TWITTER MARKETING PRODUCTS

There’s a problem with the Big Follow strategy, though. Why the “Big Follow” Strategy doesn’t work?

If you want people to see your Tweets on Twitter, you gotta have followers. Obviously, that can drive a person to commit himself or herself to building up the biggest follower base possible as quickly as possible.

One of the most popular techniques to get those followers in place is to start following others. There’s a tendency out there in Twitterland for those who’ve been followed to follow in return. That generous reciprocity can make it easy to build a follower list that will really turn heads.

That’s why following as many people as you can without setting off the “you’re probably a spammer or a bot” alarm is such a popular technique for new Twitter marketers.

Yes, you get the followers. The problem is that you get a bunch of followers who aren’t really interested in anything you’re saying. They followed out of kindness, ignorance or because they’re not really a human being an they’re programmed to follow when followed.

When it comes time to market to that motley crew, you can guess just how effective it is. It’s like cold-calling the first set of numbers in the phone book or emailing random addresses. It’s not targeted and It doesn’t convert.

You best bet is to focus on building a truly interested and targeted social network. The results will be a lot better than what you get with the “big follow” technique. Read more in our Twitter book: Twitter Marketing Secrets

Mike Paetzold back again for day 4 of my visit here as part of The Old Bald Guy’s Blog Tour. This week I will be discussing Twitter. Twitter is the popular micro blogging platform that allows you to post your thoughts but only in 140 characters or less per entry.

So far I have discussed why Twitter is a bloggers best friend and yesterday and the day before the topic was Integrating Twitter into all you do – parts one and two.

Today the discussion will move to the most important part of using Twitter – moving them to your list.

If you have been following and applying what has been discussed here you are building a relationship with your followers. You are becoming a trusted information resource and your followers are looking for your tweets. There is a problem though.

The data flow on Twitter is moving quite quickly to say the least. Your tweet may easily be missed even by the people that are your raving fans depending on how they access Twitter. (Going on a bit of a side bar here. I will return to my main point shortly.)

One of my favorite tools for using Twitter is Tweet Deck. It allows me to segregate into columns not just replies ad direct messages but I can group the people that I really want to not miss their information in a separate column. The goal of using the techniques in Twitter Time Saver is to get your name listed in that special column on your followers set up.

Because of this it is always preferrable to move people to your ezine or email list. This can be quite easy as all it takes is a quality gift on the topic you talk about.

Adding a tweet about a gift like that which will grow your email list is easy to do and you will get your biggest fans to be able to get your information in multiple formats.

Twitter can be a great way to get people to sales pages but… unlike getting them on your list it is a once and done proposition. Make sure that at the very least your are using offers to join your list as you tweet to your followers regularly.

Hope you have enjoyed my stay here this week and you have learned from what I have added. Hopefully you are now following me on Twitter and have checked out my blogs. Next week I will be heading to Blog Income Life. Hope you follow me there.

About the author

Mike Paetzold has been online since 2000 and runs numerous blogs and you can find out what he is up to at Mike Paetzold Recommends. You can also find out and keep current with WordPress at his blog WordPress Made Easy. Follow Mike on Twitter

Mike Paetzold back again for day 4 of my visit here as part of The Old Bald Guy’s Blog Tour. This week I will be discussing Twitter. Twitter is the popular micro blogging platform that allows you to post your thoughts but only in 140 characters or less per entry.

So far I have discussed why Twitter is a bloggers best friend and yesterday the topic was Integrating Twitter into all you do – part one. The discussion centered primarily on integrating your blog and Twitter.

Today the discussion will move to integrating other services into how you use Twitter. Sites like Facebook and Friend Feed make it easy to integrate all of them together.

All of these places are places where you can share information on your topic of interest. The cool thing is that Google has made it easy for you to do that with Google News and Google Reader. You can add the rss feed for any topic to your reader and see the latest information that Google finds as they find it.

Friend Feed allows you to integrate anything you share on your Google Reader account to Facebook and Twitter automatically. And the last word is the important one.

We all know that sharing good quality information is the key to making any social media work. It shows you to be a very valuable resource on a topic and can build your following.

