VIDEO: How I got 900+ followers on Twitter with 3 hours of work...

[nick1123]

Hi all - I just made a quick video about how I was able to get 900 followers on twitter with about 3 hours work.

I must mention that getting followers on twitter is actually easy; it's keeping them that is hard.

To keep them you you must tweet about quality stuff on an ongoing basis. This part takes effort.

YouTube - How To Dramatically Increase Your...

Links in the video:

The Twitter Numbers Game
The Twitter Numbers Game

Twitter Following and Update Limits
Twitter Support

[jayden.fellze]

This is really a nice and helpful video. yeah, you are right getting followers is really quite easy but maintaining them is quite of a challenge. I have trying to get followers up until 2000, and i am still working it out. To be able to maintain followers, the tweets hould always be informative and reliable. Thanks for the video.

[Andyhenry]

Surely there's a bigger picture:

WHY do you want 'followers' on Twitter in the first place?

It's hardly the most effective marketing method and it's much easier to build a targeted list in other ways, so why focus on doing this?

[maggytyger]

There are many easier ways of marketing. However social marketing is growing leaps and bounds. This is where you can meet new people and build rapport then you can bring those people back to your site or blog. The ones that you build rapport with will trust and follow you in whatever you do. They are the ones who will build a solid foundation behind you and will stick with you all the way!

[Andyhenry]

Originally Posted by maggytyger

There are many easier ways of marketing. However social marketing is growing leaps and bounds. This is where you can meet new people and build rapport then you can bring those people back to your site or blog. The one sthat you build rapport with will trust and follow you in whatever you do. They are the ones who will build a solid foundation behind you and will stick with you all the way!

That sounds like a sound-bite....

What's YOUR experience.

I've been using Twitter for a while now and have a fair number of followers and have my own experience of where the benefits are - but I see a LOT of people talking about it in ways which sounds very much like a lot of other IM stuff - sounds nice but they never actually had that experience or result, but they very much would like to think that's what will happen as it justifies the time they're wasting on it.

People can talk up anything and when they're trying to sound clever and show off their fancy marketing knowledge, it's easy to pick on new things like this - but in reality there are more people talking about the benefits than getting them.

It's just a matter of clearing up what's speculation vs what's fact/experience.

Andy

[nick1123]

Originally Posted by Andyhenry

Surely there's a bigger picture:

WHY do you want 'followers' on Twitter in the first place?

It's hardly the most effective marketing method and it's much easier to build a targeted list in other ways, so why focus on doing this?

Andy, this is a great question.

Twitter is a great way to share ideas and broadcast messages. It's a little like email marketing, the more people following you (that are interested in your niche) the better.

As long as you tweet about worthwhile things I think it can be a very effective marketing tool.

I recently needed reviewers for a new traffic guide I wrote and decided to ask for volunteers via twitter.

The tweet looked like this:
I need 5 people who can review my new traffic guide, if you're interested then email me nickstraffictricks@gmail.com

Within minutes I had people emailing me asking if they could review my ebook. Pretty nice.

You can use twitter to build traffic to your blog by tweeting about worthwhile content you have posted. Once at your blog you can have them signup to your list.

Twitter can help you build your list.

Twitter is a great marketing tool, but it's different from email marketing and other tools. The rules are different and so you and your strategy must be different.

[Dana_W]

Well, I make my living off Twitter so you know MY take on this - the more followers that I've gotten, the more press release clients that I find, and the more money I make. I have two press releases that I'm writing today and one I'm sending out, and this is all from clients that I found on Twitter.
I personally do not think Twitter is a great place to promote affiliate products - but when I promote my own stuff on Twitter I have done well with it. Sean McAlister & I partnered up on a book called Overnight Guru and when I tweeted about it several times a day (making sure that I tweeted other stuff as well) it sold several copies a day. That's not a fortune, but it's additional income and exposure and people on my list.

I see Jason Moffatt on here talking about making thousands a month from Twitter, and I've talked to a lot of other people who sell their products and services on Twitter. So it's not just theory; if you network properly using Twitter, you can make a lot of money.

[Simon74]

Thanks for the video very interesting .

Simon

[nick1123]

Originally Posted by Dana_W

Well, I make my living off Twitter so you know MY take on this - the more followers that I've gotten, the more press release clients that I find, and the more money I make. I have two press releases that I'm writing today and one I'm sending out, and this is all from clients that I found on Twitter.

Thanks for the insight Dana!

I am going to try to promote my own products via twitter soon.

