The Secrets to Success with Twitter

The Secrets to Success with Twitter Brought to you by Rod Larrivee and the IMTSuccess Program  http://www.rodlarrivee.com        http://www.imtsuccess.com  Follow me on Twitter http://www.twitter.com/rodl13   The Secret to Success with Twitter by IMTSuccess  Page 1 LEGAL NOTICE ©2009 Rod Larrivee and IMTSuccess Program All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the Publisher. The information in this e-book is intended for educational purposes only. Published by Rod Larrivee P.O. Box 22929 Richmond, BC Canada V6V3B8 Limits of Liability/Disclaimer of Warranty: This publication is designed to provide competent and reliable information regarding the subject matters covered. 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Any unauthorized reprint or use of this material is prohibited.   The Secret to Success with Twitter by IMTSuccess  Page 2 Table Of Contents Rod’s Take on Twitter What is Twitter Setting Up You Twitter Account and Polishing your Profile Setting Up TweetLater Getting some Automatic Content Setting Up Twitter Feed to Post Automatic Content Finding People to Follow, and UnFollowing those that don’t Follow back Setting Up Twollow to Automatically Follow Targeted People Using Tweet Deck to Manager you Followers and Tweets Pinging your Twitter Feed Rules of Engagement and Best Practices 4 5 6 12 15 16 19 22 23 24 25   The Secret to Success with Twitter by IMTSuccess  Page 3 Rod’s Take on Twitter I have had this Twitter discussion with twitterers and non twitterers alike, “What is Twitter for?” There are some people on Twitter get totally upset when I send out a tweet that has a self promoting link. I am not sure what they are doing on Twitter. In my opinion, there are not enough people in the world to make Twitter feasible for its creators, if Twitter users are only interested in what everybody is having for dinner. You do not see right now a lot of advertising on Twitter, but the Twitter owner’s have stated publically, that there will be. Twitter is a business, and it will make money. Let’s look at the big Twitterers at the time this eBook is being written. Now these are just my opinions on why they are on Twitter (I don’t think they need any more friends.) Ashton Kutcher – 1,250,000 followers – Followers for Ashton mean clarifying bad press, more followers, more fans, more box office sales, more movie rentals, more money??? CNN – 1,000,000 followers – More followers, more hits to their sites, more advertising revenue, more money??? President Barack Obama – 800,000 followers. He built his followers during his campaign, more followers, more votes, President of the United State – Good on him! Oprah – 250,000 followers in a weekend after joining Twitter on her show. More fans, closer interaction to fans, more show watchers, more magazine sales, more money??? So, here it is for me, the purpose of Twitter: Promotion of oneself, one’s product, one’s life goal, or one’s cause and I welcome all as my followers, even if you want to tell me what you are having for dinner  I trust you will enjoy this eBook, and that it will help you in whatever you are promoting. Rod Larrivee   The Secret to Success with Twitter by IMTSuccess  Page 4 What is Twitter Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that enables its users to send and read other users' updates known as tweets. Tweets are text-based posts of up to 140 characters in length which are displayed on the user's profile page and delivered to other users who have subscribed to them (known as followers). Senders can restrict delivery to those in their circle of friends or, by default, allow anybody to access them. Users can send and receive tweets via the Twitter website, Short Message Service (SMS) or external applications. The service is free to use over the Internet, but using SMS may incur phone service provider fees. Since its creation in 2006 by Jack Dorsey, Twitter has gained extensive notability and popularity worldwide. It is often described as the "SMS of Internet," in that the site provides the functionality (via its application programming interfaces) for other desktop and web-based applications to send and receive short text messages, often obscuring the Twitter service itself. Four gateway numbers are currently available for SMS — short codes for the United States, Canada, India, and an Isle of Man-based number for international use. There is also a short code for Vodafone users from the United Kingdom. Several third parties offer posting and receiving updates via e-mail. Estimates of the number of daily users vary as the company does not release the number of active accounts. In November 2008, Jeremiah Owyang of Forrester Research estimated that Twitter had 4-5 million users, currently over 16,000,000. A February 2009 Compete.com blog entry ranks Twitter as the third most used social network (Facebook being the largest, followed by MySpace), which puts the number of unique monthly visitors at roughly 6 million and the number of monthly visits at 55 million. In March 2009, a Nielsen.com blog ranked Twitter as the fastest growing site in the Member Communities category for February 2009. Twitter had a growth of 1382%, Zimbio had a growth of 240%, followed by Facebook with a growth of 228%.   