Nov/091
Make Money with Twitter
So, once again, here’s a quick recap of how you can stage your own Peaceful (or Hostile) Take Over using Twitter.
- First get a good network of followers going.
- Build relationships with your network.
- Get your followers to click on your links & tell others about you by retweeting your messages
- Make Money with Twitter.
In previous posts, I’ve shared with you simple ways to do steps 1 through 3. In the last post I even added a dimension to step #3 which showed you how to put all that retweeting on HYPERDRIVE by providing things of value to your growing list of followers. But by now, you must be thinking that something is missing. Especially if you’re in business you may, at this point, be wondering if this is just a lot of wheel spinning and wasting your time talking to people.
You’re asking “But, Harris, HOW do I make money?”
Which of course brings me to today’s post. If you take the actions that I’ve been telling you about throughout this process you’ll certainly create a growing list of followers… most likely into the thousands and beyond but up till now we haven’t talked about how to tie it all together and start making some money with this newfound connectedness.
Here’s the thing. You CAN make money using Twitter and you WILL. But it’s got to be a carefully planned process because you can easily ruin your entire pot of soup you’ve been so lovingly stirring and adding ingredients to all this time. If you just start throwing tons of pepper into the pot now, you’ll just ruin all your efforts.
So, let’s unwrap this a bit. What is Twitter?
Twitter is really a free-for-all, information gathering, networking, and socializing all going on at the same time, real time, all the time. It’s kind of like being in the middle of a crowded street in New York at rush hour.
People are streaming in all directions with a phone in one ear, a blackberry in their hand AND trying to hail a cab with the other. It’s HARD to get and keep people’s attention, and if you smack them in the head with a bowl of soup from your cart when they’re not looking they’re going to disengage… just like that. Poof. Relationship damaged. Do it a couple more times and Kablooey. Relationship vanished.
Not only that, they’ll probably be pissed you spilled soup on them.
There’s a couple things to consider here, but the main idea is NOT to try and make money ON Twitter directly. It doesn’t really work. Nothing will get people to unfollow you faster. What you want to do is have a ratio of no more than 5-10% of your tweets even trying to promote anything (whether it’s your product or a product you’re promoting as an affiliate.
What we’ve been doing over the past couple of posts is gently stirring that pot of soup. Building relationships, getting people to click, getting people to retweet. Letting those aromas fill the kitchen and start making your followers hungry for more. You’ve got them retweeting your messages, clicking your links and now you’re going to want to entice them even more by dropping a few breadcrumbs that lead them to your steaming bowl of luscious soup.
The key is to start interspersing all this great value with things of your own. Links that lead your hungry followers to even MORE good value and FREE content that you provide, luring them off of Twitter and onto your own site. If you don’t have you own site yet, there are certainly plenty of affiliate products you can promote. But I still don’t recommend sending people straight to a sales page. You have to lull your followers away from the noisy street and into your tasty cafe. The content can be many things: teleseminars, webinars even a live Ustream show… the possibilities are truly endless as long as you think “VALUE FIRST“.
Once you get their attention directed at you and you alone THEN it’s time to show them your real wares and convince them to buy your soup, so to speak. You can even give them a taste of your soup to really get them hooked before asking them to buy the entire bowl. By that time they’re hungry and they’re not distracted by all the noise going on around them.
So, that’s the big Twitter secret. To make money on Twitter, you have to get people AWAY from Twitter!
There’s plenty more *soup* for you when you join Coup De Twitter! Members are given an pre-installed “Base of Operations” site that act as an easy place for you to place these ‘things of value’ that I’m referencing above. You’ll also get 7 easy tactics for making money on Twitter and even more advanced tactics like the ones I’ve mentioned in this post. All shown in simple step-by-step videos that walk you through the entire process. Go ahead and check out the FREE VIDEO for more information right now.
I look forward to helping you with your very own Twitter takeover.
