TWITTER FOR MONKEYSWhat to do for Success on Twitter! Instructions so simple even a monkey can follow them!

Twitter for beginner monkeys1. Write your Name! Make a twitter account name related to the

name of your site.

2. School Picture! Upload your picture onto

the profile of that twitter account. Even if it's a business account, people like to see your face.

3. Doodle on your notebook! Make a

custom background for the twitter account. Ideally, it is similar to the theme of your site. It might also have your website address on it.

4. Make a binder for your work Put the Twitter account into http://Hootsuite.com.

The username is: The password is:

5. Go to the lunchroom and look around. Put the Twitter account into http://Tweetbig.com.

6. Find your kids to sit with. Think of some specific keywords

and phrases related to your twitter account. Try for 10. Example: “DUI lawyer,” “criminal law” but not “law” itself, that's not targeted enough.

7. Tell people what you are about. Add these keywords to

your profile, and Tweetbig.

8. Who are the popular kids? Find some influencers in your niche

by searching on Twitter for your keywords. Put their names into Tweetbig.

9. Watch out for the crazy kid yelling in the corner! Start to follow people through Tweetbig that have your keyword in their name. Don't follow everyone. You want QUALITY followers. People who will care what you're talking about. Not Spammers.

10. Lunchroom conversations When you tweet, try to have a

20-80% ratio of promotional tweets to conversations. That's 80%

conversations.

Example: “Check out my new blog post! Http://9.tc/34” is a promotional tweet.

A conversation might be: “Hi twittername, that bar association meeting @looks so fun! Who are some interesting tweeps (tweeps are people on twitter.) I should be following from there?”

11. When is it my turn to talk? When you start, just

try to tweet once a day for the first two months. Spend the rest of your time finding new and interesting people to follow, listening, and sometimes responding to your new friends. (You don't have to raise your hand.)

12. How long before the bell rings? Try to spend one

hour per day, five days a week, on Twitter.

Twitter for intermediate monkeys1. Finding teachers and friends Make a list of influencers in your Twitter account.

What is an influencer? An influencer is a Twitter user with at least 1,000 followers. This person will also have a Klout score of at least 40. (You can find the Klout score in Hootsuite.) Find influencers with TweetBig. You can also put this list into your Hootsuite account.

2.Go to school. Visit this list once a day and see if you can find someone to mention, retweet, appreciate, or talk with. Notice how influencers are using Twitter. What are they doing? What can you do to imitate them?

3. Do your homework. Use Hootsuite to schedule tweets for the week, include shortened URLs with http://9.tc. Try to make more conversations than promotional tweets.

Example Conversation Tweet: “ twittername, I loved your article on @lawyer marketing, where can I learn more about this?” Or

Example Request Tweet: “ Twittername, would you be interested in @guest posting on our site about this? Here's our site: Http://9.tc/56” OR

Example Appreciation Tweet: “ Twittername, your blog is so useful! I @just left a comment. Thank you for writing about X!”

4. Be careful on the jungle gym! Sometimes you reach out to people and they don't respond. That's okay. You don't have to worry. Just keep reaching for the next person to connect with. There will always be more people.

5. Don't you hate it when kids yell your name over and over? Don't mention people

who are not part of your conversation. Don't put in twittername of someone@ unless they are being mentioned or being asked to be a resource in the conversation. When you randomly mention people, you risk being seen as a spammer.

6. Say hello! What happens when someone mentions you? Respond to them quickly, and continue the conversation. Where can you see if people mentioned you? It will be under the tab that says “connect”.

7. Be helpful. See if you can connect someone to a resource they need,

whether it's a graphic designer, a new website, or new book they might like.

8. Find common ground. When talking with an influencer, see

if you can find points of similarity between you and them. Maybe you both went to the same college, or root for the same team. Maybe you both love a certain kind of drink. Whatever it is, mention it, and start to build a connection.

9. Respond to compliments. When people say nice things about

you on Twitter, mention them and say Thank you. Then “star” or “Favorite” the compliment, and keep it for later. You will start to have a little bank of testimonials!

10. Call a twitter friend up and say hi! First,

message them and ask them if they'd like to chat. If they say yes, set up the call, and then call! Ask them about their expertise in the area they tweet about.

11. Go to a Twitter party! If you're feeling really brave,

go find a Tweetup in your town, and meet people IRL that you've been chatting with online! Watch out, sometimes they look different than their Twitter picture!

