Twitter Experiment - OverTweeting Part Three

In my last article I documented my experiences 'over-tweeting' with Twitter. This time around I want to re-visit the experience and blog about the little twist I put upon the experiment.

Three weeks after my original experiment to over-tweet (sending an extra 2,000 targeted tweets out over the course of one week), I decided to repeat the experiment but this time with a different target audience. The results were mixed.

Firstly I decided to use the list of Twitter followers from another well-known author. As before I stripped out 8,000 Twitter names, split them into groups of four, added a link to my books and sent out tweets every five minutes or so.

When I did this the first time I received a boost of over 50% to my blog page hits and also a small increase in Twitter followers. This time around I only received a 30% boost to my blog viewership and I lost around 100 Twitter followers.

So, my conclusions are that overall over-tweeting is worth the experiment but it does matter just who you target your tweets at. I'm going to try this experiment one more time over the Christmas period with a third set of people and I'll report back in the New Year. Until then, keep trying different things to increase followers and book sales and read my previous article to understand the mechanics of it all.

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Twitter Experiment - OverTweeting Part Two

In my last article, I wrote about the pros and cons of overtweeting. In this article I will relate my experiences when I took overtweeting to another level and increased my blog hits by 50%!

I have long since known that targeted tweets produce better results than non-targeted tweets. What's a targeted tweet? Well quite simply it is a message to a particular person using @name. I know that when I send out a tweet to all the Indie Authors I know, referencing an Interview with a link, I will receive about 100 hits to my blog (out of approximately 188 total @names). That's a 53% hit rate using targeted tweets. So I got to thinking, what if I took this idea to another level? What if I targeted 8,000 of my followers with a direct message? Would it work on that level? Of course, there was only one way to find out and that was to try it.

First of all I found a site online that would download 10,000 of my followers into a spreadsheet (more about that in another post). Then I sorted those followers by number of tweets they had sent (figuring less than 100 and they were not very active), and I dropped off the bottom 2,000. That left me with 8,000 @names. I further sorted these into four columns of 2,000 names, concatenated them together, added a tweet header and exported the whole list of 2,000 tweets into another spreadsheet. A sample tweet was as follows: FREE book to download http://bit.ly/VN9Y8y @MusicByStan @VisionFord @VintageDTSP @musixmouth. The link leads directly to a post on my blog that lists all my books including one for FREE.

Following along? Good. After this it was just a case of using AutoTweeter Pro to schedule them (at approximately 5 minute intervals). I figured that sending 2,000 tweets at 12 tweets an hour would take about a week to complete. Hopefully that was spreading them out enough and these new tweets were interspersed with the regular tweets I was sending out (as mentioned in my previous article). I was interested to see whether I could achieve another 50% rate of @names to page hits. To be successful I would need to achieve 4,000 page hits from my 2,000 tweets.

The results were amazing. I achieved greater than my targeted 50% - my blog page hits increased by over 600 per day - and I also doubled my book sales for the month in one week! My net loss on Twitter followers was actually negative. I increased my followers during the week by 85. So all in all, I have nothing but positive things to say about this whole overtweeting experiment.

Watch out next month for Part Three in this series - 'Afterthoughts and Summary.'

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Twitter Experiment - OverTweeting Part One

There has always been a lot of discussion about how often you should (or shouldn't) tweet. A lot of people say that you should only tweet a few times a day, while others tweet every few minutes. I'm one of the latter. I thought I'd use this blog post today to explain a little about why I tweet the way I do.

To me Twitter is a fire-hose. You have no control over where the tweets go and who sees them. Everything is public and mostly addressed to the whole universe. Therefore if you tweet something important at 10am, by 2pm the same day literally millions of tweets will have passed by. What are the chances that someone saw your tweet unless it was specifically meant for someone and you used an @name?

Secondly, people tell me that if you tweet incessantly you will lose all your Twitter followers. I can prove that isn't true. Actually, what I have found is that the number of followers you lose is roughly equivalent to the number of followers you gain. If you proactively go after more followers you can grow your base very nicely. It seems to me that once you have a critical mass of followers you have to do something really bad or stupid to lose large numbers of your twitter follower-base.

So, these are two parts of an argument about tweeting. I support the tweet often principle and have employed a wonderful product called AutoTweeter Pro to handle my day to day tweeting. Using this program I send out approximately 190 tweets a day (24 hours). I keep an Excel file of about 280 tweets and randomize this list 3 times into another file. AutoTweeter Pro then dispatches my tweet list over a period of about 4.5 days. The process then repeats. Every couple of weeks I mix up my tweets and re-dispatch. Believe it or not, these tweets generate over a 1,000 hits a day to my blog. That works out at about 5 hits per tweet, plus all other methods. And this is a constant. I have been using AutoTweeter Pro for over a year now. During this time, without any other effort, my Twitter follower-base has also increased by a few thousand. What this tells me is that my tweets, although definitely of a repetitive nature, are useful and relevant and I am not spamming the world. To me this proves the fire-hose theory. My 58,000+ followers each see my tweets at different times and sometimes they click on a link. In theory they may only see the same tweet from me every five or six months, and this is because no one reads every tweet sent from every one of the people they follow.

Okay, so this is the method I use for the majority of my tweeting. But how do I keep it all fresh, increase my brand awareness, and also spice it up? In the next post I will tell you how I increased my blog traffic by over 50% by adding even more tweets to my day!

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Re-Inventing My Twitter Presence

From time to time it's important to perform a make-over on aspects of your life. Anyway, that's my excuse. This month it's the turn of Twitter.