The Secret to Success with Twitter by IMTSuccess  Page 5 Setting Up You Twitter Account and Polishing your Profile First I recommend using a different email address than you main email, for everything we are talking about in this eBook. You will not have to access the email often, but you will get a lot of nuisance emails to it. Now we need to go to http://www.twitter.com and click on the Get Started – Join Button, and set up your Twitter Account. If this is going to be your main (personal or business) Twitter account, use your Real Name, and select a username maybe specific to you or your business. If this Twitter account is for a Niche you market in, you do not have to use your real name. Now, once you get the account set up, log into Twitter, and lets set up your profile.   The Secret to Success with Twitter by IMTSuccess  Page 6 After logging in, at the top right, click on Settings. Now fill in the information, with your information, as shown below. Enter the Web Site you want people to visit, and enter a catchy Online Bio (160 characters or less). DO NOT check off “Protect My Updates” or no one will see your Tweets. Then Click the Save Button.   The Secret to Success with Twitter by IMTSuccess  Page 7 Next, Click on the Picture Tab, browse for a saved picture of yourself, or your company logo, and Click on Save. You can also click on the Notices Tab, and uncheck all the email notices, as you are going to be receiving tons of followers, and you will get 1000’s of email notices. Then Click on Save.   The Secret to Success with Twitter by IMTSuccess  Page 8 Now, lets “Pimp” out your profile, with this great little free site: http://www.mytweetspace.com Find the Button, Click on it, then Click on the Link You will then arrive on a page that looks like this: Start First by click on the Upload under photo, and upload your picture. Then Upload a Logo if you have one. Then select a background you like, and select a Photo Frame you like. When you are done all boxes should be filled in like below:   The Secret to Success with Twitter by IMTSuccess  Page 9 Now click on the Auto Install Button, enter your Twitter User Name, and Password, and then click on submit. You will get a successful message, go back to Twitter.com, and take a look at your new background. (You may have to log out, and back in to see it)   The Secret to Success with Twitter by IMTSuccess  Page 10   The Secret to Success with Twitter by IMTSuccess  Page 11 Setting Up TweetLater This set up has to be complete once, and what it will do for you, is two things. Auto follow people that follow you, and when people follow you, it will automatically send them a welcome message. TweetLater does have a paid version, they will try to sell you, but you absolutely DO NOT need it. Go to http://www.tweetlater.com Click on the Register Button at the top right. After you complete the Registration, you can go back to http://www.tweetlater.com and click on the Login and Login with your Username and Password you selected during the registration. There are only a couple of things we need to do here. After login in, look for the Add Account link in one of the 2 places below.   The Secret to Success with Twitter by IMTSuccess  Page 12 Select Twitter, the Continue. Enter your Twitter User Name and Twitter Password. Check off Auto Welcome Enter a 120 character Welcome Message, ending with your web site. For example, here is mine: Thanks for the Follow! Join me Tuesday for a free webinar on increasing your Twitter following http://bitly.com/KfavT Check Off Auto Follow Check Off Auto Unfollow Then click on Save. It will take up to 8 hours before TweetLater Starts Working for you. **NOTE** in my example you see I use a URL Shorting Service, so I can have more content in my Welcome Message. Sign up for a free service, http://bit.ly and shorten your URL there. We will be using bit.ly in a future chapter. See what it should look like on the next page   The Secret to Success with Twitter by IMTSuccess  Page 13 Tweet Later is now all set up and will auto follow people following you, auto unfollow people that unfollow you and automatically send a welcome “Direct” message to all that follow you.   The Secret to Success with Twitter by IMTSuccess  Page 14 Getting Some Automatic Content The best way to get some automatic content is by using RSS feeds. This can be your RSS feeds from your own blogs, or other Web 2.0 properties that you have created like we teach in the IMTSuccess Program . The first way of getting RSS feeds, is to use Google Alerts. If you have a Gmail account, or followed my advice in the first section of this eBook, and got one, your ready to get started. Go to http://google.com/alerts the click on the Sign In link at the upper right and Sign in. You will get the following screen below, click on Create One. Enter a search term relative to your business; try to keep it to one word. Change the Deliver to Feed, then click on Create Alert Do this maybe 3 or 4 times, for different Search Terms. Make sure you use general enough terms that will be news about that topic. It can take up to a few hours for the feed to bring back results. Now you will see your list of feeds, click on the Feed link like below.   