Part I

Over the past several months, I’ve seen my Followers list increase dramatically. You can see the proof of this at http://www.twittercounter.com where you’ll see that I’ve grown by over 14,000 followers in the past three months to over 25,000 total followers.

It is too much to explain how to do this totally in this brief posting but suffice it to say, there are a couple of things you need to know in order to maximize your Twitter experience whether it’s for personal or business purposes.

1. The first thing to think about when starting any project is a business/marketing plan. What is the purpose of your Twitter account? What type of business are you in and how do you want to represent it on Twitter? Do you have a website and/or blog to promote? Well, depending on the answer to these question, you will need to find a name for your Twitter account. This is kind of important because it will represent you on Twitter. Now, this may seem simple but lots of the great names have already been taken and you will need to be a bit creative but don’t worry, there are still plenty of great names out there.
2. You should also think about your avatar, that little picture that appears next to each tweet. You can use the one given to you by Twitter but this really just yells, amateur. Try to either find a picture of yourself or some icon/image that represents your business. You can insert this picture in the settings section. Take your time because this avatar will appear on hopefully thousands of tweets and will become you branding on Twitter for this account.
3. Before you even being to grow your account you need to do a couple of things with your Profile on Twitter. First of all, make sure you use the appropriate URL in your profile to guide your followers to the website or blog you’d like them to visit. Make sure to create your personal bio in such a way as to inform and intrigue uses to find out more about you. And most of all, change the background from the standard Twitter one to a unique or at least a creative background. If you don’t want to create or buy one, you can find free backgrounds at http://www.twitterbackgrounds.com The whole process is automatic and very cool.
4. Once you’ve decided upon your name., profile and background,  you need to start thinking about how to find targeted followers, not just any follower, unless your goal is to just build up a huge list. Not sure what purpose there is in that unless you’re a movie or TV star with a huge ego that needs to be filled. what you need is TARGETED followers just like in any other business. One of the great tools available to find fellow Twitterers in Twellow at http://www.twellow.com This site is much like a “yellow page” for Twitter and provides you with a huge directory of people on Twitter in just about any niche. You will be using this information in several ways in the future as you start to maximize your Twitter presence.

Watch this brief video on Twellow….

Part II

In the last post we created selected a Twitter name based upon our business, we built a unique and branded profile and changed the background. OK, now it’s time to get our game plan together.

1. There are tons of great Twitter applications out there that will help you build your Twitter followers on a steady basis. One of the things you need to be very careful about is SPAMMING. Twitter just is not nice when it comes to those accounts that go out there and use these free applications to follow lots of people without being followed themselves. If you use these programs and follow thousands of people from the very beginning you will be removed, deleted, erased from Twitter. You will be gone with really no chance of return. Remember, this is a free application and they can do what they want with your account. You have very little recourse. Trust me, I’ve been there and done that and learned my lesson.
2. OK, that being said, how do you start. Well, once you’ve built your  Twitter page, you need to start tweeting. When you first started your page, you were asked to allow a certain group of people to follow you. Hopefully you said yes and you already have a bunch of people following you. Now, you have a built in audience so start tweeting about what you’re doing, jokes, quotes, opportunities etc. DO NOT START PROMOTING ANY BUSINESS PRODUCTS, IDEAS, or CONCEPTS! Start building a relationship with your Twitter community first then, at some time in the future, you can start building your business. To be safe, you need to have at least three personally added tweets for every automatic and/or business tweet containing a linking URL. That means, in simple terms, one promotion for every four personally involved tweets. This should keep you pretty safe but, unfortunately , you still never know if Twitter will just one day rip your account out of the ‘ether’.
3. For that reason, I would suggest that you don’t place all of your apples in one barrel. Have a bunch of Twitter accounts. Add new, targeted followers to each one on an automatic basis so that if one account is closed, you’re not totally out of business. This is perfectly legal. You will need different, unique names for each account etc but the extra bit of work is worth it as insurance against losing your business due to a Twitter whim.
4. In the next posting, we’ll talk about how to start getting your own followers on an automatic basis. So stay tuned….

