Tweeting great content is an underrated asset of many tweeters. For more check out 11 reasons why good tweets are important.

How to send good tweets:

Now theres the obvious, like don’t take the “What are you doing?” question literally. But apart from common sense your best chance of improving is by recognising that tweeting other peoples content actually gives you cred. With that in mind here’s how to find good stuff to tweet:

What to tweet?

Tweeting what has already been socially tested is a great way to have success. Here are a few sources I go to find information that is usually pretty ‘hot’.

Alltop.com

Alltop, aka “all the top stories” is a great place to find content relevant to your niche. Once you navigate to your topic they show you top 5 lists for the webs top sources. Skim through and find titles that catch your eye.

If you discover a good source it may be worth your while adding it to your RSS reader.

Stuff To Tweet

Stuff to tweet is similar to alltop but is just one page. These are all sources that are known to be popular on twitter and saves you going to the different sites to find what’s hot. Stuff to tweet also includes videos and pictures.

The downside is that if you are targeting a niche you are unlikely to find relevant content.

Google Alerts

Google alerts isn’t socially tested like the other sources but google vets out most of the smaller stories.

You can enter multiple search terms, just separate them with a comma. Set the type as comprehensive and daily if you are getting it delivered to your email (as-it-happens will blow up your inbox). Or else you can subscribe with your RSS reader.

Digg Search

Digg provides tonnes of socially tested content but to really make the most of it you can use the search. By targeting the right words you can get great content for any niche. You can use the options on the left to show only popular articles. Simply arrange by “Most Dugg”, then show only submissions with more than 100 Diggs.

The best part about the Digg search is that you can subscribe to the results by RSS.

Tweeters

If you find a twitter friend who is always sharing good stuff you can actually subscribe to their tweets as well. If you want to you can add it to your RSS reader or else you can follow their tweets from within your Twitter client. For example I have a column set up in Tweet Deck for influential people/ great tweeters and I always keep an eye out for things to RT.

RSS Feeds

Get yourself an RSS reader and subscribe to the feeds you can. The sources above are great but no doubt you will know of other great sources for your niche. If you subscribe to the influential blogs and news breakers, you’ll have a wealth of great content to tweet. Simply scan your reader in the morning, find the content, then log in to a servie like Tweet Later and schedule your tweets for the rest of the day.

Where do you find good stuff to tweet?

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So although the title seems straightforward I’ll attempt to avoid the obvious:

1. People unfollow boring people

Nuff said

2. People will Follow Friday you

Only when you stand out will people start “#FF”ing you.

3. People will see the FFs of others, look at your great tweets and decide to follow you too

It’s social proof, “so and so says your cool so I’m going to check you out”.

4. People will ReTweet you

If they like what the read they will share too (more social proof).

5. People will see the RT’s of your posts, then check out your other great tweets and decide to follow you

“So and so gets value from you, why wont I?”.

6. People will RT posts that profit you (your site, affiliates etc)

If people are used to RTing your stuff, they will be more likely to RT links to your blog, and also affiliate stuff (if it gives them value, and they don’t think your selling something.. it can be done).

7. If you slip your posts in they’ll be cool by association.

Even the ugliest cheerleader is cooler than you.

8. Losers wont ask you to RT their lame posts

If everything else you tweet is crap, other crap bloggers will have no hesitation in DMing you to ask for a RT.

9. You’ll join the Twitter elite

Or the twitterati or whatever they are calling themselves.

10. You’ll make millions while you sleep

It’s true, just follow the 5 steps, available here and you’ll turn your computer into a cash machine, literally.

11. The African Princes will stop emailing you with inheritance money offers

Coz they know you don’t need the money any more.

The Really Obvious

You’ll make more friends.

Okay, so I feel like this post took a turn for the worse around #8/9..

Any other reasons to share good tweets? How do you find new people to follow?

Read part 2: Top 5 Places To Find Great Stuff To Tweet

Related Posts

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So you may have looked at your twitter count and noticed you just lost a serious chunk of followers, for some people its up to 10%. The natural response is to go back over what you said, start second guessing yourself. Thoughts like “maybe I shouldn’t have tweeted about my erectile disfunction woes” may cross your mind.. Well fear no more, there seems to be some logic behind your follower drop (unless you did tweet about your erectile disfunction, in that case heed the advice of your internal critic).

Seems Twitter has run a spam purge.

What’s that?

You know how sometimes while searching through twitter accounts you’ll see “This Twitter account has been suspended due to strange activity”. It’s actually just a nice way of saying “This is a suspected spammer”, not “They were saying some weird stuff and we got worried”.

