#9 How to Use Twitter

Podcast- How to Use Twitter Autopilot Your Business Podcast Transcription

Listen to the audio version of this document HERE

Get your FREE Online Survival guide at www.autopilotyourbusiness.com © 2013 AutoPilot Your Business. All Rights Reserved.

Note: We of course can't promise that all links mentioned in this document will be live,

and if you stumble upon any that aren't, we apologise! 1

Andrew McCauley: Hello and welcome back to podcast #9. This is Andrew

McCauley for Autopilot Your Business and we are excited

and we – myself and the lovely Heather Porter.

Are you there, Heather?

Heather Porter: I am here of course, Andrew McCauley. It‟s good to be

back. Welcome back, everybody to podcast… We are on #9

already?

Andrew McCauley: We are on #9 already. Now, can you believe that?

In our last podcast we did LinkedIn and we had some pretty

amazing results to that, lots of people checked this out and

lots of new comments and fans from doing that podcast.

So, that was pretty cool and we did ask them what would

they like to hear on our next podcast which is this one.

So, Heather you want to tell them what the winning topic

was for this particular podcast?

Heather Porter: The winning topic is Twitter and it‟s Twitter because there is

a nice mix of reactions around it whether it‟s actually

worthwhile or a waste of time. So, today we are going to

clear it up that it is in fact not a waste of your time and it‟s

a very, very valuable tool to use in your business.

Andrew McCauley: Yes, totally. And it was actually surprising. I didn‟t think it

would be Twitter but then I started looking around at some

resources that people could go and find out about Twitter.

http://autopilotyourbusiness.com/podcasts/9-how-to-use-twitter/

http://www.autopilotyourbusiness.com/

http://www.socialmediamasterplanseries.com/







There is a lot of free information out there because not a lot

of how-to courses, particularly for strategies and things like

that to how really utilize Twitter. So, as I said, there is a

bit of a gap between the people who love it and people that

hate it. So, I guess we won‟t try and bridge that gap today,

right?

Heather Porter: Exactly. And to prove that Twitter is in fact actually one of

the most amazing resources for a quickly timely market

research to find new clients and to engage your current

clientele. So, let‟s get stuck in, shall we?

Andrew McCauley: I think we should, I think we should. Where do we start on

Twitter?

Heather Porter: Let‟s start at the beginning.

Andrew McCauley: At the beginning.

Heather Porter: For anybody that‟s really new with Twitter, maybe who

doesn‟t even have an account, let‟s talk about what it is

first and how to get a profile.

Andrew McCauley: Well, I guess the thing about Twitter is that it is pretty

much replacing the 24-hour news services we see on TV.

Back in the „90s and early 2000s we had cable going, we

had FoxTel and that sort of stuff going on in Australia.

There were news channels that were going all round the

clock. Twitter now has pretty much replaced a lot of news

services or specifically enhanced them and it is the place to

find out where things are happening now. It can be things

that are having a lot of worldwide scale – earthquakes and









disasters and celebrities and celebrity events and that sort

of thing – but it also is a great place for you to find what‟s

happening in your industry, what‟s happening in your niche,

who are the people, what are your customers doing, what

are your competitors doing and it‟s a great way to spy on

that sort of stuff. Never before really have we ever seen so

much availability of information about your target market

and your competitors. So, it‟s a very simple tool to use. In

fact, I think part of the simplicity is the confusion for a lot

of people, really.

Heather Porter: That‟s actually a really good point because… what it is? It‟s

140 characters…

Andrew McCauley: 140 characters, that‟s all we have. What we have is 140

characters. It‟s designed to sort of fit into a standard text

message.

Heather Porter: That‟s how it started. Yeah, exactly, it started as a tool to

actually text phones, didn‟t it? You could get mobile

updates.

Andrew McCauley: Totally, totally. So, you have got 140 characters. So, this

is an art now to really getting your message across as

quickly and swiftly as you can inside 140 characters.

So, one of the things that you want to think about when

you are starting Twitter is don‟t be intimidated, firstly. I

mean, the learning curve can be a little bit steep but

essentially we boil it down to pretty much three things. It‟s

reading, reading what people have got to say; it‟s writing,

writing things that people want to know about; and also

sharing, sharing information you find relevant to you.








Heather Porter: I would actually jump in there really quickly too and add

one more. I think engagement – if you go to somebody‟s

Twitter wall – we will jump into that in a moment – but if

you go to somebody‟s Twitter page or profile and it‟s just

them saying things without any engagement to other

people, you kind of think “Oh, well, they switched on

automation or they are not actually real person or

whatever.” So, I would add engagement to the mix too.

Andrew McCauley: Yeah, good. I never really was able to mention that. We

will talk about it… But Twitter isn‟t Facebook. Facebook‟s

got a lot of social interaction style aspects to it, lots of

pictures and a lot of bits and pieces like that with friends

that you actually know and it‟s okay to do this. Twitter has

a lot of people that go “getting to know”. It‟s about making

new connection to sharing information and riding the

information curve. So, after a while, I did get used to those

differences between Twitter and Facebook.

Heather Porter: So, let‟s start quickly I guess with the profile. With Twitter

you have something called a Twitter handle or your user

name and that‟s like whatever you want it to be, really. So,

when you sign up for a Twitter account, you get to choose

your user name. Do you have any pointers on what to

consider when choosing your name?