For me it has been a decent way to get traffic.

[Andyhenry]

Originally Posted by Dana_W

I see Jason Moffatt on here talking about making thousands a month from Twitter, and I've talked to a lot of other people who sell their products and services on Twitter. So it's not just theory; if you network properly using Twitter, you can make a lot of money.

That's partly because he's positioned himself as an IM expert and wants to be seen talking about the stuff the crowd is wondering about.

In reality you can make money using any communication system like this because there are just so many ways to do it.

I could say that one recent SEO client I got from Twitter that earned me $10k means I could run around saying how you can earn $10k in 1 hour on Twitter, and although I could argue that it's true - it would be nothing more than trying to sensationalize a system rather than saying anything about how others can make money.

Making money using Twitter is as easy as most other ways, but there are other benefits from this type of social system which you can easily miss if you're just interested because someone told you that you could sell stuff by following lots of people and then pushing sales messages to anyone who follows you back.

[Jay Moreno]

@nick1123

thanks ive been meaning to start using twitter, just with everything else i have going on not had chance - but watched your video and signed up...

actually i had signed up last June just hadnt used it...

just added you and some other people too!

[Dana_W]

If I'd only ever gotten one client from Twitter I certainly wouldn't promote it as a great way to network and market one's services, even if I made thousands off that client - but I now am at the point where I get several new clients a week.

I also get a lot of personal benefits from Twitter - I've made friends, I've gotten solutions to non-IM things, I've had people help me figure out my son's math problems - so I am certainly not saying Twitter is ONLY good for business - it's good for a lot of things.

[P1R4T3]

Nice - however is 900 followers really worth 3 hours of your time?

If the followers you retend are qualitative prospects then it's all good - besides you can outsource this work or better yet get a friendadder.

[nick1123]

Originally Posted by P1R4T3

Nice - however is 900 followers really worth 3 hours of your time?

If the followers you retend are qualitative prospects then it's all good - besides you can outsource this work or better yet get a friendadder.

So I try to find people in my same niche and try to get their followers to follow me. I am hoping that many of these turn into quality followers but time will tell.

Is it worth 3 hours? I dunno yet but I intend to find out.

[mandyg33]

I'll watch your video later... and let you know my thoughts

[mandyg33]

Originally Posted by Andyhenry

Surely there's a bigger picture:

WHY do you want 'followers' on Twitter in the first place?

It's hardly the most effective marketing method and it's much easier to build a targeted list in other ways, so why focus on doing this?

The more people you have following you the greater access you have to influence people... kind of like having a big email list... the money is in the list!

[ObsidianKnight]

I was skeptical of twitter at first. I too thought, "how the heck am I going to get followers".

If know one knows you, then you likely don't. But if you follow people, and they follow you back, then post quality tweets, your base will start to grow. in one day I went from 0 to 1000 followers. I still have 1147 presently on the account in question. I started it less then a week ago. I use the account for a specific niche, and have already gotten considerable traffic to my site it promotes, as well as networked with writers, webmasters, and other like minded people.

I get a couple of customer questions every day. Building a rapport with those who are following this niche and site is worth it to post a handful of tweets a day.

[Brad Fisher]

The video seems pretty vague. You talk of going from 50 plus followers to over 900.
I don't seem to have drawn any conclusion as to whether your method of building a list, or followers, probably because you did not really share the behind the scenes (what you spent 3 hours doing that led to 939).

[jbode]

You can actually automate twitter and produce a viral effect of getting followers, it involves using tweetlater.com and a few other services. I'm actually working on a case study right now. As of my current results I have about 300 followers (growing daily) after about 5 days for about 10 minutes worth of work actively following people that may be interested in what I am offering.

consider using tweetlater's auto-follow feature it will give you a good start at getting followers

[nick1123]

Originally Posted by Brad Fisher

The video seems pretty vague. You talk of going from 50 plus followers to over 900.
I don't seem to have drawn any conclusion as to whether your method of building a list, or followers, probably because you did not really share the behind the scenes (what you spent 3 hours doing that led to 939).

All I did is go to other people on twitter in my same niche and follow their followers. Following 1000+ people took 3 hours. No magic here.

