“Twixplode Mini” Fast start 5 day guide for Twitter Twixplode mini – The Bible for using Twitter as a Tool to Build Your Business! Twixplode mini – The Bible for using Twitter as a Tool to build Your Business! A mini blueprint on how to build a massive following, and how to massively monetize this same following. SEAN MALARKEY Day 1 Setting up or fixing your account So many things are about to change for you, if you have not been growing by the hundreds a daily basis ‐ DO NOT skip this part. It is crucial and you will thank me later. First things first, I assume you have an account already; this is a good time to go back and make sure things are set up correctly. You've never experienced growth like this, and there are some vital steps that will help you grow and save you from some headaches. If you do not have an account, great, follow this guide and you'll have done things correctly the first time. I see a lot of "Professionals", "Experts" & "Gurus" making some very basic and critical mistakes. Do not skip over this part ‐ take 5 minutes and make sure you've done things correctly. It's critical for growth! When setting up your profile - make sure your first & last name are separated. I so badly want to name some names here but I won’t. There are some Internet "gurus" who have made this mistake. Why is it so important? Because people can't find you via search, and when you want to build a list ‐ it’s crucial people can find you. For instance, if your name is "joeblow" and someone searches "Joe Blow", they won’t find you. First & last name NOT separated First & last name separated Your BIO - Write a strong bio. Make sure it is relative to what or who you are. If you are selling real estate ‐ make sure you mention you're a Realtor and use the next few sentences to sell your self. If you’re an internet marketer ‐ list your area of expertise and any accolades you’ve been awarded. Mention anything you think will help people know you better. If you’re good at something ‐ call yourself an expert ‐ everyone loves an expert. Lastly – try and add a human touch to it. If you are a parent – mention your kids or that you’re a parent. If you like Salsa Dancing – mention you’re into that. This is Social Media – so try to be social and not stale or boring in your profile description. Your Website - link your website You should add your site. I'm averaging over 300 unique visits a day with minimal tweets about my site ‐ If you don't have one, link Facebook or another social networking site you use (or link mine http://SeanMalarkey.com ). Make sure to leave out, or get rid of the "www" (check the link prior to inserting and make sure it works). This is valuable real estate ‐ and the www eats up some of it. Leave the "www" at home Notices - If I were you, I’d turn them off Notices are great, but when you’re gaining a ton of followers they will drive you crazy. Turn them off. You'll be checking your twitter account often and won't need them. For @Replies ‐ I set mine to "to the people I'm following" ‐ this is really all you want to see. For more info on @replies, go here: http://help.twitter.com/forums/23786/entries/14595. Notices - Make sure to turn them off. Trust me. You'll thank me later for this ‐ look at this email from one of my first students. Sean, Everything is going great - I have added over 1000 followers in the last 13 hours. Well not everything is great, I opened my email to over 1800 new emails in my inbox today - not cool - took almost an hour to delete them all. Lol, thanks again I’m loving your help! -Carl Devices - Be sure to turn updates off. When I first started testing my theories on how to grow, it was around midnight. I began testing and lay down in bed ‐ only to hear my phone alerting me text messages one after another ‐ they were coming in by the minute. My wife said to me, "who the hell is texting you this late?” I said, "Who cares" ‐ then 5 minutes later and 11 text messages later, I got up went to the kitchen and discovered Twitter was blowing up my phone. I turned my phone off and in the morning when I turned it on, my inbox was full. I didn't know it had a limit prior to Twitter ‐ hundreds of text messages from Twitter in a matter of hours are not cool. *Side note ‐ did you know this was what Twitter was originally designed for ‐ text messaging? Hence the 140 character limit (leaves room for 20 more characters as to include the username in a reply)‐ 160 characters are the limit for sms. Turn mobile device updates off Picture This is a very personal aspect of twitter. Upload whatever picture you feel appropriate for your profile. If you want to be a celebrity ‐ use your mug shot. If you're a Realtor or someone who will be meeting clients from Twitter ‐ using your mug shot is a good touch. It will add an extra level of trust when you meet. If you're ugly or self conscience ‐ make a cartoon drawing of your face at http://avatars.yahoo.com or better yet –use the photo you love so much from your glory days when you were younger. Design There are so many cool options for design. I personally like mine with my smiling daughter’s face. It's a kick‐ass photo and the colors work well with Twitter. If you want to customize your background, check out http://www.twitip.com/custom‐twitter‐backgrounds/. Darren Rowse took some time to put this guide together and I’d be doing you an injustice not sharing it with you. This is the end of Day 1. Twixplode - How to explode your follower count! I promise tomorrow I will begin to open the floodgates for how to grow your traffic. Your homework for today is to identify exactly who your target audience is and start making a list of Tweeples (Twitter People) your