Don’t Forget – Please follow me on Twitter – CLICK HERE!

Part III

In Part III I want to show you how to use some of the automatic programs to start obtaining a whole bunch of targeted followers. Now, once again, this needs to be done cautiously and prudently. The last thing you want to do is create a huge list and then lose your account because of SPAMMING. This happens each and every day and it can be, at least, avoided to some degree. Twitter, being a free program, controls all of the processes and creates their own rules. Don’t like it, don’t do it.

OK. The first tool I want to talk about, in order to obtain targeted followers, is Tweet Spinner. Why do I pick this application. Well, first of all, I use it. Second of all, it works and obeys most, if not all, of the Twitter rules. If you follow their directions you will most likely be OK with Twitter.

Now, I can’t explain each and every function of Tweet Spinner but I do want to at least cover a few of them to get you started. First, before you can use Tweet Spinner, you need to have at least one (1) Follower. I am going to assume that by now you have that one follower, hopefully more. I would also suggest that you buy the pro version. It only costs a few dollars a month and gives you a whole bunch of great functions. Anyway, I am going to assume that you’ve spent the few dollars. You then can do the following:

1. Add keywords that are appropriate to your niche. This is really important: Make sure to set Scheduling to ON. In that way, Tweet Spinner will check the world for Twitter users that are tweeting that specific keyword on a timed basis. I would suggest that you use the recommendations provided by Tweet Spinner so, once again, you don’t get black listed by Twitter for SPAMMING. If you follow too many people at one time based upon the number of Followers you have, you can get in a bit of trouble. So follow their recommendations and you should be fine. I know, I stress this a lot but, trust me, having you account removed after months of building it can just ruin your day.
2. Check the reciprocity on your keywords after a couple of days or so. If you find that the reciprocity for certain keywords is very low, you might want to remove it and allow more profitable keywords to be used more often.
3. Understand, that Tweet Spinner will not allow any additional following if your Follow ratio (ratio of those that follow you to those you follow) is greater than 107.5%. Now you can change this but, once again, I suggest you leave it as is to avoid problems.
4. OK. so you’ve added some keywords, made sure to check scheduling wherever possible and you want to do more. Well, the next thing to do is to use the name(s) you copied from Twellow, (the Twitter Yellow Pages) and use the Tweet Spinner Mimic functionality. Here you are going to add the names of Twitter users with large lists in your niche to the Mimic list. You then will schedule Tweet Spinner to start following the followers of those people. The advantage lies in the fact that, for the most part, a) most of those followers are probably in your niche as well and b) statistically about 40% will follow you back.

Check out this brief video:

That should be enough for now. Go get Tweet Spinner and start using it. More to come in future installments of The Twitter Starter.

Remember, please Follow Me On Twitter – CLICK HERE!

Part IV

OK. In parts I, II and II we briefly covered setting up your account, finding followers in your niche and then setting up a sort of automatic system for creating targeted followers.

In the next couple of lessons I thought we’d talk a bit about some other programs that you might want to use to maximize your Twitter experience. Now, some of these duplicate tasks performed in other programs but there are a whole bunch of ways to run a race and everyone has their favorites.

One of my favoriate programs is TwitterFeed. This free application allows you to post to your Twitter account automatically from an RSS feed. It basically works like this:

1. Find an RSS feed in your niche. This is easily done by going to http://alerts.google.com and creating an alert in your niche. When setting up the alert make sure to set it up as a feed not email. Then click on the feed link and copy down the rss feed url.
2. Go to TwitterFeed and sign in with your Twitter ID.
3. Create your Twitter Feed.
4. Repeat as often as you want for one or more Twitter accounts. Be sure to keep the feed pertinent to your niche.

