One of the ways you enjoy all of those things and really “embed” Twitter into your life (instead of squeezing it into your schedule if you have the time) is by putting Twitter on your mobile and taking it with you as you go.

Why do you want to do this?

Twitter is a microblog platform. Because of that, your value to the people who are following you is only realized when you publish constant microblogs (“tweets”, in case you hadn’t figured that part out yet). Some of those microblogs can be value-added content related specifically to the industries and interests of your followers, and some of those microblogs can be you sharing a part of yourself to relate the human side of your life and business to other people. A combination of those two reasons is why you want to tweet in general… and here’s how it relates to tweeting on the go:

People who want to tweet more effectively need to find things to tweet about. And being on the go gives you material to tweet about.

“Headed to #starbucks”
“On a break from the Chamber of Commerce event”
“Waiting in line at the store”
“Waiting in line at the airport”
“Waiting in line at the bank”
“Really enjoying this sushi”
“Learning a lot from the seminar”
“I’m at the park. Anyone else nearby?”
“Stuck in traffic”
“Just landed in San Francisco”
“Great concert!”
Etc., etc.

Twitter is about connecting on several levels with your audience and this gives you a number of advantages:

• You appear a little more human with content like “great concert!”

• You seem more relatable with content like being stuck in line.

• Your network can connect with you if you end up somewhere that they are (such as the park or the San Francisco reference, above)

• You position yourself (like with the mention of the seminar or the Chamber of Commerce event).

So, how do you tweet while on the go?

The really basic way is to sign in to Twitter and go to the Devices page. This page tells you how to use your phone’s texting (SMS) function to tweet. You just send an SMS to s specific code and the content of your text contains the tweet. Be sure to read the details because your phone carrier might charge you and not every carrier supports this.

You can also install a Twitter mobile app on your phone to interface with Twitter in a more familiar way. Start at Twitter and go to the Downloads page. Here, you’ll find Twitter mobile options for the iPhone or iTouch. And, if you click through to TweetDeck or HootSuite, you’ll find apps for your phone there, too (on TweetDeck’s iPhone page and HootSuite’s iPhone page).

Another popular solution is Twitterberry (which is now called “Open Beak”) for Blackberry devices.
Just Google “Twitter mobile apps” to find more options. As Twitter grows in popularity, more and more apps will become available.

If you want to get the most of out Twitter, and if you want your audience to get the most out of it, too, then tweet on the go. Intersperse those value-added tweets by giving people glimpse into your life. You’ll be rewarded with a more connected network because of it.

Bonus Tip:  Some Basic “Tweeting on the Go” Rules

• Don’t tweet and drive

• Stop tweeting while talking face-to-face

• If you’re getting bad service at a restaurant, it’s okay to tweet it but just watch out for libel (false accusations) which are really easy to tweet in the heat of the moment

• Watch for opportunities to connect with specific Twitter users (i.e., “I just passed @Bob’s favorite bar. Are you in there right now, @Bob?”)

• Have fun

• Be real

Related posts:

1. Tweets in 10 – Tweet this! Plug-ins for Your Browser‏
2. Tweets in 10 – #Great #Idea #for #Twitter
3. Tweets in 10 – Twitterpress: Combining Twitter and WordPress10

Okay, I realize that not all of you are WordPress users so this might not be as relevant for everyone. But many of you are so it was worth writing one newsletter dedicated just to WordPress users.

The reason for putting Twitter plug-ins into your WordPress site is the same reason you’d put some of last week’s tools into your blog or website: It saves time on your tweets and helps to strengthen those connections between your Twitter followers and your website visitors (encouraging connections of Twitter to also become regular blog readers, for example).

There are lots of WordPress plug-ins that use Twitter in some way. I’m going to show you the couple that I use but there might be others that work better for you.
The easiest way to get plug-ins is simply to sign in to WordPress and then to go to the Plug-ins menu from your dashboard. In this menu there’s an “Add New” link and when you click it you will see a cloud of plug-in tags. Buried within that cloud is “Twitter”. So click the “Twitter” tag and you’ll get the list of plug-ins related to Twitter. Scroll through this list (it is constantly updated so it might be worth checking it out regularly to see what kinds of apps people are developing).

WordTwit

I like the app called WordTwit. WordTwit is a powerful but simple way to turn your blog posts into tweets. With this app installed and operating, whenever you blog and click “publish”, your blog will turn into a tweet which includes the blog’s title and a link back to your blog.

What I like about this app is that you can adjust the settings in a number of different ways: You have shortcode choices that include bil.ly, ow.ly, and even shortcode based on your own domain name!

WordTwit also offers statistics so you can see what your most popular Tweets were, and there are codes that you can add for further analytics beyond the simple “most popular” number.

In addition, you can set it to only tweet certain tags (or to tweet everything BUT certain tags). For example, one colleague I know who uses his blog as his primary website, has his WordTwit set up so that only informational content is sent to Twitter but his portfolio and self promotional content (such as testimonials) aren’t tweeted.

This plug-in is about pushing content out to Twitter. But what about generating content on your site from Twitter?

You can use any of the plug-ins discussed in last week’s newsletter. Or you can use something like…

Lifestream

Lifestream is a little more advanced for users with coding experience. It creates an attractive way to display your tweets in posts, pages, or your blog’s sidebar. In the WordPress plug-ins page, search for “Lifestream” or check out the developer’s page here.

