A SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT

Tonight Skeeter Hansen and I will be featured on Diane Walker’s @MLMBlonde Free Live Webinar. In case you may not know Diane…she’s a true professional (6 figure income earner), leader, relationship builder with several successful years in the network marketing arena.

Diane will be asking us various questions about how to successfully use Twitter for your business, such as..

1. How you can generate traffic to your website or blog from Twitter
2. How you can find targeted high quality followers on Twitter
3. Ways you can Generate Leads and prospects from Twitter
4. Increasing Sales with Twitter for your business
5. How to you can network effectively on Twitter…
and many other techniques and tips…

The great thing is that you can have a lot of success on Twitter without being stuck to the computer all day, if you know how..

Come join us tonight and learn how: Free Live Webinar

WHEN: Tuesday March 9, 2010
6pm Pacific Time
8pm Central Time
9pm Eastern Time

Come join us tonight, you’ll be glad that you did. Free Live Webinar

Follow me Al Ferretti @alferretti

Follow Skeeter Hansen @SkeeterHansen

Follow Diane Walker @mlmblonde

I’ve learned some great networking techniques from Bob Burg (Thank you Bob Burg.) Bob is an author of Endless Referrals, Go Giver, and Go Givers Sell more. 3 books I highly recommend.

Between learning from Bob and adding my own personal touch, here are 7 Networking Techniques you can take advantage right away and apply on Twitter or anywhere else for that matter. Enjoy~

1. Engaging: You will make more friends and attract more followers by becoming interested in other people versus trying to get other people interested in you. The key to engaging with others on Twitter is making the other person feel important. A great way to connect with someone new is to give them a compliment. There’s always something nice to say about someone.

2. Building Relationships: People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care. With Twitter, People can get to know, like, and trust you much faster and more efficiently than traditional means of marketing by focusing on one major step when building relationships, the follow-up.

3. The Fortune is in the follow-up. Many successful business owners have discovered when following up with people has made all the difference to their business. If you don’t follow-up with people, your competitors will.

4. Providing Value: Your true worth is determined by how much more you provide in value than you take in payment. When you effectively engage and build relationships by providing value and give people what they want you will gain new and repeat customers with Twitter.

5. Be the referral source: by referring a persons business to other people. There is simply no better way to get someone to want to do something for you, than first doing something for them

6 Connecting: Before you connect with someone go to their blog/website and do some basic research. Visit their about page and send a tweet with a positive comment about them or their business. Doing this will show them you took the time and are being thoughtful.

7. Tweetups:This is an excellent opportunity to meet with multiple people at one time in person. Meeting your friends and followers in a group setting will give you the option to share ideas and take your relationships to the next level.

The secret to networking on Twitter is to harness the power of your tweets. All things being equal, people will do business with, and refer business to, those people they know, like, and trust.

With that being said networking on Twitter is all about three core values; engaging, building relationships and providing value in your tweets.

How do you network on Twitter?
Please share your comments or stories below…

Confused on how to use Twitter the right way?
Take advantage of this step by step Twitter Marketing System

Follow me Al Ferretti @AlFerretti

Follow Skeeter Hansen @SkeeterHansen

Discover how to use Twitter and get more done in less time with the right tools.

With over 50,000 tools that integrate with Twitter now the big question is, which tools do I use for what?

15 Great Avenues For Building Your Network on Twitter…

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

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

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

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

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

6. Just Tweet it
Find Tweeple, tools, Twitter bots and more through this directory.

7. TweetWheel
TweetWheel will help you discover which of your Twitter friends know each other.
(Updated-has been reported as being broken)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Stop Making Excuses and Start Making Money Marketing With Twitter

Follow Skeeter Hansen on Twitter
Follow Al Ferretti on Twitter

The key to making Twitter or social media/networking a useful tool is to identify your strategy for how you want to use it.

Many people jump on Twitter with no strategy and start sending tweets expecting to get more traffic and customers. That is just not how it works, especially Twitter.

Marketing Your Business on Twitter

Before building a business with Twitter ask yourself a few simple questions:

1. Do you want more traffic?

2. Are you looking for brand awareness?

3. Do you want more followers?

4. Are you trying to sell a product?

5. Maybe you want to build a mailing list.

What ever your reason for marketing your business on Twitter, you must have a strategy to increase your ROI (return on investment).

Start using tools like Twitterfeed (Twitterfeed) that will help you automate your feed. Take advantage of bit.ly (bit.ly) to track your clicks in your tweets to see whats working and track your competition to get ideas from them. Let’s not forget about twellow (Twellow) the people search that Twitter should have built to locate people in your niche.

These are just a few of many great tools to help you leverage your time while building your business using Twitter.

Once you have a strategy, the only thing left is taking action. Don’t let this keep you from building your business with Twitter. Just remember, you don’t have to be perfect, use some common sense and make adjustments as you learn along the way.