Check out this brief video for more information:

Part V

I thought that we’d talk ab it about getting video into your Twitter tweets in order to provide your Followers with new and unusual content whether it’s just for fun or for marketing purposes.

There are a couple of Twitter applications that provide this function but my overall favorite is tweetube.

Here’s how it workds:

1. Before you start you need to click on the Tweetube button on the tool bar and type in your Twitter Username and Password.
2. In the application you’ll see four basic choices. For the purpose of this lesson we’ll going to talk about the Webcam Video upload.
3. Assuming that you have a webcam attached to your computer, and who doesn’t today, you need to click on the Share Now button.
4. Download the appropriate application depending upon whether you’re using a PC (coming soon) or a Mac.
5. Click on the tweetube icon to open the application.
6. Record your video by clicking on the little red camera button. Don’t worry, you will have the opportunity to see the video and redo it if necessary.
7. Once you’re done, click on the stop button (the little black box)
8. In the next screen watch your video. If you like it you need to add a title and a 140 character message and click Tweet Video.

You’re done!

Watch this brief video:

Part VI

Before we go onto a whole bunch of other tricks and techniques to be used with Twitter, I thought I would just give you a list of some cool Twitter apps for you to take a look at and possibly use for your professional or personal use. This is by no means a complete list and I will add to it over the coming days, weeks and months so stop by often

1. TweetYourBlog – Integrate your blog with your Twitter profile and draw traffic.

2. TweetMojo – This is one great site. Let’s you create a video using your webcam and then post it on Twitter along with a comment.

3. BustaTweet – A Bunch of additional Twitter applications. That’s where I found TweetMojo.

4. TwiveAway – Create your own Twitter giveaway and get followers.

5. TwitterCounter – A great site to check out your twitter statistics as well as those of others.

6. Twitter Score – Another Twitter ranking site with some additional tricks up its sleeve.

7. TweetMeMe – Hottest links on the web.

8. Twitter Grader: Learn your Twitter grade, your local Twitter Elite, and find new people to follow through Twitter Grader.

9. Twitterholic: Check out the top Twitter users and find out your Twitter stats on Twitterholic.

10. TweetStats: TweetStats offers a graphical analysis of your Twitter stats.

11. Twitter Friends: Carefully measure your Twitter conversations using Twitter Friends.

12. Twinfluence: Twinfluence will measure your Twitter influence based on reach, velocity, and social capital.

13. Tweetwasters: Find out how much time you and other users waste on Twitter.

14. Tweet-Rank: Learn about the quality of your tweets by finding out which ones won or lost followers.

15. Mr. Milestone: Get a tweet when you reach various milestones using this Twitter tool.

16. Retweetrank: Find out how many retweets you and other Twitter users have through this service.

17. Tweetbeep: With Tweetbeep, you can set up alerts that will help you keep track of keywords on Twitter.

18. Twitterverse: Check out archived timelines and tweets through Twitterverse.

19. Twitscoop: Twitscoop shares what’s hot on Twitter at any given moment.

20. Twitbuzz: Twitbuzz tracks the latest conversations as well as popular Twitter links.

21. Retweetist: This service ranks the hottest links being retweeted on Twitter.

22. Monitter: Get real time keyword monitoring on Twitter from Monitter.

23. TweetNews: TweetNews ranks stories based on the amount of related tweets.

24. TwitterBuzz: TwitterBuzz will tell you what’s being linked to the most on Twitter.

25. Tweetscan: Set up Tweetscan to make sure you don’t miss any @replies, and to get alerted of your search queries.

26. Twitter Local: With this service, you can see tweets from Twitter users in a specific location.

27. Twubble: Twubble will expand your Twitter bubble, picking out people you may like to follow.

28. MyCleenr: Sort your friends by their last tweets, and you can get rid of the inactive and useless accounts you’re following.