The typical process is for the account to be suspended without question for 7 days. After that the account holder can email twitter support and have their account unsuspended if they agree to follow the twitter rules. However if the account holder doesn’t email the account remains suspended. After a while these need to be deleted. This follower drop seems to be Twitter purging these inactive ”strange” accounts.

So yes you may have lost a few followers, but don’t fret. Asides from making your follower ratio look better they weren’t doing much. At least now you wont be spammed by them should the holder decide to revive their suspended accounts.

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If you are looking to promote your website or blog using social media then your at the right place!

To get started all you need is a computer, something to promote and a few friends.

Friends

Friends are powerful in small business and start ups but since we can amplify anyone’s voice online, friends are more influential than ever before. The only challenges is giving people who are willing to support you sufficient leverage for their “small” voices.

Viral traffic from a base of 200 friends can be crazy.

Clout

Those with clout are the ones who influence. Finding people with clout within your niche is an essential step in formulating your social media plan, because ultimately you want to influence them to spread your message. If you can influence the influentials your job will be much easier.

How To Find Your Clout:

Find popular blogs within your niche.

• Found the most influential blogs using blogcatalog, Alltop, Delicious, Technorati and Ask. More on this in a post to be written.

Find twitterers with large followings within your niche.

• Use wefollow to search for tweeters within you niche, rank them by “Most Influential”.
• Use Twitter Karma to arrange you followers by follow count (weed out some spammers while your at it..). The ones with high follower counts (and lower following counts) are likely to have clout.

With Them Over

It is essential you win these guys over. A long term strategy is far better than pestering them and becoming another spammer.

The key is to get noticed by them first. An easy example online is to do them a favour. For example if they are a blogger, comment on their posts, if they are a tweeter, ReTweet their messages (especially links to their own content/self promotion) etc,

Then approach them about your product. But be prepared.

What To Prepare

• You need your freebie/giveaway (high perceived value).
• An easy to tell story/point of interest or discussion.
• A system that will leverage each person’s voice.

Freebies

You need to find a freebie or something to give away that actually has high perceived value for the customer. This can be relatively low cost (or even free) for you.

Ideas:

• Give your product away – This is the best as it means customers actually get to interact with what you’re selling, it wins them over and they are more likely to spread the word. This wouldn’t be an effective strategy if you were selling houses..
• Free eBook – Overdone but still effective if well targeted/of interest to your niche
• Webinar – Same as eBook must have valuable content
• Invites – To your new service website, early access to the 2.0 release etc. Very effective for getting people to pass on and spread the word. Invite your influentials and give them another 10 to give to their readers. Much like the Google Wave release.
• Money – Will always draw a crowd, but gets expensive.. and it’s a pretty “cheap” marketing strategy.
• Your Time – If people value it as much as you do this can be a winner
• Physical Stuff – A “Limited Edition” branded t-shirt, pen.. It might cost more than an email, but someone with clout wearing your shirt is priceless.

A Great Story

If your story is hard to tell or boring it wont spread. Having a story that will stick is powerful in getting your story to spread. And ideally your story will make you look good.

For more on what makes ideas stick have a read of this excerpt from “Made To Stick” by Chip and Dan Heath.

You want to have a memorable story, or point of interest about your product/business before you approach those with clout.

Leverage Their Voice

Initially our voice would only go as far as it was audible, then came cave drawings, anyone who came into that cave would benefit from our work. Next was twitter, ok so there was a few developments in the middle.. but with Twitter we can send one 140 character message, @aplusk (Ashton Kutcher) can ReTweet us and 4million people benefit. Technology has changed how loud one man’s voice can be. And when marketing online we can selectively amplify our positive customer feedback.

Find Your Customers

Find out where the customers are online and what they are looking for. Focus especially on social networks, what will they be reading socially online, what will they share? Will it be YouTube. Develop your campaign that around these social mediums.

Interact with your customers and leverage their voices (the ones that like you). Set up a blog and share their stories, tweet their exploits, do a video on them/promote their videos on your site, use testimonials etc the list goes on. But the key thing is to get them interacting with you.

Competitions are a great place to start.

A Great Competition

Get creative. A competition should be related to your niche in some way, empower people to take part and reward everyone for their involvement.

Launch the competition through your existing friend networks, with databases of existing customers and with your newly acquired influential friends.