If you’re a WordPress user who wants something really easy and quick to use, refer to last week’s issue and embed one of those tools in your WordPress site.

CommentLuv

Another way to integrate Twitter into your website is with CommentLuv. CommentLuv adds a content-rich and social component to your blogs. Users who type in your comments can add their Twitter accounts.

WP Quote Tweets

One I haven’t used yet but I’ve been thinking about using is WP Quote Tweets. This turns specific tweets into quotes on your site. You can see an example from the developer here.

Bonus Tip:  Twitter and WordPress = BFF

I have only begun to touch the service of the million and one things you can do with Twitter and WordPress together. At the time of writing this newsletter WordPress has 552 plug ins that use Twitter in some fashion. Before deciding, check them out and see if one works better for you than another.

Image credit: http://www.chromaticsites.com/blog/wordpress-plugin-twitter-retweet/

Related posts:

1. Tweets in 10 – Twitter Plug-ins for Your Mobile
2. Tweets in 10 – Spread the News, Spread the Love
3. Tweets in 10 – #Great #Idea #for #Twitter

Now what? You’ve got all of these people listening to you, so what should you do next? In other situations, an intent audience might be the perfect group of people to make a sales presentation to. But that is not the case for this audience! (At least not an obvious one!)

Whatever you do, don’t blatantly market to this audience! This is not the time to start (obviously) selling to them. That is a quick recipe to lose followers, destroy your credibility, and diminish the potential “return” you can get on the time and effort you spent on Twitter.

Does this sound familiar to you?

It’s similar to a situation from my own life a few years ago:

I had a good friend once and we used to hang out quite a bit. Then she got into a business and wanted me to get into it too. I wasn’t interested because I was already busy with my own existing businesses. But she was persistent. Every time we got together, she would present the sales pitch to me. Not surprisingly, I never returned her calls or took the initiative to get together with her and I found convenient reasons why we couldn’t meet for coffee. Sadly, we drifted apart… because I was interested in being her friend but not interested in the constant sales pitch I heard from her.

Twitter is similar. People follow you and come to respect what you have to say. And, like my relationship with my friend, it’s okay to talk a bit about yourself from time to time in a tasteful way that isn’t blatantly self-promoting… just like you would normally reference yourself in a conversation with your friends.

For example, some acceptable self-referencing (but NOT self-promoting) tweets might be:

• I just finished coaching a client about social media (and add a link to your website page that talks about your coaching – on occasion)
• Getting ready for my speech at tomorrow’s seminar (link to the seminar’s website)
• Tired from creating a proposal for an entrepreneur

See how these are different (and superior) to self-promoting tweets like: “Buy my ebook at my website” or “If you need coaching, give me a call.”

Now, I don’t want you to despair. You haven’t spent all this time on Twitter just to build up an audience who won’t buy from you! On the contrary, this is an audience who might be highly likely to buy from you; you just can’t blatantly pitch them through Twitter. Twitter is not a sales presentation tool. It is a tool to allow you to build up an audience of people who think you have something valuable to say. You build up the audience, develop some credibility, and when they’re ready, your audience will take the next step.

When is it Right to Sell to Someone?

Think of it like this: You “pitch” your product or service to prospects… not to leads. And the people who are following you on Twitter are leads. You need to turn them into prospects first and then you can pitch to them.

So think of Twitter as the way to build a relationship with people as leads and gently encourage them to become part of your list. Once they’re on your list, they are prospects and you can add value through (for example) newsletters and sales presentations.

(Note: That’s not to say you won’t convert people into customers on Twitter, but it doesn’t happen as often).

Back to the Example

Let me revisit the example I gave earlier about my friend. If she really wanted me to get into business with her, she would have been far better off to continue having normal conversations with me. Through the natural course of our friendship, she could talk about everything (friends, relationships, the weather, politics, family… and occasionally her business). As someone who values her, I would happily ask questions about the important areas of her life – including her business – to learn more. If she became more successful and if I expressed an interest in hearing more about her business, then THAT would be the perfect time for her to give me a bit of a sales pitch.

The more of a relationship you build with your Twitter followers, and the more value you offer them, the more they will respect and admire you and share you with their friends (cough – cough – remember ‘Retweeting’). When they are ready to hear more, they will join your list and become a prospect. And when they are ready to buy, they will make a purchase.

Adding More Value to Hasten the Sale

You can help to lock your name in their minds and you can also jumpstart the switch from following you to seeing you as their service provider. You can do this by creating high quality content on your website, especially content that they can read regularly, download, or subscribe to.

For example:

• A blog with an RSS feed
• An ezine
• A free ebook or ‘free chapter’ of an ebook you charge for
• An “insiders’ circle” or membership program (free or paid)

By giving them this option, they are going onto your turf to indicate that they want to hear exclusively from you. They are saying that they want to advance the business relationship from being one where you are just one small voice in a vast field of tweets to a relationship where you are sending them content in their inbox or RSS reader.

My favorite thing to do is to have what I call a ‘squeeze page with benefits’. You know what a squeeze page is, right? A website or page where the person exchanges their name and email address in exchange for something free (whether it be an ebook or an ezine or any number of things). Well, a squeeze page with benefits gives them the option to get that free goodie OR buy something.

