Introducing Dr Alex Davidovic on Twitter

[Barbara Gabogrecan]

I am delighted to introduce Alex to you to discuss 'How to use Twitter to grow your business'. Many of you would have already tried Twitter and I guess most of you are still wondering how on earth it can really help your business. Now we can find out!

Dr Alex Davidovic is an Internet expert like no other: by his own admission he prefers travelling and beach-life to working, so his entire business follows 3 immutable rules:
1. It fits into a single laptop computer
2. It runs with equal ease from anywhere in the world, and
3. It is fully and thoroughly automated.

“Now that we have the Internet, no-one is unemployed, everyone is an Internet entrepreneur”, laughs Dr Alex, but stresses that, “The fundamentals of every successful business, online or offline, are the same, and when you lay the foundations correctly, your business flourishes and it becomes very difficult to go wrong“.

Dr Alex is the author of the books Underdog Marketing: Enrich Your Reputation, Fashion Free Publicity and Wrestle Your Market Share from the Top Dogs; in which he explains the publicity-building process step by step. “When you’re just starting, you are an underdog: the top dogs have carved up the market and you have to challenge them for your share”, says Dr Alex. “Fortunately, thanks to the social media and the Internet, you’re a champion within weeks or even days – and the time keeps shrinking.”

Take advantage of this rare opportunity to learn from an expert.
Cheers
Barb

[Alex Davidovic]

Hello everyone,

Thank you Barbara for the introduction!

Why use Twitter?

Twitter is HUGE - it is ranked as the site #14 in the world in terms of traffic, and approximately 25% of all Internet users are on Twitter. The ability to reach many people quickly makes Twitter a good candidate for promoting your business.

Recently my friend Richard and I opened a new website, http://www.RacingGamesPro.com, with an assortment of free racing and parking games in several categories.

Being new to Twitter, and having a brand new website, presented an opportunity to put Twitter to a test as a marketing tool. After reading what experts have to say, it was action-time, and the following is a rather personal account of how to use Twitter to publicize your goods.

Results

Let's fast-forward: two months later, our new Twitter persona, GameInnovator ( http://twitter.com/gameinnovator ) had 4,864 followers and was featuring on 21 lists. Rich lives in Los Angeles in US, and we took turns posting the total of 70 tweets.

After using Twitter as the primary way of publicizing http://www.RacingGamesPro.com, the site got the Google Page Rank of 3 and enough traffic to cash-in on it. At the time of writing we've already had 7 paid adverts running.

Based on what I've learned from others and on my own singular experience with Twitter, here are some tips on how to use it to promote your business:

Choose a relevant Twitter name people can remember

People need to be able to recall your name easily, so make it short and memorable. I came up with GameInnovator, which is specific enough (games-related), and generic enough (can be applied to more than just racing games).

Modify the background to reflect your business

It is a good idea to replace the background Twitter gives you by uploading your own one. I don't think you need an artist for this purpose - use the imagery from your site or get something from http://www.istockphoto.com to give people an indication of what your tweets are about.

Be consistent with your tweets

If you're running a personal Twitter account, you can tweet just about anything. However, for business purposes, it is essential that you stay on the topic. In the GameInnovator case, this meant posting only games-related tweets, not talking about current affairs or the lunar landing.

Post 3 tweets at a time

A single tweet is easily lost among other tweets. Preparing 3 tweets and posting them in rapid succession one after the other helps you stand out, and allows you to say more than with just one tweet. A good way to use your 3 tweets is to 1) present a benefit, 2) present another benefit, and 3) have a call-to-action with the corresponding URL.

Avoid direct offers

Generally, taking people directly to an offer get you nowhere. Taking them to a squeeze page works somewhat better. Taking them to a page with more information works best. It also presents you in a good light because you're giving them information rather than trying to sell to them.

Follow the followers

Each time you post a new set of 3 tweets you get new followers. However, without making some extra effort, obtaining enough followers to make it commercially viable will a slow process. To speed it up:

- Encourage people to follow you on Twitter on your webpages. At http://www.racinggamespro.com, I've reserved a prime area on the right-side navigation bar for this purpose.

- Follow the followers. This is probably the main way of obtaining new followers, and it works like this: first, do a search on Twitter to find relevant leaders with plenty of followers. In our case, we searched for "online games" and more specifically for "free online games". Second, follow the followers of the leader: you know that they are interested in your topic, and many of them will follow you back after checking your tweets.

Use the right tools for the job

Several Twitter tools are there to make your life easier. I suggest you have a look at:

- http://www.twollo.com: tool to automate getting more targeted Twitter followers.

- http://www.twollo.com: great if you want to show pictures to your followers.

- http://stufftotweet.com: see the most popular tweets to get ideas on what to tweet about.

- http://sta.rtup.biz/profiles/blogs/twitter-viral-marketing: lists 11 Twitter marketing strategies.

When it comes to commercializing your tweets, places like http://be-a-magpie.com/twitterers/ and several others allow you to get paid for tweeting about third-party goods and services. I've signed up to check them out, and for me it was a total waste of time. In my view the main benefits of using Twitter are to:

- Obtain prospects by driving traffic to informative pages on your site, and

- Keep your business in from of the eyes of your followers by letting them know about specials, promotions, and other interesting news regarding your business.