Essentials:

• Have a good prize (the better the more response)
• Have more than one prize. People don’t like entering if there’s only a 1 in a million chance. The more people you can reward the better. Can you reward everyone? An eBook, an invite, the VIP section?
• Get everyone participating, not just entrants. Getting people to vote is one way to increase involvement from readers.
• Get everyone promotiong. Give entrants all the “vote for me” tools they need. Prewritten tweets, Facebook updates, Emdedable banners/buttons, and emails are all good.
• Make it fun, and then promote the winner

Close well

Lots of competitions are big and exciting but once the hype of the competition is over, it’s forgotten. Think of a way to extend the life of you competition beyond prizegiving. Think about “The Best Job In The World” competition, where Ben has been blogging about his experiences as the winner.

The End

Phew! Longest post ever. So much to say and yet still so much unsaid!

This is  far from complete guide, but it is one that works.

If you have any pointers or ideas leave a comment. Would love to hear your approach.

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If you are using twitter to promote any product, whether its a business, your blog, or maybe yourself, you need to be thinking about how to generate followers targeted to your niche. Now you have two options, the free option and the paid option. I started with the free option and then moved to the paid option. Below I will give you thorough instructions on how to generate a mass twitter following for free, and quick simple instructions on how to pay for it.

The Free Way

You know what they, say you’ve got to spend money to make money. Not always true, and to prove it, here’s the free way to grow your twitter following.

People Follow Back

Based on my experience about 10-30% of people will follow you back either automatically or by choice. The more valuable your tweets are to them the more likely they will follow you back. All you need to do is find people who may be interested in what you tweet about, but how do you know who to follow?

Follow Based On Keywords

Following users based on what they say will help you target a specific niche. Simply find people who are talking about what you are sharing valuable information about.

Search.Twitter.com

Using this website you can see what people are saying in real time and search the results. Basically you can search keywords that are relevant to your niche and follow those with tweets that are interesting. This is a great way to follow targeted people, but you need to have a lot of spare time, and be willing to get carpal tunnel. Check out how to cut through the spam in twitter search.

Twollow.com

Twollow will automatically follow users based on keywords. All you need to do is set up a few keywords and it will automatically follow users for you while you focus on more important things. The only problem is it’ll only follow about 50-100 users a day. At a follow back rate of 20% it would take more than 2 years to get 10,000 followers. You need something else.

Follow Based On Followers

Following based on followers is another way to get targeted followers. If you are a golf instructor chances are people that follow other golf instructors on twitter will be interested in you too (and you’ll be interested in them). You can either find people on twellow.com or wefollow.com then manually follow each of their followers or use..

FlashTweet.com

With Flash Tweet you can enter a certain user and automatically follow their followers. Simple enter your twitter details and flashtweet will log you in and give you the option to search a users followers. Once you have completed the search you will see a list of about 100 users, simple select all and follow. Rinse and repeat until you have followed your daily limit.

Flashtweet also gives you the option to search by keywords. This is a new feature and can be used when you start to feel the carpal tunnel creeping in after a few hours on twitter.search.com.

Follow Based On Profile

Following users based on their profile can be a good way of connecting with tweeters who feel strongly about a certain topic. Our bio generally contains the stuff we are really interested in. This is the most painstaking process but may just produce the best results.

Twellow.com And Wefollow.com

These sites let you type in search terms based on users profiles and categories. If you are targeting golfers simply search that variable and a list of names will come up. Choose the ones you like and follow away. Twellow is the easier option as it lets you sign in to the site and follow with just one click, while Wefollow looks nicer it just redirects you to their twitter page, making it two clicks to follow each tweeter.

Auto Unfollow

Once you start following a few users you will notice two things. 1, not every one follows you back. 2, twitter limits your following to followers ratio. This means you need to cull the people you have followed who aren’t following you back before you can follow more users.

Twitter Karma

To unfollow those who haven’t followed you back yet simply log into Twitter Karma every few days and show only those your following, then check all and bulk unfollow and it does the rest for you. A fairly simple process but when you need to repeat it every few days it does get quite tiresome.

Auto Follow Back

Its good etiquette to follow back tweeters who follow you. However due to the increasing amount of spam following everyone back has its problems. So you can either go through your new followers list every few days and choose the people you want to follow or you can auto followback and then unfollow people who make a mess of your twitter stream or DMs. I recommend the later and to do it I use..

Tweet Later

Sign up to Tweet Later, register your twitter account (you can have as many as you want) and then check the auto follow box and it does the rest. There are dozens of other services that will automatically follow back for your, but the reason I use Tweet Later is that it gives you many other options such as Auto Unfollow, Auto Dm’s, track keywords and that’s just the free version. Check it out at tweetlater.com.