The Secret to Success with Twitter by IMTSuccess  Page 15 A page will open and you need to copy and paste the URL, into a separate file like Note Pad for use to use in the next step. Save each of the URL’s for each alert you created. All you need is 3 or 4 at the most. Now, one more step to make this automatic, is log into your http://bit.ly account that you registered previously (or register now and log in) Once logged into bit.ly, click on the Account Link at the top right. First you will need to link you twitter account to bit.ly, by entering your Twitter Username and Password in the spaces provided and click on ADD to the right. Once you do this, you will need to save your API credentials to the Note Pad file that you saved your RSS feeds to. You will see these on the left, just copy and paste them into that Note Pad File Done here, lets finish off the Tweeting Automation.   The Secret to Success with Twitter by IMTSuccess  Page 16 Setting Up Twitter Feed to Post Automatic Content Go to http://twitterfeed.com/ and click on Login to twitterfeed using your OpenID Click on the small arrow to the right of the box and select Google, then click on Login If you are already logged into Google, it will automatically log you in, if not, it will ask for your Google email and password. Then Click on go to my twitter feeds (or create a new one). Then Click on Create a new Feed Enter the Following information Twitter Username and Password (Click on Test Twitter Authentication) RSS Feed – One of the RSS feeds you saved in the Note Pad File (Click on Test RSS Feed)   The Secret to Success with Twitter by IMTSuccess  Page 17 Update frequency: 6 Hours (This will depend on how many of these automatic posts you want each day and how many RSS feeds you are adding. I suggest only 4 – 8 post a day like this.) Post up to 1 New Update Each Time Include Title Only Shorten Link thu bit.ly (Enter your API Credentials you save to the Note Pad File) Check the picture below to be sure you have everything correct, then click on Create This feed may take up to 24 hours to start posting to your Twitter account, be patient. This feed will run forever, posting new content relative to your Business to your Twitter account. Post like this are great, as it shows Twitter and your followers, that you are not just there for self promotion, but to share valuable content.   The Secret to Success with Twitter by IMTSuccess  Page 18 Finding People to Follow and UnFollowing those that don’t Follow back This is where most Twitter’s go wrong, and this is the most important part of your Twitter business. How to find the right people to follow, that will follow you back, and are interested in what you have to offer. First of all, you are staring a brand new Twitter account, we have to manually follow some targeted people, and this will take maybe 15 minutes a day. In fact, I still manually add targeted people to my Twitter account daily. First go to http://www.twellow.com/ get yourself signed up and log in. Once log in you need to do a search. This is the cool part, it actually searches people bio, so you can find targeted people. Like for my IMTSuccess Program business I would search terms like internet marketing training, seo training, web 2,0 courses, and when I find people with lots of followers, I follow their followers. In the picture on the next page, you will see my search term, and the results. In the results, it brings back the people with the most followers for that term. I click on that person’s name on twitter.   The Secret to Success with Twitter by IMTSuccess  Page 19 Once I arrive on their Twitter Page, I click on their Followers Then I click on the Follow Button beside each of his followers, until I have followed everyone on that page, the I click on next and do the same on the next page. I usually will not follow anyone who does not have a picture, or that has a Lock beside their name showing me that their updates are protected. Now there are some rules on how many people to follow per day. On a brand new account, twitter will allow you to follow up to 2000 people, but will not let you get past that, until you have 1850 people following you. My recommendation is to follow up to 250 – 300 people per day, and if you target right, 30 – 40% should follow you back. Now after you reach the 1850 followers, twitter allows you to follow 10% more people than are following you. Example, If you have 4000 followers, you can be following 4400. Now, if you are doing the math, you will realize if only 40% of the people follow you, you will have to regularly remove people you are following that did not follow you back. Twitter makes this almost impossible, but there is a solution. Go to http://dossy.org/twitter/karma/ Enter your Twitter User name and Password, Click on Whack, and go for a coffee (I could take a while, you can minimize the page and check back in a few minutes) Do not do this step too soon after following a lot of people, as you need to get them a change to follow you back. I do this 3 times a week, at least 24 hours after I have followed a group of people. Now this is VERY IMPORTANT. I have seen people wipe out their Twitter Following by using this tool. Follow instructions and it will work fine.   