As people keep seeing that what you are tweeting is helpful and that you are sharing not just your stuff but others valuable information you build up a credibility.

This makes it more likely that people will be looking for your tweets and you have beaten the biggest barrier in using Twitter, you have gotten their attention.

Find the latest information for your topic on Google News and any blogs in your niche that always have quality content. Add the rss feed of the news topics and the blogs to your Google Reader account.

Grab the feed of your shared items from the reader and add that to your Friend Feed account.

Now add in your Twitter and Facebook accounts along with any other social media sites you use like You Tube to your Friend Feed account.

Set your Friend Feed to automatically publish your new items to Twitter and Facebook.

Now as you go through your reader just click the share link and it will automagically (not a word but it should be) be tweeted and added to your Facebook and Twitter streams. Direct additions to Twitter will be automagically be added to your Facebook and Friend Feed stream. Any other sites you added like You Tube will also update on the other sites.

This allows you to do one simple action and have it spread across your social media presence. All while saving you time and allowing you to provide quality information to your followers so they will want to recommend you to others.

You let Google work for you to find the latest information and then you act as the editor to decide what is valuable and what is not.

You can find tutorials and videos showing you exactly how to set this system up in Twitter Time Saver.

Do this regularly and when you add in other tweets you will have an audience that is looking to hear from you which will increase the response rate you can get on them all while keeping yourtime (your most valuable asset) commitmemnt to a minimum.

Be back tomorrow for my last day here on this blog tour.

About the author

Mike Paetzold has been online since 2000 and runs numerous blogs and you can find out what he is up to at Mike Paetzold Recommends. You can also find out and keep current with WordPress at his blog WordPress Made Easy. Follow Mike on Twitter

Mike Paetzold back again for day 3 of my visit here as part of The Old Bald Guy’s Blog Tour. This week I will be discussing Twitter. Twitter is the popular micro blogging platform that allows you to post your thoughts but only in 140 characters or less per entry.

Yesterday I discussed a few of the ways that Twitter can help a blogger and vice versa. They really do work well that way together and both are more powerful together than separately.

Today I want to talk about some of the easy ways to integrate the two. I am always about automating things where it is possible and making it easy for people to follow me in the format that suits them.

After all some people are really into Twitter. Others love to use Facebook or MySpace. Some like to keep track of various blogs using feed readers. My goal is to make it easy to get my information on multiple platforms so each person can find me in the way that they like.

It is easy to tie your blog and Twitter together. Tweet My Blog is a plugin that will automatically send a tweet through your Twitter account every time you add a blog post. It will allow you to add a widget to your side bar and show your latest Twitter entries on your sidebar.

The good part about using something like Tweet My Blog is that you set it up once and it keeps working for you.

Now you can do this with other services like Twitter Feed but they are more complex to get configured.

Either of those will automate both tweeting your posts and showing your latest tweets on your blog.

Twitter though is social networking and one of the best ways to integrate your blog and Twitter is to make it easy for blog readers to let others know about your blog post.

Now you and I both know that unless your post is extremely valuable none of your readers are going to take the time to copy the url then go to their Twitter account or whatever Twitter tool that they use to let their followers know about your post.

Adding TweetMeme Retweet Button like I have here when Fred wasn’t looking (sorry Fred ) makes it easy. You can click the button and it will automatically retweet the post to your Twitter followers. This makes it much more likely that your readers will pass the word along. You have made it easy for them and removed a lot of the friction for them.

Finally make sure that you make it easy for your readers of your blog to follow you on Twitter. You can do this by adding a ribbon on your blog (just do a Google search for Twitter Ribbons) or use a button in your sidebar. Again you can find lots of these by doing some searching on Google.

You can add a follow me link in your signature like I do. Speaking of which are you following me? If not click the link in my signature below and start now .

Tomorrow I will be back and finish up with integration using other social sites. The more places you share the more likely you will get the results you want.

Now go follow me on Twitter. (Yes, sometimes it helps to ask more than once )

About the author

Mike Paetzold has been online since 2000 and runs numerous blogs and you can find out what he is up to at Mike Paetzold Recommends. You can also find out and keep current with WordPress at his blog WordPress Made Easy. Follow Mike on Twitter

Mike Paetzold back again for day 2 of my visit here as part of The Old Bald Guy’s Blog Tour. This week I will be discussing Twitter. Twitter is the popular micro blogging platform that allows you to post your thoughts but only in 140 characters or less per entry.