Twitter for Advanced Monkeys

1.Chatting! To

become known, gain followers, and more, it's important to take part in twitter chats. Here's a list of Twitter Chats: http://bit.ly/9zAZrR

2. Where is the chat? How can you tell someone is taking

part in a chat? They might say, “I agree, twittername. #HRChat.” @The Hashtag, # + some words is how other people who are chatting can find their answer.

3. What's the format? What to say? What do you

say in Twitter chats? The moderator asks a Question, other people retweet it, “Q1: what is your favorite beer? #beerchat” for example. And then, when people answer, they say, “A1: Coors! No wait, Budweiser! Can't decide! Can't decide, brain aneurysm! #beerchat”

4. Man it's so loud in here! How do you keep track of

what people are talking about in a chat? You can use tools such as TwitGrid, TwitterFall, or simply the Twitter Search function.

5. How can you pay attention? If you choose the

Twitter Search Function, put the # and the words for the chat inside the Twitter search box at the top. Then you can keep refreshing the page to track what people are saying.

6. When the teacher asks a question, just jump right in! When you are chatting inside a Twitter Chat, you

MUST remember to use the # + the words, example #lawchat, #Appchat, it can make little sense, just copy paste it so you don't mess up when you type it. If you don't put it in, no one will be able to see what you wrote.

7. Play Nice! Remember, play nice with the other monkeys on the Twitter chat. If you disagree with someone, be polite about it. Say something like, “ twittername, really? I never@ thought about it that way. #lawchat”

8. Don't yell. If you

don't know the answer, it's okay to say, “I don't know.” But don't pretend to know. And don't try to dominate the conversation. People will start to ignore you. Pay attention to the give and take of the conversation.

9. The class is watching. A lot more people are

watching and listening than talking. So just remember that you may think you're talking to 4 or 5 people, but there may be 30 people on the chat. You have no way of knowing.

10. Summer reading: Read the Tao of Twitter, by Mark Schaefer, and Twitterville, by Shel Israel.

Have a good summer and stay crazy!

TWITTER FOR MONKEYS WAS DRAWN AND WRITTEN BY MAZARINE TREYZ.

Tracking Your Progress

Twitter Metrics that Matter

Who gets to your website from Twitter?

Twitter does not show you the traffic that comes to you from Twitter, but you CAN figure this out a few different ways.

• You can have a custom landing page for Twitter visitors on your website, and track the visits to that page.

• You can also track when you do twitter outreach, and how traffic to your website rises on those days.

• You can also use a tool called Twitter Sidebar, which sits in the side of your website and when people visit your website and they're logged into twitter, you can see them appear on this sidebar.

Other Twitter Metrics that matter

• Mentions: When you have a twitter account, you'll notice how people will mention you, with an “ ” symbol, @

• Number of Followers: This is one way to track your progress, but it isn't the most important one. Still, the more targeted followers you have, the bigger your broadcast network is. Do NOT buy followers. This will only backfire.

• Retweets: You can REACH farther when people retweet you. If someone with 20,000 followers retweets you for example, then suddenly, you have 20,000 more potential eyeballs looking at your blog, your twitter account, than before. You might have more followers and more website traffic because of that, which eventually translates into more sales.

Twitter Tools: • Twitalyzer: It helps you find your most powerful followers and retweeters. It helps

you see how your influence is expanding or contracting. • TweetReach: When you use Tweetreach, this tool will allow you to see the

maximum number of potential people that are looking at your tweets for a given week, based on mentions and retweets as well as the size of your own audience.

• TwitterGrader: This is from Hubspot, this will show you how fast your account grows, if you are gaining or losing followers, and charts based on how much you tweet. Not as pretty as TwitSprout.

• TwitSprout: Will show you how fast your twitter account is growing, the ratio of followers to following that you have, and how fast or slow you're losing or gaining followers over the course of a week.

30 day plan for dominating Twitter Checklist

I did it! What to do

DAY 1: Pick a twitter handle that reflects your unique brand online.

DAY 2: Search for your friends or colleagues or heroes or heroines on Twitter and follow them. If you haven't already done this, sign up for Hootsuite and link your Twitter account.

DAY 3: Do a keyword search on twitter for words that are common in your niche. For example, if you are a craft brewer, search for the word “beer,” of course, but also “craft brewing” “biere” “bier” “cervisa” “stout” “IPA” “keg” you get the picture.

DAY 4: Start to follow people who use these words too.

DAY 5: If this sounds too tedious, sign up for TweetBig's free 7 day trial, and allow Tweetbig to find and follow these people for you. You still have to check off that you want to follow them, but it's easier than doing it one-by-one in Twitter.

