Thank you to all the people who have e-mailed me and commented on my websites about my first Twitter article. Here is a link to it, if you would like to read it again:
http://patsutton.com/index.php/archives/154

I am so pleased that you all found it so useful. With that in mind I have decided to write a sequel by way of your questions answered, hope you find it just as useful?

Here are some of the questions you have asked me:

1. What do I tweet about?
It is important not to be self serving. If you want people to follow you and to re-tweet you then the magic word is “quality”.
As an example: A gardening company would tweet about the best way to keep your grass nice and green or the easiest way to grow marrows…get the drift? Of-course, don’t forget to include where the tweet has come from. If you have a long website name then shorten it at “bitly.com”. If you are promoting a blog or website, try asking a question or excite them by announcing something new happening; you will find that more people will click through if they are curious.

2. The direct messages from people thanking me for following or just saying hello – should I answer them?
If, like me, you have a number of Twitter accounts then it would be a full time task to answer all your direct messages. I do sift through them and answer ones that are of interest but I am afraid that we are victims of our own actions – a lot of the messages that come into my inbox are automated so it can be a fruitless excersise and will fall on deaf ears I am afraid.

3. Is there a platform where I can manage all my Twitter accounts together?
Yes, there are many…I use Hootsuite which I believe is the best – you can add as many accounts as you want and you can tweet right out of the program to all or any of your accounts with just one press of a button. It also has the facility to feed your Blog or articles automatically to your Twitter stream.

4. Is it OK to ask questions of my followers?
Absolutely yes. I have asked many business related questions and had some really helpful replies. The best one was when I was told by my doctor that I had a slightly under active thyroid. He said that if I started medication I would probably be on it for the rest on my life. He told me that it is possible to treat the illness with natural therapies and change of diet so he advised me to give the natural route a go before resorting to medication.
After fruitless searches on Google I decided to ask my Twitter following on my “WomenSpeakBiz” account. I was in-undated with replies and helpful suggestions, it was overwhelming.

5. How do I know if people are mentioning my Tweets?
You can use “Twitter Search” you will be able to search for your Twitter name. It is not a bad idea to contribute to the conversations occasionally.
If you use TweetLater, (mentioned in my “How to Market On Twitter” blog), you can subscribe to a digest. They will send an e-mail to you every time someone mentions you or re-tweets your tweet.

6. Is there a more targetted or better way to follow people?
Yes there is, it is called Twellow!
Twellow is a directory of public Twitter accounts, with hundreds of categories and search features to help you find people. The beauty of Twellow is that you can search by name, demographic, sex, business, geography, industry or just keyword.
As a Twitter user you are probably already on there but, it is a good idea to register. If you register then you will be able to update your profile and add yourself to categories so that people can find you easily.
I found the geographical search great as I have a social network based in Warwickshire, Uk and I wanted to follow people in the Warwickshire area so that they would, hopefully, follow me! Once they did follow me, my direct thank you message to them would subtly mention my social network and …. Bob’s you’re uncle, my Warwickshire Network would start to populate nicely!

7. What if I want to write more than the 140 character limit?
You have a platform called TwitWall. If you already have a Twitter account, all you need to do is to login to TwitWall using your Twitter userid and password.
Twitwall is a sort of Blogging companion to Twitter. Your submissions can be less formal than a blog but more comprehensive that a Tweet. Every time you write something on TwitWall it will feed onto Twitter complete with a link to your full entry. It is a great way of getting longer messages out quickly.

So why do we use Twitter?
Relationship building, profile building, sharing ideas, marketing, getting answers, staying connected, news, staying up to date, direct messaging, communicating……..
Can you think of more?

