This one, courtesy of Michael Danielson, aka Essence on the Warrior Forum:
Source URL:
http://www.warriorforum.com/main-intern ... y-how.html----------------------
BACKGROUND:
I just got off the phone with Steve Johnson, architect of DirectNetworker.com (editor note: NOT live just yet)
A few of you are following my "I need a mentor" thread, in which Michael Oksa (who is awesome) is volunteering his usually-$50-an-hour coaching services to help a broke father (me) pay his bills. What I haven't admitted to anyone is that I actually have TWO 'mentors' -- Michael Oksa and Steve Johnson.
Michael Oksa is helping me with selling a product, and the realities behind what it takes to reach people with an idea.
Steve Johnson is recruiting me into Direct Networking, which is basically a massive relationship-building IM-fest at this point. He's got some very cool ideas about how to use everything from Twitter to snail mail to build a network.
So, I asked him about Twitter networking, and he filled my ear for a good hour. I thought 'what the heck, I'll share this with the Warrior Forum.'
So, here goes: Steve Johnson's thoughts on Twitter Marketing, filtered through me.
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Twitter is noisy. It's confusing. Unless you have some decent tools, it loses focus rapidly and becomes useless for people who are trying to build relationships. But people are doing it anyway, and they're making money.
Here's how:
Step 1: Tell a Coherent Story. From your handle to your bio, every element of your Twitter account should tell a coherent story, and it should be a story that applies to your business. If it doesn't contribute cleanly to the story you're trying to tell, change it or eliminate it altogether.
Step 2: Remember that Twitter is a BLOG. A micro-blog, to be sure, but it's a blog. That means that people can and do go back and look at everything you've ever tweeted to check your signal-to-noise ratio and your whackjob factor, just like they do with a normal blog. Keep your signal-to-noise ratio HIGH by keeping side conversations limited to @-messages and only Tweeting about things that are relevant to your field. If necessary, run a 2nd Twitter ID for business. Remember: your Tweets are the most important part of your story! Keep them fully in-line with your bio, skin, and picture.
Step 3: Find people who are in your field, who have significant spheres of influence (read: lots of followers), who are willing to listen to what you might have to say (read: they follow plenty of people). Twellow :: Twitter Directory, Twitter Search, & Twitter Yellow Pages is good for finding people who share your interests.
Step 4: Get to know them! Talk to them, learn about their lives, hook up on Facebook, and let them talk about what they do. People love to talk about what they do. Learn from them, and THEN once you've established a relationship that YOU respect, move into telling them about whatever project, site, or other major thing you're working on.
Step 5: Get their Skype ID, address, phone number, birthday,and everything else you share with your close friends, and draw them into your Inner Circle.
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Of course, you need a final goal to be working towards. For Steve and his Inner Circle, it's Direct Marketing. What will it be for you?
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I'm NOT sure I said all this as elegantly on the phone as Michael gives me credit for, but that's ok - identifying "sounding boards" for your ideas, and then analyzing the responses and how your ideas sound both to others and to yourself AS YOU SAY THEM, is a huge part of this game.
Expect to see a MAJOR WEAPON for the crew, developing at
http://tweetflirt.net that will encompass all these concepts, and many, many more, as well as serve members as a CLASSIC recruiting asset (site will be set up in our own proprietary recruiting network where you CANNOT refer people to a site without BONDING their new site ID to YOUR BUSINESS - I call this my "flirt site farm" concept - aka "proby recruiting" (proby short for probationer) - ie, in SOME cases, it's better to show a person a "training wheels" web site than try to haul their butt straight into the MIT of Direct Networking (SIT? Steve's Institute of Technology?) hehehe Make Sense? Am I speaking JIBBERISH here?
