May, 2009
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Use Tweet Later effectively
How can you be actively present on Twitter without losing your life into a constant stream of communication? What is the most efficient way to keep your friends and customers informed without being in front of your computer all the time? How can you welcome and take care of your followers automatically? The answer is www.tweetlater.com, a site which offers a service for organizing and scheduling your tweets, for managing multiple Twitter accounts and for following and unfollowing people automatically.
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This is the first site you should register into after you have created your Twitter account. In this way you will be ready to tackle your expansion on Twitter from day one and you won’t have to think about it any further.
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Registering is easy: you need to provide a user name, which IS NOT your Twitter username but any other identity of your choice, and a password. The basic service is free and it is all you need to get started.
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Once you have registered you need simply to login in and configure your accounts. Here is where you input your Twitter username and password. You can have multiple accounts configured at the same, if you need to. You manage your accounts by clicking on “Accounts” on the navigation bar to your right.
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Your account will be listed in a page that shows also its key features. You can edit its features by clicking on the “Edit” link.
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You will go to a page that contains and describes all the key automation features. In the first half of this page you have the user name and password for the Twitter account, plus a check box that allows you to send automatically a welcome message to anyone who Follows you. Just below the check box you also have a window for entering the text of your welcome message that has to be 120 characters long, max. It is very advisable to have a welcome message and you can also include an URL pointing to your blog or site.
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Later in the same page you also find a checkbox for enabling your automatic follow of anyone following you and the automatic unfollow of anybody unfollowing you. You can also enable the “Vetting” function for manually approving the automatic follow back.
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Now you are done with configuring the automated tasks for your account. You can now schedule tweets in advance. You do this by going to “New Tweet” and then entering the text of the message you want to publish inclusive of any link (URL). Tweet Later will shorten your long links so that they don’t take away space from you message. You can then decide at which time and date to publish your scheduled tweet and hit the “Save” button.
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You can review the list of your scheduled messages and you can also edit, copy and cancel them or add a new scheduled tweet.
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You can also search for messages containing specific keywords, including your user name. You get the results on your e-mail box.
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Used well, this tool can save you a lot of time in your Twitter experience while leaving you free to jump in at any time and join the ongoing conversations at your will.
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Roberto Mazzoni
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P.S. If you want to get regular updates of my new articles and download a full free Twitter ebook, sign up for my newsletter.
What people are looking for on Twitter
Just completed a survey on Twitter users and the first question asked was “What would make you a perfect Twitter user?” There were three possible questions and anyway left the door open to comments and the result shows that people are mostly concerned in “Understanding how Twitter really works” (40% of answers).
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The peculiar relationships that are built between Tweeples (Twitter users) is missed by some. It is pretty evident also that a fair amount of people have come on Twitter because somebody else advised them to do so, either for finding friends or for marketing something, yet they still don’t fully get it and need help to envision the difference between Twitter and the many other Internet Marketing tools.
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The survey shows as a the second most common answer: “Being able to attract followers” (33% of answers) which indicates indeed that many people are out there with promotional purposes or simply want to make themselves better known or find new ways to make money on line.
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The third answer is: “Ideas to tweet about” (27% of answers) which is something common also in the blogging field, but is less present here because with 140 characters available it’s easier to find something to say even though it is just “I am going to take a coffee” (not advisable though). Probably the answers shows a desire to find something to say that other people will also find interesting and which will attract them as followers, friends or buyers.
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Time for answers
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Twitter is a place where you can exchange short messages, as if they were text messages, with other people who can “tune in” to you by following you. It is a bit like listening to different radio channels and skipping from one to the next at every single tweet (message).
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You can also filter the stream of messages so that you tune in only to those coming from few selected people or that cover some specific subject (keyword). It is a wonderful way to get in contact with people because they feel more protected that other places, since they don’t have to use their personal e-mail or even they real name for that matter. Look at it as an evolution of chat, but on a much wider scale and in a much more organizes fashion.
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The best way to attract followers is to have something to say that they find interesting. Many will also follow you because they want you to follow them. If you are looking just to increase the number of followers moderately and build a group of close knit friends you won’t have to worry, it will happen by itself provided you put yourself out there and communicate. If you are looking to reach a high number of followers, this is a whole subject in itself and it will require separate articles.
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What to Tweet about? Just like blogging, chose a subject you are passionate about and just go ahead. If you really don’t know what to say, then you should ask yourself why you got on Twitter in the first place and reorganize your goals or just listen to others.
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Roberto Mazzoni
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P.S. Thanks to all the people who have used some of their time to participate in my survey.
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P.SS The three subjects above and many more will be covered in much more detalil as I move along and will result in a Twitter survival guide, so why don’t you subscribe to this blog and keep abreast of all the cool new stuff coming out?