Pat Sutton is a professional blogger her website is http://www.patsutton.com

An old man on the point of death summoned his sons around him to give them some parting advice.
He ordered his servants to bring in a faggot of sticks, and said to his eldest son:
“Break it.” The son strained and strained, but with all his efforts was unable to break the Bundle.
The other sons also tried, but none of them was successful. “Untie the faggots,” said the father, “and each of you take a stick”.
When they had done so, he called out to them: “Now, break”, and each stick was easily broken.
“You see my meaning,” said their father.
Union gives strength. aesops

One day a countryman going to the nest of his Goose found there an egg all yellow and glittering. When he took it up it was as heavy as lead and he was going to throw it away, because he thought a trick had been played upon him. But he took it home on second thoughts, and soon found to his delight that it was an egg of pure gold. Every morning the same thing occurred, and he soon became rich by selling his eggs. As he grew rich he grew greedy and thinking to get at once all the gold the Goose could give, he killed it and opened it only to find nothing. Greed oft o’er reaches itself.

I am not going to explain to you how to create an account, I am sure you are capable enough! Once the account is created with a nice profile and picture you can then start to add your “Tweets”.
You are allowed up to 140 characters and it is advisable to keep the tweets as short as possible, I will explain why shortly.
I know a lot of people use Twitter to talk about their latest night out or what they had for dinner but as a business person you can utilize Twitter to market your business.

The first thing to do is to find followers. You do this by using the search facility and searching for keywords that people, who are your target audience, would be using, either in their names or their tweets. As an example, “business”! You will have pages and pages of people talking about business and now you need to scroll down to choose who you want to follow.
Now, it is etiquette on Twitter that if someone follows you, you then follow them, not everyone abides by this rule but a lot do. As I am sure you have worked out by now; you will end up with people following you who are likely to be your target audience.

Be careful not to follow too many people all at once as, you must balance your follower/following ratio. So as not to bring down the wrath of the Twitter police, basically; you can’t follow 50,000 people if only 23 people follow you.
I would suggest that you follow 100 a day for a couple of days then wait until you have upped your following then you can go and follow more.

There is a great little website called, http://huitter.com/ where you can automatically un‐follow people who have not followed you. Don’t do this every day as you need to give people time to notice that you are following them but it is worth doing it about once a week.

OK, now you have a few followers it is time to do some marketing.
Obviously you can announce new items you are selling or services you are offering but the strength of Twitter is the relationships you can build.

So tweet stuff like motivational quotes or links to great blogs or websites that you think will interest your followers. Keep these short and remember to always add your website address at the end of the tweet. If you have a long address you can pop over to Bitly.com and get it shortened. You just enter your web address then hit “shorten” and it will give you a short version that you can use when space is limited.

Now I am going to tell you a secret trick that is so valuable that we need to keep this between you and me alone!

Find someone who is tweeting and is following you and who has a whole load of followers then find their website and take a look at what they do. Then come back to your Twitter account and Tweet an exceptionally wonderful complement about them. With luck they will see your Tweet and will then re‐Tweet it to their whole follower base, they won’t be able to resist it; we all love complements and can’t resist telling people that we have received them!
This is the reason your original tweet needs to be short, to enable people to re-tweet your comments. People do it all the time.

Here are a few tips you can do to simplify Twitter.
You can automate a message thanking people who follow you thus creating those important relationships. You can set this up at TweetLater.
You can go to the Twitter Yellow Pages, Twello, to search for people to follow.
You can download Sesmic Desktop to keep an eye on everything including, tweets, messages and mentions.
You can set up an RSS feed into your tweets so that even when you haven’t the time to tweet, something is going out for you.

The list is endless and I could fill another book but I think we have touched on the most of the important stuff here.

How does Twitter work with “The Image Attraction System”?

When you write a blog you announce it on Twitter, say something like: Great blog about Viral Marketing see http://www.patsutton.com you could shorten this link in Bitly.com if it’s too long.
People will then click through to your website and see you, your great profile and your product. Clever isn’t it?
You can also set up a welcome message through TweetLater directing them to your blog or product page or better still your profile.

Excerpt from “The Image Attraction System” by Pat Sutton

Posted by Tom Kulzer (AWeber CEO)

Your web business probably gets product inquiries from potential customers around the globe. Inquiries come via e-mail and your web site, and you try to send information to each hot prospect as quickly as you can. You know that you can drastically increase the likelihood of making a sale by satisfying each person’s need for information quickly!