Sayanora Future Twinjas,
Harris Fellman
CoupDeTwitter.com
Nov/094
2 Secrets to Get People ReTweeting Your Messages
I’m about to show you how to really SUPERCHARGE your Twitter efforts by getting people to click on things that you send out, and more importantly how to get your followers to actually ReTweet your messages. When they do this, it gets your Twitter ID in front of their followers; their followers will very often come check YOU out & consider following you as well.
(And for all you Search Engine Optimization experts out there, your head should be spinning at how awesome it is to get people sending out LINKS to your Twitter pages. But I’ll leave that conversation to the experts of that field.)
In my last post I talked about building a relationship with your followers and gave you an easy to follow daily process of things that you can to do to help you start connecting to people in the right way. I also mentioned jumping into conversations where you feel you might have relevant or interesting things to contribute.
That’s all well and good, and it works, but there are some things that you can put into place that will literally put your Tweeting and newfound relationships with your followers into hyperdrive.
One of the keys to the success of this approach is not just getting people to talk TO you, you want them to talk about you as well, and that’s where Retweeting comes in. The funnier, more interesting, & more emotional your tweets are; the better chance that they’ll be ReTweeted. But don’t think that just because you’re witty and handy with a good line or two that it will entice people to retweet what you’re writing.
There are some proven tactics that will get people spreading your Tweets all over the Twitterverse and I’m about to share a couple of them with you right now. Not only that, once you engage your followers and start giving back, they’ll click your links AND retweet them as well! (I love it when I see people ReTweeting links of mine that actually have *affiliate URLs* in them – but that’s a topic for my CoupDeTwitter members only – heh heh.)
Okay, so how do I get people to start retweeting me?
Once again, this is not nearly as hard as you might think. One of the most popular and MOST retweeted segments that you can put out there are: Famous Quotes. It’s true. People simply love to retweet good quotations. It might seem silly but there’s actually a ton of value in doing this. It’s a great use of Twitter to instantly get a motivational thought coming through the timeline and it turns out that people just love to ReTweet them back out.
There are a bunch of places you can go to find great quotes.
My wife bought be a book called “The Most Brilliant Thoughts of All Time” which has 100’s of quotes in them. Every once in a while, I pop open the book & look for a quotation or two that I like. But even easier for you would be to find a website that has quotes that you can cut and paste right in. Instead of me telling you my favorite quotations websites; just go ahead and type “motivational quotes”, “success quotes”, “sports quotations”, or whatever tickles your fancy into your favorite Google .. er, I mean, your favorite search engine and you’ll find more than what you’re looking for.
Once you get into the groove with this, I recommend even using a service like TweetLater to automatically send quotes out from your Twitter account for days and months to come. I love me some TweetLater & this is a great use for that service.
Once you find a quotations site that you like, you’ll find literally hundreds if not thousands of quotes. Some of them are obviously too many characters to fit in a single Tweet, but there are many to choose from that fit right in. Oh, and one rule of thumb especially with things that you’re wanting to get retweeted… even though you have 140 characters to work with, keep your quotation tweets down to around 120 which gives people room to retweet them and not have to modify them at all since they’ll be putting “RT @yournamehere” in front of each Tweet when they re-send it out (which is, of course, the entire point of this little exercise).
A little something else regarding quotations that I love to do is to pick a person that is currently in the news. Recently we had a rash of celebrities passing away – I went out and Googled quotations from those very people & helped to honor them with good positive quotes from them. Great stuff. People seemed to really appreciate (and retweet) those quotes.
That’s enough about quotations, I’ve got one more big tip for you…
Alright, now another thing you’re going to want to tweet of real value is pertinent, up to date and breaking information about your particular interest or niche. How do you keep right on the cutting edge of things related to your business or niche? If you didn’t already know about this, you’re gonna freakin’ love me for telling you about it.
Google has a service called “Alerts“.