This will get you there… eventually. Think about how long it takes when you have just one account, now try with 2 or 3! So when crippling wrist cramp just isn’t an option check out…

The $55 Way

For those who actually have other things they want to do, there is a way to build a twitter following of over 10,000 without really doing any work, but obviously you ain’t going to get it free. But if you can earn money with time spent elsewhere then its a no brainer. Buy some software and set it on auto then watch as your twitter following increases daily.

Tweet Adder

I have tried a few paid tools to grow my twitter following but Tweet Adder has to be the best. It has so many more options than it’s competitors, and runs without a glitch every time. Once you set the parameters it builds a list and targets these people automatically.

It will also schedule tweets and send bulk DM’s for you. It runs on Mac or PC and in my opinion is the only way to go when growing your twitter following.

For more information and to get your Free Demo checkout www.tweetadder.com

To get the most out of Tweet Adder or another auto follower software such as Twitter Snipe and others, check out how to cut through twitter spam and get targeted results in twitter search. It will help with getting a really well targeted list of followers.

All the best!

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Google Your Email

You should already know not to post your email in any comment, on any forum, or have it as a part of any contact page. If you really need to submit your email in a public place you should set up a disposable account that can be discarded once overloaded with spam. See Fake Address – Why Everyone Should Have At Least One.

If you can find your email on google so can spammers. So google your email and find the places yours is exposed then remove them. It may take a few days or weeks for google to pick up the changes but once its done you’ll be in the clear.

Don’t Tweet Your Email

If you want to share your email with someone make sure it’s via DM not @ messages. Spammers have caught on that they can use search.twitter.com to find emails. Although twitter has taken a step in the right direction by blocking email results from searches such as “@gmail.com” it’s still easy to find thousands of emails with twitter search. Have a look at this search to see how many people are tweeting their emails every few minutes.

Here’s to a clean inbox.

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I know your auto DMs are probably great but there are many who didn’t get the memo. It doesn’t take long to get sick of auto DMs. I want my direct messages to actually be messages rather than needing to trawl through dozens of “friendly” sales messages. No, I wont buy into your MLM scam!

Good news! Although there are many services that will provide you with and Auto DM there are two that make up nearly 90% of DMs sent, and you can opt-out of them both! This means your twitter account will never receive Auto DMs from these two services.

Tweet Later

TweetLater is great service but too many muppets have caught on. If you want a service that can schedule your tweets and gives you better control I recommend you check it out. However if you want to opt out of the DM’s that get sent from tweetlater, here’s how:

1) Follow @OptMeOut on twitter, they’ll follow back within the hour.

2) Once they follow you back, send them a DM (with anything in it).

3) You’ll will receive an opt-out confirmation DM.

4) You have opted out! You can now unfollow OptMeOut.

If you ever change your mind about opting out just send a message to the Help Desk asking to be removed from the opt-out list.

Social Too

Social Too is a tool for Auto DMs, follows and unfollows. Like Tweetlater they also give you the opportunity to opt out of their auto DMs. 2 simple steps:

1) Sign up for Social Too

2) Tick the box below in the Preferences tab.

Done.

Congrats, you have now opted out! Expect to receive at least 90% less Auto DMs.

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The Digg Bar

If you’ve used digg you will be familiar with the digg bar. It appears at the top of any page you click through to from Digg.com and scrolls with the page. The great thing about the bar is that users can instantly vote for your page without needing to find a digg badge or copying the URL.

Digg users are familiar with the bar and new users will notice the bar and may even consider joining digg. This is good for you because now more of your followers will be on digg and you will get more diggs the next time you tweet a link.

Shortening With Digg

Using the digg shortener is easy. Simply add the Digg Bar Bookmarklet and you will be able to shorten with digg. Once you have shortened it you can click the twitter icon in the digg bar and submit to twitter. From here you can either tweet the link or copy it and schedule a tweet for later.

When your followers click your link they will now see the digg bar placed prominently at the top of your page.

Other Social Sites

There are many other social bookmarking sites and this trick works on them all. The best option is to choose a site that your posts will get popular on and that your followers are using. No point posting digg links to a bunch of reddit users.

If your chosen site doesn’t have a URL shortener just use another service and shrink the link to your page on that site. Also remember that if the other site doesn’t have a bar, the reader will need to click again to get to your site (may not be a big deal, but you might find you’re getting less click-throughs to your actual page).

