Here are my top five Twitter tools and sites for getting the most out of your twitter account and automating as much as you can to make your twitter experience, quicker & easier…

1st up, the most essential tool for any serious “twitteree“, or “twitterette“, imho, is a desktop app to make the whole experience easier.

I started off with Thwirl and liked it’s simplicity, but then came across TweetDeck

The first time I looked at TweetDeck I have to admit, I didn’t like it, mostly because of the black color, but now I wouldn’t go back to Thwirl.

TweetDeck just presents tweets, @’s and DM’s in such a clear way it’s easy to keep track of what’s going on, which can be very important when you end up in a 4, 5, or 6 (or more) different conversations at the same time, with a mix of @’s and DM’s coming at you left right and center!

With TweetDeck you know exactly where everything is…

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I mentioned in my last post (5. Getting out and meeting people, aka “networking”) how important it is to get and get together with other marketers whenever possible.

I managed to make it down to London a couple of weeks ago for Martin Avis’ London Lunch for the first time in well over a year, and it was great to see so many people there!

It was also great to catch up with a whole bunch of people (fellow internet marketers) who I’ve not seen in months, although I didn’t manage to chat with everyone I wanted to (sorry Rob!), and I forgot to take any photos, too busy nattering away, sorry!

So there’s 2 points to this post, first is an invite to what will be a great internet marketing workshop weekend that I’m going to, and the 2nd is more of a proposal based on having some kind of informal getogether in Cheltenham every couple of months…

Bristol Internet Marketing Workshop

This workshop is being held by Robert Puddy in Bristol (here in the UK) on May 8th - 10th!

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I would credit my success online down to 6 main things: -

1. PMA - “Positive Mental Attitude”

If you have a negative attitude to being successful then you’re going to end up sabotaging your own efforts.

Likewise if you listen to others with a “that will never work” attitude, then they will have a negative influence on your efforts, so don’t do it.

Instead start seeking out and mixing with people who have the same positive attitude and are interested in the same things as you, see No. 5 below.

I posted a great example of how a self defeating negative outlook can be recently here: -

Nothing Works Part 2

Warning - it’s a LONG read!

2. Investing in your own education

If you wanted to be a Doctor, Engineer, Lawyer or any other high paid offline “professional” you would have to spend a small fortune getting the education you need.

Why should you expect to get the REAL knowledge you need online to be for free?

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I was recently asked by a fellow marketer, who shall rename nameless to save his embarrassment , where he could find his facebook profile link, so that he could create a simplified link, like mine: -

http://mattgarrett.com/facebook

so here’s a quickie on how to find the link, and although Andrew   didn’t need this bit, I’ll also show what html code to use to create the link.

when you log in there should be a link with your name on the right at the top of the page, the link will look something like -

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=776035400&ref=name

then just remove the “&ref=name” bit from the end so it’s like this - 

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=776035400

you can then use this url in a standard html page for the redirect, here’s the html code to use, just replace the url with your own profile url: -

url redirect html

then save the file as index.html and upload it to a NEW folder called “facebook” and you will end up with a link that looks like this and is easier for people to remember: -

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I was going through some notes I’d made a little while back last night and came across a little golden nugget that was given to me by fellow marketer Simon Hodgkinson..

Simon’s a pretty smart marketer with a fairly impressive array of products, which you can check out on his Hodgkinson Publishing site, as well as his own book

Simon was checking his Gmail account while we were sat at the bar and mentioned another marketer (who’s name I can’t remember) who had his gmail account broken in to after accessing it on an unsecured network at a hotel, and subsequantly had many of his websites, servers and other business assets attacked!

The problem is that gmail is accessed via http instead of https (secure encrypted) as a default, so if you use Gmail I recommend you take a moment and go in to your “Settings” (from the top right hands side of the page when you’re logged in) and then scroll down the page to the bottom to find the option to change to logon via https as a default.

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It seems I must be doing something right with Twitter, even though I don’t twitter everyday, and sometimes even miss a week or two, my twitter followers count continues to climb…

It seems the automated BlogMyTweet.com plugin that I have added to my main blogs (like this one) does help to even bring in some traffic to the blogs as well, so it appears that I’m not just twittering away to myself, phew!

lol…

I’ve recently added a twitter “Follow Me on Twitter” graphical button to my blogs to see if they help to pick up even more new “followers” and it does seem to be helping.

Here’s three of the best sites I’ve found with free Twitter “follow me” buttons you can use: -

Free Twitter Buttons

Free Twitter Graphics

Free Twitter Follow Me Buttons

I’ve also added the TwitterCounter.com chicklet to display the number of followers I currently have, which seems to add a nice touch of social proof, encouraging people to go ahead an follow me.

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“Too many emails!”

that’s the most common comment I recieve from people who unsubscibe and it’s not surprising.

one of my subscribers mentioned recently that he’d had more than a dozen emails about Mike Filsaime’s Traffic Fusion on the launch day, which actually put him off.

I had to admit that I’d had around 3 times that many, but then I’m on just about every marketers list, including all my JV partners and adswaps partners, it helps to be able to spot the best stuff out there and find new JV/adswap partners, but it can get a bit much, even as a full time marketer who doesn’t have a full time job on top.

For anyone still juggling a “job” and their new internet marketing business it can be a killer…

In fact, receiving too many emails is also the best reason for unsubscribing from peoples lists, as With so many offers for the best new thing” flying around it’s very easy to get distracted and lose focus.

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If you’ve been in the Internet Marketing (IM) market for any length of time you’ll be familiar with the principle of a “One Time Offer” (OTO), where after signing up for a free offer (or a paid product) you will be be given a “special offer” for a product or service, usually at a discounted price, but will only get that price if you take the offer right then.

It’s a fairly standard marketing approach for professional online marketers (big and small) to make such an offer and can be very effective.

However, it can also cause confusion and irritation if people are not expecting it or haven’t come across it before, I recently recieved a support ticket accusing me of being a “con merchant” because of it…

I use AdSwaps as part of my list building process and it works very well, adding over 2,000 new subscribers to my newsletter in the last 24 days for example.

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Alex Goad released his new Affiliate Payload report today, you can find out what I think of it in my full review here: -

Affiliate Payload Review

There haven’t been as many bonuses on offer form other marketers as I’d expected, but I did spot four worth listing, so I thought I’d list them here as usual, along with my own of course.

 ~##~

I’m going to list mine first, but there are 3 other bonuses below, from Ben Shaffer, Ellery Coleman and Chris McNeeney respectively, just in case one of those is of more interest to you.

My Bonus Offer -

1. Two keyword targeted articles written for you for your first two cpa offers (value $14)

2. 400 keywords researched and analyzed for you, including search volumes, competition (kei) and ppc bid values (value $54).

Note: I’ve owned and run the TopKeywordlists.com private membership site for the last 3 years, so I know a thing or two about keyword research.

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Damn, I had no idea it would be so difficult to pick a winner, I think that’s why I’ve not been in a rush to close the competition, I wasn’t looking forward to trying to pick just one winner, there’s some excellent posts!

You can read the original post and the replies here: -

http://mattgarrett.com/jv-tips-100-prize/

There are a few bits especially that I’d like to highlight: -

All of Reed’s points are bang on, unsurprisingly, but meeting someone at a seminar shouldn’t be underestimated. Just one JV partner that I made at the last seminar I went to paid for the cost of the seminar for me…

Giving the person a testimonial for their product is also a great tip.

Ben mentioned that it’s a good idea to offer potential JV partners a review copy of your product, you shouldn’t really expect them to pay for it after all, and they’re not likely to promote it if they don’t get to check it out…

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