But, after you’ve delivered that first bit of information to your prospect, do you send him any further information?

If you are like most Internet marketers, you don’t.

When you don’t follow that initial message with additional information later on, you let a valuable prospect slip from your grasp! This is a potential customer who may have been very interested in your products, but who lost your contact information, or was too busy to make a purchase when your first message reached him.

Often, a prospect will purposely put off making a purchase, to see if you find him important enough to follow up with later. When he doesn’t receive a follow up message from you, he will take his business elsewhere.

Are you losing profits due to inconsistent and ineffective follow up?

Following up with leads is more than just a process – it’s an art. In order to be effective, you need to design a follow up system, and stick to it, EVERY DAY! If you don’t follow up with your prospects consistently, INDIVIDUALLY, and in a timely fashion, then you might as well forget the whole follow up process.

Consistent follow up gets results!

When I first started marketing and following up with prospects, I used a follow up method that I now call the “List Technique.” I had a large database containing the names and e-mail addresses of people who had specifically requested information about my products and services. These prospects had already received my first letter by the time they requested more information, so I used the company’s latest news as a follow up piece.

I would write follow up newsletters every now and then, and send them, in one mass mailing, to everyone who had previously requested information from me. While this probably did help me win a few additional orders, it wasn’t a very good follow up method. Why isn’t the “List Technique” very effective?

• The List Technique isn’t consistent. Proponents of the List Technique tend to only send out follow up messages when their companies have “big news”.
• List Technique messages don’t give the potential customer any additional information about the product or service in question. He can’t make a more informed buying decision after receiving a newsletter! If someone is wondering whether your company sells the best knick-knacks, what does he care that you’ve just moved your headquarters?
• List Technique messages convey a “big list” mentality to your potential customers. When I used to write follow up messages using the List Technique, I was writing news bulletins to everyone I knew! I should have been sending a personal message to each individual who wanted to know more about my products.

What follow up method really works?

Following up with each lead individually, multiple times, but at set intervals, and with pre-written messages, will dramatically increase sales! Others who use this same technique confirm that they have all at least doubled the sales of various products! In order to set this system up, though, you need to do some planning.

First, you’ll need to develop your follow up messages. If you’ve been marketing on the Internet for any length of time, then you should already have a first informative letter. Your second letter marks the beginning of the follow up process, and should go into more detail than the first letter. Fill this letter with details that you didn’t have the space to add to the first letter. Stress the BENEFITS of your products or services!

Your next 2-3 follow up messages should be rather short. Include lists of the benefits and potential uses of your products and services. Write each letter so that your prospects can skim the contents, and still see the full force of your message.

The next couple of follow up messages should create a sense of urgency in your prospect’s mind. Make a special offer, giving him a reason to order NOW instead of waiting any longer. After reading these follow up messages, your prospect should want to order immediately!

Phrase each of your final 1 or 2 follow up messages in the form of a question. Ask your prospect why he hasn’t yet placed an order? Try to get him to actually respond. Ask if the price is to high, the product isn’t the right color or doesn’t have the right features, or if he is looking for something else entirely. (By this time, it’s unlikely that this person will order from you. However, his feedback can help you modify your follow up letters or products, so that other prospects will order from you.)

The timing of your follow up letters is just as important as their content. You don’t want one prospect to receive a follow up the day after he gets your initial informative letter, while another prospect waits weeks for a follow up!

Always send an initial, informative letter as soon as it is requested, and send the first follow up 24 hours afterwards. You want your hot prospects to have information quickly, so that they can make informed buying decisions!

Send the next 2-3 follow up messages between 1 and 3 days apart. Your prospect is still hot, and is probably still shopping around! Tell him about the benefits of your products and services, as opposed to your competitors’. You will make the sale!

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Send the final follow up messages later on. You certainly don’t want to annoy your prospect! Make sure that these last letters are at least 4 days apart.

Following up effectively seems complicated, but it doesn’t have to be! So many potential customers are lost because of poor follow up – don’t you want to be one of the few to get it right?