target might follow. For example ‐ you want to target Skateboarders ‐ go and look for professional skateboarders who have Twitter profiles. We will start tomorrow with what to do with this info! Have a Twickass day, Sean Malarkey Day 2 Today is the day to grow... Before you take any of the steps below ‐ note that everyone will have different results. There are many different variables that may contribute to your outcome: How many tweets you've made, how many you’re following now, how many are following you, etc. Also ‐ make sure you have implemented steps from Day 1 or your results won’t be as good! If you just opened your Twitter account, it's a good idea to tweet 10‐20 times at a minimum before you take any action. One more thing, if you want to drive a lot of traffic to your site ‐ go to http://socialoomph.com and register. Once registered, click on "add account", add your Twitter account and it will give you an option to automatically send a DM to all new followers. Think of something clever to say in your DM ‐ something compelling to get them to click on your site or respond back, or come back to your profile to learn more about you. Use your imagination. If you can figure out a way to make the DM about them, and mention your link ‐ you’re golden! I saw a good auto dm recently that read. I hope 1 day they make a statue of you, and people stand around and say “man, what a beautiful statue” This Dm will almost everytime intrigue people to investigate you (which typical;ly means going to your profile and clicking on your site link) or reply to you. On to growing your following.... Did you think about your target market yesterday? Are you ready to add a ton of followers? Ok then, find a Twitter profile of someone your target market would follow. For example, if you’re a blogger ‐ search for bloggers like Pete Cashmore or Darren Rowse using the search function on Twitter. For more advanced users try Twellow.com . Twellow has a category function that you search for individuals within certain markets or categories. It is really good, and will give you tons of people to pick from. Pick your target guru, and click on his/her followers ‐ Click as many as you can, add every single last one of them if you can. I know it seems like a lot of work, but it’s worth it. About 40% of the people you follow will follow you back. If you don't want to manually click every follower ‐ you can try HUMMINGBIRD ‐ This sweet little tool will automate the whole process. Check it out, if you’re serious about growing a big following fast. I use it and it works very well! It used to take me about 2 hours to follow 1K people ‐ With HUMMINGBIRD, it takes about 2 minutes. 2,000 is the limit of people you can follow till you get at least 1,900 following you. That's all for Day 2, see you tomorrow. Day 3 Good day, How did it go? Did you implement all of the steps in Day 1 and 2? Were you able to follow up to 2,000 people? It’s kind of a pain in the butt clicking on all those follow buttons, but trust me, it’s worth it. If you don't want to fool with it, I strongly recommend taking a look at Hummingbird. If you did follow a lot of people, you should have an influx of new followers. If you have a site or blog, I hope you took my advice and opened an account at Tweetlater.com. If you did, you probably saw some good traffic to your site. If you didn't, take the time now and go there and set up an account, and set up your auto DM with a link to your site. So what to do today? Well let’s learn about what you should be tweeting in order to help you grow. The best tweets are the ones that get re‐tweeted or engage your audience and get them to respond. This is a crucial step ‐ because when someone re‐tweets you, you get in front of all their followers. Same thing goes when they respond to your question. Bottom line ‐ when someone places your name after the “@” symbol, you appear in their tweet stream and are exposed to their entire audience. What gets re-tweeted • Funny tweets • Cool articles • Quotes • RT of other good tweets What’s a good question to engage your audience? • Something that's specific to your market • World affairs • Funny stories or pictures or video • Tech or web related articles • Anything from digg ****With both methods mentioned above ‐ you can sometimes double your results by simply asking for a re‐tweet ‐ "Please RT" <‐‐‐in marketing that’s known as a "call to action" and works wonderfully. Don’t use this everytime – but use it from time to time and you should see a spike in RT’s. As far as what to tweet ‐ You are smart. Use your brain, I'm sure you'll think of something great. I’ve asked for help to get rid of the hiccups ‐ see my hiccup post or look at these results when I asked if anyone used MySpace. I have a million more examples ‐ but it’s irrelevant ‐ be you and you'll be fine. There are certain times of the day that are better than others for things to get RT'd. For example, quotes will get RT'd 300% more in the morning. Why? I guess people appreciate the inspiration they derive from a good quote early in the morning, but that's just a guess. Your audience may have a lot to do with it as well. Play around with it and you'll be sure to see some trends. Day 4 Like Attracts Like & Get Rid of the Dead Weight! Like attracts like – what do I mean? It’s pretty simple – Those who are now following you are like you or like you for some reason. Chances are the majority of the tweeps who did not follow you back fit into three groups: 1. They don’t like you. 2. They are not interested in you. 3. They are not active users. You really don’t want any of the three groups following you anyway. I know it sounds harsh, but it