[paul nicholls]

Ive been using twitter for a while now and ive finally worked out how to use it to funnel lots of traffic

Im using a twitter add on called twit clicks and i save a tracking link to each one of my
twitter profiles and i use a different profile headline so i can see which profile gets the most clicks

once i determine the best headline that gets the most click throughs i use more of the same text in my other profiles

i funnel traffic to a video squeeze page to my opt in

there is no limit to the amount of traffic that you can send from twitter and all of the traffic will be targeted because of the keywords that i search for using twellow

i keep hearing people saying about how many followers they have. Having lots of followers isnt the most important part. Its being able to generate traffic from twitter to your squeeze page, thats where you will start to benefit

yes you can get results from tweets with the odd affiliate link but generally your not going to get any guaranteed results but if you channel people to your opt in page then thats how you leverage twitter effectively

hope this helps

[nick1123]

@dps - Thanks for a great analogy.

I am encouraged that other people are having some success with twitter.

[FrankRumbauskas]

Dunno about everyone else but I quite prefer Twitter for what it was intended - following only my friends (i.e., real friends) and using it to communicate with them and keep each other updated on goings-on, etc.

If I followed 1,000s of people, I'd never even see my friends' tweets because they'd get lost in all the noise.

I suppose if I ever tried that, I'd create another Twitter profile but I'm not going to ruin an application that I really enjoy for what it was originally intended to do.

[Mo Goulet]

My friends already know what I'm doing. I'm trying to get the rest of the world to hear about it.

Today I sent a direct message to President Obama.

I do not know of any other way I could have done that but then again now I'm sure the Secret Service knows what I'm doing. LOL

I do see the point of communicating with just your friends and I do have a twitter account just for that.

Follow me at Twitter / SmokinTimes

BTW...I just started 2 days ago and I simply follow Dana_W's book.

Great stuff and easy to understand even for us 50 + ers

[Davion Wong]

I watched the video. I must say that it is really cool. Twitter's clickthrough rates are higher than email marketing and certainly is a great tool to communicate. I am actually looking at how I can build up my Twitter account and this video is going to help me a lot. Thanks!

[Jill Carpenter]

This is not about doing 3 hours in one day. That is not effective.

And while I will agree that following your competitors followers can be effective, there are a plethora of other things you need to have in place to make this tactic much more effective.

IE, properly designed background, auto DM set up, website with a decent offer (hint a freebie), autoresponder, etc -.

You need to offer quality to your twitter friends or there is no benefit to them following you. You need to spend more than 3 hours and really look at their posts and reply where you see fit.

Anyone can go and just follow and get followed. But there is a whole big part of the picture you are not getting from this single video.

Twitter has so much more to offer if you take your time and really look at the whole picture.

I actually go back in and check my @ replies and dm's. Yes, I get a lot of dm's that are auto - but if their headline is good enough I will go look at their references.

My point is, don't think you will spend 3 hours with twitter and be done with it. A hundred and 40 characters isn't as quick as you think if you really are going to use twitter to help build a list.

Use common sense and common courtesy.

[Walter Cruickshank]

This is pretty cool. Sorry if this is a stupid question, but can this be done if your blog is on the blogger.com site? I have not used twitter before

[allenjohn]

Hi - 900 followers in 3 hours is totally meaningless. It is what you do with those followers that is the important. Don't get involved in Twitter unless you're serious, but if you are then PM me for a complete Twitter marketing plan. There is definitely money to be made on Twitter but it is a not a free lunch. All the best, Allen

[jacstone193]

Thanks for the info guys.

[Sumit Menon]

This is an awesome video! But, the problem is unfollowing the people who don't follow you back! I mean, once you reach 2,000 you must have at least 1819 followers. So, before following anyone, you must check their following/followers ratio.

[Jason Moffatt]

Originally Posted by Davion Wong

I watched the video. I must say that it is really cool. Twitter's clickthrough rates are higher than email marketing and certainly is a great tool to communicate. I am actually looking at how I can build up my Twitter account and this video is going to help me a lot. Thanks!

I'm going to disagree with this.

One thing Twitter is really cool for is you can actually see the click thru rate of other people's stuff.

How you may ask?

By the view count on TwitPic.

Take any big guru with a big amount of followers... Mike Filsaime, Perry Belcher, Ed Dale, or even Frank Kern and check out how many followers they have. Then, when they post a pic to "Twitpic" check out how many people actually view that picture.

The click thru rate is almost never over 10%.

While Twitter is amazing, I think it's important to keep it in perspective.

Also, Dana mentioned me making a few thousand a month via Twitter. Truth be told, I've been clearing over $10,000 a month on Twitter for the last consecutive 3 months.

Twitter can be downright amazing if you know how to leverage it in your favor.

