Unleash The Power Of Twitter

How to explode on Twitter. Well you could eat a couple of cans of cold baked beans and then log on to Twitter and chat but I don't recommend it.

You may already know the information here or have worked it out for yourself like I did but if you haven't, it's presented here in very simple terms, just exactly how easy it is to get lots of like minded followers on Twitter. These followers in sufficient numbers create a terrific marketing tool, like a newsletter but always changing and improving. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to realise that lots of followers means you get your message out to lots of people and potentially drive traffic to your website or blog and if your product is worthwhile, hopefully increase sales.

It's Really As Easy As 1,2,3

STEP 1. Get yourself a Twitter account if you haven't already got one. Twitter is a place where you can post short messages to tell others, who might be interested, of what you are currently doing. You can also interact with other tweeple, twitters or twots (as John Cleese put it, yes he Twitters, or so he says :-)

This bit is essential as without a Twitter account there's not much point in trying to get people to follow you, which is your next objective. Fill in your profile with interesting information about yourself and what you do and add a link to your website or blog.

STEP 2. Sign up to a directory for Twitter like Twellow. Twellow is a place where you can register your Twitter account and join up to 10 categories e.g. health, education, travel and lots, lots more, each with thousands of people listed. Fill in your profile here too with as much about you and your business as you can. Then you can start looking through the categories and join some. In each category and sub category are listed those people who have also joined that section. Next to there name is a Follow button. You got it, you click on the follow button for those people that are interested in what you have to offer. Apparently Twitter takes a dim view of you following more than 400 people a day so keep it sensible. Obviously you can create quite a list of people you follow in just a few days. In turn many of those will follow you back and build your Twitter follow list.

STEP 3. All this can get a little tedious but you can get some automation to help you. Tweetlater provides another service where you can register your Twitter account with them and they can do all sorts of automated things for you, such as automatically follow those who follow you and sending out a direct message to each of your new followers. In your message you can thank them for following you and also maybe add your web or blog address. Tweetlater does suggest you don't push the latter but I didn't have any problem with getting direct messages from folk with a website or special offer on them. If I am interested I will click to find out more and if I'm not interested I delete the message. We are all grown ups and I prefer to decide for myself what I do with messages sent to me.

AUTO-PILOT The above three steps, I have tried and they work but you have to put in the effort. So what's all this doing it on auto-pilot stuff. Well OK, to a small extent you can automate some of these chores but when it comes down to it, the available automation tools have yet to come up with anything that really makes an impact. Some of them do work but only on a small scale as Twitter limits the amount of things you can do at any one time and physically some of the servers cannot cope with the demand that's being placed upon them such is the size of Twitter now. Below are a couple of tools which I have found work on a small scale.

Twollo Here you can type in some keys words or phrases and they claim to search every hour or so for other folks twittering on these subjects. Their system then automatically follows those people. Quite a few will follow you back. In practice, I have found the service is sporadic and only adds a few every day.

Tweetbots This little tool can add interesting content automatically to your Twitter account via an rss feed. Just create a Google Alert for some key words or phrases and have them sent as an rss feed. Copy the url of the rss feed and add a new bot on your Tweetbot account. Paste in the url and Tweetbots will periodically add that content for you. It's reasonably effective and I use it but I'm not sure it's worth the effort, though some of the content is very interesting.

MAKING MONEY Well here again this is a bit of myth but it is possible if you add some affiliate links to your auto Direct Message sent from Tweetlater (see above). If you search for 'Twitter' on Clickbank, you will find several cash making opportunities but in practice you have to be pretty lucky to make any sort of effective income.

That's about it other than keeping the whole process ticking along by replying to folk, posting interesting content etc. I don't make any promises that you will get followers or that you will get more traffic to your website or blog or indeed that you will make any money. I have never made these fantastic sums that are claimed by the spotty 20 somethings and personally I think the claims are a lot of bull but this process can get you in touch with like minded people and give you the opportunity to talk about yourself, your ideas and maybe your products or services. It's really up to you. I am only passing on what I have learned.