A few years ago I undertook an experiment to grow my Twitter following to 20,000 people. Time has since marched on and I am currently pushing the boundaries of 60,000 people. My life on Twitter has gone through 4 distinct phases:

1. Start-up - During this time I grew my follower base to about 20,000 people and tweeted about all and everything, only concerned with building a following
2. Brand-forming One - During this time I settled on tweeting only quotes and funny stories and interacted a lot with my followers. I grew my base to about 40,000
3. Author Re-brand One - In early 2011 I changed my Twitter name to also reflect my transition to becoming an author. I also changed my tweets to be more blog based and also interacted a lot with my followers. I grew my base to about 50,000
4. Author Re-brand Two - Late in 2011 I decided to go full out and over-tweet everything to help build my fan and author base. I automated a lot of my tweets and supplemented them with new blog posts and other interesting book review articles. I grew my base to what it is now (just below 60,000). Most of my tweeting is one-way and I only really get engaged with followers that @message me

And so it's time to move forward again. I have missed the interactions I have had with followers but, you know, it's damn difficult to keep fully engaged with 60,000 followers! This week I changed my Twitter name to only reflect my author name, Paul Dorset, and I also updated my profile description to better reflect what I want to convey. Finally, during the next few days I am going to change the way I interact with people on Twitter too. It's time to spend more time engaging with people and generally post more personal messages. The blog post links I have been swamping my timeline with are also going to be scaled back. Will this make a difference to anything? I don't know - it's just another part of my continued Twitter (and social media) experiment. We live in ever-changing times and if we don't adapt, we die. So, here's to the next 10,000 or 20,000 Twitter followers - or not. Let's see where the journey takes me.

Thanksgiving Promotions & Author Re-Branding

As we enter the final few days before Thanksgiving, I thought I'd spend a few moments telling you what I'm planning over the coming week. I'm also giving an update on how my author re-branding exercise continues.

Firstly on the promotions front, I have decided to embrace Black Friday (and Saturday) and also Cyber Monday and offer different promotions every day. So just two more days until the fun begins. Why not take the opportunity now to head over to Amazon and buy a copy of my first published novel, Xannu - The Prophecy. It's only $0.99 and represents a great bargain for what has been described as a 'wonderful read.' As you may guess, I'm not going to be discounting this great book any further!!

So, onto the re-branding. As I've recently posted, I've updated and redesigned my main website, pauldorset.com. I've also spent some time to update other sites that build on my branding. All my trending tweets can be found at tweets.pauldorset.com and as from today, you can also find this blog at blog.pauldorset.com. Then for all you Facebook fanatics, you can friend me at facebook.com/pdorset27. I believe it's important to build a platform on which you can be successful that uses everything you have at your disposal. Branding is about consistency. Now that I have successfully ported everything underneath the PaulDorset umbrella, I can start to make better use of my brand.

So, there we have it. Watch out for the Thanksgiving promotions and take a look at all my branded sites.

Pet Peeve - Twitter TrueTwit Validation

So as you know, I'm a fairly big and active Twitter user. I also make a point to @reply to people and follow them back to help them grow their network. It's what I do! In all honesty I wish I had another ten hours a day and then I could talk more and be more personal with my followers, but life is what it is and I do the best I can.

But there's one thing that really irks me about some people who use Twitter. And it's not those people who choose to keep their accounts 'private' (that's their choice). No the Twitter users that annoy me are those that use the TrueTwit service. Actually I thought at first that these people were in fact 'true twits' but maybe that's a little unfair! Why do I get peeved with these people? Well, quite simply a lot of them are people that initially followed me and I try to follow back. Seems straightforward enough. Instead, I get some email about having to validate myself in order to follow them. Well guess what, I never bother. Life is way too short to prove to someone that I'm a human being and not a bot of some description.

So nice friendly Twitter people - please, please, please, forget about this piece of software. Does it really matter who follows you on Twitter? Seriously?

Pet peeve over for the day!

How To Promote Your Twitter Followers (with Paper.Li)

It’s always nice to get your tweets re-tweeted by someone else, isn’t it? It’s also nice when other people @message you. It makes you feel special.

But what about making other people on Twitter feel special? And what if you could do it with very little effort? Now you’re talking!

If you’ve been using Twitter for any amount of time you’ve probably discovered, or even use, Twitter lists. They’re really easy to set up and I’m not going to go into the details here. (Just remember, you can only put 500 people in each list and there’s a 20 list maximum for each Twitter user). But what do you use these lists for? If you’re anything like me, probably for filtering your friends’ tweets into manageable chunks. Still with me? Okay, now what if I told you there was also a way to use these lists to promote your Twitter friends?

Meet Paper.Li, your Twitter followers’ friend! Paper.Li takes a Twitter list as input and then once a day publishes a digital newspaper based on your friends’ best tweets that have links attached. Want an example? Then click HERE. Impressive eh? What is more, when the paper is published Paper.Li automatically sends a tweet to your timeline referencing the digital newspaper AND highlighting a few of the contributors it has chosen. Wow! Automatic Twitter friend promotion! Your followers will love it and re-tweet the link and probably thank you in a tweet as well. Then, as an added bonus, you can always click the link and get a day’s digest of your friends’ tweeted links.

Writing this post has already inspired me to go create some extra lists and newspapers. I guess I’ve got even more promotional work to do now! For the rest of you, head over to Paper.Li and set up an account there. It’s straightforward and very self-explanatory. Then let their website do your Twitter friend marketing for you. Your followers will thank you. They will think you are performing tirelessly on their behalf. Maybe you won’t want to spoil that illusion for them. Or maybe it’s a secret you do want to share. I’ll leave that part up to you.

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This article was first published as a guest post on Molly Greene's blog.

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Author Paul Dorset’s “How to build a brand on Twitter for FREE!”

@RebeccaLacko on Twitter reprinted one of my blog articles in her blog the other day with a nice introduction (Many thanks, Rebecca). The original article can be found HERE, but following is what she wrote:

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I have a feeling I would like Paul Dorset, were we to meet. Well organized, typo-free, and to the point, Dorset writes prolifically, and not just books. His blog Utterances of an Overcrowded Mind offers concise, valuable  posts about the craft of writing, yet for all his laser-focus, the banner image for his headline is a complete departure: a darling child, likely his daughter, next to a Christmas tree. Whimsical, warm, and poignant–and nothing at all to do with his niche. Works for me.

I follow Paul on Twitter (@jcx27), where he appears as a Twitter junkie, posting roughly 50-60 tweets–about writing–PER DAY. Is he feverishly tweeting the hours away on his iPhone, to the consternation of the little girl in the picture? Before any of us forcefully disarm his Twitter app,  he posted about his method on his blog, to help writers build their own brand in the Twitterverse. The following are excerpts from Dorset’s post:

1. Where do I get my material from?

If you’re like most people, there is only so much relevant content you can make up for yourself on a daily basis. This means you’re going to need to get more material from somewhere else. But where? The Internet of course. I use Google alerts. Go to http://google.com/alerts and try setting some up. Use the Alert information that is emailed to you for writing Tweets. Another place is your favorite RSS feeds. You probably read this stuff already so use it and re-tweet it.