Watching out for you, one tweet at a time -TwitterWatchDog

Get results faster with Twitter
Take advantage of the # Twitter Training and Marketing system

Follow me, Al Ferretti @AlFerretti

Follow Skeeter Hansen @SkeeterHansen

Remember when traditional media ruled the world?
You know…. TV, radio, and newspapers.

Now you see nearly all TV, radio and newspapers saying Follow me/us on Twitter.
Who would have ever imagined big media advertising and asking their audience to follow them somewhere else?

In my humble opinion, this is one of many indicators that technology has changed the playing field. And it’s good because the playing field is virtually now equal for everyone out there, including you. Whether you are in Fortune 500 company, own a traditional business, a stay at home mom, or just getting started online, we are all sharing the same or similar tools and resources to connect with one another.

Here are just a few of the many reasons why Twitter is a Big Opportunity to Your Success.

1. You can spread the news about your brand, product or service at the speed of lightning.
(even faster than traditional media like Fox News, CNN, ESPN, etc. That’s one of the reasons why traditional media asks us to follow them on Twitter, not to mention that’s where a chuck of people are hanging out now.

2. Pick your passion. Twitter recently reported that there are now over 50,000 third party clients, tools and apps that integrate with Twitter. These are great for user flexibility, customization, automation (when used properly), and much more.

3. There’s no limit on how to use Twitter with even more ways being created all the time. Some companies use twitter for special offers, customer service, traffic generation, building your brand, research, the list goes on and on. (what ever you do, don’t use Twitter for spamming-that’s surely the fastest way to ruin a reputation and you may even get suspended)

4. With my 20+ years of success and failures in my own businesses on/offline and in corporate America, Twitter is by far the most powerful business tool, when used the right way, that I have ever experienced. I’ve built a HUGE email list of subscribers, generated traffic consistently from over 130 countries and sales are coming in. Most importantly, the connections that have been made are absolutely priceless.

A last note before I close out this post, instead of seeing Twitter as a place to broadcast, see it as place to engage, build relationships and provide value. Then you will discover why Twitter is a BIG Opportunity to Your Success. We share how to capitalize on the Twitter opportunity, with Tweet Formula just click here. Even if you think you understand Twitter, ask yourself, am I getting the most out of it in the least amount of time? If not, we can help you do that.

Please leave us a comment and share your ideas, thoughts and stories.

Follow me Al Ferretti @AlFerretti

Follow Skeeter Hansen @SkeeterHansen

I was speaking recently at a conference and as I stepped down from the podium…a well-dressed man was waiting to tell me he recognized me from Twitter. “I have a question for you”…why do you follow so many people on Twitter?”

Apparently he hadn’t read my Twitter Watchdog post about My Twitter Philosophy

He went on to tell me he only follows a few very select people who he “is nurturing” because he wants them as clients. Well, I thought…focus is good, and then I remembered…

Many years ago I was doing the marketing for Ford Motor Co. I was feeling pretty great about how well we were doing, getting prospects to go to their local dealerships and test drive new cars. But, as soon as I get “puffed up”, something always happens to set me right again. This time it was an irate dealer-owner in Quebec.

He called the agency and screamed at me that my foolish mailing had brought in a blind man who requested a test drive of a new car, a big Explorer. His salesman wasted an hour driving the guy around…and it was all my fault, because my list selection was stupid. Then he called the Chairman of our agency to tell him to kick me to the curb.

I apologized profusely. Not sure how a blind man even read my direct mail letter…and then went back to work, humbled.

Next morning at 11:00 AM I get a call from that same dealer. This time his voice was filled with gratitude. The blind guy had brought his brother in that morning and just signed the papers to buy a fully loaded Explorer. Imagine!

So if one blind man can buy a big old car…who might be the person who buys your service, your product…your next great idea?

I think (for what it’s worth):

1. Follow people back, if they’re real people. I followed @aviationartlife because she had a weird logo. Turns out, she’s Cecilia Karr and her husband is an Aviation Artist. I own an agency..never know when I might need him. Meanwhile, we’re friends.

2. @Ms_effective tweeted me about contributing a section of her new book. I gave her some of my secrets of feeling great before presentations and she wrote about them in her new book, 101 Quick Tips Effective Communications by Debbie Mayo-Smith. She’s in New Zealand and month she sent me a half dozen copies of the new book…with my secrets in it. Love that!

3. Then there’s @kansasauthor who writes directly to me often. He didn’t like the fact, I kept calling him Kansas, so I looked up his name, Tom Mach. Found out he wrote a great book entitled, Sissy. I ordered it last night from Barnes and Noble.

So, I’ve made dozens of new friends. Maybe I’m not as focused as the guy with the Armani suit..but Twitter is definitely making me happier.

Lois Geller Follow me on Twitter

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

Confused on how to use Twitter the right way?
Take advantage of this step by step Twitter System