Twitter Tips for the Modern Jedi NLP Mind Master
I’ve just finally “got” what twitter is all about. And I think it justifies a post so that I can share some of what I’ve learned and some of the resources I’ve discovered which may help you to get right to it. If you are wondering what twitter has to do with NLP or the Way of the Modern Jedi, it’s this: Tiwtter is a powerful tool to build your practice, and to rapidly build a community of people who are interested in what you have to offer. For folks like Noah St. John and Tony Robbins it’s a way to stay in touch with “the faithful” without clogging up their e-mail in-boxes. For me it’s a way I can reach out to people with specific interests in Music or NLP or who may be local. It’s flexible and a lot of fun.
The other day I saw a short post from some one I’m following on twitter it said: “I just ran with scissors!”
I wrote back “I just stood on a chair!” It was something that took only a moment and it made me smile. I also recently had lunch with some folks here in New Haven who I met on twitter. You never know till you get into it.
So here are some basics:
First things first:
Go to http://twitter.com and sign up for an account.
It is best to use your real name if you can get it. (Use upper and lower case so your first and last name stand out.) The new social media is about being real and accessible. If you advertised your practice in a holistic publication like “Natural Awakenings” you wouldn’t use some silly user name would you?
Make sure you fill out your location and short, one sentence bio. Make sure that you leave the box for “protect my updates” empty. You want to be in the public stream.
Next. Follow me. You can do that by using the twitter search function or just use this link: http://twitter.com/MarkShepard
The next thing you need to know about Twitter is that it is considered polite to follow those people who follow you. And unless some one is completely objectionable it’s a good idea. You can tell almost instantly from a persons follow/following ratio whether they “get” twitter or not. If someone’s following about the same number as are following them they are most likely going to follow you back when you follow them.
There are a couple of programs that can even automatically follow people who follow you and send them a welcoming message. You should get one of those when you follow me. It has a link to my http://MarkShepardSongs.com site where they can get free downloads of my songs.
I use http://www.SocialToo.com but I like http://www.TweetLater.com also. Check them both out.
Some people make a business pitch in their auto follow e-mail. This is not about making a sale. It’s about building a community and contributing something to that community. The best one’s offer some kind of legitimate help. Like the guy I followed who in his follow back pointed out I could change my twitter username from markshepard to MarkShepard. Just a helpful little tip. I appreciated it. Most of what I’m sharing with you here today I learned from short little tweets on twitter.
And that’s what twitter is all about. It’s people helping other people and making themselves useful.
It’s not what it first appears to be, which is a platform for the self absorbed to trumpet their every moment of their dull mundane day. It’s about having conversations and making connections that gracefully lead people to what you have to offer.
Once you have a twitter account and have followed me, click on the link on your twitter home page titled “Everyone”. Just take a few minutes and read through the most recent posts.Any time you see someones user name preceded by an @ symbol you can right click and open their twitter page in a new tab. If they seem interesting to you go ahead and follow them by clicking the “follow” button. You can unfollow them at any time by clicking the same button on their page.
Please note: if you follow a bunch of people who have fewer than 100 followers and who are following a small number they most likely are newbies and will not have set up the auto follow process. You mostly want to follow people at this point who have a strong likely hood of following you back. One of our goals is to rapidly build social proof as well as a community of people who we can tweet to.
The best resource I found for getting a massive number of followers in a short time is Scot Mckay’s short video. Scot is also one of my favorite dating and relationship coaches and he is a master of the new Web 2.0 social media world. So if you’re not into dating or healthy relationships just focus on what he has to say about twitter. I have watched him go from 1,000 followers to over 25,000 followers in the last three weeks or so. Following his advice I’ve gone from 100 to well over 1,000 followers in about 2 weeks with very little time or effort spent on it. Plus I’ve connected with some great info about music marketing on the web etc.
How To Get 1,000 Twitter followers in 12 Days by Scot Mckay
Also his video “Why Follow Everyone Back On Twitter” is excellent as well.
Scot McKay also offers a free e-book called “Twiduction” that has a lot more nuts and bolts of how to pimp your twitter profile. You should do that even if you are not trying to attract dates. Just take his “how to” advice and use it in your own context. Everything in it works perfectly well for attracting business clients. After all business networking is a lot like dating…(I know, material for yet another post at another time)
Any questions? I’d be happy to answer them. Just leave a comment below. I look forward to Tweeting with you soon!
Mark
Just so you have them in one place here are some additional twitter resources to check out once you get going.
http://www.friendorfollow.com this enables you to see at a glance who is not following you back, who you are not following and who are your mutual followers/following folks.
http://www.twitter.grader.com this enables you to search specifi key words like NLP or localities like New Haven or Connecticut so you can find people who you might want to follow.
http://www.TweetDeck.com this handy application is actually much easier to use than the regular twitter home page. you can see all your follows tweeting by you in real time. it also does some handy things like automatically shorten any long URL that you might be passing on to your Tweets.