TwitterWatchDog.com

When I mean “powerful”, I mean how many people do you actually reach? How many of them would welcome a direct message from you that asks them to retweet your post and they actually do it without hesitation? Are you effectively influencing these bloggers? – Are they actually referencing you as a source of knowledge in your niche?

You can have a lot of followers, but even a large percentage will probably have one eye on their stream, and that depends on when they are online. So how can you make your tweets reach and influence enough followers?

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Twitter cleanup is when you go through your account and skim your followers. You eliminate the ones that are noticeably spam. For those with accounts in the tens or hundreds of thousands, this might be difficult. This could be tedious because Twitter does not like mass unfollow and follow applications.

So, for those with a lot of followers, when is it best? How often should it be done?

The best answer is once a month. Designate 15 minutes to do this as it should not be a chore and really, you can eliminate a lot even in 15 minutes. To do this, skim the profiles for ones not completed or ones that may have spam for their most recent tweet. Please do take in account that there are twitter monetizing programs like Sponsored Tweets and Be-A-Magpie that the users only tweets on occasion.

For some people, they are lax in who they allow, but for those focusing on certain niches, it might be best to take a deeper look into some followers to find out if they have anything to say. This might also be an opportunity to connect with people who actually are interesting!

Remember that sometimes your own followers do look through your follower list. If it is jam packed with spammers, they may even unfollow. They are looking through your followers to find any interesting individuals, which draw in your social networking community a lot closer.

How often do you do a twitter clean up? What are your guidelines? Do you use any specific tools to clea your twitter follow list up?

Follow me Nile @Blonishnet

This is more an opinion of Google Buzz and a few things I believe about it compared to Twitter. My overall thoughts are that Google really needs to stick to handling their other projects rather than open others. I was not impressed with Google Wave. Is there a reason why Google did not just combine the services of the two, or would it have been too much on their servers?

K.I.S.S. (Keep It Simple, Stupid.) That is why I like Twitter. I like a lot of the applications designed for Twitter that I can use to filter and sort out my multiple accounts for the sites I run. Most of them are just as simple. Overall, I do not mind change. That is why I am not beefing about Facebook’s changes in the past week.

For Gmail users, that is great, Read the rest of this entry »

Skeeter recently brushed up on the point of using hashtags and keywords to reach more people in his article Mistakes to Avoid, at least reach quality people and not wallflowers (you know, the ones that rarely tweet, or could still be figuring out Twitter, or might even be brewing up a spell of spam.)

What I would like to do is share on how to focus on that more, connect, and actually influence those followers.

1. Finding followers – quality followers. These are the ones that are truly interested and want to connect on some level with others. Keywords and hashtags only go so far. In order to find quality followers, you should dig deeper by reading through profiles.. Places like Twellow are great, and you can look up keywords and hashtags on the Twitter search. Also, websites like Mashable, TechCrunch, WebProNews, other popular blogs, and even here at TwitterWatchdog, some people actually leave their Twitter username. If they have said something that catches your eye, you might want to follow them because they are the ones more likely to be quality followers.

2. Connect with followers. Auto DMs (automatic direct messages) are not always great to use. Some of the followers might not have followed you if your Auto DM is not something that relates to the topic they had stepped into and decided to follow. So, if you do Auto DMs – try using a general message that attracts them to know about you. For example, you could try a Twitter landing page on your site that says “Welcome Tweeps” and introduces yourself. The page could direct your visitors to either a blog, or certain places you think your visitors might be interested in seeing. For example, Graham Smith (@imjustcreative) has a nice landing page with a video introduction.

Of course, it is difficult to keep up with everyone if you have a lot of followers. The key is to make the effort. Try asking thought provoking questions, tweet interesting articles, and make an effort to read other’s tweets. While you might not respond to them all, you can respond to the ones that could bring in others to the conversation.

3. Influence followers. So, now that you have found followers, and then connected with them, you now need to influence them. Along this process, with finding and connecting, you have built yourself as a trustworthy person. Whether you are selling your product or just trying to get people to read your blog, you need to become a person that people see as very knowledgeable in your niche. That is what the leg work was before you became influential. All those blog posts with powerful information that you wrote, tweeted, and received feedback will pay off on some level. Eventually your followers will retweet and even recommend you. This is what you want to work on by producing quality work while also being consistent as a person. If you are all over the place, it is difficult for your followers to know what you want them to learn or even buy.