So, to summarize:

Don’t think of Twitter as a place where you just pitch your services. Instead, think of it as a collection point for leads to become prospects. And, when they are ready to take the next step, they will visit your website to explore what you can offer them. And you should be ready there to help them become customers. There are of course creative ways to convert them directly from Twitter when you have things such as a free and paid version of an item.

But how do you get them to make that transition to your website?

Tweet valuable content often!

Related posts:

1. Tweets in 10 – A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words
2. Tweets in 10 – Twitter Plug-ins for Your Mobile
3. Tweets in 10 (Part 2) – Gathering the RIGHT Followers

Gathering followers is fun… but gathering the right followers (and finding the right people to follow) is even better!

Don’t get caught up in the myth that you need to follow a lot of people. Some Twitter users collect followers like they’re going out of style… but effective Twitter users know that what you really want is a carefully cultivated list of the right people. When you’re listening to and speaking to a well-chosen group of people, your tweets will be easier to write, more compelling to your select audience, and you’ll have an easier time building relationships and marketing yourself.

To make that selection even more successful, I recommend Twitter directories. Twitter directories are just what the names imply: Directories of Twitter users sorted in various ways so you can find people with similar interests.

Sign up for some or all of these directories, fill in your information, and here’s what will happen:

1. People will find you and follow you because you are closely aligned to the kind of people they want to follow.
2. You’ll easily find many, many people to follow based on the sorting mechanisms of those directories.

Related posts:

1. Tweets in 10 – Say Hello with Twellow
2. Tweets in 10 – Twitter Plug-ins for Your Mobile
3. Tweets in 10 – Twitterpress: Combining Twitter and WordPress10

I also gave you some homework to do to think about lists that you could potentially create to make Twitter more useful to you. In this issue, I’m going to show you how to create your own useful Twitter Lists, I’m going to give you a few more tips about using Twitter Lists, and I’ve got a bonus idea at the end that I think you’ll find interesting.

How to create lists in ten minutes

Creating lists is really easy. Here’s how to do it, step by step:

1.    Sign in to Twitter.
2.    Go to your profile (the second link at the top right, between “Home” and “Find People”.
3.    Just below your picture and profile name you should see the words “That’s You!” and to the right of that you’ll see a button called “Lists”.
4.    Click the button to open the list menu. It will say “New List” and, once you’ve created lists, they will also appear here as well.
5.    Click “New List” and, in the interface that pops up, enter the list name and a description and select whether you want it to be public or private. (This is where you bring in the homework I gave you in the last Tips In Ten issue).
6.    Click the “Create List” button. Congratulations! You’ve just created your first list. Now do that for the other lists you want to create.

Easy! It probably takes less than 10 minutes to create all of your lists.

If I were you, I’d create a handful of lists according to the homework you did, but I would also create a private list called “Miscellaneous”, especially if you’re serious about making Twitter Lists really useful for you. You’ll see why in a moment.

How to manage your lists in ten minutes a day

Managing your Twitter Lists can take ten minutes a day over several days, especially if you have a lot of followers or people you are following. Still, in just 10 minutes a day, you can get through it and make Twitter Lists really useful for you.

To manage your list in 10 minutes a day, here’s what to do:

Start with the people you’re following. (You have to start somewhere and I think this is the most useful purpose of Twitter Lists). Click on the “Following” link in your profile and you’ll see a list of al1 your followers, 20 per page, each with their name and a picture and a recent tweet. To the right of each profile you’ll see a couple of buttons – one button is for managing links and the other button offers some additional actions you can take (like mentioning them or unfollowing them).

In some cases, you can tell by looking at the profile and the name and a recent tweet how they can be sorted. However, in most cases, you can’t really tell with that information. So here’s what I do instead to make it really fast:

I right-click on each profile to open in a new tab. There are 20 profiles that show on each page, so if you right click each one, you’ll open 20 new tabs. That’s okay because it will go really fast this way:

Go to the first tab, read their bio, see a couple of their tweets. And you can sort them into one or more lists right from that page. Visiting their profile is the fastest and easiest way to sort people into lists because many people write enough information in their bio to make it easy for you to sort them appropriately. (If you’re still not completely sure, then check out their website, but it’s probably going to be rare that you need to do that).

You can do this pretty quickly for every one of the 20 profiles you have open. And once you’ve sorted them just close their profile.

But, here is a huge time-saving and annoyance-saving tip. If you can’t immediately sort them into a list then put them into your private “Miscellaneous” list. This is like the miscellaneous junk drawer in your house. I’ll tell you what to do with that later in this issue. However, as much as possible, sort each profile into one or more of your lists and sort as few people as possible into the “Miscellaneous” list. I find after doing this a couple of times, that I’ll know right away which list someone should go into and if I can’t immediately identify a list for them within 5 seconds of viewing their profile, I will put them into the Miscellaneous list.

If you take 10 minutes a day doing this, you should be able to get through 40 to 60 profiles. So, on the first day, take 10 minutes and get through the first batch of profiles. Then take note of where you left off and on the next day, go to where you left off and do another 40 to 60 more.

“But I have so many people to sort into lists”

Twitter Lists is a useful tool and the more people you need to sort, the more useful Twitter Lists will be for you. If you can do 60 profiles in a day, and you take 10 minutes a day for 100 days, you’ll be able to sort through 6000 profiles.

