The Top Must-Have Tools FOR SKYROCKETING ENGAGEMENT

AND GROWING YOUR AUDIENCE ON TWITTER

I get asked all the time, “Carlos, how the heck do you keep your Twitter stream flowing with engaging Tweets and grow your following so fast?”

People are SHOCKED when I tell them that with a few simple (and mostly free) tools they can automate most of the process. That way you don’t have to spend hours every day on Twitter when you’d rather be making music.

Here’s the stuff I use right now (after 2+ years of experiments and trying all kinds of stuff). Feel free to steal my set-up.

Set up a Gmail account specifically for the purpose of your Twitter content garden.

Call it: “TeamYourName@Gmail.Com”

Make a list of at least 30 of your favorite bands.

Set up Google Alerts for all of those bands to be delivered to that email address once a week.

Google Docs will come in handy for you as well. The spreadsheet is great for keeping track of your growth and identifying which targets are the most fruitful.

Click here to set up your Gmail account…

Use Hootsuite to keep your Twitter queue full. You can pre-schedule up to 10 tweets per day.

Go into your Gmail account once a week and turn the content in your Google alerts into tweets.

Lyrics are also a great source of tweets. If you put 1 or 2 lines of your song in a tweet, you’ll get some great feedback on your songwriting.

Finally, retweet the retweets. You can either monitor the retweets through your Hootsuite dashboard or set your email notifications from Twitter to go your Gmail account.

If you sit down for a couple of hours once a week and pull from those 3 Tweet resources, you’ll never have to worry about your stream going quiet.

Use your Hootsuite dashboard to keep up with your Twitter conversations. Instead of being a slave to Twitter all day, you can just check in with Hootsuite a few times a day for a couple of minutes and stay engaged with your fans.

There is a premium version of Hoostuite, but you don’t need it. The free version gives you everything you need.

Click here to set up your Hootsuite account…

Use Tweepi to grow your Twitter following.

Remember that list of 30 bands from earlier?

Now go find all of their Twitter handles and make a list in your Google Doc spreadsheet.

From Mon-Fri each week, use Tweepi to follow the followers of one of your favorite bands. 250 per day is a good place to start. Twitter is pretty dead on the weekends so you should focus on making music those days.

Make sure to use Tweepi’s filtering tool to narrow it down to only people that have tweeted in the last 24 hours. By only following active Tweeps and maintaining an interesting Twitter stream, you should get a pretty solid follow-back rate.

You’ll also use Tweepi to unfollow anyone that doesn’t follow you back. They don’t show you the unfollowers until a week after you follow them. That way they have plenty of time to follow you back. So go ahead and unfollow all the unfollowers you can while your in there each day.

There is a premium version of Tweepi as well. You may want to upgrade someday, but the free version gives you all you need to get started.

Click here to set up your Tweepi account… (the free version is hidden in a smaller box below the premium versions)

Use SocialOomph to start conversations with all of your new followers by sending out an automated Welcome Tweet.

The #1 mistake that people make on Twitter is sending out a link in their welcome tweet. It comes across very spammy when people do that.

I recommend using the following template for your welcome tweet. It’s exactly what I use with all of my clients:

“Nice to meet you! I’m ___, a singer/songwriter from ___. What kind of music do you listen to?”

Remember: You’re looking for a long-term relationship with your fans, NOT a one-night stand.

So if you make that extra effort to get to know them, you’ll find they will often ask to hear your music before you offer it. And that’s a much better position to be in than scaring them away with a pushy welcome tweet.

This is the one tool on the list that you’ll need to invest in. It costs $6.44 per month and it’s worth every penny.

Click here to set up your SocialOomph account…

And that is it my friend! Over-thinking tools is NOT a requirement. Enjoy the tools and keep rocking;)

-Carlos