Archive | November, 2019

Twitter can be one of the best tools in your marketing arsenal when you know how to leverage this social network to your maximum advantage. That’s why I’ve compiled some of the best tips and tricks for building your lists of followers and converting those people into sales. First, we’ll start with the tips which serve as a great review for seasoned users as well as an awesome guide to those new to Twitter. And then we’ll then move on to the more advanced tricks where you can really turn up the volume on your marketing.

Twitter Tips

Have a killer bio. Make it benefit oriented for the reader. Give a clear indication of what they can discover from following you. Add in a touch of humor, show that you’re human, add a bit of intrigue, and target it to the exact person you want to attract. Yes, it’s a tall order for a short bio, so work on it and then don’t be afraid to tweak it as you think of better ways to word what you want to say.

Tweet consistently – as in every day and even several times a day. Use a social media tool to schedule great content and even retweets to be dispersed at the best times throughout the day.

Make your tweets short enough that other people can retweet them, adding a short comment of their own. Generally 250 characters or less is good.

Reposting is cool if your content is great. In fact, it’s not only cool, it’s unfair to followers if you only post it once. What if they missed it?

Respond to everyone. Whether they’re retweeting you, mentioning you or favoriting your tweet, be sure to respond back. Think of it this way: If someone standing next to you at a party said to the group, “You’ve got to hear what this person just said,” and points to you – or if they ask you a question – wouldn’t you respond back? Of course you would. And imagine how they would feel if you just ignored them. Ouch.

Tip your hat often and liberally. When you link to someone’s content or share something from someone else, add an @AccountName mention. People love to get credit for their own stuff, and they should get credit for it, too.

Let everyone see your tweet – unless you don’t want them to. If you place a mention at the beginning of your tweet, only you, the person receiving your tweet and anyone who happens to follow both accounts will see the tweets in their streams. This is useful if you want to keep your exchange private, but not if you want everyone else to see the tweet, too.

Get your Twitter emails down to a manageable amount. Go to Twitter’s email notifications center and you’ll see that Twitter has over 20 different email settings you can turn on or off. Customize these settings to suit you so that you stay in the loop but don’t get overwhelmed.

Don’t try to read every Tweet, because you can’t. And even if you could, it takes too much time. Instead, carefully choose whose tweets you want to read. Then create a Twitter list of just these accounts.

In the beginning, follow a lot of people to maximize the growth of your own followers. Later – if you want – you can use one of the many tools available to weed out those who no longer use Twitter, don’t follow you back, don’t engage, etc.

Twitter Tricks

Whether you’re a new or a seasoned Twitter user, odds are there are at least a few Twitter tricks here you don’t know about yet.

Get every Tweet you ever made. Maybe you want to see what you were doing on March 10th, 2009. Or you want to glean all the great tips you’ve given throughout the years and put them in a book. Whatever your reason, you can get ALL of your tweets since the beginning of Twitter by following the instructions here: help.twitter.com/en/managing-your-account/how-to-download-your-twitter-archive

Use Twitter advanced search to find ANYTHING. Twitter advanced search is a powerful tool for finding tweets on any topic or tweets to or from particular people. Plus you can search geographically, search certain time periods, search for a key term coupled with a URL, search for particular attitudes on a topic and more. Here’s a list of search operators and how to use them: support.twitter.com/articles/71577-using-advanced-search

Use hashtags. A lot. When someone searches for a particular hashtag, your tweet will show up regardless of whether or not they follow you. Tweets with hashtags get more engagement, more new followers and put you more in the spotlight while improving your reputation. Those little hashtags pack a powerful punch.

Like shortcuts? Twitter has a BUNCH of them to save you time. For example, click ‘n’ for new tweet, ‘f’ for favorite, ‘r’ for reply and ‘t’ for retweet. To get the full list, type ‘?’ into Twitter.

Tweet during the work day on Eastern time, Monday through Thursday for the greatest engagement.

If you’re using Twitter for business, schedule it into your day. Be sure to check Twitter once or twice each day to respond to conversations.

Find out what lists you’re on. From your lists page, click on “member of.” You might get some interesting info from seeing the types of lists you’re on, as well as insight into how people perceive you.

Subscribe to lists. You can only subscribe to public lists, not private. Go to the person’s profile, click ‘lists,’ and choose what list you’d like to subscribe to. This is a great way to get info on a particular niche, as well as getting yourself acquainted with players in the field.

Use Favorites your favorite way. Favorites is a versatile tool. You can favorite because you like something, because you want to bookmark something for later or because you want to end a conversation. Some use it as an endorsement, such as when they want to privately back one side of a Twitter debate. Others favorite because they don’t want to spam their followers with a lot of tweets.

Use Favorites to entice someone to follow you. If you follow someone on Twitter and want to express approval for a tweet they sent while making them aware of your own presence, sometimes hitting the favorite button is the way to go.

Find your best followers. Using Social Rank (socialrank.com), you can find out which of your followers are the most engaged, which are the most valuable and which are overall the best. Social Rank looks at things like influence, follower count, content and engagement when making this determination, so you’ve got real info backing the choices and not just your gut instinct. From there you can choose which followers are a priority to build relationships with.

One more thing: Do you think Twitter is just for the young? Think again. The fastest growing demographic on Twitter is the 55-64 year age bracket. In fact, this demographic has grown 79% since 2012. So if you’re marketing to this group, Twitter can reach them.