That’s a good thing. Yes, you might have a million people to sort and it will take a while but Twitter Lists can be a powerful tool and you just need to push through the bulk of the work to do it. And there’s another advantage: You’ll get to know the people you’re following really well and, when you’re done, you’ll have an insanely powerful tool as part of your business and it will help you to be much more competitive.

(If you’re really pressed for time or have millions of profiles to review, get your assistant to do it for you).

Once you have the majority of the people you’re following sorted into lists, it will only take a second or two every day to sort the new ones that you choose to follow.

What do I do with the “Miscellaneous” list?

I mentioned that you needed a private Miscellaneous list, which was going to be the “junk drawer” of your Twitter profile. The reason I recommend this is because there will be times when you can’t easily sort someone into one or more of the lists you’ve created.

Rather than just leaving people unsorted, where they might be buried deep in your list and difficult for you to find, sort them into the Miscellaneous list where you can get to them later.

This Miscellaneous list is not going to be a permanent catch-all but rather it’s a way for you to see what is missing: Now that you have all these growing lists, you can look at your Miscellaneous list from time to time and see if you can easily group people together. Maybe you notice that you have a huge number of poets who don’t fit really well into one of the lists you’ve created and who have all been dumped into Miscellaneous. So that is your cue to create a poets list. Or maybe you see that you’ve defined an existing list too narrowly and there are a bunch of people in the Miscellaneous list who could be part of an existing list if you adjust your thinking slightly.

The goal is to have an empty Miscellaneous list but you need it to keep track of the people who you haven’t been able to easily sort. Believe me, this is a useful exercise because it helps you quickly see if there are groups of people you are following (or who are following you) that you’ve completely missed.

Once you’ve done that for the people you are following, you can then look at doing the same thing for your followers. There is value to this, too, but it is less of a priority than sorting the people you’re following.

Twitter Lists are a powerful tool that you can use for all kinds of purposes to make Twitter even more useful for you. It does take some times to build them and sort people into them, but the effort is worth it in the end.

Bonus Tip:

This is another aspect of Twitter Lists that I didn’t know about and only discovered when I was doing some fact-checking for this Tips In Ten. You can follow lists. To follow a list, go to a list’s page (which you can click through while viewing someone’s profile) and you’ll see the option to follow that list at the top of the lists’ tweet stream.

Those lists will appear in your sidebar and you can click on them to view the activity in that list. This is a great way to listen in on what colleagues and competitors are talking about without doing the work of creating a list yourself.

Related posts:

1. Be a Twitter List Champion in Just Ten Minutes – Part 1
2. Twitter in Ten Minutes a Day!
3. Tweets in 10 – Say Hello with Twellow

It all starts somewhere! In business, the “nails” you need to win your entrepreneurial war are leads. For want of leads, the business will be lost. Leads are crucial to your business and having a steady stream of leads coming in will mean a steady stream of sales tomorrow. So, how do you generate leads?

A definition

It could be argued that your Twitter followers or Facebook friends or LinkedIn contacts are leads. To some degree they are but I like to think of these as one step prior to leads. The reason is, people might be your follower or friend because they want to pay attention to you but are not yet ready to buy. In my opinion, leads are slightly more “invested” in you and may not be ready to immediately buy but have indicated in some way (i.e. perhaps through a newsletter subscription) that they are interested in receiving content exclusively from you. So, you might think of the “leads” category as being split into two: social connections and exclusive contacts.

The content in this issue is aimed at helping you move people either from social connection to exclusive contact or to meet them for the first time and make them exclusive contacts. I call these folks “leads”. There are a few ways to generate leads If you want to create more leads, repeat this process several times or combine a few of the ideas below.

First, decide what you plan to do once you have a list of leads. Do you call them up to pitch to them? Do you add them to your ezine list? Do you mail them something? Understanding your sales funnel and knowing what the next step is will help you create effective leads. (There’s no sense collecting their phone number if you’ll never use it).

Second, now that you know what you are going to do with the lead, decide what information you need in order to call that information a lead. Do you need just their first name and email address? Do you need their name, address, and phone number? The more information you need and the more private the information is, the more difficult it will be to get it. Figure out what the bare minimum is and when someone gives you that information, you have a lead.

Third, construct your lead generation tool or system to help you capture this information. I’m going to give you several and each of these only takes ten minutes or less.

Web-based lead generation

For a good balance between cost effectiveness, ease of use, and lead capture, I like the lead generation tool of collecting people’s email addresses and building up a mailing list by sending out a free newsletter. You can send out the newsletter and demonstrate your value and then later turn some of those subscriber-leads into customers.

One popular online lead generation method that I’ve personally seen work quite effectively for one of my colleagues is to advertise through Google AdWords to drive traffic to a sales page. The sales page offers a free report and newsletter. They sign up and get the free report right away and then the newsletter shows up each week on a specific day.

Email capture tools are fairly common online and it just depends on what system you want to use. I’ve featured 1ShoppingCart in the past as an ezine distribution tool. Other ezine distribution sites like AWeber or Constant Contact both give you the ability to add email capture functionality to your website with an easy snippet of code.

Not only will you need to add a way to capture email, you’ll also want to give people a reason to subscribe. There was a time – perhaps a decade ago – when people would subscribe to ezines simply because they could. But now there is so much content piling up in our inboxes that people are expecting real value from newsletters or else they won’t bother subscribing. So, it’s worth spending another ten minutes (or more) on your “sales” content to convince people to leave their name and email.