Follow Friday ritual
Every Friday something happens in the Twitter world that focuses everybody’s attention. Following an idea by Micah Baldwin (www.twitter.com/micah) as described on his own site (http://learntoduck.com/micah/follow-friday). It is a way to show that you are proud of your friends and encourage others to follow them.
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You don’t need to state the reason, you simply need to tweet (put in a short message) their Twitter user names with an ampersand before them and then add the special keyword #followfriday o more simply #ff. Note that in Twitter you indicate a keyword (a special subject) by putting the symbol # just before it. It is named an “hash tag” and indicates a subject on which other people also can discuss so that one can view all the messages about that subject gathered together.
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So every Friday Twitter is swamped with messages of people recommending their friends or other Twitter users whose messages they found particularly interesting during the week It is a form of saying that you are proud of them and of being connected with them. For example, if you wanted to suggest me you would write a message like “Cool people #followfriday @fratel”.
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The sum of all suggestions is collected by a special site. www.topfollowfriday.com that shows you the highest recommended people of the week and how many people have specifically suggested you. Its is also a good way of returning the favor by suggesting that your followers follow those who have sponsored you. This is not a rule of course, it is up to you to decide what.
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Roberto Mazzoni
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P.S. Twitter is ultimately for the people, and for their friends and its a very good way to find new ones.
Think skill
Many people think first and foremost to a product when they are trying to promote or sell something online, be it through Twitter or other communications channels on the Web. This is quite understandable also because the product is right in front of us, when it is something physical, or it is something we are familiar with when it is a service.
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So you find all kinds of products and services that promise benefits that sound just irrelevant to you or that look like simply spam.
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In the end we get everyday messages that promote heavily this and that and we believe this is the right way to go because “everybody” does it.
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That’s the first trap to fall into: the fact that “everybody does it” is not not necessarily a guarantee that it is successful or that it actually works. The best thing to focus on is SKILL. I have been recently conducting a survey on Twitter and To the question “What would make you a perfect Twitter user?” the majority answered “Understanding how it really works”.
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So that knowledge comes first other concepts like “Ideas to tweet about” or “Being able to attract followers”. And the key to understanding it is actually finding a way to create effective communication with other people. And this brings us back to the first skill of any Internet Marketer, which is WRITING COMPELLING COPY. Articles, posts, sales letter or any other type of written message, which is anyway always more effective than video or audio as such.
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But how do you write compelling copy in 140 characters at a time when you use Twitter? Well, the challenge is to sound as original and emotional as you can, and still give content of interest.
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Roberto Mazzoni
Brute Force Twitter
The increasing popularity of Twitter as a relationship and marketing platform has spurred the growth of several systems and software that facilitate the recruitment of more followers and the management of one’s account.
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There are two system right now on the Web that use the name of Brute Force, one has been designed by Rich Bryda (Twitter name BigRichB), a 34year old Web publisher who sells weight-loss e-books and that has developed, with several attempts, a system that brought him to 70K followers in three months (http://budurl.com/brute) and that he sells in the form of a video course for the usual $ 97. He is also offering to manage other people Twitter accounts for $ 497 per month.
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Today he has 78K followers and he has been growing at a more usual and stable pace. I have never tried his system both because he doesn’t seem to have been able to repeat his exploit in the last couple of months and because it was apparently relying in some part on following people who were following spammers. I am more interested in having more targeted and dedicated followers.
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The second “Brute Force” product has been developed by Peter Drew, SEO expert (Twitter name www.twitter.com/peterdrew), and Dana Willhoit, Web PR and ghost writer. It is a combination of advices on how to develop a presence and a business online and a software that follows or un-follows people automatically. Drew claims to have been using the “brand” Brute Force for years. His package, which is $ 37 a month for a subscription fee, gives access to a forum with search optimization advices and the software itself that keeps a centralized database to that you can keep track of the people you have un-followed so not to follow them again.
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BruteForceTwitter, that’s the name of the software, opens up with a very simple interface allowing you to define one or more accounts you want to manage (http://budurl.com/drew).
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Once that is done you can select the name of one Twellow (a person on Twitter) and get the software to automatically follow the people that are following him in the expectation that they will follow back. The software selects a random number of people to follow, working in ranges between, for example, 100 – 500 or 200 – 1000 and so on. It will first look for them (making sure you haven’t already unfollowed them) and then will follow them one at a time, slowly, with randomly changing delays between one follow and the other so not to be “blocked” by Twitter.
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It is a slow progression and you can open several windows of the program so to follow people from several different other Twellows. I have used it for a while and it is a practical way to develop a presence on Twitter.
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Roberto Mazzoni
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P.S. Help create the best Twitter survival guide ever by taking this survey: http://budurl.com/monk
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