2. How often should I tweet?

There are millions and millions of Twitter users on the Internet. Unless you have millions of followers, the chances that a lot of people will see all your tweets and click on links are very small. But don’t be despondent, this can work to your advantage as well.

I have over 50,000 followers on Twitter. What do you think the chances of everyone reading and actioning any single tweet I make are? Actually, the number is very small. Twitter is a bit like a fire hose, you spray water everywhere; it’s not a direct pressure jet of water that is directed specifically at something. What does it mean? Well, actually it means that if I tweet one thing at 8am and then a very similar thing at 9am, there’s a good chance that the tweet will be seen by different people. But, if I only have 10 followers, then they will all most likely see both of my tweets. So, follower numbers are important as a ratio to tweet frequency too.

As a general ratio, for every 10,000 followers you have you can tweet the same thing one time per day. So in my case, I can safely send the same tweet out 5 times a day without worry that people will notice I’m spamming them. But you have to intersperse your tweets with other tweets so that anyone looking through your timeline doesn’t see the repeated pattern. A reasonable timeline that anyone looking back through will be about 20 tweets or so. This means that if I am to repeat a tweet 5 times a day, and I need to create 20 tweets between each repeat, then I should be tweeting about 100 times a day! Now that’s a lot more than I currently tweet. In fact I guess I send out around 50-60 tweets a day. This means I shouldn’t repeat the same tweet more than twice a day.

But the question still remains, how often should I tweet? The simple answer is that the more followers you have and the more you want to build a brand, the more you should tweet – up to a limit of about 6 tweets an hour (above that and it will be impossible to follow you). Tweeting 50 times a day (for me) is a lot of tweeting so I have automated much of the process.

3. How can I automate my Tweets?

There are two tools I want to introduce: Twitterfeed and Twaitter. They differ slightly and they both serve different purposes.

Twitterfeed

In the first step I wrote about building alerts and having them delivered as emails. Well, now it’s time to change those emails to RSS feeds so that you make better use of them. If you go to http://google.com/alerts and edit one of your alerts, you can select ‘Feed’ in the edit box. Save this and then you should see a little RSS button next to the alert. By right-clicking on the RSS feed you can copy its feed address. Do this! Next, go to Twitterfeed.com and set up an account there if you don’t already have one. Create a new feed and then follow the prompts, pasting in the RSS feed address when appropriate (use the advanced settings to determine how often to update Twitter – every 30 mins or so). Then finish off the process and you are now automatically posting new alerts into your Twitter feed (you may need to wait up to an hour for the first feed to kick in). So, onto automating your own Tweets.

Twaitter

Twaitter is a free product that allows you to schedule your own tweets (up to 10 an hour) on a single or recurring basis. The process is very easy so I’m not going to go into details.

Put all your best blog posts on Twaitter. When you’ve built up 30 or 50 blog posts, I’m sure you’ll have a handful of favorites that you’d like others to read again. Post the links in Twaitter and schedule them (recurring). (Note: Link your blog to Twitterfeed to post all freshly published posts. Keep in mind, if you have a WordPress blog like me, there is a built-in tool which does this automatically, after each new post. -RL)

With the combination on Google Alerts, Twitterfeed and Twaitter, you can have most of your tweeting automated and your branding well underway.

If you’ve followed along and actioned all the steps so far, you should now be sending 30+ automated tweets every day to your Twitter feed. Now all you need to do is a little gardening!

With the increased flow of tweets you’re going to get more replies from people. Be prepared to answer them! You’re also going to have to carefully monitor the traffic that’s flowing to your blog. This is the only way to understand which of your tweets are working and which are not. Hopefully you have analytics on your blog and you can see just how many hits you are getting. What time of day do you not get any visitors? When do you get peak traffic? Rearrange tweets to try and smooth things out a little.

Oh, and use exciting headlines for your tweets. There’s a lot more chance of people clicking on them that way. Words like ‘FREE’, ‘advice’, ‘help’, ‘dummies’, etc. will all drive traffic to you. Put yourself in the head of the reader. Which headline would make them want to click your tweet? If I had called this series ‘Building brands on Twitter‘ it wouldn’t have had as much reader power as ‘How to build a brand on Twitter for FREE!‘

It’s not an overnight process. Get the ball rolling, and refine your process to suit your material and unique audience. Do you currently automate? Do you have any advice culled from your experience?

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I Have a Retail Value of $15.94

That’s all it costs to buy a copy of each of my published books in digital format. Scary. The sum total of my retail life for sale is $15.94. Mind you, if 10,000 people buy me that would add up to $159,400. Not too shabby!

The reason I am writing this blog post is to try and understand just what motivates people. It’s obviously not everything to do with the money. If it was then anyone buying one of my books would simply buy them all. Maybe I should increase my book prices to $14.99 each. Would I sell more, or less? Probably a lot less. So that leads me to believe it’s also a lot to do with exposure. I have limited means to get exposure for my books. I’m just going to have to try harder somehow. My 2,000 Facebook friends and 54,000 Twitter followers equates to a very small percentage of the world’s population (in my case 0.001%), and that’s just my potential reach (not including drop-bys to my blog, etc.). When you look at things this way, it’s no wonder that new authors struggle to make a breakthrough in book sales.

So, I’ve decided to make June another crazy marketing month. I don’t know quite how I’m going to do this yet, but I need to somehow get my potential reach numbers higher. I’ve begged and pleaded for book reviews and I’ve had a few (it seems everyone is just so busy nowadays) and I’ve tried to get newspaper interviews. I’ve tried a lot of things, but it’s very tough and it all shows slow progress. I also need to publish more books (but come on, there are only so many hours in the day).

Anyway, there will be more on my marketing effort in the next few days. In the meantime, I am going to shamelessly promote this blog post and provide links to all of my books that are currently on sale at Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Smashwords. The links below all point to Smashwords. Smashwords allows you to read a portion of my books for FREE (usually around 20%). You don’t even need an ereader to read the books – they can be read directly onto your computer! Then, if you like the FREE sample, you can either buy the book on Smashwords, or head over to Amazon or Barnes & Noble to find them there. So, go ahead, knock yourself out. Read a sample of my writing and help me realize my retail worth of $15.94.