When you sign up at http://alerts.google.com, you can have the god of the internet, Google, send you all kinds of information right into your e-mail that keep you completely up to date on just about any topic you can imagine. You should put in pretty narrow keyword terms so you don’t get too much crap to sift through. But even if you do, you can always adjust it later. Just get out there and get started.
You’ll have blog posts, news items, and web pages sent directly to your inbox. Scan through it looking for what you feel is the best articles and then viola — use that content in your tweets! Sending out this sort of information will train your followers that you’re a giver of good information; and, more importantly, it will train them to click on stuff that you send out. Many will even ReTweet these posts, thus telling their followers that YOU are a good source of up-to-the-minute information as well.
Putting your Twitter marketing efforts on hyperdrive, my friend, that’s what CoupDeTwitter is all about.
Try these tips for yourself! You’ll be shocked at how well this really works. And when you do, please let me know through my Twitter account @harrisfellman. I’ve got tons more to share with you when you decide to become a member of the growing “Twinja Army” – people just like you who are “taking over” Twitter with my incredible Coup De Twitter system. I hope to see you in my private forums soon!
Sayanora Future Twinjas,
Harris Fellman
CoupDeTwitter.com
Oct/093
Why Build Relationships on Twitter?
Okay, here’s the real magic of using Social Media, like Twitter, for marketing purposes…
You can build relationships with and connect to REAL PEOPLE. Oh, Big Advertising, the trade winds are a shifting. Consumers are way past the tipping point now where they tend to trust ‘Regular Joes’ now more than Big Giant Corporations.
My guess is, that if you’re reading this article, you’re probably more likely to be a Regular Joe than the CEO of a Fortune 500.? (Dare I coin a new phrase? CE-Joe? Hmm, no – I’ll pass.)
So, the real glory of Twitter is not so much that you can easily build a list of followers as I discussed in my last post. It’s the fact that you can build RELATIONSHIPS with them. And this is where you, the Regular Joes, have an advantage!
What I’m going to do for you in this post is get you started creating those relationships. I’m going to give you a daily process that, if you follow it, will easily turn your Twitter account into a magnet in whatever industry or niche you may be in.
In some of my previous posts, I already got you started on the path to Twitter greatness. So, let’s recap my 4 main rules of engagement shall we?
- Get Followers
- Build Relationships with them
- Get them Clicking & Retweeting and…
- Make Money.
In my last blog post I talked about how to get tons of followers and gave you some (hopefully) compelling reasons why you should bother. If you took action as I suggested, you will have literally thousands of new followers very soon.
So, Now what?
This brings us to the next phase of this Twitter takeover. It’s time to start to really build a relationship with your followers. But first let’s talk about why it’s so important to do so.
So here’s the question:
Who do YOU trust?
Sure, you might say your Mom or Dad, but really for most things… you trust your closest friends. What we’re talking about here is who you trust for recommendations. But to put a finer point on that and put it within the framework of a business discussion:
Who do people buy from? People (and companies) they trust!
Therefore, as you’re building your relationships on Twitter or any other social networking site, that’s actually what you’re doing… building TRUST. And it’s imperative that you do.
“How?”, you may ask. It’s not that hard really.
You’re going to want to first start by engaging your followers. This can be as easy as a simple and personal welcome message when they follow you. Some people I know actually do this manually (by hand) for each and every follower that they obtain. I can see the validity of this method – but it’s awful time-consuming. Especially considering that there are a number of services out there that can help you do this.
My personal favorite is Tweetlater.com. It’s free and easy to use. Not only does it send out automatic welcome messages for you, it also allows you to schedule tweets to go out in? the future among many other very powerful features. Go check it out Tweetlater, it’s an incredible free tool.
You’ll want to be sure to create a welcome message that adds value or engages your new follower. Otherwise, you’re just creating spam straight to their direct message inbox. Stay away from even attempting to tell your new follower about any product or service that you might have. It’s a sure way to turn them off and have them unfollow you immediately.
What you want to do is get them replying back to you right away. For instance, ask a question that’s easy for them to answer – their favorite gadget, football team, or whatever’s appropriate to your interests.