I know everyone has a different strategy with Twitter, but I've found 95% of what I heard on the topic utter rubbish that pretty much equates to a spammy style that few want to see or hear.

Great Video! Thank you very much. I'd also suggest Twitter Gold, it's a WSO on here.

[Dennis-White]

it's all about leverage... Twitter if definityly a great way to help build up relationships but as going as far to say it gets a better click through rate then email marketing thats just plain wrong... (my opinion only)

I can send out a killer offer to twitter and make a few sales and send the same offer to my email list and receive hundreds of sales...

Not saying you cant make money on twitter because trust you can... I mean guys like J-Mo are proven guys who "know" how to leverage twitter and use it to there advantage, It also takes personality and on twitter if you don't have it well quite frankly spamming links aint gonna help your business...

However, twitter is definitly something that should be in your business module ...

Good video BTW! Keep it up...

[ObsidianKnight]

I personally use Twitter as a tool. A tool that can help me put my posts in from of people who will read them, who might not know I had a website in the first place.

To give an example, since I started my twitter account for my site, I now have 1200 followers, and a few dozen or more people asking legitimate questions related to my niche, in this case pet health and training.

Those people who ask questions have a greater chance of clicking my website, which is where I capture email, and promote products. The majority of all my tweets are geared for new blog post notifications or Q&A. Most people use the @reply option to ask direct questions. Which means those who follow might only see my reply.

As it has only been a week, I have found helpers to help with my content, people who are willing to visit my sites, people who talk to me and ask for "my" advice or help, and to me this builds trust. As long as their interacting with me, I'll continue to do it.

[Sumit Menon]

OMG! I got 150+ twitter notification e-mails today in the inbox!

If you are using this technique turn of the notification emails.

[Alan Petersen]

A lot of old man fist shaking over Twitter a la Jon Stewart...video in that link is pretty funny...

Twitter Frenzy | The Daily Show | Comedy Central

Good video Nick but I agree it's more important on how/what you tweet than just adding followers to tweet ads. Same thing with email lists. If all you do is send sales pitch after sales pitch you probably won't do as well either.

[laurelwachtel]

A nice video! Would agree that it can be quite easy sometimes in getting some followers to your twitter channel but getting them to follow it continuously is a different thing altogether. In getting users to follow my channel continuously I've found that I have to always keep my tweets updated and current with relevant and informative information. Once I discoverd that, I found I had more followers on a daily basis. Nice post!

[Jason Moffatt]

Originally Posted by laurelwachtel

A nice video! Would agree that it can be quite easy sometimes in getting some followers to your twitter channel but getting them to follow it continuously is a different thing altogether.

BINGO! B-I-N-G-O and Bingo was his name-0!

Twitter is way overhyped for so many of you marketing types. When you learn how to get "true followers" is when you learn how to earn serious cash.

[ebooks4u]

I used the same technique to build a list of over 2000 followers... Plus... when people decide to follow me, I send them a (free) brandable Twitter Ebook, called “What Are You Doing?”, allowing them to insert their own Twitter link, and 2 other affiliate links, so they can make money by spreading the Ebook and building their followers at the same time…

All this happens on autopilot via the Socialtoo system… people follow me, they get an automated message, sending them to my squeeze page, once there they enter their details, so I can build a list, they see a one-time-offer before they get to my brandable Ebook, then they distribute the Ebook with their (and my own) Twitter link... and the whole process repeats and repeats... how about that for monetizing your Twitter account? ;-)

[Mark Riddle]

Jason,

I agree there is lots of hype, and I don't see twitter as a internet marketing tool.

Internet marketing in the sense of ebooks aff products etc.

But where I have found it be be extremely effective is with my internet radio station.

Twitter has been a great place to find music people that become our artist for our playlist.

Its a great tool to communicate with them and they use it to talk with their fans, and also send their fans to us.

We Literally get more traffic from twitter than we do from google.

Bands and musicians find us with twellow, and a few other sites that have focus on singer songwiters, bands, music groups, that include our twitter ID (which is @KcCafeRadio ) some of the artist have huge followings and can cause a rush to our stream with just a single tweet.

I don't really know how many people follow the musicians that are being played on our station, but I can guarentee its TONS more than follow us directly.

Twitter is a good match for us because although I do send out our URL most of the time its interaction with our followers and / or giving information that is important and relevent.

They visit our site, listen to the stream and a good number of them bookmark the site and return frequently.