This is a process that you will rinse and repeat many times over, but will find one thing: you will build solid connections that will last.

Do you use this process? If so, how has it worked? If not, do you have a process that has worked for you?

Follow Nile Flores on Twitter – @blondishnet

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I mentioned that I would address why you should have a twitter account for your business and it comes as sort of a gift in time for Christmas, especially for those who are first timers to TwitterWatchDog.com. Just to give you a little background on where I live – I live in Centralia, Illinois, which is in southern Illinois, barely within the St. Louis metro east. Centralia is a very small place. It is a city that has a annual Balloon fest that attracts a lot of people from over the region, and a large yearly Halloween parade, much larger than some of the city parades I have seen growing up.

I have the privilege to talk to a lot of small business owners. Centralia is a place where people are still a bit hesitant about the internet, but those in business are contemplating if they need a website. The problem is, a lot of them do not have that much money to fork out for a shiny website made by a big kahuna web design company. I offer my services. I often talk to them about Twitter as I believe any business should plug into the social network.

This is helpful on several levels. If you use Twitter to connect with others, and they find you trustworthy, you build a reputation that is easily searchable. You help your business virtually get on the map, and furthermore, you get your town/city on the map. A lot of smaller cities do have a website, and for places like Centralia, it is great to see business coming in from anywhere. The brilliant part about Twitter is – IT IS FREE!

There are many tools to find people in your general area or even in your niche. You do not necessarily have to have an e-commerce site, but if you have products you like to feature that are unique to your business versus others in your niche, Twitter would be one of the great places to share that information. You never know, you might either make a good transaction over the phone, or actually set up an e-ecommerce site.

Another thing is that you can use Twitter to provide Live Support too. There are several places already that do, like Best Buy’s Twelp Force. Even though they are a larger business, small business can use that as an example to help others.

Going further, Twitter is great for freelancers. Freelancers are small business owners in their own right too. Using Twitter allows them to connect with others in their niche. The number of projects I have paired up with other freelancers who needed my skills are more than I can count, and a lot of them came from connecting with them on Twitter.

There are more reasons, but I thought I would allow some room for conversation. If you are a small business owner, what are your reasons? How have you used Twitter so far for your business?

Follow Nile Flores of Blondish.net on Twitter – @blondishnet.

10 Easy Steps with training videos, live calls and a complete support system to help you succeed faster with Twitter.

A lot of people still miss the point of Twitter’s original functions. It was not exactly made to be a huge chatroom. Though having a conversation on Twitter is great, for some of your followers, it may make them unfollow you. There are people that believe having thousands of followers is the way to get ahead. It only does in your own mind if you do not influence anyone. Influencing your followers means engaging them in what you have to share.

I have put together a short Creed for Twitter Tweeps (“tweep” is the actual word for people who use Twitter.)

The Creed of a Twitter Tweep

1. You are not obligated to follow back everyone.

2. You are in control of your content, so make sure you are aware of articles you Retweet. Retweeting an article blindly could affect your trust if the article is not up to par with what your followers expect.

3. Do not expect others to follow you back even if you keep sending them tweets. It does not necessarily mean you are being ignored, but they may be a bit busy to respond to every tweet, especially celebrities on Twitter.

4. You should use Twitter for more than connecting with others. There are sites that send their articles through the Twitter stream that could prove beneficial to you or even just be of interest. (Be open and expand your knowledge.)

5. Advertising is okay, but excessive advertising is seen as spam. Be cautious and do not become a spammer.

6. (For Newbies) It is okay to have more than one Twitter account if you are a person who tweets as an individual, for a company, or even for a particular website if you have more than one website. (Example, I have 3 accounts I tweet under, in the process of making one for my webhosting and design company, and tweet for the company that I am a social media intern.)

7. Do tweet your blog articles to your followers. How will they know you if you do not share your content with them?

8. Be active and choose your conversations wisely. While someone might be offensive, it is best to just unfollow or block, and not give them the joy of your ire.

9. The number of followers are NOT important. It is the quality and trust. You can have thousands of followers, but what benefit is that when none of them have any interest in what you want to share? Without quality or trust, there is no influence among your followers.

Of course, there are more that can be added. I have left this a bit open so you, the reader might be motivated to add to this list.

Follow Nile on Twitter at @blondishnet.

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