There is some debate about automatic welcome messages and I’ve had several discussions (some heated) with people on Twitter about it. The bottom line is this: You must give value and further your cause in some way. It’s a delicate balance. You can’t just say “Hey look what I got, don’t you wanna buy one”. And be warned, “Hey thanks for the follow, looking forward to tweeting with you” ends up being just as useless to you in the long run as well.
Finally, what I really wanted to do was give you a quick “daily process” that you can follow to really ensure interaction on Twitter. Feel free to add in more than this if you want to, but if you do this each and every day, you can be certain you’ll have a growing base of people you’re starting to build a relationship with.
Daily Process For Your Twitter Account
- Read your @mentions and reply to all of them.
- Post what you’re actually doing or thinking about right now.
- Post a favorite quotation, recent news link, or just basic info (this can be from online or offline resources) HINT: Go to http://alerts.google.com and set up some alerts for your interests to be automatically sent to your inbox.
- Scan your own timeline & look for conversations to jump into.
- Go to http://search.twitter.com, search for topics of interest to you, and get into a few conversations there as well. While you’re there, go ahead and search for your own name and/or company name to see if anyone is talking about you
- Check your direct messages (DMs) and reply to them as well.
- Repeat this at at least 3 times a day.
In a future blog post, I’ll share with you? some awesome secrets about how to get your Twitter friends to click on stuff you send out, and even more importantly how to get them ReTweeting like crazy as well.
If you like what you’re reading here, you’re going to love my Coup de Twitter system. It covers all 4 of the main steps to Twitter Domination in easy-to-follow and easy to swallow step-by-step video format. But first, check out the FREE video on the home page – no sign-up required.
Now get out there and kick some Twass & be sure to follow my Sensei booty @harrisfellman on Twitter.
Thanks again for reading,
Harris Fellman
Marketing Sensei
CoupDeTwitter
Oct/091
Get Targeted Twitter Followers – The Easy Way!
Maybe you’re like I was just a few months ago, thinking:
“Twitter is short for Time Waster”
or
“Twitter is just not a business tool”
or
“I joined Twitter and I just don’t get it”
I’ve introduced a number of people to Twitter and I hear things like this all the time. Especially the last statement. Typically what happens is someone will join up, invite some of their friends, and then lo and behold, sit there and wait around for something to happen. Although the founders of Twitter claim that it’s just a micro-blogging tool, it really has become a rapidly growing , if somewhat rudimentary, social network.
Like I said in my last blog post on the subject, there???s a right way and a wrong way to go about attacking Twitter for your own purposes. If you’re jumping into Twitter and looking at it primarily as a way to make money, you’ll fail miserably and you’ll fail quickly.
Allow me to remind you of my rules for “right” Twittering:
- First get a good network of followers going.
- Build relationships with your network.
- Get your followers to click on your links & tell others about you by retweeting your messages
- Then, and only then, consider how you might monetize the network.
I actually recommend that you don’t even bother thinking about making any money with your twitter contacts until you’ve got at least 5000 followers. I know what you???re thinking. HANG ON THERE! 5000 followers? How am I gonna get 5000 followers? The answer is quite simple, my friends.
Follow other people first.
It???s based on the law of reciprocity: you follow someone, they follow you back. It’s really the ‘way of the world’ on Twitter and it works far better than any one of the other systems out there. Some of those other ideas for getting followers can work, but truthfully, at the core “follow others and they’ll follow back” is the best system out there. You’re in control of who you’re following & thus what ‘target audience’ you’re hitting as well.
Depending on what niche or business you happen to be in you can expect somewhere between 20 to 50% of those people to follow you back.
Wait a second, Harris… What’s this “business or niche” part?
