I got an email this morning from a networking contact I met on LinkedIN.

He asked:

I have a question. Currently I have about 15k twitter followers adding about 250 per day, how the heck did you get to 50k+?  Have you been able to monetize your followers in anyway?  Connect in multiple ways?

That’s actually 3 questions.. so I thought I should answer them all here to help others who ask.

My reply:

Funny you asked about Twitter in an email after I reached out to you on Twitter yesterday with didn’t get a response there.

No worries. I’ve found it’s best to listen to my market wherever they want to talk and respond to help if I can.

I’d say you are in Stage 2 the Three Stages or Twitter Acceptance

Your question about monetizing was a dead giveaway.

I took a quick look at your profile and it’s obvious that you are trying to broadcast on Twitter. Not a single conversation on the first page.

The secret to Twitter (and marketing in the future) is to LISTEN and LOVE.

LISTEN: Read others Tweets. Learn what your market wants and get it for them.

LOVE: Respond to questions, refer people to resources.. especially ones that aren’t your own sales process and say thank you whenever you can.

Stage 3 conversations are where the fun lies. Have fun helping people and you will be attractive or “Follow Worthy” as we talk about in Twitter Revolution

You may be getting advice that some system will get you more followers and automate marketing on Twitter. Many of them don’t work, even the ones that do will make you look like a 20th century marketer and could get you labeled as a spammer. (read more on “Don’t Be THAT GUY at the Social Media Party” here)

The “followers” number posted on a profile is not the best indicator of whether someone is helping other. It is one indicator of activity. Other indicators would be

• The number of conversations you have
• The time you have recommended a good link that doesn’t point to a self serving sales page
• How often someone says “thanks for the help”
• The use of the retweet functions (RT) to share others tweets.

A few “famous off Twitter” people build up a following regardless of whether they engage the public. Most of use won’t see any value from Twitter until we engage in listening and love (caring).

“People don’t care how much you know until the know how much you care” — Stephen R Covey

There are many examples of sales through Twitter. Dell attributes $6.5 million to posting deals. Dell can do that, they are a multi billion dollar company.

Zappos is a better example of a company that gets “listen and love” The CEO tweets as @Zappos and most of the office staff does too. You may see a special offer, but mostly they are listening to their customers talk about shoes and joining conversations to add value, help and spread love and good energy.

The Secret of High Follower Counts

They don’t do much for click through results. More connection give you more opportunities to listen and love and more conversations result in real people, real relationships and real business. However, when I post a link with tracking data.. the results are about the same as when I had 1/10 the followers. Twitter is not a broadcast medium.

The revolution in sales and marketing is just starting. With the technology we have now, there is no reason to ever try to pitch someone that is not anxious to hear from you. Rather, we teach our clients monitor the Tweet stream for conversations and questions of those that are looking for a solution (Listen), then where appropriate, join in the conversation answer a question give advice without any expectation of making a sales pitch (LOVE).

You can focus on helping people in your target market, or just help in general. People will be attracted to you when you GIVE.. it’s the Law of Reciprocity (you can get anything you want if you help enough others get what they want).. we want to do business with givers.. people that we know, like and trust. Asking for a sale too soon kills that process. Fortunately, the technology today allows us to meet and network, get to know people and build a trust relationship fast.

A good salesman knows that marketing is a process and hones his skill. Today, the skill that we all need to learn is “listen and love” .. it’s a lot more fun than cold calling, much more productive and will transform us into better people.

Why waste time selling to someone that doesn’t want to buy.. there are millions looking for whatever you have.. just go help them!

Follow People Who Are Doing Social Media Right

My Twitter Radio show has guests with news and tips.. but our primary goal is to allow Twitter users to meet and mingle with leaders in social media.

This Friday’s show will feature @JayBerkowitz who wrote The 10 Golden Rules of Online Marketing. Join us live for Social Media Radio to chat with hosts, guest and others who are doing social media this way or listen to the Twitter Show on iTunes

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@JesseStay has a great way of explaining the NO RULES philosophy:

I get so bugged when I see so many people trying to tell me how to write my Twitter stream. Some say I have to have multiple accounts to organize the data. Others say I can’t run ads and my content can’t be promotional in any way. Funny thing is most of those people are promoting something of their own, whether they admit it or not. Personally that doesn’t matter to me.