is what it is. So what do you do with those who are not following you back? Get rid of them! How do you do that? It’s really simple, and in fact, this is probably the #1 question I get. People ask me all the time – “How do I tell if someone is following me?” Go to your home page and click on the “following” button Click there Then you will see everyone you are following. Now how do you tell who is following you back? And who do you remove? Aren’t you glad you found me? I took the time and made this neat little photo that answers both of those questions. FOLLOWING YOU NOT FOLLOWING YOU If you look closely enough you will see the first account account has a “Direct Message” option. If you have the option to DM someone – that means they are following you. If you do not have the option to DM someone –That means they are not following you back. Click the remove button for everyone who has not followed you back. What you’re doing is clearing the way so you can add more to follow and increase you’re following. As I’ve mentioned before, Twitter limits the amount of people that you can follow. Initially its 2,000 (maybe less if your account is new or not very active). After you reach the 2K mark, it’s roughly 10‐13% more than the amount of tweeps who are following you. So, you need to quit following those who are not reciprocating to clear the way for new tweeps who may like you! That’s it for Day 4 – have fun building your list! Day 5 This is the easiest day yet… Basically you’re on your way – you need to repeat days 2‐4. Before you do that, lets cover some important items. Today I want to take some time to fill you in on a few key things. These are rules you should live by if you’re serious about building your list and having a list of value. Credibility and interacting – a list is only as good as the person communicating with it. I know this to be a fact – as I have multiple Twitter profiles and have tested everything under the sun. One of the main things I have noticed is responsiveness can vary drastically depending on how well you interact with your list. In other words, I have 2 profiles with similar numbers. They both have around 11k followers as of today. I often use http://www.bit.ly and tweet the same links at the same times. For example the last tweet I tested with these 2 accounts was for wordpress hacks. Both had the same subject line – “40 awesome wordpress hacks” and I included the bit.ly link. Bit.ly gives you the ability to track how many clicks the link got. Take a guess at what the difference was between that made the 2 profiles 97 vs. 21. That’s right – one of the profiles got almost 5x the results. Why did that happen? ONE of the profiles is very responsive with his list. My VA spends 30 minutes a day (costs me $2.50 ☺ ) and he goes in and replies to every person who replies to the profile. He posts meaningful quotes in the morning, funny stories, videos, and links in the evening. He RT’s a lot of really good stuff as well; we identified 5 profiles that he takes turns going to their page and picking stuff to RT. The other profile barely tweets at all – 2 tweets a day that are all set up on auto response through tweetlater. Never responds to people, never RT’s anything. You’re probably thinking it’s a waste of a profile‐ but it’s not – we have learned a lot from it – and I think it’s not too late to turn it into a responsive following. The lesson to be taken from above is this, if you really want to leverage your efforts on Twitter – interact, respond and give value. And then you will bear the fruits of your labor. 80/20 Rule Live and die by this ‐ Give 80% and take 20%. In other words, don’t sell sell sell. Give back, believe me it works. I’ve given you some ideas on what to tweet – but try and be personal – tweet things that are relevant to your niche or target audience. Aggressive following – be warned, Twitter will shut you DOWN! It is ok to be aggressive, but only if you are adding value to Twitter. Twitter will tell you when to stop – but if you are not considered a value to the community – they will shut you down. I personally have never been shut down, but then again, I never send out spam and I follow the basic rules I have talked about earlier. If this happens to you – you can get your account back – they basically will suspend you for up to 7 days. There is a whole section on this topic in the Twitter help section. To prevent this – don’t be a douche! Add value, interact and don’t spam. It’s that simple. Hummingbird – If you’re serious about growing your list and don’t like manual labor, go www.Twitterfriendfinder.com and spend $100 on Hummingbird – It’s so worth it. As of right now – it is totally in compliance with Twitter’s terms of service. Look here for yourself. In the future, they could ban automation to build your following. But as of right now – it’s allowed and if you really want to build a huge list – it’s essential – Do you think I could really comb over thousands of pages following and un‐following people? The answer is NO – I’d rather play with my Kids! That’s all for now, I’ve written a 100 page Ebook that takes the above info and really expands on it and goes beyond it with all the ninja tactics I know. For more info on that you can go to http://www.twixplode.com Or stop by and check out my blog http://www.Seanmalarkey.com I have some pretty good posts over there. If you have liked this guide – be sure to sign up for my newsletter when you land on my site. Be sure to say hi to me on: Twitter – http://wwwtwitter.com/SeanMalarkey Facebook – http://www.facebook.com/SeanMalarkey LinkedIn – http://wwwlinkedin.com/in/SeanMalarkey Have a Twickass day, @SeanMalarkey!