If you don’t want to create an ezine (which is an ongoing effort), then an ebook, report, whitepaper, article, or e-course are all good ways to collect email addresses without the ongoing publishing effort.

You will still need to get people to come to your website in order to leave their name and email address (or whatever other information you’re collecting) and that might take some work through Twitter or other social media, as well as some Google AdWords.

In-person lead generation

There are lots of in-person lead generation methods. Some of them are old school and may still work in some situations but not in all situations or for all businesses!

Door-to-door lead generation: Okay, I’m not into this at all but some companies still do it and swear by it. You basically walk up and down a street and knock on doors and strike up a conversation. If you do it and are happy with it, more power to you (just don’t come to my door). Same goes for telephone leads.

Face-to-face lead generation: If you’re out there networking then this is still a very powerful way of generating leads. Maybe you’re at a tradeshow or convention or a Chamber of Commerce event or a seminar; that’s where this kind of thing is really effective. Make sure you have plenty of business cards and make sure you get business cards from other people. When you receive a business card from a lead, flip over the business card and write something down on the back (such as something memorable about them or a product or service to talk to them about). Also, make sure that the information you collect from face-to-face leads at networking events satisfies your “basic information” need for lead generation. If you sell novelty hats and need to collect a name, email address, and hat size in order to call the contact “a lead” then just collecting business cards isn’t going to b e enough. In your case, you need to craft a conversation framework that will help you get that hat size.

Referrals

The most effective lead generation tool is the referral. That’s because people trust and respond to word-of-mouth from peers so much more than any other kind of marketing. This is where you ask current clients who of their contacts could benefit from your service. There are two ways to do this:

Ask for referrals: If you serve 5 clients a day and you ask each client for the name of someone to recommend, you can build up a big bank of really qualified leads. Yes, not every client will give you a name. However, if you ask each client each day and only get one name a week, you’re still getting 52 names a year!

To do this well, be specific. If you simply say: “Who do you know who can benefit from my services?” you’ll get a negative response each time. However, if you ask “Do you know someone at work who has trouble with time management?” then you will have a much more successful track record of getting referrals. Ask for permission to contact the referred person and to use your client”s name. When you contact that person say something like, “I was talking to Mary about some time management ideas and she thought that you might find some of them interesting…”

Invite referrals: Rather than asking for referrals – which can still seem pretty aggressive for a lot people who might not be comfortable with it – simply invite your clients to refer you to others. You can say something like “I have some openings next month and I’d like to give your contacts the first option to benefit from them before I advertise to the general public for new clients.” Be sure to empower your clients to refer you effectively by giving them extra brochures and business cards.

You may also want to consider offering an incentive for referrals who become customers. You frequently hear of this in several different industries; it generally works like this: If Mary recommends Sam to become your client, and Sam becomes your client, then Mary gets a bit of a percentage kickback. Take ten minutes to put together your own referral program, put a package of brochures and business cards into an envelope and hand them to your clients next time they’re in your office.

Lead generation is a key skill to have. It takes work now – usually ten minutes but sometimes a bit more – and when you do it regularly, you will see work come in regularly. But be warned: It requires diligence and consistency and patience to be successful!

Bonus Tip:

My Secret: One of my secrets is not pushing referrals but being making it blatantly obvious to my customers that they are available. Here are two ways I do that:

• Everytime I send anything via mail or shipment, I include several referral cards. These referral cards look like a post card. On one side they have all my information and marketing image and on the other side they have a short form that asks for a referrals contact information. They are then addressed to me with postage paid. My clients can either pass these out to prospective referrals OR complete the short form providing me with the prospective referrals information and mail it in to me!

• Clients pay their invoices online for one of my companies through a control panel. I have a cute graphic in the right sidebar when they log in that invites them to recommend us to someone and gives them a quick form they can fill out that includes their referrals name and email address. It then sends the prospect an email saying ‘Clients Name would like to refer you to Company Name.’ and a bit more information.

Related posts:

1. Generating Repeat Business in 10 Minutes a Day
2. The Power of a List: Part 1
3. How to Get ‘LinkedIn’ like a Superstar… in Ten Minutes a Day

Sometimes that audience is made up of loyal visitors to your blog. They’ve bookmarked your blog and they visit everyday or read your RSS feed to see what you have to say. Sometimes that audience is made up of newsletter subscribers: They’ve left their email address in the hopes that you send them high value content on a regular basis.

There are plenty of tools and resources to help you create the infrastructure to communicate with that audience, whether through blogs or newsletters (or many other ways). In fact, in previous Tips In Ten articles, we’ve talked about those very things: I’ve shown you how to create regular blog content. And, I’ve shown you different autoresponder tools you can use to upload content and distribute it to your audience.

But the question is often asked: How do I get an audience?

You might have great information on your website. And you might have the audience-capturing and audience-communicating infrastructure already set up. But you need eyeballs! You need email addresses. You need people reading your content and thinking about you as the expert.

So how do you get that audience?

Well, as you can tell by the title of this issue, I think you need more than an audience. I think you need a fanbase. I’ve seen people generate an audience: I’m sure we’ve all received email and snail mail that seemed unsolicited and turned out that our email address or postal address were sold to someone. In other words, we were an audience but an unwilling one.