What matters to me is that I can use Twitter the way I want to. I can write everything in one stream if I want to

Catch the rest of his post here

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One common stage 2 idea is that you can reach different people in different time zones by setting up a repeated tweet every few hours.

Fact is, you will reach more people with that specific tweet, and if you are tweeting just the one tweet it’s likely that almost no one will notice.

Unfortunatly, most of the tweeps using this technique fail to add any real valud beyond the self promotional tweets. So while I would never say that you should not repeat a tweet (after all, or mantra is NO RULES) I do regually caution against having a profile page that is full of “come and look at me” type tweets

@GuyKawasaki wrote a piece today showing his results when he repeated a tweet:

You would think that the skies would open up, and I’d get struck by
lightning by the Twitter gods. Think again. In the case of repeating a
tweet four times in thirty-two hours, there was a big spike for the
first tweet, but the next three still yielded very good results. In
total, the four posts resulted in 5,059 clickthroughs in tranches of
1,481, 1,415, 1,208, and 955; note, however, I looked at the server log
and approximately 20% of these clickthroughs are bots. 700 people
signed up for this service, by the way, because of my four tweets.

As suspected, more people saw the tweet each time it went out and the total clicks went way up.

What Guy left out was that he has a reputation for saying very smart things and engaging in real conversations with many tweeps.

What I prefer to see is self promotion with variety. I often use the same URL in a dozen or more tweets in a single day, for instance, the link to my Twitter radio show (http://TwitCastRadio.com). However, I use the link in unique tweets, mostly in answer to people asking me a question.

Sometimes, I’ll promote an upcoming event or show with several hints about the show. One tweet will have the show announcement, another will thank the guest I’ve booked, yet another will mention what we will cover on the show.

What about RT (ReTweets)?

Use the same ideas for tweets I see from those I follow, I often send out their message to my tweet stream. I’ll use the lazy RT button if that is available in the software client I’m using that day, sometimes I think what was written was perfect. But usually, I try to add value with a comment, or by writing my own tweet. Other times, I’ll see a link, read a post and end up with a blog post of my own (as happened today with this post.. thanks to @24k for the link)

It’s only 140 characters.. be creative and write more about your subject. Anyone seeing more than one will appreciate the details and you get a new batch of readers each time. When you get to have hundreds of thousands of followers, you can repeat without worry. Until then, give us unique valuable content whenever you can.

For me, great content is always great content. How about you?

Warren Whitlock
Co-Author of “Twitter Revolution: How Social Media and Mobile Marketing is Changing the Way We Do Business & Market Online”, speaker, social media marketing strategist, and publisher.
Read more at http://WarrenWhitlock.com

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I’m teaching a class on how to promote yourself on Twitter.

NOTE: It’s not about adding a lot of bogus followers and spamming them

To promote yourself right, be part of something bigger than yourself. That’s I’m inviting EVERYONE who wants to show they are a GIVER to tweet along with us, make new connections and build relationship with REAL PEOPLE today.

HOW TO PLAY

Simple to join us:

Starting today (July 23) at 2pm Eastern (11am Pacific) I will tell our class about the #GREENLIGHT hash tage and the link to this explanation — http://budurl.com/greenlight (this link will come back to this explanation)

I’ll teach them to follow the thread of posts and add their own so they can network with you and other GIVERS on Twitter.

If you post a tweet with #GREENLIGHT during the next few hours, thousands of givers will see it.. and see that you are one of us. So will like what they see, real human tweeps with something to say and a giving attitude. You will get a few new followers that see you as a Twitter user who “get it”

The event continues after the class ends and I go to meet up with fans of WHO’S GOT YOUR BACK by Keith Ferrazzi. If you are in Atlanta, you can join us FREE but the for our purposes.. it’s just a great excuse to promote GOOD ENERGY. I’ll tell everyone there about #GREENLIGHT and the group of great networkers will check and see your tweets too.

What’s Good Energy?

Anytime you help another person, pay it forward, or just treat your fellow human beings as important individuals, you are spreading good energy.

On 9/9/9, people all over the Earth will be part of Good Energy Day.. but you don’t have to wait to 9/9/9. You can spread good energy any time.