[Peter O'Connor]

Hello again Alex

I just love the idea of not running any business unless it fits on a laptop!

I have always suspected that my involvement in social media sites would involve great amounts of time spent and generate dubious results. How much time should we allocate to things like Twitter? I am very busy at present building and updating a number of web sites, so my time is precious. I have heard of people achieving wonderful results using social media, but I wonder how much of their success is in their minds, not in their bank accounts.

As it seems to be working well for you, I would love to hear your thoughts

Regards

Peter

[Alex Davidovic]

Hi Peter,

You're right - using social networking to market our business can sink an incredible amounts of your time. In the end Twitter worked well for me. However:

- I spent quite some time trying to get private messaging to work for me. Private messages are better than tweets because they end up in the visitor's mailbox. However, Twitter imposes a limitation of 250 private messages a day - so if you have several thousands of followers it takes forever to PM the entire list.

- At the beginning I was doing everything manually. This REALLY takes time and becomes very tedious after a while.

It was only after I started getting results that I began searching for a way to automate everything. Without automation, I don't think Twitter is viable - it just takes too much time.

Let's break it down: opening a Twitter account, filling-out the profile, uploading your picture and replacing the background with a custom one can take anywhere between 1 hour and 4 hours, but you only need to do all of it once.

The on-going time commitment goes on:
Posting tweets
Following people potentially interested in what you do, and
Un-following people if they do not follow you after few days: you want to have more people following you than the other way round.

Luckily, all of it can be automated. When it comes to posting tweets, do the following:
1. Create a list of benefits for your products and services, and
2. Make a note every time there is something interesting happening in your business.

Having done that, turn every benefit and every note into 3 tweets: 2 explaining it in more detail and 1 with a call-to-action. To build a strong following, you only need to send one lot of 3 tweets every day. With that one lot, do not spread it out, send all 3 tweets in rapid succession one after another.

This leaves you with having to automate 2 things that take most of the time: following people and un-following people. I spent quite some time looking at available tools and was getting ready to pay someone at Elance to do write the code, when I stumbled upon a piece of software that does exactly what I want.

The name of the tool is Twitter Adder (they also call it Tweet Adder in a number of places) and there is a great video on how to use it at http://tinyurl.com/yejuwoe

Twitter Adder is incredibly under-priced - so I bought a copy immediately, and let me tell you what I love about it:
Search by the followers of another user. Let's say I find 5 users in my industry, each with 3,000 followers. Using Twitter Adder I add all the followers to my list in seconds, all 15,000 of them. The program automatically removes duplicate entries. Twitter Adder then starts following these people automatically at the rate I specify (100 people a day at the beginning, increasing to 600 a day when you have a big list).

Un-follow users. Plenty of people you follow will follow you back. I've set Twitter Adder to automatically un-follow all the users that do not follow me after 3 days. Add to that people who follow you through the "Follow me" link on your site, people who saw your tweets, and people who did a search for your industry - and the number of people following you is always greater than the number of people you follow. Except in the early days, of course.

This program has a number of other pizzas - for example the ability to automate messages, tweets and replies - which are all very useful, but for me the first two (follow and un-follow) are absolute gold.

The bottom line is: go to http://tinyurl.com/yejuwoe, get the copy of the program and you'll have 4,000 people following you in 3-4 weeks. The total on-going time commitment is 3 to 5 minutes a day, to write and post your block of 3 tweets. In my view, this is the most time-effective way to use social marketing...
...and you'll agree that 3-5 minutes a day is not much for a steady stream of prospects and customers you gain in return

[Alex Davidovic]

Hi again Peter,

In my previous post I've mentioned some of the Twitter limits. It's a good idea to be aware of them when you start doing things on a larger scale:

1,000 updates per day. My recommendation: 3 updates per day.
1,000 direct messages per day. Even though 1,000 is the official figure, I think that 250 direct message per day is more accurate.
100 API requests per hour. This is just in case you plan to develop your own software.
Follow limit. Everyone can follow the first 2,000 people. After that, Twitter imposes limitations based on the number of people following you.
Un-follow limit. This too depends on the number of followers. Unfollowing 300 people a day is safe.

[Barbara Gabogrecan]

WOW Alex – I am getting confused…but what’s new – I am a dummy when it comes to technology – so I am going to ask you a few questions (please be kind with your answers, not too techo…)

Q.1 – I did try to put a different background on my Twitter, but I couldn’t get it to work. Can you give me some easy step by step instructions?
Q.2. – I have only used Twitter so that the search engines know what I am doing (so I always have a URL listed) is this a good use of Twitter?
Q.3 – I do not really understand why having thousands of followers (or following) works – who has time to read thousands of Tweets?
Q.4 – How do you get to use the right hand panel to add information?
Q.5 - I have received notification of Followers and when I go to follow them back the ‘Follow’ button is not there – why is it there sometimes and not others?
Q.6 – I started Twitter with my own name – I guess it is time to start a new one relating to the business!
Q.7 – Where / how do you find users in your industry

OK Alex – WOW me with your answers!
I think your info so far is great and I love the links you are providing.
Also Congratulations on using Twitter so well to get your new business off the ground with such a BANG!
Cheers
Barbara

[Peter O'Connor]

Thank you Alex

I was at a networking meeting one night (some time ago) where Face Book and Twitter were the topics of discussion. One girl in the audience actually admitted to using Face Book and Twitter 6-7 hrs a day - and she "worked" full time for Telstra.