I think you need a fanbase: Where every audience member (whether they click to your blog or they read your content in an RSS feeder or they see your newsletter in their inbox) is a fan. Someone who has sought you out.

These fans are the most loyal of audiences because they appreciate what you have to say and they respond with purchases or referrals.

So, how can you create a fanbase in 10 minutes a day? It IS possible. And before I tell you, I want to reference someone who has a similar idea: Gary Vaynerchuk. If you’ve never heard of him, I’ll give you a short bio: Gary Vaynerchuk owned a wine store in New Jersey. He wanted to build his brand so he started creating video blogs showing his unconventional wine tasting. They are compelling, and if you ever get a chance to view one or two, you should. You can see them at http://tv.winelibrary.com.

Using a very similar method to what I’m about to describe here, he built up his reputation and now is a noted author, speaker, and a go-to authority on branding and on wine.

To build up a fanbase, here’s what you do:

First, find relevant sites. Relevant sites include blogs, forums, Facebook fan pages, and Twitter accounts that are somehow connected to your business or industry. So, for example, when I do this, I would look for blogs, forums, fan pages, or twitter users who were in the small business, entrepreneur, coach, and freelancer segments. When Gary Vaynerchuk does this, he looks for blogs, forums, and fan pages on wine.

Second, I would go there and leave comments, participate in discussion, follow, friend, tweet, talk, converse. I would say things that were relevant (and NOT self-promotional). For example, if I found a blog post that talked about productivity, I would comment with something like “that’s great. I’m going to implement that suggestion” or “you’re exactly right with your idea, I’ve been doing something similar for years” or “Thanks for the tip. I’d also recommend…”

Vaynerchuk says (in a video that I will link to shortly) that he would go to a Facebook fan page about merlot and comment with something like the name of his favorite merlot.

The idea here is not to blatantly self-promote but rather to engage the writer and his or her audience and participate with them. You can sign your name and leave your website address but don’t overload your comment with self-promoting content.

Third, I would repeat this process. I would do it again tomorrow and the next day and the next day and the day after that. Ten minutes a day, each and every day. I would keep finding relevant sites and I would keep commenting and participating.

Here’s what will happen: Occasionally, someone will click on your link. They’ll read what you have to say. They’ll become a fan. Then someone else will do the same. And so on. Those occasional people will build up. Over time, you’ll pick up a following; a fanbase.

I love how Vaynerchuk says it in this video, so check it out for yourself: It takes 2 cents to GROW a wine show. (Note: I’m not sure why he’s filming this one from his bathroom, but the content is good even if the setting is weirdly irrelevant).

In one area where I don’t necessarily agree with Vaynerchuk is in the time this takes. He suggests hours. I think that’s a great idea but I don’t know many businesses where that kind of time is feasible to spend. Quite simply, we need to grow our business but we don’t have hours to spend doing what I’m about to describe. Unless you outsource some of it, you need to find the time to do it and I believe you can do it in ten minutes. Of course, if you have hours to accomplish what I and Vaynerchuk are suggesting, by all means spend the time. But if you only have ten minutes (as most of us do), then use those ten minutes wisely.

That’s it! That’s all you need to do. And it works. I can attest to its success and certainly the infamous Gary Vaynerchuk can as well. If you have hours to spend leaving your two cents on related sites around the web, then by all means do so. But if you are busy (as many of us are) and you only have ten minutes a day, start there. That should give you enough time to read and comment on 2 or 3 blogs or Facebook fan pages. And if you only do 2 a day from Monday to Friday, you’ll have commented on 10 by the end of the week and about 5,200 by the end of the year! That will have a big impact! If even 1% of those people become fans, that’s 52 more people by the end of the year.

A couple other things to note:

I would be remiss if I didn’t mention a few other important elements: I believe you need two other things here in order for this to be successful:

• First, you need good content to drive people to. If you’re going to entice people to your site/blog/whatever, you need to deliver with good content. This might mean hiring a writer if you don’t have the time or skill to create the content yourself, or hiring an editor if you have the time to put something together but you don’t have the time to polish it.

• Second, you need to have the infrastructure set up to “lock in” your fanbase. This might mean regular posts on your blog. Or, it might mean that you have some RSS functionality. Or it might mean that you have a subscription newsletter. Whatever you do to engage your audience, you need to be able to deliver on that engagement consistently.

Ten minutes a day for a fanbase? It IS possible. Start today and build your fanbase!

Related posts:

1. Comments and How They can Make You More Successful (In Just 10 Minutes) – Part 2
2. Building and Maintaining a Compelling Website in Just 10 Minutes a Day
3. The Power of a List: Part 1

LinkedIn was launched in 2002, which makes it a “granddaddy” among its peers. And, unlike other social networking sites, it has a specific niche focus of creating and empowering professional connections (compare that focus with Twitter and Facebook which are for everyone but can be used by professionals in specific ways). In other words, on Twitter you’re going to get a mix of business and personal followers and you can freely range back and forth between personal messages (“I’m going out with my family tonight for ice cream”) and professional messages (“For information on mastering Twitter, click this link”). On LinkedIn, it is acceptable to take a more “professional-only” and even sales-oriented approach.