PS. If you liked this post or can empathize with it, please re-post, link to it, or retweet it. Thanks!

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Xannu - The Prophecy by Paul Dorset. $0.99 from Smashwords.com

For fans of Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter & The Narnia Chronicles, the 1st in a thrilling epic fantasy series. Would you wake up in a hot sweat if you lived your night’s dreams as a soldier battling un-earthly creatures, witnessing powerful magic and fighting to save your own life on a daily basis? English schoolboy Terry West does. Frequently. And someone wants him dead... *** READ 20% FOR FREE ***

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Xannu - The Healing by Paul Dorset. $3.99 from Smashwords.com

Continuing on from The Prophecy, this book follows the journeys of two groups of travelers who are both trying to heal their charges. Back in England, Terry West is distraught after the loss of his best friend. But as Teern Truthbringer the soldier, Terry is busy battling un-earthly creatures & witnessing powerful magic on a daily basis. But is he prepared for the perilous journey he has to take to heal his charge; the Xannu.   *** READ 20% FOR FREE ***

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Fergus Fedderfeeny's Food Factory by Paul Dorset. $0.99 from Smashwords.com

Farnsworth is worried. Bags of the Food Factory’s vegetables are definitely missing! What will his boss, Fergus Fedderfeeny, say when he finds out? Then there’s the wonderful tasting pies. He doesn’t know how the recipes got changed or if it’s because of the missing vegetables. Armed with a toolbox of hammers & staying well away from The Mangler, Farnsworth is going to solve the mystery.*** READ 20% FOR FREE ***

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Jai and Jasmine's Jeopardous Journey by Paul Dorset. $2.99 from Smashwords.com

Jai hates the stink of rotting vegetables and he’s been thinking about them and the smelly ship ever since he arrived in Gwillville. Maybe the ship is the secret to being reborn and maybe it’s a way to find Farnsworth’s missing father. Jai is convinced he needs to make a jeopardous journey of discovery, but his cousin Jasmine is not so sure it’s such a good idea. *** READ 20% FOR FREE ***

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The 10 Hour Project Manager by Paul Dorset. $5.99 from Smashwords.com

This book gives you the tools to successfully manage the majority of most projects in only 10 hrs a week. It is about the meta-rules associated with projects and the management skills that help you decide what to pay close attention to and what can safely be de-prioritized. You will learn the important things to focus on, because although every project is different the meta-rules are the same. *** READ 20% FOR FREE ***

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How To Write & Self-Publish Your First Novel by Paul Dorset. $0.99 from Smashwords.com

Writing and publishing your first novel is tough. It usually takes a long time. Years for most people. It can be soul destroying too. This ebook is a series of essays solely concerned with improving your writing skills and getting your first novel successfully self-published, and marketed. It is written from thousands of hours of experience and every essay in it is relevant and has a purpose. *** READ 15% FOR FREE ***

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16. Self-Editing Your Novel (Writing for Success)

Well, today unfortunately we have to stop the blog posts from my series on Writing for Success (UPDATE: If you have come here from a link, you can read the first 15 articles by scrolling down the page). The reason? Of course I would like you all to buy the ebook! You feel cheated? I don't believe that. Thousands of you have read the posts so far and the feedback has been great. But, unfortunately the last ten of the twenty-five posts are only going to be available in the ebook.

When can you buy it? In about a week (NOW!!). And it's only going to be $0.99 $3.99. That really is nothing for anyone who takes writing seriously and who wants to write a successful novel. So, I am sure you'll understand my decision...

In the meantime, today there are a lot of goodies for you to look at. Firstly, let's take a look at the full contents of the upcoming ebook: How To Write & Self-Publish Your First Novel -

CONTENTS

1. Don't Start the Story at the Beginning

2. Become a Successful Writer in 2,000 Hours

3. Poems and Short Stories

4. Creating a Good Plot

5. How Long Should a First Novel Be?

6. Writing in the First Person

7. Writing in the Third Person

8. Dialog Versus Narrative – Show Versus Tell

9. Writing Your First Novel: Words & Routine

10. Conflict and Its Importance

11. Plot Pace

12. Creating Believable and Well Rounded Characters

13. Writing Dialog – Or ‘He Said, She Said’

14. Creating a Page Turner

15. Letting the Book 'Cook'

16. Self-Editing Your Novel

17. The Process of Pre-Reads

18. Creating a Fantasy World

19. How to Write a Novel: The End-To-End Process

20. Creating a Writing Environment without Interruptions

21. Reading to Write

22. Encouraging All Would Be Authors

23. The Self-Publishing Process - The COMPLETE Instructions

24. The Relevance of Social Media

25. Marketing Your Book

There's more than enough stuff to keep you occupied here!

For the remainder of your Sunday enjoyment, how about taking a look at some of my most popular posts? I'm sure there's something for everyone here. Have a great Sunday.

1. Dummies guide to publishing an ebook on Amazon Kindle, Barnes & Noble and Smashwords
2. Don't start the story at the beginning (Writing for Success)
3. Amazon Kindle - Reading Books on the iPhone, Android, Blackberry & Droid
4. Become a Successful Writer in 2,000 Hours (Writing for Success)
5. FREE Xannu excerpt...
6. 16,000 Twitter Followers in 90 Days without steroids (Part One)
7. Ebook sales top paperbacks for first time
8. IndieBookBlogger: 5 Star review for Xannu - The Prophecy
9. What is epic fantasy and why do I write it?
10. Who is Lucy Weatherington?

The Complete: How to build a brand on Twitter for FREE!

(Note: This is a consolidated post from 5 previous blog entries that were posted as a series. Minor alterations have been made to this consolidation.)

Twitter can be a little bit daunting when you first start using it. You just type some stuff and off it goes into the Internet for all to see. Wow, I just tweeted my lunch. Wow, I just tweeted my car accident. Wow, I just tweeted my break up with my boyfriend... You know how it goes.

But you get through the first couple of days and you've tweeted twenty things, all totally unrelated, and then you start staring at your screen. Nothing. Just a handful of followers and no one is replying back to you. Well what do you know? Like everything in life, it's all about branding. (If you're interested in building up a lot of Twitter followers read this post).

