • Understand and use direct messages (DM) (private), replies (public) and re-tweets (RT) correctly.
  • You don’t have to read every tweet or reply to every DM, but don’t ignore them all either.
  • Use URL shortening tools like TinyURL, tr.im and others for cleaner tweets and more characters for you.
  • Comment on others’ tweets and re-tweet what others have posted to build your place in the community.

Rule #7: Track Your Results

Once you have everything in motion, you’ll want to keep an eye on things to track your progress and to determine whether it makes sense to spend more (or less) time on Twitter for business marketing. You can easily go overboard with measurements. Here are our recommendations on the ‘must haves’ and the ‘nice to haves’.

In Rule #1 you set your Twitter objectives. What do you need to measure to make sure you’re headed in the right direction? These are your key performance indicators or KPIs. Once you know what your KPIs are, you’ll be able to figure out what tools you need.

For example, if your goal is to get visitors to your website and to sell a product, you’ll want to know how many visitors are coming to the site from Twitter, how many of those visitors buy your product and how your conversion rate compares to visitors from other sources. Web analytics tools from Yahoo, Google and others  can get this information for you. Obviously this is simplified. You’ll likely have multiple goals and more KPIs for each goal, but it’s important to understand what metrics you really need and why they are important – what do they tell you and how can you use that information? You’ll need to track your KPIs on a regular basis and use them to make adjustments to your strategy as needed.

Conclusion:

Twitter is changing the way people communicate and search for information and it hasn’t even scratched the surface in terms of its potential reach and influence.

Twitter can be used for fast, effective and inexpensive research, customer support, public relations, lead generation and more – but your efforts will almost certainly backfire if you don’t follow the explicit and unspoken policies in this vibrant and rapidly growing community.

Whether you are self-employed, a small business owner, a multi-national corporation or a government agency – a high-tech company, a manufacturer or a coffee shop, Twitter provides huge opportunities and risks.



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Filed Under: Twitter Marketing Tagged With: get more followers, marketing with twitter, twitter account, twitter followers, twitter for business, twitter profile

10 Secrets to Attract More Followers on Twitter and Get More Clients

by Donna Gunter 4 Comments

I do wonder at times if some Twitter users have any time to get any work done. Several of the more prolific ones that I follow swear they spend no more than 30 minutes a day on Twitter, but I really find that hard to believe. Many times it seems they are twittering just to say something, like “Good morning, Twitterverse” when they begin their day, give more details than I want to know about what they had for lunch, what their children said to them, or when they take a nap.

I realize that this is part of the “like, know, and trust” process that enables people to get to know each other, but sometimes it’s simply too much information..LOL. I primarily use Twitter for business marketing. Consequently, I try and limit my personal twitters to no more than 2 per day. My clients, who create accounts on Twitter for business marketing, as well, tell me, “I’m signed up. Now what in the world do I Twitter about? How do I market my business with this tool?”

Here are 10 strategies that I use regularly to marketing my business and my expertise via Twitter. Remember, you have only 140 characters for your tweet (Twitter post).

Followers on Twitter1. How you’re helping clients. Talk about specific ways that your business helps clients and use their Twitter ID if you have their permission, i.e. “Just finished @clientname brainstorm great Internet marketing plan for 2009″ or “Finally finished setting up Quickbooks for local hardware store – now they can invoice their clients”. This can attract others to become your followers on Twitter.

2. What you’re doing in your own business. This is a perfect time to tell your followers on Twitter when you’re blogging, writing an article, creating your weekly ezine, recording your podcast, i.e. “Had great interview with Jane Smith today on speaking to grow your biz. Great ideas! Subscribe to podcast & listen here “

3. Useful tool or resource you’ve found. I run across these all the time in my daily activities, and your followers on Twitter will appreciate you for sharing, i.e. “Found great new Firefox plug-in to monitor & check multiple Gmail accounts at same time at ” or “Read great blog post on working at home with kids under 5 at (URL here)”

4. Ask a question. Need some ideas or some quick brainstorming? Your followers on Twitter might have opinions on what you are looking for, i.e. “Help! Desperately seeking new laser printer. Recommendations?” or “How do I find training organizations online?”

5. Conduct a survey. What do your followers on Twitter think about a particular issue? Ask them via Twitter, i.e. “Quick poll: Do you get more clients from Facebook or Twitter? Respond at (URL here)”

6. Report on live events. The latest Twitter trend seems to be tweeting what’s happening at conferences or workshops. In order for Twitter users to follow a particular event, it’s usually referred to by a name preceded by a # sign, as in #JVAlert, for example, to make it simpler for people who want to follow those posts. So, if you were at an event, you might tweet “#JVAlert John Smith speaking on affiliate programs. Just got a great idea on training affiliate managers!” Just don’t get so wrapped up in tweeting that you ignore the content delivered in the conference!

7. Product or service launch. If you’re about to launch a new product or introduce a new product, let your Twitter followers know, i.e. “Pre-launch pricing for new DVD set about how baby boomers can start an online biz. Get $100 early bird discount at (URL here)”

8. Responding to others with advice or answers. The way to build professional relationships with your followers on Twitter is to help them. So, if a Twitter follower asks a question, comments about something to which you have a response or an idea, or you want to ask a follow up question, this is the perfect place to do so.

9. Acknowledging new followers on Twitter. I’ve noticed a recent trend of acknowledging people who’ve decided to follow a Twitter user in the past day or so. I initially thought that others were doing this as a measure of popularity, but what I’ve come to realize that it’s actually helping out the new followers because it exposes their Twitter profiles to others who may have never heard of them and who might like to follow them. So, to thank your followers on Twitter, you’d tweet, “Welcome new followers @twittername, @twittername, etc.”

10. Automate your tweets. Many of my tweets have been automated and connected to other things I do. TwitterFeed turns all of my blog posts into tweets. aWeber turns each ezine issue into a tweet. EzineArticles.com lets my followers on Twitter know every time I publish an article through their service. Typically all that’s involved here is connecting the particular service to my Twitter account. Once all the services are connected, I get free and automated Twitter posts with no additional effort on my part.

Twitter can be a great time-waster or a wonderful way to market your business and leverage your expertise online. Follow these 10 strategies and you’ll begin to attract and get more followers and get more clients through social networking.



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Filed Under: Twitter Marketing Tagged With: followers on twitter, get more followers, social networking, twitter account, twitter follower, twitter for business

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