29. Follow Cost: This tool will tell you how much effort it takes to follow someone.

30. Tweepler: Use Tweepler to organize your tweeps based on whether you’re following them or not.

31. Just Tweet It: Find Tweeple, tools, Twitter bots and more through this directory.

32. TweetWheel: TweetWheel will help you discover which of your Twitter friends know each other.

33. SocialToo: SocialToo will help you keep track of all of the people who have followed or unfollowed you.

34. Twitoria: Reduce your clutter on Twitter by finding your friends that haven’t tweeted in a long time.

35. TwitDir: With TwitDir, you’ll be able to search for people, and exploring categories including top followers and updaters.

36. Who Should I Follow?: Using this site, you can get good recommendations for Tweeps to follow

37. Nearbytweets: Learn about all of the Twitter users in a specific area with the help of Nearbytweets.

38. Twellow: Find Twitter users in a specific industry using this service.

39. Mr. Tweet: Mr. Tweet is a personal networking assistant for Twitter, helping you find relevant followers.

40. Qwitter: Qwitter will help you manage your network by sending an alert when a person unfollows you.

41. Twitter Feed – Add RSS feeds from you blog (or other feeds) automatically to your twitter profile.

42. Summize: Retrieve information on Twitter quickly to search Twitter in real time.

43. Tweet O’Clock: Trying to reach someone? Tweet O’Clock will help you find the best time to get their attention.

44. Just Signal: Set up a filter using Just Signal to get only the tweets that discuss the keywords you’d like to read about.

45. TweepSearch: Put your Twitter network to good use and search your followers for specific parameters.

46. Friend or Follow: Manage your Twitter contacts and find out who’s not following you back through Friend or Follow.

47. TwitResponse: TwitResponse makes it easy for you to schedule the delivery of your tweets ahead of time.

48. TwitterSnooze: Put the pause button on a particular user for a while with Twitter Snooze.

49. Twitterless: Get notified when someone stops following you with Twitterless.

50. Twilert: Track specific keywords to receive alerts for using Twilert.

51. TrueTwit – Avoid twitter SPAM with TrueTwit.

52. Tweetdeck: Tweetdeck has a groups function that will help you more efficiently follow the people you really want to listen to.

53. Twalala: Put the mute button on certain people and topics for a while if you are receiving lots of updates you’re not really interested in.

54. Tweetburner: Use Tweetburner to share links, and you can track their usage.

55. Twitpic: Twitpic makes it easy to take mobile phone photos and share them using your Twitter account.

56. TwitterHawk: Get targeted marketing on Twitter through TwitterHawk.

57. Acamin: Acamin makes it easy to share files on Twitter with your followers.

58. Glue: Post links to books, movies, restaurants and more on Twitter through Glue.

59. Ping.fm: This service will update all of your social networks at once.

60. TweeTube: TweeTube makes it easy to share videos on Twitter.

61. twiggit: Use this automated service to share the articles you digg on Twitter.

62. Twisten.fm: Share what you’re listening to on Twitter through Twisten.fm.

63. Tweet Spinner – Tweet Spinner is NOT a “get-followers-fast” application. What’s the point in having lots of people following you who aren’t interested in what YOU do? Instead, our follow management tools enhance your Twitter account by finding new friends who match your interests, keywords, and other filters.

64. Twittercal: Link your twitter account and Google Calendar to easily keep up with your events and appointments.

65. Timer: Use Timer to get reminders about tasks through your Twitter account.

66. TwitterNotes: Organize your notes using Twitter with TwitterNotes.

67. Remember the Milk: Use Remember the Milk on Twitter to update your to do list for school or work.

68. Tweetake: Tweetake will back up your Twitter timeline for archiving and more.

69. Nozbe: Nozbe makes it easy to add and update your to do list on Twitter.

70. Toodledo: This popular to do list app integrates nicely with Twitter.

71. TrackThis: Send TrackThis your tracking number, and you’ll get Twitter messages every time there’s a change in location.