Now Google has started indexing the tweets on Twitter and their spiders have been extremely busy. It makes Twitter a perfect place to…

• Get your post indexed
• Let your followers know about your other content

As you can see the trackback from Twitter was indexed 25 minutes before Google indexed the actual blog post. This has been consistently happening about 90% of the time over the last month or two.

The other thing you can do with Twitter to help your blogging efforts is to add your Twitter stream to your blog side bar. There are numerous plugins that will allow you to integrate this into your side bar and this will make sure there is fresh content each time they visit.

As long as you are tweeting regularly there will be fresh content on your blog each time the page gets indexed.

When I discuss integration later this week I will be listing the plugins that I use for that.

In my opinion every blogger should be using Twitter as an adjunct to their blogging efforts for these two reasons. It is also a good way to build a relationship with your readers and to find new readers and allow your followers to spread your message to places that you can’t reach.

Will talk more about the details when I talk about integrating Twitter.

About the author

Mike Paetzold has been online since 2000 and runs numerous blogs and you can find out what he is up to at Mike Paetzold Recommends. You can also find out and keep current with WordPress at his blog WordPress Made Easy. Follow Mike on Twitter

Hi guys and gals let me take a minute to introduce my self and explain why I am here. My name is Mike Paetzold and I have been traveling across the blogosphere as part on The Old Bald Guy’s Blog Tour.

Since early Novemeber I have been taking up residence on a different blog each week. I did take off two week over the holidays to spend time with my family but I really enjoy being able to get out and meet new people this way.

Now a bit about me personally. I have been online since 2000 and am known by some as The WordPress Guy. I love blogging, teaching people to blog effectively and to understand how to make money online.

I have created numerous products and not just about blogging but list building and integrating Twitter into your process.

I am active on a variety of social media because items like Twitter, Facebook, Squidoo, Hub Pages and more can greatly help your overall marketing plan.

You can find me on Twitter as MikePaetzold and if you like the information I provide here this week I hope you will follow me.

So enough about me. Let’s get to what I will be covering here. See each week I change topics to match the blog I am visiting and this week the topic will be Twitter.

Over this week I will be covering the following topics.

• Twitter and list building
• Twitter and blogging
• Twitter tools for integration
• Using free offers

Finally before I finish today I think it is important to understand a bit about Twitter before I cover the other topics.

Twitter is a minn blog where you get a maximum of 140 characters per post or as they call it Tweet. It is a great way to build interaction with those that follow you and integrates well with other social media.

The true power of Twitter has more with that interactive nature than what you can accomplish in 140 characters.

I’ll be back tomorrow so leave your questions and I’ll talk to you then.

About the author

Mike Paetzold has been online since 2000 and runs numerous blogs and you can find out what he is up to at Mike Paetzold Recommends. You can also find out and keep current with WordPress at his blog WordPress Made Easy. Follow Mike on Twitter

Mike Paetzold will resume his Blog Tour tomorrow visiting this website!

Mike will be submitting several posts this week. To keep track of where Mike is traveling across hyperspace visit his Squidoo lens: http://www.squidoo.com/oldbaldguyblogtour

Mike Paetzold got started blogging in 2003 and has become an expert on using WordPress Blogs. His WordPress Made Easy blog is visited by many to get the latest WP news and Blogging tips.

Mike is also a great mentor and published quite a set of Blogging Resources. His Blogging for Seniors is a best seller! Same for his WordPress Made Easy, a must have resource if you want to start your own blog.

So a great welcome to “Mike’s Blog Tour” to this humble blog.

There are two ways to approach Twitter from an Internet marketing standpoint. You can either try to figure out how to really get involved and to parlay that into improved business or you can try to find the shortcuts and secrets that will dump a pile of cash in your lap overnight.

Here’s the scoop. The people trying for a quick score aren’t making money.

