Twitter Marketing Without Turning People Off

Building a relationship on twitter is very important. You have to treat them like your family, this is a long term business that you will be building here and you can market to as long as you treat them right. All the best.

I posted this in another thread, but here it is again:

1- To get followers, forget about using auto-follow software because all you will get is other marketers who are more or less like Amway-in-your-face. Instead use automated searches related to your niche, and simply just start responding to questions and statements, like you were opening a conversation.

2- You do NOT need to sell anything. I have yet to put up a link to a clickbank page or any other affiliate offer. Instead, when I do post links in Tweets, I send them to videos or articles that are posted beside one of my sign-up forms or offers. FREE INFORMATION + CHOICE is a key strategy when I use Twitter.

3- Respond and search to a variety of topics, not just your niche. If you were at a party would you ONLY talk about your work? My Tweets are not only about poker, but also sports and team, music and artists, software and computers, Red Bull, Soup, my dogs, my daughter, funny SPAM mail I get... etc. etc. Tweet like you would "talk" at a party.

5- Follow people and tweet them at the same time. The way to get followers is to say hi, and agree with them about something THEY said. (Just like you would at a social event). Do NOT DM them, that is useless on Twitter because DM's are full of SPAM. Eg. I have a search for Full Tilt Poker. So if someone uses that term in a tweet, I can respond by saying something like, "Great job in the tournament. Congrats. Brian have you tried the Midnight Madness tournament?" 9 out of 10 times, they will follow you back and ENGAGE you at the same time.

6- Slow is good. This may sound like a slow process to you but it really isn't. You would be doing the same thing in sales job, or as a business owner. People take you more seriously, and think you are more friendly this way. Once you build a base, others will start following you.

7- QUALITY FOLLOWERS. Forget about following those massive Twitter users (sadly they are mostly IMers). They suck and never respond to you anyway. You are just a Twitter digit to them. The QUALITY FOLLOWERS have less than 200 followers, and the BESTEST BEST have only 50 or so!!!! Yeah. That's because they are using Twitter for its social aspect entirely, and they are NOT marketing. They are also MUCH, MUCH, MUCH more likely to respond to your Tweets because they do not use software and probably still use their original Twitter stream when online. Anybody with 1000's of followers do not watch their own stream anyway, and are trying to PUSH sell to YOU.

8- ReTweet is good for business. Have a saved search as RT@yourusername and make sure you reciprocate at a later time.

9- Do Not spew out numerous Tweets in succession or have an automated D, or automated follow. You will get nixed from many followers who gave you the benefit of the doubt to start.

10- Add your tweets to other platforms like Facebook and Google SideWiki. When I Tweet something that I have an alert set up for and re-post it to another platform, it gets picked up by Google in minutes.

11- Finally, use a third party software to manage different accounts. I have tried many, but Seesmic and Hootsuite are tops IMHO.

With what I have done so far, I can INSTANTLY send anywhere from 50 to 200 viewers to one of my pages with any given Tweet, if I write a Tweet with some humour, charm, conviction or curiosity. You can plug in your own conversion math for sign-ups and eventual sales from there.

I keep reading in this forum that Twitter is a waste of time but to me it has worth it as a communication venue where i have expanded my reach to a new audience. Twitter can work, but only if you are invited to the party because people like you and what you have to say.

IMPORTANT: Do NOT follow everyone that follows you. Most IM accounts will be all over you once their auto-software kicks in. Be selective by following only those users with good value ratios. For example a Twitter user following 1965 others while only having 1308 followers and has only made 28 tweets since he signed up in March is essentially a Spatterer.

A quality Twitter account will have 225 followers, follows 188 and has tweeted 1,485 times over the last 2 years. In fact, such an account is GOLDEN to you.

Good advice here.

Be a good "Twitizen" is a good principle to live by.

Contribute -- and share information and goodies, and share your own info to...

I do send them to squeeze pages for free stuff quite a bit, but also sometimes to free downloads without any optin, and to articles, mine and other people's.

And interact, via questions, retweets, and responses.

Keeping up with what's going on can get challenging of course as your account grows. Though I always check if anyone responded or addressed my by @myname and/or retweeted something -- and respond.

I'm wondering thoug... should I start a new account every time my account grows beyond a couple of thousand, to have one that remains relatively manageable? Does anyone have any ideas on that one?

Thanks.