I just knew there had to be some way of automating this and you have pointed me in the right direction.

Many thanks indeed

Regards

Peter

[Alex Davidovic]

...I was at a networking meeting one night (some time ago) where Face Book and Twitter were the topics of discussion. One girl in the audience actually admitted to using Face Book and Twitter 6-7 hrs a day - and she "worked" full time for Telstra.

I just knew there had to be some way of automating this and you have pointed me in the right direction.
Peter

Thanks Peter,

6-7 hrs a day - the Telstra girl is taking it to the extreme
She is not the only one, though - with 1/4 of all Internet users being on Twitter, it is immensely popular.

For the rest of us, automation is the key. With time Twitter may evolve and start blocking the automated tools, but right now it is a huge opportunity, while building a strong following is so easy.

By the way, Twitter Adder ( http://tinyurl.com/yejuwoe ) is not the first tool I've come across, but it is the best. Genesis Rocket is a very solid tool too, I even put up a page about it at http://www.underdogmarketingchallenge.com/twitter/, but Twitter Adder is just so easy to use and completely automates all aspects of Twitter campaigns, it makes it rather hard to beat

[Alex Davidovic]

Hi Barbara,

Thank you!

Your questions are right to the point, let's see if I can come up with the right answers

Q.1 – I did try to put a different background on my Twitter, but I couldn’t get it to work. Can you give me some easy step by step instructions?
Log into Twitter account
Go to Settings / Design / Change Background Image, and
Upload a new image.

Also, make sure that your image is one of the supported formats (gif, jpg or png).

Q.2. – I have only used Twitter so that the search engines know what I am doing (so I always have a URL listed) is this a good use of Twitter?

Yes, it is certainly a good use of Twitter. I don't think it is the best use of Twitter though, because permanent one-way links from relevant sites give you a lot more clout with Google. Twitter is great for driving immediate traffic to your site, it is less effective as a long-term SEO tool.

Q.3 – I do not really understand why having thousands of followers (or following) works – who has time to read thousands of Tweets?

Quite right, no-one has the time to read thousands of Tweets. People skim through the tweets, picking up the ones that tickle their imagination. To stand out and ensure YOUR tweets are being read, there are 3 things you can do:
1. Tweet regularly
2. Write interesting, relevant tweets with a benefit or two, and
3. Post 3 tweets at a time - this really makes you stand out.

Q.4 – How do you get to use the right hand panel to add information?

You only have a limited way to use the right-hand panel: Settings / Account / One line bio allows you to write about you and your business.

Q.5 - I have received notification of Followers and when I go to follow them back the ‘Follow’ button is not there – why is it there sometimes and not others?

In the Settings people may tick the Protect my tweets option, which removes the ‘Follow’ button.

Q.6 – I started Twitter with my own name – I guess it is time to start a new one relating to the business!

For business purposes, the rule is one topic - one Twitter account, which helps you to stay focused and relevant to your followers. You cannot use the same account to tweet about the cat food and global warming

Even within one topic it is a good idea to have one generic account (for example, for marketing), and one or more specialized accounts (using Twitter to promote your business, article marketing, MLM...).

With a tool like Twitter Adder ( http://tinyurl.com/yejuwoe ) you can comfortably handle 5 Twitter accounts at the same time, if you use Twitter as one of your traffic-generators. If you want Twitter to be your primary source of traffic, I recommend having 10 or more Twitter accounts and dedicating one computer to this purpose.

Q.7 – Where / how do you find users in your industry?

Here is how to find users in your industry, step-by-step:
Do the keyword research to find the keywords and key-phrases relevant to your industry
Log into your Twitter account click on Find people
Search using one of the relevant keywords (for example, "dog training")
Have a look at the users that Twitter found for you. You want the ones who a) have lots of followers and b) write tweets relevant to your industry. Ultimately, you want their followers to switch allegiance and follow YOU.
Run Twitter Adder ( http://tinyurl.com/yejuwoe ), select Search by Followers of Another User, and click Save All. When you have 10,000+ people on the list, let the program do the rest

It may look like lots of steps - but we're only talking minutes, not hours, of your time - everything else is automated, and that's the beauty of it

This is similar to purchasing Microsoft and Apple shares in the early days. The window of opportunity is likely to remain open for another 4 to 6 months: in this time-frame anyone can easily obtain thousands of followers and make a fortune.

After that, I don't know... as more people become aware of and start using Twitter automation, the tools will eventually lose their effectiveness. But right now, Twitter is the marketing El Dorado for your business

[Alex Davidovic]

Back to the question on Twitter backgrounds - I'll see if I can find some good-looking ones that you can use as-is or with small modifications.

I'll be posting them here shortly...