Its kind of like a no cost, no optin, continuity program for your ears LOL

Mark

[Nathan Hangen]

Tons of followers are great, but targeted and devoted followers are even better.

Still, good video. People need to see that Twitter isn't as difficult as it seems and you can use it to make money.

[nick1123]

Originally Posted by ebooks4u

I used the same technique to build a list of over 2000 followers... Plus... when people decide to follow me, I send them a (free) brandable Twitter Ebook, called “What Are You Doing?”, allowing them to insert their own Twitter link, and 2 other affiliate links, so they can make money by spreading the Ebook and building their followers at the same time…

All this happens on autopilot via the Socialtoo system… people follow me, they get an automated message, sending them to my squeeze page, once there they enter their details, so I can build a list, they see a one-time-offer before they get to my brandable Ebook, then they distribute the Ebook with their (and my own) Twitter link... and the whole process repeats and repeats... how about that for monetizing your Twitter account? ;-)

Great way to leverage twitter and spread your ebook virally!

[misterlmno]

i have found a few videos like this. Twitter is a great way for traffic to your site and you may also build up a fair few contacts. Also think of Twitter as a mail list you can build up quickly.

[ObsidianKnight]

Originally Posted by netmalls

Jason,

I agree there is lots of hype, and I don't see twitter as a internet marketing tool.

Internet marketing in the sense of ebooks aff products etc.

Mark

Mark, I am sure that people like Brad Fallon, Matt Callen, Joel Comm, and many other super affiliates would disagree as to how effect Twitter can be. Some of these guys have 10k or more followers. Many of them are long time customers, friends, and new purchases.

They have name recognition and brand power. This means they can get and maintain a large list of followers who are waiting to see what new products they come up with.

People say to e-mail your customer list a couple times a month, with an ad maybe every 4-5 emails. Well with twitter, even if they were to only tweet 10 times a day, and list one add every 50 tweets (or 5 days), there still getting that ad in front of a responsive following, which will click, buy, be trackable, and convert.

To me that makes it a marketing tool.

[Mark Riddle]

ObsidianKnight,

You have illustrated exactly why I don't think its a great internet marketing tool. in the sense of outbound new to the net, no list no big name.

Not a single person you have listed created their empire by twitter.

That's my exact point, People like our own Dana W use twitter to build community, not pitch a product.

Your time will be much better spent setting up articles, PPC and other traffic tools to sell product.

Mark

Originally Posted by ObsidianKnight

Mark, I am sure that people like Brad Fallon, Matt Callen, Joel Comm, and many other super affiliates would disagree as to how effect Twitter can be. Some of these guys have 10k or more followers. Many of them are long time customers, friends, and new purchases.

They have name recognition and brand power. This means they can get and maintain a large list of followers who are waiting to see what new products they come up with.

[ObsidianKnight]

Mark,

I understand they did not create their empire with twitter.

But hey, I did not build my house foundation with a hammer and chisel out of a quarry, but the hammer and chisel are still tools.

I am not disputing whether it is a "great" tool, or even a tool you will use, but it is still a "tool" for marketing.

And, I agree that there are "better" tools, like articles (of which I have just posted a dozen in the last couple days), which I suggest many people use first, but that was not the point either.

[The Wanderer]

Twitter is an incredible tool for a lot of purposes, but just using it to collect random followers or trying to make direct pitches on it is a sad waste of both its powers and your time.

Ways in which it is absolutely revolutionary:

1) integration with cell phone so customers can get instant updates on things like the location of your truck (Tacos And Twitter: In L.A., Kogi Korean BBQ Taco Truck A Social Networking Juggernaut -- Courant.com) or which local restaurant within walking distance of work is least crowded, or break-downs of service (DC metro lines are all on Twitter).

2) Researching just about anything-- either using applications like Twellow to quickly find and connect with people in a particular region or field, or asking a personal question (Howard Rheingold got a speaking gig to cover an extra day in London in about 15 seconds using Twitter) or doing market research before deciding on a product or releasing it.

3) And, of course-- duh-- social networking. I've reconnected with a lot of people using linked-in and facebook, but that tends to mean I know where they're currently working. With Twitter I have some regular interaction with them and feel that we're actually connecting, rather than just giving each other a vague update on what we've been doing.

[Bob Monie]

I know Twitter has been exploding in the IM world for 18 months or so now but today I was shown how big its really getting.

I had 3 of my good friends ask me on seperate occasions, if I use twitter. They know nothing about IM and wanted to know just for social reasons.