If you’re new to LinkedIn or an occasional user, let me give you a quick overview of the features:

PROFILE: Everyone has a profile. You can put your C.V. on the bio along with links and contact info and your tagline, etc. LinkedIn has also started adding a few applications (including an Amazon plug-in, a blog plug-in, file storage through box.net, and virtual workrooms) to add to your profile in order to help you keep people informed and to help you connect with others in different ways.

CONNECTIONS: Once you have a profile, you build up your connections. You invite people you know and have worked with to connect with you. These are your “first degree” connections. Then you can see more info about their connections (which are your “second degree” connections) and then you can see more information about your connections’ connections’ connections (which are your “third degree” connections). If you want to meet a second degree connection, you ask your first degree connection for an introduction.

GROUPS: There are a number of types of groups – Professional groups, Networking groups, Corporate groups, Alumni groups – that you can be part of. Each group has places to post news and have discussions and network with others who share the same affiliation. There are plenty of groups for all kinds of interests and professions.

ANSWERS: Very similar to many of the other “questions and answers” sites online (Yahoo Answers, Answers.com, and so on), LinkedIn provides a place where people can ask and answer questions on a variety of business-related topics.

Of course there are other aspects of LinkedIn, but the above just highlights a couple of the main features.

LinkedIn is a tool that is only useful when you’re actually using it. Having a network of people is pointless if that network is inactive. But, when put to good use, your network can be priceless. LinkedIn is a good tool to position yourself and to leverage your relationships.

So, here is what you can do on LinkedIn, in just ten minutes a day:

Preliminary work

Start by updating your LinkedIn profile. Add in as much information as appropriate and connect your profile to some books on Amazon and your blog and any other application that might seem appropriate. This might take more than ten minutes, depending on how active you were on the site before. If you need to, spend a couple of days (at ten minutes a day if that’s all you can spare) to optimize your profile for people who might be looking at it.

Next, make sure your contact list is up to date. You might want to import your contacts from your CRM system or your email address book. Get everyone into one place and connect with them.

Also, download the LinkedIn toolbar for your browser so you can use it at a moment’s notice.

Finally, determine some short-term goals you have for your business; things you want to accomplish within 1 week to 1 month.

These are the initial steps that you’ll take and once those are done, you’ll be ready to move forward by performing the next steps in just ten minutes every day.

Daily activity

First, sign in to LinkedIn and update your status. Like the status line on Facebook, this is just a simple way for you to tell people what you’re doing. Use it to describe what you’re working on that day and make sure it positions you well. Like this: “I’m coaching 3 clients on how they can use Twitter to grow their business.” Duration: 30 seconds.

Second, connect with someone. This isn’t always possible because you might not have someone to connect with, but try anyway. Even if you end up with 2 or 3 a week, you’ll still grow your network by 100 to 150 a year. Don’t forget your doctor, dentist, lawyer, and drycleaner. Duration: 30 seconds.

Third, find a question in the Answers section that you can apply your expertise to, and answer it. Be sure to answer thoroughly and link to any resources or references that can help support your position. Be helpful rather than self-promoting, but it’s okay to leave a link to your site in the signature line. Duration: 1-2 minutes.

Fourth, find a discussion in a group that you belong to and participate there. If you’re not sure how you should be responding, adopt the same rules as you might use in a forum: Avoid blatant self-promotion in favor of thoughtful, value-added answers. Duration: 1-2 minutes.

Lastly, pull out your list of goals (which you prepared during the “preliminary work” section) and look through your contact list for 1 person who can help. It might be that you already have someone in your first degree contacts who can help you. Or, maybe you need an introduction to someone in your second or third degree contacts.

• For a first degree connection, you might write something like: “Jennifer, I’ve enjoyed working with you in the past. Your graphic designs have always communicated the message I needed. I have a goal this month of aligning my branding across several marketing channels. Would you have a moment to speak with me about how the graphical element would need to change? And, do you know someone who might assist with the content side of the branding?”

• For a second degree introduction, you might write something like: “Jack, I noticed that Maria is a contact of yours who is a Ruby on Rails developer with a background in business. That is exactly the kind of person I’m looking for to help me with a new project I’m working on. Would you kindly make an introduction? I’d appreciate it.”

By doing this, you’ll be really using your network instead of just collecting names. And just imagine how much you’ll get done when you proactively work through a list of your business’ goals with the help of 5 people each week! Duration: 4-6 minutes.

There you have it! In ten minutes you have positioned yourself, added a connection to grow your network, and sought help on business goals you have.

But that’s not all. If you find that you have a few more minutes, consider these activities. If I were you, I’d do one of these a day in a rotation and try to keep the duration to 2 minutes per day.

Give a recommendation: Recommendations are testimonials – saying something nice about someone in your network. Give recommendations freely. (You will get some in return but don’t expect them). Make sure they are truthful and spell check them before clicking “submit”.

Ask a question: You have questions; everyone does. LinkedIn gives you a great place to ask them and get good advice back from people who know what they are talking about. When you get some responses, interact with the responders via email and thank them.

Join a group: You might do this daily in the beginning, but at some point it will become tedious to comb through the existing groups to find ones that are relevant. So if you stick to picking 1-2 groups a week to join, that will be enough. After all, you don’t just want to join them, you want to participate!