Let me explain:
One of the coolest aspects of Twitter is that you can really focus down and TARGET people who are interested in what you have to say. I first recommend that you create a good profile and decent background for your account that really shows off your personality and main interests. Make it, what I call, “Follow Friendly” so that when you follow people, they see your Twitter account, the right people will want to follow you back. (The ‘right people’ being people that are also interested in what your key interests or business is all about.)
I’ll finish up this post by letting you in on some some great services that will help you find people who are in your niche and share your personal interests. Be sure to check out MrTweet.com, WeFollow.com, and Twibes.com. All you have to do at these sites is type in your keyword and find people in your industry or niche. What you’ll want to do here is find people on Twitter in your area of interest with (generally) between 2,000 and 100,000 followers. And then what you want to do is … not only follow them, but FOLLOW THEIR FOLLOWERS, TOO. Twitter allows you to follow up to 1000 per day – I recommend more like 300-500 per day.
And don’t think you have to do it all yourself – you can hire a virtual assistant to do it for you for a few hundred bucks a month or get a software tool that does this as well. And believe me, there’s plenty of tools out there! I’ve personally tested out a large number of these “follow tools” and the one I recommend is called “Twit FriendAdder“. It’s only $50 and does everything (and more) than software I’ve seen at 4 times the price.
Of course it doesn???t stop there. There???s a lot more to all of this than just following people (like creating avatars, building relationships, & making money!). And, as you can expect, this is all covered in my Social Media Income System entitled “Coup De Twitter“. There’s a free video for you there with no sign-up required to watch.
Lastly, if you have any questions for me, you can find me on Twitter – my ID there is @harrisfellman – I look forward to hearing from you.
Thanks for Reading,
Harris Fellman
CoupDeTwitter.com
Aug/091
How to Take Over Twitter
It???s everywhere. From blogs to newspapers to books at Barnes and Noble. And it???s loud. Tweet, tweet, tweet, tweet.
It???s Twitter. And whether you like it or not (yet) it???s going to be around in some form or another for a long time I suspect. Might as well get used to it, right?
A couple of months ago I was in the same boat many of you might be in right now, wondering whether all this Twitter madness was of any use to me at all or whether it was just a bunch of noise, literally. But I started to hear a lot of Twitter related stories and talked to people that I personally know who were using it in ways that I hadn???t considered before.
And the lightbulb finally went off for me. There was some serious power in Twitter! People were not only using Twitter to make connections and network with others, they were making money too. Some of them making LOTS of it as I came to find out.
The biggest thing that stood out for me is this…
From a marketing perspective, Twitter = Listbuilding. Plain and simple. Proper listbuilding is all about building a list AND building relationships with the people on that list. And in many cases the people I was talking to confided in me that their Twitter contacts were more responsive than even their e-mail lists were. As a long time email marketer, I was pretty shocked. But I started doing research and I discovered several truths that I want to share with you.
There???s a right way and a wrong way to go about using Twitter, and some rules of thumb to keep in mind along the way. But there are several crucial steps you???ll want to take note of.
Here???s how this works:
2. Build a relationship with your followers. Yes, that???s right, you???re going to need to start talking with your followers! You want to treat them like you would anyone you might meet at any other social gathering, stipulating that you???re not at a professional wrestling event and everyone is already yelling at one another. <G>
3. Get them Clicking & ReTweeting. Once you build that relationship with them you want to encourage (gently) them to start clicking links you provide with items of interest and most of all to get them Retweeting your posts. Why? Because the *real* power of Twitter is NOT in your own list of followers. Nope. The real power is in the power of the exponent. If you give things of value to the Twitterverse, the Twitterverse will return the favor??» Tenfold.
4. Last but not least. You want to make money right? Of course you do. Once you???ve completed steps one through three, there are a ton of ways that you can start to monetize your followers??»their followers and their followers followers. But also beware: Twitter spam is on the rise and people are becoming wary of anyone who just jumps into the pool and starts shouting Marco Polo at the top of their lungs. You have to be very careful to craft your Tweets so that people are still getting maximum value from you.
Harris Fellman
CoupDeTwitter.com