72. Joint Contact: Get project management productivity on Twitter using Joint Contact.

73. Tempo: This time tracking tool allows you to send in updates from Twitter.

74. Tweet Later: Tweet Later offers a great way to set up alerts, schedule tweets, send thank you DMs, and more.

75. OutTwit: OutTwit will make it easy for you to use Twitter inside of Outlook.

76. Jott: Jott makes it easy for you to tweet without ever having to type, transcribing your voice message to Twitter.

77. Hellotxt – Tweet or post to one or more social sites at a time. A great time saver.

78. MyMileMarker: Keep track of your mileage with info sent via Twitter every time you fill up.

79. 21Tweets: 21Tweets offers personal coaching on Twitter.

80. TwtTRIP: Organize your travel plans and find other Twitter travelers on your way with TwtTRIP.

81. Tweet Answers: Twitter Answers makes it easy to ask questions and get answers on Twitter.

82. Twtvite: Twtvite is a simple event organizer that will help you create a tweetup.

83. Vacatweet: Set up an autoresponder for your Twitter account with Vacatweet.

84. plusplusbot: Share when someone goes out of their way to help you, or otherwise make your feelings known using plusplusbot.

85. TrackDailyGoals: Use this site and the #dailygoals hashtag to keep track of your goals every day.

86. ConnectTweet: Put the voices of your group or business together through ConnectTweet.

87. Tweeteorology: Find tweets about the weather in any location through Tweeteorology.

88. DreamTweet: Keep a reminder of your dreams and nightmares, and follow the dreams of others through DreamTweet.

89. Chipin: If you’re raising funds on Twitter, make use of Chipin to set a goal and let your supporters track the progress of the campaign.

90. Xpenser: You can Twitter your expenses to Xpenser and they will be recorded for you.

91. Twittertise: Schedule your tweets and track their click throughs with this app designed for Twitter advertising.

92. TwtQpon: Create simple Twitter coupons for your business with TwtQpon.

93. CheapTweet: Get all of the deals, sales, coupons and more being discussed on Twitter through CheapTweet.

94. Tipjoy: Like Chipin, Tipjoy offers a way to create social payments for your cause, content, or people.

95. SalesTwit: Get contact management for Twitter with the help of SalesTwit.

96. Tweet What You Spend: Track your cash in a really effective way using Tweet What You Spend.

97. StockTwits: StockTwits shares the investment discussions on Twitter in real time.

98. Qwitter: Update Qwitter to shame yourself into quitting smoking.

99. TweetPlot: Use TweetPlot to chart your food and fitness statistics.

100. Tweetwhatyoueat: Keep a food diary to track what you’re eating every day using Tweetwhatyoueat.

101. gtFtr: Use the gtFtr tool to record your exercise activity on Twittr.

102. SugarStats: Track, monitor, and share your blood sugar through Twitter with SugarStats.

103. FoodFeed: This Twitter-based food log makes it easy for you to track what you’re eating.

104. Add to Any: Get your posts shared on Twitter by using Add to Any on your WordPress blog.

105. TwitThis: Make use of this plugin to send Twitter messages about your blog post.

106. MyTwitter: Use the MyTwitter plugin to display your Twitter status on WordPress.

107. Twitpress: Twitpress will send out a Tweet every time you post a new blog entry.

108. TwitterCounter: With this plugin, you can display the number of followers you have on Twitter.

109. TwitterFeed: Announce your blog post on Twitter with a customized message using TwitterFeed.

110. Hummingbird: A unique tool to increase the number of targeted followers and also to reduce the number of people not following back. This one is not free but well worth the $97

Part VII

Hi everyone. Hope you’ve enjoyed the last six (6) lessons and you’re starting to move ahead with Twitter.