Why do I need a brand?
I'll state this once and simply: To maximize your following and legitimacy, you need a brand. If you have a large number of followers and a legitimate brand, people will take note of what you tweet and action on it (think: click your links!).

Finding your Twitter brand is a difficult but necessary thing to do to maximize your following. Me? I now write about books and blogging and publishing. That's my brand. When I first started on Twitter my brand was quotes and weird news stories, but that all changed a couple of months ago. The important thing though is to have a brand. That way people know what you're Tweeting about. So just choose a passion, something that you can happily tweet about forever, and then stick to it. Of course, you can send the occasional tweet about something completely different, but for most part stick to your brand.

This article will cover:

1. Where do I get my material from?
2. How often should I tweet?
3. How can I automate my Tweets?
4. What about a blog?
5. How do I pull the whole thing together?

So, let's get started on step 1:

1. Where do I get my material from?

If you're like most people, there is only so much relevant content you can make up for yourself on a daily basis. This means you're going to need to get more material from somewhere else. But where? The Internet of course. But the question still is, how do you get it? I use Google alerts. Go to http://google.com/alerts and try setting some up. To start you can have the results emailed to you. (There are other ways to use Alerts and I shall be covering those in Step 3 - Automating). Use the Alert information that is emailed to you for writing Tweets. Another place is your favorite RSS feeds. You probably read this stuff already so use it and re-tweet it. Your brand is beginning to form.

Experiment. Find out what works for you. Spend a few days tweeting about a topic you like and then refine it slightly until you're happy.

2. How often should I tweet?
There are millions and millions of Twitter users on the Internet and your tweets represent the smallest of a fraction you could ever imagine. Unless you have millions of followers, the chances that a lot of people will see all your tweets and click on links are very small. But don't be despondent, this can work to your advantage as well.

I have over 50,000 followers on Twitter. Think about this. What do you think the chances of everyone reading and actioning any single tweet I make are? Actually, the number is very small. Twitter is a bit like a fire hose, you spray water everywhere; it's not a direct pressure jet of water that is directed specifically at something. And this is an important fact to remember. What does it mean? Well, actually it means that if I tweet one thing at 8am and then a very similar thing at 9am, there's a good chance that the tweet will be seen by different people. But, if I only have 10 followers, then they will all most likely see both of my tweets. So, follower numbers are important as a ratio to tweet frequency too.

As a general ratio, for every 10,000 followers you have you can tweet the same thing one time per day. So in my case, I can safely send the same tweet out 5 times a day without worry that people will notice I'm spamming them. But - and here's the important other factor - you have to intersperse your tweets with other tweets so that anyone looking through your timeline doesn't see the repeated pattern. A reasonable timeline that anyone looking back through will be about 20 tweets or so. Taking my example further, this means that if I am to repeat a tweet 5 times a day and I need to create 20 tweets between each repeat, then I should be tweeting about 100 times a day! Now that's a lot more than I currently tweet. In fact I guess I send out around 50-60 tweets a day. This means I shouldn't repeat the same tweet more than twice a day.

But the question still remains, how often should I tweet? The simple answer is that the more followers you have and the more you want to build a brand, the more you should tweet - up to a limit of about 6 tweets an hour (above that and it will be impossible to follow you). This means you need to build your Twitter following as an urgent task (read this post about how to build 16,000+ followers). Then you can increase your tweet frequency appropriately.

Tweeting 50 times a day (for me) is a lot of tweeting so I have automated much of the process.

3. How can I automate my Tweets?
There are two tools I want to introduce; Twitterfeed and Twaitter. They both are slightly different and they both serve different purposes.

Twitterfeed
In the first step I wrote about building alerts and having them delivered as emails. Well, now it's time to change those emails to RSS feeds so that you make better use of them. If you go to http://google.com/alerts and edit one of your alerts, you can select 'Feed' in the edit box. Save this and then you should see a little RSS button next to the alert. By right-clicking on the RSS feed you can copy its feed address. Do this! Next, go to Twitterfeed.com and set up an account there if you don't already have one. Create a new feed and then follow the prompts, pasting in the RSS feed address when appropriate (use the advanced settings to determine how often to update Twitter - every 30 mins or so). Then finish off the process and you are now automatically posting new alerts into your Twitter feed (you may need to wait up to an hour for the first feed to kick in). So, onto automating your own Tweets.

Twaitter
Twaitter is a free product that allows you to schedule your own tweets (up to 10 an hour) on a single or recurring basis.The process is very easy so I'm not going to go into details (just try it)...

With the combination on Google Alerts, Twitterfeed and Twaitter, you can have most of your tweeting automated and your branding well underway. The only question that remains is "what do I tweet about that will drive traffic to me?" This is the subject of the next step - 'What about a blog?'

4. What about a blog?
Previously I wrote about how to automate your tweets so that you don't have to sit in front of the computer all day long. We have also written about how to convert Google Alerts into Twitter feeds and so all that remains is for you to supply your own stream of relevant content. This is where blogs come in!

I started this blog at the end of February 2011 and it is now April 25th. Only two months have passed and my blog already has over 7,000 page hits and is growing by about 300 hits per day. I hope that within a few months I'll be getting 500+ hits a day. What does this mean to me? Quite simply, every page hit I get is a chance for me to sell something, educate someone, solicit someone, or just pass on a simple message. I also get the opportunity to earn a little money from Google ad sponsoring. The way I figure it, the more people that visit my blog, the better my branding will be and the better my messages will be getting out. Also, Google will rank my blog higher the more interaction I'll have with people, etc. The list is endless.

So, you need to write a blog. And then you need to post at least once a day. Anything. It doesn't really matter to a certain extent. If you build it, they will come. If you link to it, they will come. If you keep on writing, they will come! The point is that without a blog at the center of your branding you are nothing! Your voice is your brand.

Okay, you've built your blog, now what? Simple. Reread the previous step and link your blog to Twitterfeed. It's as simple as that. Every time your blog has something new it will get sent to Twitter (and you can send it to Facebook too). Cool. But wait, it's not over. Remember we also wrote about Twaitter? Well this is where you put all your best blog posts. When you've built up thirty or fifty blog posts, I'm sure you'll have a handful of favorites that you'd like others to read again. Post the links in Twaitter and schedule them (recurring). Your work is nearly done.