Bonus Tip:

See those people with the word “LION” after their name? No, they do not live on an African savannah and chase gazelles. It stands for “LinkedIn Open Networker”. Open Networkers are those people who don’t feel that you MUST know the people you’re connecting with (which is something that LinkedIn has suggested is important and designed into their interface). These open networkers are open to invitations even from people they don’t directly know. And guess what: these people are connected! You can easily build your network from a few dozen to a few hundred in just days by joining a LinkedIn Group related to these “LIONs”. Join the LinkedIn group “TopLinked” (or visit their site at TopLinked.com), which is one of the best ways to connect with more people.

Now, not all of you will want to be open networkers. Personally, I don’t see anything wrong with it because it doesn’t seem to be different than mutual following on Twitter. But, if you plan to grow your network (and use it!!!) then this is a good way to grow it rapidly.

The most important thing:

The most important thing about LinkedIn is to USE your network. People who sign up to LinkedIn and don’t use their network effectively won’t derive any value from the site. But if you work your connections and seek to add value to them (and ask for help from them), you will enjoy your LinkedIn network just as much as you might enjoy a local, face-to-face networking event… and it only takes 10 minutes a day!

No related posts.

Today’s topic is microblogging.

The mindmap lists Twitter and Plurk although I’ve seen others (usually more niched microblogs) and I think an argument can be made to include Facebook statuses and LinkedIn updates. The social media mindmap also gives several Twitter tools that can make your Twitter account look better and make tweeting more effective.

I’m not going to talk about the mechanics of tweeting because I cover that elsewhere but I will give you some tips about microblogging more effectively:

Which one?
So, let’s start with the basic question: Which one should you use? Twitter? Plurk? Facebook? LinkedIn? One of the other bazillion microblog clones that are springing up?

Lisa Barone, of OutspokenMedia, wisely suggests that you choose a flagship community and focus on it. Don’t try to do all of them. This is good advice for a business considering many different marketing channels but it applies equally well to selecting just one microblogging platform. I like Twitter because it’s a big, open, and widely adopted community. Facebook and LinkedIn aren’t as easily accessible by others and Plurk has an interesting horizontal “timeline” interface but feels a little garish (the way Myspace has turned out to be). Ultimately, though, you need to figure out where your best audience is likely to be and meet them there.

Optimize it
Once you’ve chosen your flagship microblogging community, you need to customize it. Add a background, fill out the profile, etc. Don’t leave the default settings in place because it is not only boring but also a practice that a lot of spammers use.

Add friends (or followers or fans or whatever the term is in your particular microblogging community). Don’t just add anyone; add those who could be your customers. You want to listen to them so you can meet their needs.

Share
I think this is the biggest failure that entrepreneurs encounter on microblogging sites: They fail to share themselves. People encounter dry, boring businesses all day long. They want to connect with other people and it’s okay to share a little of your own personality when microblogging.

Be consistent
There is nothing more annoying on blogs than to read the words “I’m sorry I haven’t blogged for a while…” and it’s the same on microblogging sites. If you’re going to use Twitter, Plurk, Facebook, LinkedIn, or whatever other site is out there, be consistent. Communicate regularly. Share constantly. You don’t have to overwhelm people with content and if you only tweet (or plurk or microblog) a couple of times a day then that’s better than nothing. But do it every day.

People like the idea of starting a blog but they can be a lot of work. Twitter (and the rest) are blogs, too, but they are much smaller and can be far more interactive. Become a microblogger and share yourself with your market.

Happy (micro)blogging!

Related posts:

1. “What Should I Do?” – Social Communities
2. Tweets in 10 – Get Connected!
3. “What Should I Do?” – Promotion

Are We There Yet? – Yes, we are there yet. We are there now. You’re already home. Confused? What a fun twist on overcoming the constant need to resolve uncertainty. Like a small child we all become impatient at times. Wanting the answer now, not willing to wait. Many great examples are listed here to alter the need for constant clarity in life’s situation. Sometimes it just is what it is.

A Kid, A Tie and a Chocolate Smile – One smile can do a world of good. In today’s world we rarely slow down to take in the good moments from strangers. In this post you will find out how one little boy in a busy city could transform a man’s day.

8 Websites You Need to STOP Building – Very funny! This comic like post will keep you laughing. It goes into several unnecessary points behind certain web sites.

5 Reasons Email is Now Snail Mail – Email in the past seemed to be super fast right? Not anymore. With more ways to communicate nowadays IM and Twitter have left email in the dust. Some interesting point are listed here as to the cause of slowness with emails. However, I have to say I’m still a fan of email slow or not.

Create Your Own Awesomely Weird Chocolate Bars – What will they think of next? Odd but somewhat interesting you will find the makings for the most unique candy bar in this post. From potato chips to herbs you name and they can put it in your custom chocolate bar. I think I’ll just stick with a normal good old chocolate bar.

Number of Twitter followers is the most overrated metric in social media – Mark makes some great points here about the volume followers. Sometimes more is just more and not benefiting you in the long run. He gives good examples of the outcome when having more followers than you can keep up with. “Numbers of followers/friends/readers matters, but in my opinion how connected you are to them is even more important in determining influence and reach”.

The 9 Stages to Social Media Acceptance – Social Media made simple. For newcomers the tips listed in this post will be most beneficial. The step by step process of what to expect when entering the social media experience will turn you into a master tweeter in no time.

If you’re looking for more, see the rest of my favorites on HeatherVilla StumbleUpon.

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