Archive for the ‘Business’ Category:
twitter - Follow and Followed Alike…
I’ve found that for a given topic, affiliate marketing in this case, you can find a lot of good quality tweeps associated with the topic, and follow them expecting a ROF (Return On Follow) of new followers. I originally did this with the AffiliateTrust account and was stopped in my tracks at the wall with 2001 follows. The wall is twitter’s limit to following without an equal number of followers. The followers began accruing and after a few months of not following anyone new, sort of topped out at about 1750. Wanting to get over that 2001 wall and being so close, I decided to go for it. But how?
I’ve thought about using twitter apps that prune out follows who aren’t following back, but want a little more control over the process. Recently twitter added the new feature that places buttons for context menus on each follower and followed in your lists. I looked for a way to determine which of the followed are followers by examining the menu in the followed list. I found that ones following me had a DM option that was absent from ones not following. So I simply went down the list and un-followed most of the non-followers.
There were a couple problems that came up…
I found that the context menu covered up the next button in the list when using Firefox. To speed up removing hundreds of followed, I started at the bottom of the list rather than the top to overcome this.
The second was that removing people caused the page to backfill when advancing to the next page. This meant that I had to go back a page over and over to continue removal. To solve this I found the very last page of the followed list. How did I do it? Look at the address of the page. There will be a page number for the page you’re on. Divide your followed total by 20 and round up. Enter that as the page number to go directly to the last page. Then begin at the bottom of the last page and work your way backwards through the list.
I removed about a thousand followed yesterday which freed me to add new followers and I added about 800 in two separate session. After the first session of additions my followers suddenly dropped off to 1750. I don’t know why. All I can come up with is that I may have removed some followed that happen to have been following me. In any case, this meant I now had to gain 250 users to get over that wall instead of the original 150.
Where did I find ones to follow? I picked a tweep connected with Internet/affiliate marketing who has over 24,000 followers. I figured these would be well targeted for the topic. So I opened his follower list and went to work. This is actually easier than it sounds. I simply went down the list clicking follow follow follow… I wanted to be a little more selective though, so I skimmed the tweeps and primarily selected ones that were obviously personal accounts with portrait avatars and real names. I quickly began to notice patterns in some of the accounts and realized that a huge percentage of this persons followers were spammers. There were many relating to escort and dating services so I avoided most accounts with pretty girl avatars. No wonder he had over 24k followers!
After a few hours of work I hit last nights follower goal of 1900 at about 1:00AM, then went to bed. The followers were accruing at about two a minute. I expected to get over the wall by the time I got up.
Sure enough! This morning the count was right at 2090 and is now at 2120 and still climbing. Oh man, just realized that now that I’m over the wall, I’ve got another thousand to go after.
I’m not claiming that this technique will work for all twitter accounts. Like affiliate marketing, your twitter account will need to provide some value for your followers. And for longevity you should target tweeps that will be receptive to your message. You won’t meet these goals with the rampant “400 followers immediately” schemes. It takes work. Then, once you have a large audience, with carefully composed and balanced pitches, you can reach thousands…
And “pitches” is a topic for another day…
Business Cellular on a Budget
I usually blog about affiliate marketing, but every once in a while something related to business comes up that’s worth passing on. This is not a promo for any particular product or service and there is no compensation involved. This was intended to be a post at the Affiliate Trust Forum but was becoming a book, so here it lands…
Whenever I get mail from Qwest that doesn’t look like the regular bill, I just toss it because it’s usually a special offer or promo. I got another one a few days ago that I’m glad I opened. Had it not been in a large manila envelope, it would have suffered the demise of the others.
Turns out that Qwest is closing Qwest Wireless services and apparently becoming an agent of Verizon. I currently subscribe to Qwest business services that ties my cell service with my business landline service through what they call “one number”. So how will this impact the communications I’ve relied on for so many years? It’s not pretty! No more one number service that automatically routes calls for either the landline or cell number to the cell phone when it’s on, or either number to the landline when the cell phone is off. When unanswered our office voicemail system picks up the call. Not only this, but it’s goodbye trusty Motorola V710. This cell phone will become obsolete and worthless when the change is complete in September. I’ll salvage the micro SD card, but that’s it.
Next thought… hmm, perhaps now is my chance to catch up with technology (again!). My wife and I… well, let’s just say we’re behind the times. My youngest son, his girlfriend, and my daughter all have G-Phones. My older son has an I-Phone. Every time I’m with them something comes up that sends them scurrying to search Google using their phones. I sort of pat my Moto and watch longingly while they access the world at their fingertips.
So I began a qwest (sic) to see what I can do to catch up. And sorry, I just don’t use the phone enough to make the purchase price of an I or G phone worthwhile, along with their exorbitant monthly connection fees.
Enter the Samsung Omnia… it seems you hear so much about the I and G phones with their touch screens that you may not realize there are alternatives with similar features. Verizon offers a selection of touch screen phones. I spotted the Omnia and did a little research. There’s a good review with video at cnet reviews. This is a “smart phone” running MS Windows Mobile® 6.1 Professional with Microsoft® office Word Mobile, Excel® Mobile, and PowerPoint® Mobile; Adobe® Reader® LE PDF viewer, and Opera™ Mobile browser. It’s Wi–Fi Capable, plays DivX movies, and includes 8GB of additional internal memory. Wow! And the good news, with the Qwest 25% discount and the rebate that comes with the phone, it’s costing me about $75.
So for you fulltime Internet marketers who desire mobile business and communications access, the Omnia may just fit the bill.
AffililateTrust.org
Forum.AffiliateTrust.org