5. How do I pull the whole thing together?
If you've followed along and read all the steps so far, you should now be sending 30+ automated tweets every day to your Twitter feed. Now all you need to do is a little gardening!

With the increased flow of tweets you're going to get more replies from people. Be prepared to answer them! You're also going to have to carefully monitor the traffic that's flowing to your blog. This is the only way to understand which of your tweets are working and which are not. Hopefully you have analytics on your blog and you can see (preferably hourly) just how many hits you are getting. Look for peaks and troughs. What time of day do you not get any visitors? When do you get peak traffic? Rearrange tweets to try and smooth things out a little.

Then try new things. Maybe a few video blogs on YouTube, or a series of special blog posts that you can link to again and again (like this one!). Over time, you can reinforce your brand by helping others to discover you and getting them to retweet your posts.

Oh, and that reminds me of one more thing - Use exciting headlines for your tweets. There's a lot more chance of people clicking on them that way. Words like 'FREE', 'advice', 'help', 'dummies', etc. will all drive traffic to you. Put yourself in the head of the reader. Which headline would make them want to click your tweet? If I had called this series 'Building brands on Twitter' it wouldn't have had as much reader power as 'How to build a brand on Twitter for FREE!'

So, remember the steps:

1. Decide what your brand is
2. Find external sources that reinforce your brand
3. Set up automated tweets based on your sources
4. Keep a blog and feed the posts automatically to Twitter
5. Select 'top' blog posts to auto-tweet
6. Monitor and adapt as necessary

It's not an overnight process and there a lot more nuances I could write about. But if you follow everything I've written you'll be well on your way to building your own brand on Twitter for FREE! Good luck...

How to build a brand on Twitter for FREE! (Part 5)

Previously:

Where do I get my material from? (Part 1)

How often should I tweet? (Part 2)

How can I automate my tweets? (Part 3)

What about a blog? (Part 4)

How do I pull the whole thing together?
If you've followed along and read the complete series of posts so far, you should now be sending 30+ automated tweets every day to your Twitter feed. Now all you need to do is a little gardening!

With the increased flow of tweets you're going to get more replies from people. Be prepared to answer them! You're also going to have to carefully monitor the traffic that's flowing to your blog. This is the only way to understand which of your tweets are working and which are not. Hopefully you have analytics on your blog and you can see (hopefully hourly) just how many hits you are getting. Look for peaks and troughs. What time of day do you not get any visitors? When do you get peak traffic? Rearrange tweets to try and even things out a little.

Then try new things. Maybe a few video blogs on YouTube, or a series of special blog posts that you can link to again and again (like this one!). Over time, you can reinforce your brand by helping others to discover you and getting them to retweet your posts.

Oh, and that reminds me of one more thing - Use exciting headlines for your tweets. There's a lot more chance of people clicking on them that way. Words like 'FREE', 'advice', 'help', 'dummies', etc. will all drive traffic to you. Put yourself in the head of the reader. What headline would make them want to click your tweet? If I had called this series 'Building brands on Twitter' it wouldn't have had as much reader power as 'How to build a brand on Twitter for FREE!'

So, remember the steps:

1. Decide what your brand is
2. Find external sources that reinforce your brand
3. Set up automated tweets based on your sources
4. Keep a blog and feed the posts automatically to Twitter
5. Select 'top' blog posts to auto-tweet
6. Monitor and adapt as necessary

It's not an overnight process and there a lot more nuances I could write about. But if you follow everything I've written you'll be well on your way to building your own brand on Twitter for FREE! Good luck...

How to build a brand on Twitter for FREE! (Part 4)

Previously:
Where do I get my material from? (Part 1)
How often should I tweet? (Part 2)
How can I automate my tweets? (Part 3)

What about a blog?
Yesterday I wrote about how to automate your tweets so that you don't have to sit in front of the computer all day long. We have also written about how to convert Google Alerts into Twitter feeds and so all that leaves is for you to supply your own stream of relevant content. This is where blogs come in!

I started this blog at the end of February 2011 and it is now April 22nd. Only two months have passed and my blog already has over 6,000 page hits and is growing by 200-300 per day. I hope that within a few months I'll be getting 500+ hits a day. What does this mean to me? Quite simply, every page hit I get is a chance for me to sell something, educate someone, solicit someone, or just pass on a simple message. I also get the opportunity to earn a little money from Google ad sponsoring. The way I figure it, the more people that visit my blog, the better my branding will be and the better my messages will be getting out. Also, Google will rank my blog higher, the more interaction I'll have with people, etc. The list is endless.

So, you have to write a blog. And then you have to post at least once a day. Anything. It doesn't really matter to a certain extent. If you build it, they will come. If you link to it, they will come. If you keep on writing, they will come! The point is, without a blog at the center of your branding, you are nothing! Your voice is your brand.

Okay, you've built your blog, now what? Simple. Reread yesterday's lesson and link your blog to Twitterfeed. It's as simple as that. Every time your blog has something new it will get sent to Twitter. Cool. But wait, it's not over. Remember we also talked about Twaitter? Well this is where you put all your best blog posts. When you've built up thirty or fifty blog posts, I'm sure you'll have a handful of favorites that you'd like others to read. Post the links in Twaitter and schedule them (recurring). Your work is nearly done.

Tomorrow we'll explain how to pull it all together. Then your branding will be complete!

How to build a brand on Twitter for FREE! (Part 3)

Part 1
Part 2

Today we are onto Part 3 of building your Twitter brand and the topic is automating your Tweets.

How can I automate my Tweets?
There are two tools I am going to introduce today; Twitterfeed and Twaitter. They both are slightly different and they both serve different purposes.

Twitterfeed
In the first part of this series I wrote about building alerts and having them delivered as emails. Well, today it's time to change those emails to RSS feeds so that you can use them. If you go to http://google.com/alerts and edit one of your alerts, you can select 'Feed' in the edit box. Save this and then you should see a little RSS button next to the alert. By right-clicking on the RSS feed you can copy its feed address. Do this! Next, go to Twitterfeed.com and set up an account there if you don't already have one. Create a new feed and then follow the prompts, pasting in the feed address when appropriate (use the advanced settings to determine how often to update Twitter - every 30 mins or so). Then finish off the process and you are now automatically posting new alerts into your Twitter feed (you may need to wait up to an hour for the first feed to kick in). So, onto automating your own Tweets.

