Setting up your Twitter Channels

Yes­ter­day I intro­duced the con­cepts of attrac­tion and net­work build­ing as two key ele­ments in your 2009 mar­ket­ing strat­egy. Both rely on being able to build, grow and main­tain net­works that can help you bring buy­ers to your shows. As I have already dis­cussed on-line social net­work­ing is going to play a major role in your suc­cess or fail­ure not just for 2009 but from here on out. So for the fore see­able future we will be focus­ing reg­u­larly on set­ting up and using your net­works effectively.

Besides hav­ing a blog, Face­book, Twit­ter and Friend­feed are the three most impor­tant tools you will need to build and nur­ture your net­works in order for the attrac­tion and net­work­ing strate­gies to work. Start­ing today, I’ll be cov­er­ing in spe­cific terms  how to get set up with and use these three tools.

So let’s get started… The first thing you need to do is go to Twitter.com, you will see the fol­low­ing page, Click on the big green but­ton to start.

Click­ing will take you to this page where you will need to enter your user name and password.

TIP:

Select a user name that fits you and your busi­ness, since you are your own brand try to find a user­name that will be easy for you and your fol­low­ers to remem­ber and that will reflect your work. For exam­ple mine is bwphoto it is both easy to remem­ber and it asso­ciates my name with my work. Your user name will be appended to Twitter’s to form your unique URL which is another rea­son to keep it sim­ple and mem­o­rable. You will need that full URL later depend­ing on the sites you join. My unique URL is:

http://www.twitter.com/bwphoto

After you have clicked the “Cre­ate my account” but­ton you will be take to your home page which look very bare, but this is where the fun begins!  Your home page is where you will be able to…

• see your followers,
• see those you are following,
• read direct mes­sages and replies addressed to you
• Favorite peo­ple you want to really pay atten­tion to
• see the entire pub­lic feed, which is like lis­ten­ing to every­one in a stadium

The first thing I rec­om­mend peo­ple do at this point is to com­plete your pro­file by click­ing on the “Set­tings” tab in the menu in the top right of the page. The page shown above also points out the “Set­tings” tab which we we’ll cover after we get your pro­file set up.

The “Set­tings” Page

• Account-  set your time zone, your blog or web site address, and a one line bio here.

TIP:

Make sure you enter your blog address as a full URL so fol­low­ers can click on it. Lack of viable and related web site or blog is one thing that may lead me as well as oth­ers to block you or decide not to fol­low you.

TIP:

Also make sure your bio really describes what you do and what you rep­re­sent, your bio com­bined with your site link are the only things a stranger will have to deter­mine if they want to fol­low you…at least in the beginning.

• Devices — If you have a smart phone and want to receive instant mes­sages (SMS) from Twit­ter noti­fy­ing you of new activ­ity then enter your mobile num­ber. Make sure you read the side­bar “Twit­ter with SMS” any mes­sages you receive via this method will count against your SMS account on your mobile account.

• Notices — Lets you deter­mine how twit­ter responds when some­one fol­lows, or direct mes­sages you.

TIP:

I find that hav­ing Twit­ter e-mail me when­ever I have a new fol­lower helps respond to them on a timely and per­sonal man­ner. Remem­ber this is all about build­ing relationships.

• Pic­ture - This is pretty self explana­tory, it is where you get to upload a photo or graphic that will serve as your graphic identity.

TIP:

While you can eas­ily change your pic­ture I have found that using some­thing that reflects your brand, which in your case is YOU is the best for attract­ing the best fol­low­ers.  Make sure the image is read­able and DO upload an image. Absence of an image is often a sign of some­one you may not want to fol­low or have fol­low you. It can be an indi­ca­tion that they don’t take the net­work seri­ously or they are not famil­iar with the inter­net. Either way I use it as one of the cri­te­ria for not fol­low­ing or even block­ing someone.

• Design- Here is were you can really express your­self. Twit­ter offers sev­eral choices for both back­ground and design, to start out  select some­thing that best suits you and your work.

TIP:

It is very easy to make your own cus­tom back­ground or you can have one made from a vari­ety of web sites that now pro­vide the ser­vice. Mine is shown below.

Find­ing People

There are many ways to find peo­ple and many dif­fer­ent strate­gies peo­ple use to make con­nec­tions. You can use the “Find Peo­ple” tab in the menu bar which will dis­play four tabbed choices

• Find on Twit­ter — Use this to search for subjects,keywords, etc. To find poten­tial con­nec­tions or friends you might think are on Twitter.
• Find on other Net­works- this tab lets you search web based e-mail services.
• Invite by e-mail — Use this to invite friends whose e-mail you know and you would like to join you on Twitter.
• Sug­gest Users - Twit­ter will sug­gest poten­tial matches based on your pro­file, loca­tion and who knows what else.

TIP:

Before the rise of Twit­ter based sites like Twel­low, or oth­ers this was the best way to get started. Now I rec­om­mend using Twel­low which we will talk about later.