The Secret to Success with Twitter by IMTSuccess  Page 20 Once the results come back you will see a screen like below. Change the “SHOW” to “Only Following” Now it will only show the people that you are following but for some reason they did not follow you back. These are the people we need to get rid of in our Twitter account, so we can follow more. Scroll down to the bottom of the page. Each of the people under their usernames should have a green arrow with the words you follow them (and nothing else) if all ok, click on Check All, then Bulk Unfollow. See below: Within 5 minutes of you doing this you Twitter account should be updated, and you will be able to target and follow more people.   The Secret to Success with Twitter by IMTSuccess  Page 21 Setting Up Twollow to Automatically Follow Targeted People Now some fun stuff and setting up some auto follow rules. For a brand new account, I recommend do not use this feature till you have had at least 50 updates and 500 followers. Go to http://www.twollow.com sign up for an account, and log in. This is a pretty simple site, that allows you to enter a keyword, the program checks Twitter every hours or so for people tweeting about that keywords, and can autofollow them for you. DO NOT ABUSE THIS SYSTEM – You could get you twitter account banned. Be selective in your keywords and very descriptive. Example don’t use keywords like business, marketing, everybody tweets about that. Use 2 and 3 word keywords if you want or specific keywords about your business. My advice, maximum of 4 keywords, follow 5 – 10, and then change you keywords once a week. The picture below explains how to enter the info Again, do not abuse this system, I still prefer the 15 minutes a day manually adding targeted followers for other Twitterers accounts.   The Secret to Success with Twitter by IMTSuccess  Page 22 Using Tweet Deck to Manager you Followers and Tweets A lot of people, including myself, have complained about the lack of functionality on the Twitter web site it self. But there is an application out there that uses the Twitter API, to actually organize and make the twitter experience a lot more enjoyable. Go here http://www.tweetdeck.com and download and install Tweet Deck – you will be glad you did. This application runs in the back ground on your computer, and you can bring it up when you want to send a personal Tweet, or respond to a reply or direct. Below is a quick shot of what it looks like. There are so many things you can do with TweetDeck, that you cannot do with the Twitter site. Replying or sending a direct message is as simple as hovering on their picture, and clicking the appropriate button. You can monitor peoples tweets for specific keywords, and interact with them, and so much more. You are not a professional twitterer without this. Download it, Install it, and start using it, you will love it in no time.   The Secret to Success with Twitter by IMTSuccess  Page 23 Pinging your Twitter Feed It is a good idea to ping your Twitter feed every day or two. No more than that. Make sure that has been at least 8 – 10 tweets before you ping it. What is pinging, well it lets the search engines know that you have new content, and all Twitter is, is a Micro Blog. Let’s first get you Twitter feed. Log into your twitter account at http://www.twitter.com click on Updates at the top right, and copy the URL which will look like this, but with your Twitter ID: https://twitter.com/rodl13 Now go to http://autopinger.com/ scroll down to the spot where is ask for the URL, and paste your Twitter feed in. I usually uncheck the Non English Services. Then click on Start Ping. It will bring you to a new page which will show your ping results. Don’t worry too much about this as you will get some failed. DO NOT PING AGAIN for a couple of days and be sure there has been updates.   The Secret to Success with Twitter by IMTSuccess  Page 24 Rules of Engagement and Best Practices Here are some simple rules to follow to avoid having your Twitter account suspended. I have followed these rules and have never had a problem. Do not grow too quickly with a new account. Like, do not follow 2000 people the first day. Start with 100, then 200, then a max of 250 until you have 3000 – 4000 followers, then you can ramp it up a bit Don not sent tons of tweets with links every day. Especially links to your sites. This is considered Spam Example of a spam Tweet – hey check out my business it cool http://www.yoursite.com and sending that tweet over and over again. Do not send directs or replies all the same with your link just to promote yourself. Your welcome message is already doing that. Do not send a tweet with an unrelated link: Example – Anyone watching the hockey game tonight – http://www.yoursite.com Be sincere when tweeting with people. Don’t just be there to send your link out. Have fun with Twitter, interact with people, and they will look at your stuff when you send it out. - For the best online marketing course available visit http://www.imtsuccess.com © Copyright 2009 Rod Larrivee. All rights reserved worldwide. No reproduction, redistribution, or copying of any content in this report without prior permission from the author. Your success using the information in this report is entirely up to your ability, persistence, and factors in your control. As a result, we make no guarantees of results or income from this report.   The Secret to Success with Twitter by IMTSuccess  Page 25