In this lesson I wanted to talk a bit about analyzing what you been doing so that you don’t just repeat bad behavior. In every marketing event, you need to decide whether you’re efforts are working or not. It’s not just about getting Followers but rather getting TARGETED Followers in a steady manner. The one thing you want to avoid is getting de-listed by Twitter. So, steady growth is the answer.

As mentioned earlier, you want to have a good mix of tweets with the majority being manually created and maybe one out of four or five being a linked marketing feel.

One of the programs I count on is Twitter Analyzer. It has a tremendous number of tools that I use every day to help me make sure what I’m doing is actually working. The two most important tools for me are the growth curve and the online Followers.

Check out this brief video for more details:

Part VIII

Well, I had to make a decision today. Is this post a Twitter Application of the Day or Lesson VIII. As you can see I decided to make it another lesson in the ongoing eCourse, The Twitter Starter.

My reason for doing so relates to providing you with reasons to use Twitter. You see, one of the questions I constantly get from non-Twitterers is, “Why do you use Twitter?” Seems like a simple question but the answer can be a bit complex. My main reason for starting to use Twitter and my reason for using it now are two totally different things.

When I first started using Twitter it was basically for fun. Just to see what it was all about. Now, it’s about a year later and Twitter has become one of my major marketing tools and an essential part of my marketing funnel.

So, to get to the point, one of the ways you can use Twitter is by inserting video into your tweets. There are a number of ways of doing that including embedding YouTube videos etc.  However, I just found a very simple to use and FREE tool that you can use to add 5 minutes of screen capture to your tweets right away. The program is called Screenr. Basically it works like this:

1. You go to http://www.screenr.com and login with your Twitter username and password.
2. You then click on the Record button. A square box will appear. That is the area of screen capture. You can resize this box to whatever you need.
3. Select the area you want to record. It could be your blog, your website, a product demo etc. That’s totally up to you. You have a full 5 minutes to get your message across.
4. Once your finished click on DONE.
5. Write  your tweet (up to 140 characters) and
6. Your Done. Just click on Tweet at the bottom of the screen. The video will be processed and tweeted in just a matter of minutes.

There are some other features such as video storage, iphone distribution etc. but you can find out more info on their website.

For a quick demo watch this video:

PART IX – Watch Out or They’ll Shut You Down In A Heartbeat!

Twitter is Free….it’s important that you remember that because since it’s free it’s their ball and they can take it home whenever they want!

This is important because if you break their rules, or even come close to breaking their rules, they will close your account in a heart beat. It’s happened to all of us without cause and without recourse. If you break Twitter’s rules on the number of people you follow in a day or in the number of tweets containing a marketing url etc. you really stand the chance of having your account deleted. Once it’s gone, even though they now have a way to request having the account reinstated, take it from me, it’s most likely gone.

You can read their Latest Rules to see what the current rules are but I’ve found that they don’t really help very much. Here are some basic rules I go by:

The things you have to watch are:

1. The number of people you follow in a day. It used to be you could follow 1000 people a day. That was the rule. Now that has all changed and I don’t believe anyone really know how many people you can follow safely. I would suggest that you keep it to a minimum and try to base it on the number of followers you currently have in your account. I believe it is safe to say that the larger your follower list is, the more people you can follow per day. Just don’t be a pig.
2. Try not to use automatic following programs. Now, that being said, I believe you can use certain automatic programs but make sure that you use them prudently and follow their guidelines. The people who write these programs tend to stay up on the rules and will help you keep yourself and your account safe.
3. Don’t SPAM. I would suggest that for every marketing tweet you send you should send at least four to six non-business related tweets. Not that this is a hard and fast rule, but hopefully it will  keep you safe as well. Twitter does not take well to SPAMMERS.
4. Not that I have any real information on this but I would be careful about all of those ‘get rich quick’ Twitter programs. I just don’t personally trust anyone who says that they can help make you rich by tweeting.

PR: wait… I: wait… L: wait… LD: wait… I: wait… wait… Rank: wait… Traffic: wait… Price: wait… C: wait…