Another amazing fact: 25% of smartphone owners ages 18-44 say they can’t recall the last time their smartphone wasn’t next to them. In fact, 63% of smartphone owners keep their phone with them for all but an hour of their waking day. This gives you potential access to your prospects at all times of the day, every day of the week.

Bottom line: As with most marketing strategies, your best bet is to ALWAYS get prospects to your squeeze page and onto your list as fast as possible. Social media can be fickle – you may or may not get a particular message to your followers. But once you’ve got them on your list, they’re yours to market to anytime you like.

Standing apart from the crowd of other emails in your prospects’ inbox isn’t easy. There are gimmicky ways to do it – write subject lines that shock, use lots of funny characters in the subject line, use the latest “hot” subject line [for the past year this has been “Hey”] and so forth. But how do you get your recipients to become avid readers of your emails?

Sane Method #1 – Tell stories. There is a marketer who appears in my inbox about once a day. Gmail highlights this email, because Gmail knows I read his emails. Why? Because he entertains me with stories. I know when I click his email I’m going to get swept up into another world. And even if it’s just his world and just for a minute, it’s a great escape to my otherwise sometimes monotonous day. And yes, I buy his products, too.

There’s an added bonus to telling stories besides the fact that your emails get opened and read, and it’s this: Telling stories is fun. Instead of selling, selling and more selling, you’re now entertaining. You can embellish, you can be flamboyant, you can add your own personal touch, you can get creative and you can have a blast doing it.

Suddenly your day is just a little more exciting because every moment you’re watching for the next story to fall into your life. Even a routine trip to the store can become an exciting adventure. The newspaper holds new meaning and the websites you visit are a treasure trove of possible stories you can share.

Sane Method #2 – Be a coach. Think of your readers as your students. Love your subject and stick to your subject. Only build your list with people who want info on your particular subject, then teach them all you can about it. When it comes to recommending products, tell them the good and the bad. Give them lots of detail. Be their coach first and foremost and they will hang on your every word.

This method works especially well if you love your topic. If you find yourself spending hours on the Internet learning about this topic, hitting all the forums and websites, finding the best products and so forth, then this method is for you. Every new site you visit is an adventure because you are continually on the lookout for more information you can share with your students. And selling becomes easy because again, you are simply sharing your knowledge with your students.

The [Not-so] Crazy Method – Hide clues in your emails that lead to prizes. I haven’t yet tried this method but I’ve been tempted. What if every email you send out holds a clue to a valuable prize? Collect all the clues and you find the prize online. There’s little doubt this method will get your emails opened, but will they be read? In the right niche, yes. Imagine doing this in a gaming niche – what a killer technique. The viral effect alone could be huge.

So tell me – is this last method crazy, or a millionaire maker? I don’t know of anyone who’s doing it – yet. But no doubt someone will. And in the right hands, it could be powerful, indeed.

Did you know there are actually 4 types of residual commissions? Let’s explore them…

Automatic recurring commissions – these are likely the ones you’re most familiar with. You promote a membership program and you get paid monthly for as long as that customer retains the membership you sold.

Cookie commissions – when you sell a product, a cookie is placed on that customer’s computer. Then anything else that customer purchases from the seller is linked to you, and you get a commission. But if the cookie is deleted, or if the customer changes computers, then you will no longer receive commissions on their purchases.

Lifetime commissions – this works like a cookie commission, only instead of a cookie the product seller uses the customers email address to track sales. Thus, as long as the email address remains the same, you can receive commissions on all sales from this customer for years.

Second tier commissions – this is when you refer other affiliates to the merchant. Sort of like a multi-level program, you get a small commission for the sales your referral affiliate makes.

Now then: If you make a traditional affiliate sale, you get paid and that’s it.

If you make an monthly membership type of sale, you get paid until the customer cancels which means you usually get paid for several months. Not bad.

But if you promote products with either cookie or lifetime commissions, you can get paid for years on anything else they buy from that vendor in addition to the original sale.

Imagine a product seller with a fleet of 30 or 40 products. You promote just one of their products, and 20 of your customers buy that product. Now over the course of the next few months and years, this product seller promotes other products to these 20 customers, resulting in a further 80 sales over time. Normally you wouldn’t make a dime on these sales, but in this case, you make the full commission on each and every one.

So next month you get unexpected commissions, and the month after that, and five years from now, too.

Nice.

And it’s all because you promoted products with lifetime referrals or cookies.

So where can you find these products?

One method is simply to keep your eyes peeled. Not all selling platforms allow for lifetime referrals, so by looking at those that do, you can find the product sellers who will pay you for every product they sell to your customers, not just the ones you promote.

Next, use a search directory, such as www.affiliatescout.com. When doing your search, choose “lifetime commissions” under “features” without any other search parameters and you’ll find hundreds of results. Go back and narrow your parameters to find the exact programs your audience might be interested in.

Most of all, anytime someone asks you to be their affiliate, ASK if they pay lifetime commissions. Sometimes they’ll have two programs, one in which they only pay commissions on the first product sold, and a second, secret program they reserve for their heavy hitter affiliates in which they do pay lifetime commissions. It never hurts to ask.

Bottom line: If you can make recurring or even lifetime commissions from your promotional efforts, why not go for it? You do the work once, and you get paid over and over again. You can’t beat that.