The only way to really use Twitter to your advantage is to use it the “right” way. You need to be a real user an a legitimate member of your (and others’) social networks. You need to contribute and you need to interact. If you’re there looking for a quick buck, everyone will smell you coming from a mile away and they’ll lock down their wallets before you get near.

Let’s say it again to make it clear: Real users make more money with Twitter.

That’s ugly news for the get-rich-quick crowd, but it’s great news for marketers with enough perspective and understanding to recognize a good thing when it’s staring them in the eyes.

Have you figured out how you can really use Twitter? Do you understand how that usage can lead to real business improvements? If you still have questions, you need to learn more about Twitter. Otherwise, you’re wasting your time. Look for the resources available on this page.

Most people soon realize that they can increase their follower numbers dramatically by aggressively promoting your Twitter URL online. Email signatures, forum signatures, badges on blogs, and a variety of other methods can help increase the size of one’s fan base.

Now that Twitter is getting so big, there’s another way to increase attention. It may be time for you to start promoting your Twitter URL offline, too.

Put it on your letterhead. Stick it on your business cards. Is your company handing out brochures, running Yellow Pages advertising, putting a display ad in the newspaper? Put that Twitter URL right there for everyone to see.

When Twitter was smaller, it didn’t seem like it could make much a difference to engage in offline promotion. Now that the user base has grown to such monumental proportions, it’s time to pull the trigger on offline promotion.

These techniques have a proven record of success with other URLs and should transfer nicely to promoting your Twitter presence.

You want to maximize your follower base, right? Start spreading the word online… And on the street.

If you use Twitter on the web by itself there’s already a lot of things that you can do to promote your business. However there are several other ways that you can enhance your Twitter experience. After reading this article, you’ll learn of 3 ways that you can enhance your Twitter experience.

1. Use Twitter in combination with other networking sites

This is absolutely critical. That is why it is listed first. You should never put all your eggs in the same basket. What if something happens to Twitter? What if it’s down for maintenance? What if there are just too many tweeps on at once and you keep seeing the fail whale (that’s what happens when you can’t load twiter)? There is a service called tweetake, which allows you to download your followers, favorites, tweets, dms, everything you need to talk to your Twitter family outside of Twitter. I suggest you download this file from tweetake daily. Another thing you should do is invite your friends to join you on Facebook or LinkedIn. I recommend putting your Facebook profile on your Twitter page as your website. That way when people follow you on Twitter, they’ll go right to your Facebook page and follow you there too. Find an email address for your Twitter posse so you can send emails to them. Don’t send them commercial messages unless they sign up for your email list. That’s considered spam. You can send them messages that you’d send to your friends. It’s great to email your Twitter friends information that will help them with their business. They’ll be extremely grateful to you for sending them wondeful information and it will seem more personal because you sent it right to them instead of blasting it to the whole Twitterverse!

2. Use Twitter +twitwall to market your telecalls.

Twitwall is an excellent service to use to market your telecalls. Every Twitter user gets a twitwall. You’d use your twitwall when you have things that are more than 140 characters to post. You can use your twitwall to promote your telecalls very easily. You’d just post the relevant information to the twitwall and then retweet it. Important: Be sure to include the words please retweet in the headline when you post information about your telecall. Even though twitwall makes it easy for people to retweet your information, they won’t do it unless you tell them to most of the time.

3. Twitter + Hashtag + Tweetchat = PARTY!

Another great way to get people talking about you and your business is to hold a Twitter party! Twitter parties are very easy to set up. All you have to do is create a hashtag for your party. Basically a hashtag acts a tracker for your party. Once you decide on a hashtag, next pick a date and a time. Then start telling everyone that’s in your Twitter family about your party and ask them to retweet the information for you. On the day of the party you can use tweetchat to follow everything everyone is saying about the party. Tweetchat is awesome because once you go to the website and log in, it automatically inserts the hashtag and tells you how many characters you have left to tweet with. It also allows you to momentarily stop the chat within the chat room so you can scroll back and see what was said before you enter the room. It’s important to both participate in and throw Twitter parties because it’s a great way to get the word out about your business and you can meet new people that are interested in the same things that you are interested in.

Twitter is a great tool to use to drive traffic to your website. These things that I’ve mentioned will only improve the amount and quality of the traffic you get to your website.