Twaitter
Twaitter is a free product that allows you to schedule your own tweets (up to 20 an hour) on a single or recurring basis.The process is very easy so I'm not going to go into details...

With the combination on Google Alerts, Twitterfeed and Twaitter, you can have most of your tweeting automated and your branding well underway. The only question that remains is "what do I tweet about that will drive traffic to me?" This will be the subject of tomorrow's post - 'What about a blog?'

How to build a brand on Twitter for FREE! (Part 2)

Yesterday we started the series on building a brand on Twitter and today we will continue that series with a post discussing how often you should tweet.

How often should I tweet?
There are millions and millions of Twitter users on the Internet and your tweets represent the smallest of a fraction you could ever imagine. Unless you have millions of followers, the chances that a lot of people will see all your tweets and click on links are very small. But don't be despondent, this can work to your advantage as well.

I have over 50,000 followers on Twitter. Think about this. What do you think the chances of everyone reading and actioning any single tweet I make are? Actually, the number is very small. Twitter is a bit like a fire hose, you spray water everywhere; it's not a direct pressure jet of water that is directed specifically at something. And this is an important fact to remember. What does it mean? Well, actually it means that if I tweet one thing at 8am and then a very similar thing at 9am, there's a good chance that the tweet will be seen by different people. But, if I only have 10 followers, then they will all most likely see both of my tweets. So, follower numbers are important as a ratio to tweet frequency too.

As a general ratio, for every 10,000 followers you have you can tweet the same thing one time per day. So in my case, I can safely send the same tweet out 5 times a day without worry that people will notice I'm spamming them. But - and here's the important other factor - you have to intersperse your tweets with other tweets so that anyone looking through your timeline doesn't see the repeated pattern. A reasonable timeline that anyone looking back through will be about 20 tweets or so. Taking my example further, this means that if I am to repeat a tweet 5 times a day and I need to create 20 tweets between each repeat, then I should be tweeting about 100 times a day! Now that's a lot more than I currently tweet. In fact I guess I send out around 50-60 tweets a day. This means I shouldn't repeat the same tweet more than twice a day.

But the question still remains, how often should I tweet? The simple answer is that the more followers you have and the more you want to build a brand, the more you should tweet - up to a limit of about 6 tweets an hour (above that and it will be impossible to follow you). This means you need to build your Twitter following as an urgent task (read this post about how to build 16,000+ followers). Then you can increase your tweet frequency appropriately.

Tweeting 50 times a day (for me) is a lot of tweeting so I have automated much of the process. That will be the  topic of tomorrow's discussion.

How to build a brand on Twitter for FREE! (Part 1)

Twitter can be a little bit daunting when you first start using it. You just type some stuff and off it goes into the Internet for all to see. Wow, I just tweeted my lunch. Wow, I just tweeted my car accident. Wow, I just tweeted my break up with my boyfriend. You know how it goes.

But you get through the first couple of days and you've tweeted twenty things, all totally unrelated, and then you start staring at your screen. Nothing. Just a handful of followers and no one is replying back to you. Well what do you know? Like everything in life, it's all about branding. (If you're interested in building up a lot of Twitter followers read this post).

Why do I need a brand?
I'll state this once and simply: To maximize your following and legitimacy, you need a brand. If you have a large number of followers and a legitimate brand, people will take note of what you tweet and action on it (think: click your links!).

Finding your Twitter brand is a difficult but necessary thing to do to maximize your following. Me? I now write about books and blogging and publishing. That's my brand. When I first started on Twitter my brand was quotes and weird news stories, but I changed all that a couple of months ago. The important thing though is to have a brand. That way people know what you're Tweeting about. So just choose a passion, something that you can happily tweet about forever, and then stick to it. Of course, you can send the occasional tweet about something completely different, but for most part stick to your brand.

This articles is the first in a series that will cover:

1. Where do I get my material from?
2. How often should I tweet?
3. How can I automate my Tweets?
4. What about a blog?
5. How do I pull the whole thing together?

So, let's get started on part 1:

Where do I get my material from?

If you're like most people, there is only so much relevant content you can make up for yourself on a daily basis. This means you're going to need to get more material from somewhere else. But where? The Internet of course. But the question still is, how do I get it? I use Google alerts. Go to http://google.com/alerts and try setting some up. To start you can have the results emailed to you. (There are other ways to use Alerts and I shall be covering that in Part 3 - Automating). Use the Alert information that is emailed to you for writing Tweets. Another place is your favorite RSS feeds. You probably read this stuff already so use it and re-tweet it.

Experiment. Find out what works for you. Spend a few days tweeting about a topic you like and then refine it slightly until you're happy. Tomorrow we'll talk about the next step: 'How often should I Tweet?'

Twitter Celebrities I follow

I am very well established on Twitter. I currently have over 53,000 followers and tweet on a very regular basis. Some people have asked me which celebrities I choose to follow? It's a bit of an odd question really, but as I keep all my twitter follows in lists I thought I would list them all out today - just for the fun of it. I even wrote a few comments next to some of them. Enjoy!

PS. If you want to follow all my celebs just follow THIS list.

