Do's & Dont's of Marketing Hype

Saw a Tweet the other day that said, “How to be a successful entrepreneur in 10 minutes.” 10 minutes, really? I suppose you could reach some sort of level of success in 10 minutes. But I don’t think many entrepreneurs would be happy there.

Real success takes time & effort. I don’t know of a single company or solo entrepreneur who became successful in 10 minutes. For many, they may have had a 10 minute period that launched them into a new level of success. But, that is generally preceded by an extended period of effort.

Point is, I get sick of the hype. It gives entrepreneurs & internet marketing a bad rap. For example, while writing this I pulled off of Twitter a few 'hype' tweets. Have you seen any of them before?

• Get RICH in just 3 easy steps
• So easy, even my blind Grandmother could do it
• Home Business Tips: How To Make Money
• Guaranteed $125 within 24 hrs signup now
• Win a FREE iPod Touch
• Sign up Free and earn $125 cash
• The SEXIEST term to a network marketer's ear

I'm not even sure how a term can be sexy.

Each was accompanied with a hyper link that I’m sure led to some magical place that will immediately make me a successful entrepreneur. Yeah right!

As an entrepreneur, do you over hype yourself and your products? If so, why? I’ve found that most people really relate to down to earth people who are selling a product or service of real value. Few fall in love with the over-hype guys. Presenting your product as effective, exciting and beneficial is certainly vital. But over-hyping it shows to me that your too desperate to sell something.

So my challenge to you is this; keep the hype to a minimum. Be yourself and accurately present who you are are and what your trying to accomplish.


That being said, my next post will give you 7 easy steps on how to make your mother in law happy, make you rich beyond your wildest dreams and cure cancer in only 3 minutes! ;-)

How I'm Getting Followers on Twitter

So it seems like half of the free world is on Twitter these days. I keep waiting for Grandma to email and tell me she's made it. The other night I was at a Diamondbacks game here in Arizona. One of the stadium banners had a Twitter ad and there was another Twitter ad over the P.A. system. I guess Twitter is here to stay.

Twitter is an online community that's mixed with people trying to make a buck, share something profound, be completely useless or some combination of the three. But, most people seem to have one common theme, and that is to get lots of followers.

Recently, I've had some success growing my Twitter account. My account is growing at a rate of over 150+ per day. (Check out Twitter Counter for proof.) My total follower count is still retentively low, but if this trend continues, then I should be seeing massive growth soon! So let me give you a few hints & tips on how to grow your followers.

First, you really need to buy Twitter Traffic Machine. I can't begin to explain how valuable this is. Put it this way, when I started using Twitter Traffic Machine, I had about 1500 followers. A week later, I had 1,000 more! That brought my Twitter follower count to only 2,500. That's a 40% growth of followers in 1 week. Not bad. I can't stress it enough, buy Twitter Traffic Machine. If you want to have a bunch of followers, it's worth the small investment ($27.00)

Next, follow some sort of strategic schedule. My week goes something like this:

Sunday: Follow about 500 people (Below, I'll list ways to follow people easily without having to click on the follow button a million times)
Monday: Same, follow about 500 people
Tuesday: Follow about 500
Wednesday: Follow about 500
Thursday: Do not follow anyone! Just Tweet. have conversations with people. @reply to strategic people who are not following you, but you'd like them to. I also use Tweet Later and schedule Tweets to be sent during the upcoming week. This is a great way to put your marketing on auto-pilot.
Friday: Same as Thursday.
Saturday: Unfollow everyone who isn't following me. Here is the best tool I've found for that: Karma

Finally, there are tons of tools to use to help you be more effective with Twitter. Here are a few cool sites for you to try out. Use these well and you'll grow your own little Twitter Empire in no time!

Twitter Traffic Machine - Again, well work the investment. Get it!
Tweet Later - Easy to use system that will allow you to automate twitter. I suggest buying the professional package.
Easy Tweet
Twollow - Easy site to find followers within your niche.
Twellow - Good directory service. be sure to place yourself in all 10 categories allotted to you.
TwitSeeker - Another easy tool to find like minded Tweeters

Hope this all helps. Now it's your turn. What works for you? What tools do you use with Twitter?

Easy Tweets - Yes, it is easy

Just wanted to take a quick second today and tell you about anew service I've been trying. It's called Easy Tweets.

This is perhaps the best Twitter-organizer service out there. The companies slogan is to "Take Complete Control of Twitter." Here are a few of their highlights


It's very easy to use. The reporting tools are excellent. Very easy to incorporate RSS feeds and you can even use Google Analytics! Their Tweet Deck view will make you forget all about Tweet-Deck.

This program is cheap & easy. Try it today. You'll be happy you did! Click here to sign up.

Getting Started with Twitter

I'm still not sure how or why, but Twitter-mania seems to be upon us. It's always amazing to me when something that seems so simple can simply explode in excitement.

So, because there are a lot of new Entrepreneurs starting on Twitter, I thought I'd take a few minutes to discuss how to get started, how to correctly grow your followers and even how to make a little money using Twitter!

Getting Started
Getting started is simple. Go to www.twitter.com. Then click on the Get Started - Join Icon
Simply, complete all requested information and your all set! Don't be afraid to use your real name as your user name. You may also want to use your company or nickname here. I prefer to keep it basic, but this is totally up to you. Once you've complete these steps you're registered.
Welcome to Twitterland!