DAY 6: Look at your follow queue in Tweetbig and continue to follow people. Look at your Klout level in Hootsuite, and your number of followers in TwitterGrader. Take a screenshot of these two numbers. You will use this to mark your progress by the end of 30 days.

DAY 7: Create a profile picture that reflects positively on you and what you're focusing on. If you're focused on international business, get a clear and attractive headshot.

DAY 8: Create a customized Twitter background. You can use one of the templates inside of ColorLovers, which you can get to through the setup page on your twitter profile.

DAY 9: If you sincerely want to dominate twitter, you'll make your own background. There are 120 pixels on the left, and people can view 500 pixels for your height.

DAY 10: Make sure you put your picture in your twitter background, as well as your website address, email, and other ways to engage with you, perhaps your LinkedIn profile address. Even if people can't click on the picture, it's good to show them you're on there.

DAY 11: Make sure you fill out your profile with keywords for your niche. A singer might put in her influences (Nicki Minaj, Simon and Garfunkel) for example.

DAY 12: Make sure you also put in a link to your website, and if you don't have a website yet, put a link to your LinkedIn profile. (Add your twitter handle to your LinkedIn profile as well)

I did it! What to do

DAY 13: Start retweeting the influencers in your niche. Go and comment on their articles, and then tweet that you commented, and what you thought of the article.

DAY 14: Follow and mention influencers in your niche as well. If they are doing an event, even if it's far away from you, you can say, “Hey ctrlsearch, @wish I could be there!”

DAY 15: When people start to follow you, mention them, say thank you, and ask them how you can help, or lead them back to your website.

DAY 16: Keep track of your direct messages and make sure that you respond to people.

DAY 17: Look at your followers and brainstorm, see if there's anyone in there you'd like to have a conversation with about your niche. Perhaps there's a way you two can connect, be blogging buddies, or create a product together. You never know til you ask!

DAY 18: Call someone from Twitter and have a conversation. If they are less experienced than you, listen carefully to their pain points, the things they complain about, and their language.

DAY 19: Continue to scheduletentweets per night in Hootsuite and link back to your witty blog posts, or to other unique and fascinating things you find about your niche. But if you retweet someone's tweet, don't just hit the retweet button. Say, “RT” and then copy paste their post, or say in 1 word what you think of it. Such as “Interesting: flavie says 2012 is going to be a @farce: http://9.tc/Za”

DAY 20: Write and schedule a series of tweets leading back to your blog posts addressing these pain points and specific language for your niche. Schedule tweets for the morning. Maketentweets about a post, and copy different sentences from the post.

DAY 21: Make sure you have a blog post around this particular problem (or a series of posts about a series of problems) and use a url shortener such as http://9.tc to link back in your tweets. If you don't have them, write them.

DAY 22: Start to create lists of your followers. When you start to list people, they will list you back, which makes you look more credible and popular, and helps you track various niches within your industry. For example if you're a

I did it! What to do

tea fanatic, you might have a list just for teashops you like, another for tea gurus, another for tea companies like Zhi tea.

DAY 23: You can mention people you've listed that you've listed them. Like “I was happy to add ctrlsearch to my “Fabulous Marketing Advice” list! @

DAY 24: Participate in hashtag conversations related to your niche, here's a list of over 400 chats: and see if you can get engaged in the discussions. If you don't know of any, mention an influential person and ask them if they @know of any.

DAY 25: With your new followers, message or mention them and ask if they'd like to do a Tweet chat with a hashtag specific to your niche (#dairyfarmers or #marketingprofs for example)

DAY 26: Have your chat on the agreed upon time and direct message followers to ask friends to participate, give them something easy to tweet. Like “MarketingProfs chat today 1:00pm EST, #marketingprofs, let's talk about where our industry is going.”

DAY 27: Measuring your Progress: Watching your progress. Watch your stats and notice how many people are coming to your blog through Twitter or LinkedIn thanks to your cross posting.

DAY 28: Watch your comments rise, and respond to comments. Continue to find and retweet people's articles on twitter, and comment on the articles in twitter.

DAY 29: Watch your followers rise and continue to thank people publicly for following you and by mentioning them in your stream. Ask them questions. Be positive.

DAY 30: Look at your stats in Tweetbig or TwitterGrader, the followers you had when you started, and the followers you have now. In Hootsuite, look at the Klout influence level you had when you started, and the influence level you have now. Pat yourself on the back for a job well done!