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A lot of people are asking the question how to get more traffic to your blog. And a lot of people are giving the same answers, “build up all traffic streams” “target keywords” “comment on blogs” etc. This works well for the established blogger but it’s a long and painful road for the new guy. Good thing the game is changing. There are now easier ways to compete with the big players.

The Shortcut

Normally traffic is built up by compounding returns. Each traffic source adds on the previous. Once you target enough keywords and have enough backlinks your site will build up significant traffic. The only problem is it all takes work, and the more competitive your topic the harder it is to get traffic. This means that for weeks or even months you may not get beyond 30 hits a day. I have one site that is nearly 2 months old and is only getting 10-20 visitors a day outside of Twitter. Including Twitter it gets around 400 a day.

How Does It Work

Social sites give the small guy a mouth. No longer does it depend on your SEO experience or your established domain names, now you can get quality traffic just by producing quality content. With social sites once you write a quality post (with a catchy title, see How To Write Article Titles For Traffic) you will naturally generate traffic even if it’s your first post ever.

There are many social sites you can use to build social traffic but I’m going to focus on Twitter.

How To Leverage Twitter

Using Twitter to get jump start your traffic still requires a little bit of effort but you will see quick results even if you are in a competitive industry. Here’s how:

1) Set up a Twitter account (best if the name is related to your blog).

2) Add followers who are interested in your niche.

Either find them through search.twitter.com or follow those who follow of other tweeters in your niche. Read 3 Ways To Get Target Followers (For Free) or use Twitter Snipe to do it automatically.

3) Add followers who are on other social sites (digg, stumble upon, reddit etc). Find them with search.twitter.com.

4) Tweet about your new posts.

5) After a few days tweet to remind people and ask them to retweet and submit to social sites.

You will get visitors to your site straight away (the more targeted Twitter followers the better). The traffic from the following retweets/bookmarks is also very powerful. For example I made the Digg front page a few weeks ago and had nearly 2000 views in about 15 minutes (resulting in server crash.. make sure your hosting is prepared). For more on social bookmarking see Social Bookmarking 101 and Getting Popular on Social Bookmarking Sites.

Long Term

By following this strategy and building your Twitter following you will see a constant growth in your traffic. As a bonus you will be improving your search engine ranking as your site naturally builds up backlinks. Remember to target keywords along the way as eventually you’ll have substantial search engine traffic to support your social traffic.

All the best!

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Twitter Affiliate Cash is a product that claims to help you use your twitter account to generate more followers and turn those followers into affiliate cash-flow. I’m not a big fan of anything that makes outrageous claims so you can understand I’d be sceptical. However I was looking to make money out of my twitter account, the right way, so I was interested.

With any online offer like Twitter Affiliate Cash I am sure to check out their guarantee before purchasing. Twitter Affiliate Cash has a 60 day 100% satisfaction money back guarantee with clickbank. So if you have problems you can just email clickbank and they arrange a refund.

Once I checked this out I decided that the worst case scenario was if the program sucked and I had to get my money back, while still hopefully being a little bit twiser (twitter wiser). As you can tell I am a raging skeptic of all internet marketing!

Gladly I was pleasantly surprised with Twitter Affiliate Cash.

The Twitter Affiliate Cash Package

The whole system includes 18 videos (plus one bonus.. shhh) which each bring something new. The videos are split up into 4 main categories.

1. Introduction

A great overview of the system and what you need to do to make it work (how it works, building trust etc).

2. Building Followers

A step by step demonstration on how to use different sites together to build a targeted twitter following on autopilot.

3. Building Relationships

Explains the importance of building trust and how to do it.

Then follows up with a few applications that help you to share quality information automatically and communicate easily with your followers. A lot of great automation tips.

4. Making Money

How to automate the money making process and track and improve your results. How to spread the same system to other social networking sites to increase your income.

My Opinion

Twitter Affiliate Cash is a great program to set your twitter on autopilot for building followers and turning your followers into cashflow. However there are two points you must understand:

1) Twitter is a social tool so to be successful you need to be a social. You can set your twitter on autopilot but to succeed you still need to interact with people on twitter and share information. Basically use your twitter like normal on top of autopilot.

2) I know better websites than Bill sends you too. I guess Bill just never knew about them or else he would have shared. For those who buy the program through my site I’ll send you a simple 3 page ebook that compliments the Twitter Affiliate Cash system. It includes how-to’s and links to the best resources that will help automate your twitter cashflow.

Simply purchase the program then fill out the contact form including your order number and I will send you the ebook.

Click here to purchase Twitter Affiliate Cash

Fill Out For Your Free eBook

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