Grow Your Follower List
There is much debate about followers. Some want to get as many followers as possible. Others only want to have a small group of followers whom they care about. This is totally up to you and why you are using Twitter. Who to follow will also depend on your strategy. I suggest only following those with similar interested to you. For example, my main interest is Entrepreneurship. Therefore, I look for people with entrepreneur topics in their tweets & bio.

You may also want to list yourself on a Twitter directory so other like-minded Tweeters can find you. I really like Twellow. (www.tweellow.com) This is an easy to use directory where you can list yourself in various categories. So, if you're interested in cooking, then you'd want to place yourself under the cooking, food, or even the health, etc.

Making Money
You can even make money using Twitter. I'll talk about this more later on exactly how, but essentially you can use Twitter to market products. They don't even have to be your products. You can easily market other peoples products and make a profit as an affiliate. We'll talk a lot more about this in later blog entries.

One word of caution, please do not SPAM people on Twitter. If all you are doing is selling something to others, people will stop following you. Instead, talk about yourself and what you are up to. Find good articles or blogs that interest you and tell others about that. Feel free to share a url to something you are selling, but don't simply join Twitter to just sell stuff. There are better ways to sell.

Now it's your turn. Why do you use Twitter? What do you like / dislike about it? What else would you like to learn about Twitter?

Twitter Grader Review - Worth Trying

Twitter Grader is one of the dozens of free tools available to help Twitter users. Like most Twitter tools, it's pretty easy to use and seems to be aimed at everyone's #1 goal on Twitter......GETTING LOTS OF FOLLOWERS! But, there is more to Twitter Grader than meets the eye.

Let's start with the basics. When you first go to www.twittergrader.com (or http://twitter.grader.com/) a very simple & clean looking interface is presented asking you to enter your Twitter username. Once you do, the grader is off and running a few few quirky, yet funny phrases while you wait. Once the 'grading' is complete, the following screen will appear.

Tons of information is returned to you. It's very easy to read & use. A few highlights:
Tweet Cloud: Located towards the middle of the screen. This shows commonly user words in your Tweets with the most commonly used in larger print. This is very beneficial because its a 2 second overview of your content. Good visual way to see what you're talking about most.

Suggest Followers: This is at the bottom of your profile screen. I'm not sure how they determine this, but for the most part the list seems to be of people with similar interests based on your Twitter profile.

Other cool features are:
TwitSnip - Nifty little tool the lives in your browser. It allows you to quickly tweet content from a web page you are currently on.
TweetIt Button Creator - Very easy to use tool to create Tweet-it links for web content. (See the Tweet it Link at the end of this article)
Badge - Tool that provides html code to show your Twitter Grade or your current followers. (See right hand column of this site)

One last feature is the Twitter Elite links at the top right of the screen. This shows top rated Tweeters and are organized by location. It's nice to see who is most active in different areas of the world. Also, if you want to be the best, you need to do what the best are doing. Here are the account this site feels are top rated on Twitter. Spend some time studying what they do.

A few negatives about the site.....The grading doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me. There seems to be a world of difference between someone who ranks at 98.6 versus 99.0. It seems like they get as many people as close to 100 as possible. Perhaps this is by design. Also, it occasionally will take forever to load your Twitter Grade and other information. Sometimes, it will freeze my browser (Firefox.) Occasionally, the site wil not load.

All in all, I really like this site. Check it out and use what you learn from it to continue creating your own little Twitter Empire. Go ahead and check out my stats there as well.

Twitter Tools For Success

I've spent a good chunk of time recently playing with Twitter and the many free Twitter-related services that are out there. There are tons. I love the Twitter concept. Give everyone a few lines to share what's on their mind. I love even more that they have an open API and literally hundreds or Twitter related applications have been created as a result.

So, the question is, which ones should you use? If you Tweet at all (and if your an entrepreneur you certainly should) using applications can help you develop your brand & business. Here is a list of a few tools that will help you be organized, personal in your tweets & will help you grow your followers:

1. Twellow.com - This is a great directory to help you find fellow Twitter accounts of similar interests. Also is an excellent place to list yourself so you can be found. Can be used to tie together your other social media profiles as well.
2. TweetLater.com - Allows you to run tons of automation through Twitter. Things like, automatic following of individuals who follow you, write Tweets to be posted later, have @replies emailed to you and more. Great free version. I suggest buying the upgraded version.
3. TwitterCounter.com - Can't say it overly useful, but it's a fun tool to show how much your followers have grown.
4. Twitter Search - Very easy & powerful to use. Will search for any words recently Tweeted. Will show you who Tweeted the word or phrase and gives you an option to view their profile.
5. TwitterGetter.com - This is a new tool that I recently tried. Essentially it's a tool that will attempt to bring you tons of followers. Frankly, I can't make a recommendation on this because I haven't' sufficiently tested it.
6. TwitterGrader.com - I like this one. The tool will give you a score of your Twitterness (that's a word I just made up) Will also show you a word Cloud of recently used words. This is good way for you to see what you tweet about most. Also will show you a list of Tweeters to follow based on your Tweets. Really good tool. And Free!
7. TweetDeck - This is an application you download to your desktop. It's a tool that will organization your followers into customizable groups. A great way to stay organized and on top of your Tweets.

One final note, make sure you respect your followers by not posting too often and only promoting things in your tweets. Instead share things of interest & value. No one wants to be advertised to all day long.

Your turn......what tools do you use? Which do you like and dislike? Comment and tells us what works.

Would you go this far for Twitter Followers?

Check out what one guy did to get thousands of followers on Twitter. He's nuts!

http://tinyurl.com/bb5m47