1. Tweet with #GREENLIGHT
2. Follow tweets with #GREENLIGHT to meet like minded people. 
3. Add a comment here with your thoughts,
4. Keep sharing GOOD ENERGY.

It’s as simple at that.

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Business Day posted an article last week on a rising trend in social media: squatters.  Seems that the latest Twitter trend is for squatters to snatch up trademark Twitter IDs.  Nicole Kidman, Coca Cola, and Nike have all had their names snatched up by others.  (You can read the full Squatters Creating Twittering Confusion article.)

Celebrities and major corporations aren’t the only victims.  Some Internet Marketers who were late adopting Twitter had their names scooped up. @biz and @ev spoke about the trend on The View last week and outlined some of the verification strategies they will be putting in place to help prevent Twitter ID theft.

But what can you do in the meantime?

Join me this Thursday for a special LIVE broadcast where I’ll share some simple strategies to protect yourself from Cyber Squatters and what you can do if this happens to you. We’ll also share some Twitter Newbie Tips & what’s to come to help you use Twitter more effectively for your business.

Visit this link: “Chat with Coach Deb” for more details on the upcoming LIVE show, and join my Tribe to get on Thursday’s FREE Broadcast.

Deborah Micek is a co-founder of the international business coaching company RPM Success Group ® Inc. She and her partner John Paul are authors of the hit book Secrets Of Online Persuasion. They are creators of the ONLY Web site system to put New Media to work marketing FOR you — BLOG i360™. Also known as “The Twitter Queen” she co-authored the first published book on Twitter, available now in bookstores everywhere: “Twitter Revolution” Grab your copy now on Amazon and get the edge on the hottest social network!

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@KeystoClarity has a radio show about her spiritual coaching business.

When she asked me to come on an talk about Twitter, I wasn’t sure what to expect… but glad to talk about the basics of Twitter and share some tips for tweeps that are just getting started.

Turned out very well. Great questions from @KeystoClarity, and we had a very interesting discussion about how we approach Twitter for business.

Listen to –> Keys To Clarity Twitter Show

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I’m logging in from Vancouver today.. live at the Canada Marketing Summit where I’m speaking on Friday.

If you are anywhere near Vancouver, come to the Radisson on Friday night to tweet up when we do this week TwitCastRadio here

If you can’t make it.. you can still see all 16 speakers from this paid event FREE. The live video feed is being professionally produced for a product to be sold later… BUT HERE’S THE TRICK.. If you watch LIVE.. you get it FREE

Here’s the link –> Canada Marketing Summit FREE feed

canada marketing, Warren Whitlock, free marketing, online seminar

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What if there were a way to plan your blogging and twitter post while planning your other marketing activities?

We’ve talked about TweetLater and how a good balance of live, real time tweets mixed with some scheduled tweets about your current promotion can save you time and get results.

Now you can co-ordinate these tweets with blog posts, status updates to other social media sites and your schedule for business, marketing and even your personal life.

The service is called PostLater. This is a highly configurable tool for every blogger. You will want to add this to your blogging arsenal

In my consulting practice, I deal with successful authors and business people that are reluctant to blog or post to social media sites because they are concerned about the time commitment involved.

I know this is an issue for most bloggers. Most of the successful bloggers that are blogging as a part time activity use some form of schedule to get it all done. Some resort to paying an assistant to handle all the posting to make sure that posts go live at the times readers expect them.

One client writes most of his business advice posts weeks in advance. He has a strong following and great content. When I asked him how he did it with his busy schedule of speaking and consulting, he admitted that he paid a full time assistant to handle it.

By regularly posting useful original content that is helpful to readers, authors build up a following online and receive requests for interviews, business propositions and an increase in leads that are looking for more of what they see you do online.

Imagine how much money he’s saving by switching over to PostLater. When I told him how it’s only $9.95, he asked “is that per post?”  The price is really so low that you’ll wonder if it’s a mistake. No, that the cost to you for as many accounts and posts as you want each month.

Have you been using TweetLater, PostLater or similar scheduling tools?

Please share your experiences, results and ideas below.

Technorati Tags: postlater, schedule tweets, twitter tools, social media marketing

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We are going to answer all your questions about Twitter, and share how others are using tools like Twitter (and apps) to build their network of meaningful connections, public relations, and get more done

Join us for this FREE event

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