@MelissaEGilbert - Melissa Gilbert - Of Little House on the Prairie fame
@KevinSpacey - Kevin Spacey
@weathermark - Mark Coleman - Local Seattle weather reporter
@bworley - Becky Worley - Tech writer and journalist
@KimKardashian - Kim Kardashian
@stevezakuani11 - Steve Zakuani - Seattle Sounders soccer player
@JamesRiley7 - James Riley - Seattle Sounders soccer player
@imogenheap - Imogen Heap - wonderful English indie musician
@SteveMartinToGo - Steve Martin
@Lenfunk7 - Lenny Henry - British comedian
@aplusk - Ashton Kutcher
@jayrosen_nyu - Jay Rosen - uber journalist
@JohnCleese - John Cleese - some funny British guy
@SarahPailinUSA - Sarah Palin - some funny American woman
@AmyatQ13Fox - Amy Allen - Local Seattle weather reporter
@StephenAtHome - Stephen Colbert
@amanda_hocking - Amanda Hocking - Author
@ginatrapani - Gina Trapani - Excellent tech blogger and software developer
@landondonovan - Landon Donovan - LA Galaxy soccer player
@mrskutcher - Demi Moore
@Elizadushku - Eliza Dushku - Actress
@rainnwilson - Rainn Wilson - Of The Office fame - very funny tweeter
@neilhimself - Neil Gaiman - Author
@SenJohnMcCain - John McCain
@ladygaga - Lady Gaga
@BillGates - Bill Gates
@IvankaTrump - Ivanka Trump
@stephenfry - Stephen Fry - Wonderful British comedian
@kirstiealley - Kirstie Alley - Every day is a trip...
@katyperry - Katy Perry
@EvaLongoria - Eva Longoria
@BonnieMcKeee - Bonnie McKee - Singer, songwriter
@scobleizer - Robert Scoble - Tech blogger extraordinaire
@EllenPage - Ellen Page - Actress
@Alyssa_Milano - Alyssa Milano - Actress - amazingly interesting tweeter
@SarahKSilverman - Sarah Silverman
@ConanOBrien - Conan O'Brien
@Ginger_Clark - Ginger Clark - Literary agent
@timoreilly - Tm O'Reilly - CEO, Reilly media
@StephenRCovey - Stephen Covey - 7 Habits guy
@charliesheen - Charlie Sheen - Unemployed actor
@Derek_Haines - Derek Haines - Weird author
@DonaldJTrumpJr - Donald Trump Jr - Son of the Donald
@Joan_Rivers - Joan Rivers

So there you have it. An eclectic yet worryingly interesting list.

You can follow me on twitter too. I am @jcx27 - join my band of 53,000 followers!

16,000 Twitter Followers in 90 Days without steroids (Part Two)

In the last article I wrote about the approach to getting 16,000 Twitter followers. In this article I'm going to cover some of the more detailed approaches and ‘how to do it'.

Step 5: Twitter maintenance - as I mentioned last time, every day you need to perform Twitter maintenance. So what exactly is Twitter maintenance? Well, simply put it's unfollowing all the people who haven't followed you back and following all the people who followed you who you weren't already following (within limits - see below). Then having done that, it's adding some more follows. And on it goes. What's the easiest way to do this? I've tried two different methods and they both have their advantages and disadvantages.

Method 1: The first method is the ‘go through your emails' approach. Hopefully you have turned on email notification for when you get new followers. If you haven't, go ahead and do this now (it's under Settings and Notices). Then set up some kind of filter in your email that sends all email from Twitter to a specific folder. This will make it easier for you to process all the emails you're going to get every day (and it will be a lot!). Every few hours you need to go to your email and open each one and look at its content. The email will be one of two kinds. If it is like below then you are already following the person and there is nothing you need to do to follow them back. If the number of followers they have is less than about 7,000 just delete the email and move on. If the new follow has more than 7,000 follows themselves then keep the email for later processing (discussed later).

If the email you have is similar to the one below then someone has elected to follow you who you are not currently following (see the extra text at the bottom of the email?). If this is the case then click on their Twitter name and you will be taken to their profile page. From here you can click on ‘follow' and follow them back.



But what about spam people that follow you or people who you followed but shouldn't have done? Well this is where the information provided in the email is most useful. It contains the number of followers they have and also how many tweets they've sent out. Generally speaking if they have sent out less than about 5 tweets they are probably a spammer. Also if they are following 1,000 people and only have 20 follows, look closely at the profile. Most other people are probably genuine. If you get a ‘follow email' from someone you have followed and they are a spammer or someone you shouldn't have followed, just click on their Twitter link and ‘unfollow' them. Simple.

Ok, so what about the emails left in your inbox that had 7,000 or more followers? Well these can become your new ‘seed list' (But don't process these until after you've unfollowed orphan follows - see below). Click on their profile, click on ‘followers' and start following some of this user's followers. The chances are that if they already have 7,000 users then a lot of their followers will also follow you. The guidelines I generally use is if the user has between 7,000 and 10,000 follows then I follow up to 2 pages worth of followers, and if they have more than 10,000 then I follow 3 pages worth. Why? Well I want to try and follow users who are more probably online. The ones at the top of the list are the recent follows. Users with more followers generally grow faster than users with less followers and so there's more chance that users with more than 10,000 followers have more recently online follows than those with less. You'll have to find out a method that works for you. Anyway, when you're done making some new follows, delete the email and move to the next. In this way you should be able to build up a stock of people to follow every day. If that doesn't give you enough at first (or you need to supplement) then you can simply right click on a user on your feed, open a new browser tab for that user and use the above guideline to follow from your existing stock. If I use this method I discount any user that has less than 1,000 followers and then if they have between 1,000 and 7,000 followers I just follow their first page (20 users). You get the idea.

Method 2: the second method is to not use notification emails from Twitter at all but instead regularly go to your Twitter profile page and click on ‘followers'. There you can see who you are following back.



Simply click on those people who you wish to follow back. Although this may seem like a simpler method than number 1 (it certainly takes less time), it's not as discerning and as thorough. When you use this method you cannot see how many followers the user has or how many tweets they have sent, you just have to use your own judgment or right click on the user to open up a window to look more closely at them. Also it doesn't give you any idea of the users who have more than 7,000 followers so you'll have to use a different method to decide who to follow.

Ok, so you've maintained your followers, how about those that you previously decided to follow (from yesterday)? As I mentioned in part one of this article, you're going to be following 800-1,000 people a day and only 30%-40% are going to be following you back. You need to purge the others. There is no simple way to do this (yes there are programs that claim to do it automatically, but believe me you need to do it manually or else you'll be unfollowing some people you want to follow even though they don't follow you back - i.e. some celebrities). You just have to bite the bullet and once a day go to your profile, click on ‘following' and skip ahead to page 40 or so (or wherever your follows started that you haven't cleaned up yet). You can tell easily enough, it'll be the last page where everyone isn't following you!



Then page by page, going backwards, unfollow (remove) all those people who aren't following you (they won't have a 'Direct Message' option). This is very boring and can take up to 20-30 minutes. But when you're done with both steps above (follows and followers), you're cleaned up ready for the next day's work.

Don't add any new follows (the people with 7,000 followers or more) until you've done this maintenance!

Ok, enough for today. Part three of the post will cover your brand, earning money, Direct Messagesand linking Twitter to Facebook or your blog.

Enjoy your tweeting!