Andrew McCauley: Yeah. If you can make your user name relevant to what

you do or your name, that‟s going to be beneficial. So, if

you have got CNN – CNN‟s Twitter name might be

CNNNews… Now, you got to know exactly where and what

sort of information that your people are going to be

delivering. BestBuyCustomerService or BestBuyService is

going to be relevant to what Best Buy does. So, if you can

put either your name or something that indicates what you








do as part of your name, then people are going to find it

easier to really say “Well, it‟s obvious what industry you are

in.”

Heather Porter: Good point and remember guys that your Twitter username

is actually what shows up in the URL of your Twitter

account. So, it would be Twitter.com/ and then your

username. So, it is important that you choose something

that really works with you and your industry.

Andrew McCauley: Yeah. And then here is the other thing too about Twitter

and it is that if you do a search for your name on Google,

Twitter is one of the Top 5 or 6 results that come back on

Google. So, your username will come back on Google

results. So, it‟s something that‟s search for your name on

Google. Remember, your Twitter handle is going to show

up in the results as well. So, you want to make sure that if

your name is showing up, people will actually know what is

it that you do.

Heather Porter: Well said. So, what about the profile? What else? I know

you have a little tiny spot to actually write a bio, don‟t you?

Andrew McCauley: Well, you have 160 characters to write your bio and in your

bio you want to make sure that it‟s got some stuff that you

want people to know what you do. So, for instance, you

have got some keywords in there… let‟s say you are a

fitness trainer, they you might want to have some

keywords like “weight loss”, “fitness training”, “group

training sessions”, that sort of stuff. Let it be human

readable so people can read it, can see that it makes sense

but also if someone is to do search for you on Twitter with

those keywords, your name will come up. So, you want to








make sure that your bio indicates exactly what it is that you

do.

Now, the other thing about your profile is your picture and

you want to make sure that the picture is a picture of you.

Make sure that it‟s a picture of you. This is social media

where you are doing social stuff, connecting, building

relationships, people want to see who you are.

Heather Porter: So, you don‟t recommend using a logo then. You

recommend using like the CEO‟s photo or something like

that?

Andrew McCauley: Definitely. We want you to use an avatar. We don‟t want

you to have a celebrity in your place because we don‟t want

your pet we don‟t want to see your baby, we don‟t want to

see your partner because that‟s not who they came to see;

they came to see you. We don‟t want close-ups of your

eyeball – I see that all the time. Don‟t do that sort of stuff.

Heather Porter: “That‟s the famous lips”, I have seen that too.

Andrew McCauley: They will see who you really are. Don‟t try and get too

alrighty fighty and make it… not everyone‟s like that. If

that‟s really who you are then that‟s good but most people

aren‟t like that. So, make sure that the photo is pretty

cool.

The other thing that you want to think about also is tailored

background, a brand background. Brand background is

great for brand awareness. If you have got a logo and

some information you want to add and you want to stick








that on to your background as well. The backgrounds

themselves are not… what‟s the word we are looking for…

they are not actually… you can‟t click on any of the images

or the links inside the background; background is just a

picture.

Now, the problem with the background these days… it used

to be pretty safe to do a generic background but the

problem with the background is that we have so many

different ranges of screen sizes out there, you have got PCs

and Macs, you have got netbooks and laptops, you have got

iPads and iPhones and all that sort of stuff, Android,

Blackberrys and the problem is that each of those screen

sizes is different and your background will change slightly

for each of those little devices. So, you got to remember

that what you may say on one device may not be the

perfect fit on another device. You know what I am saying?

Heather Porter: Yeah, perfect, perfect sense. So, I think it‟s your profile

image that‟s important, it‟s your little bio and quickly on

that point on the bio as well. Like you were saying about

creativity, I think if you are just using Twitter like a social

with your family and friends, that‟s one thing but we are

talking about using it for business. So, you also don‟t want

to take up the 160 characters in your bio and say “I like

green coffee and skiing”. It‟s an important place where you

would actually say what you do as a business or an expert.

Also, you didn‟t mention… what about the URL? Should you

stick your URL?

Andrew McCauley: That‟s a great point. I was just about to say the URL, it‟s

the only clickable part of your entire profile apart from

inside your tweets. It‟s the only clickable part. So, you








want to make sure that you have your URL that you can

fully format. So it‟s http://www. Put in that. Don‟t use

short links. Here is the think about short links. Some of

those spammy accounts have used short links to direct

people to their sales page or some affiliate link and people

are very weary about shortened URLs inside a person‟s bio

for their website. So, make sure that people can actually

see what the address is that they go to before they click it.

It just makes you probably more likely to get click-throughs

than people who are a bit weary about those shortened

URLs.

If it‟s a website, you are happy to send people to your

website, send it to them. If you don‟t have a website, then

it could be a Facebook account, it could be your YouTube

account, it could be your LinkedIn profile. Send them

somewhere so that they can get more information as they

can‟t get enough of you from Twitter.

Heather Porter: That‟s a good point really because how much can they get

of you in Twitter, it‟s very short little place.

Andrew McCauley: Yeah, totally, totally. So, send them somewhere there is

more information about you. It can be anywhere… I mean,

we have all got more than one URL these days, sometimes

we don‟t realize it.

Heather Porter: Good point, Andrew McCauley.

Andrew McCauley: Thank you, Heather Porter.



http://www/






Heather Porter: Alright, shall we move on? What else? Is that all with the

profile that we should consider?

Andrew McCauley: I think so. The other thing just on the profile is your

location. It‟s a great idea to put your location, particularly

if you are in bricks and mortar business, put the area that

you serve. Now, for instance, let‟s say in Sydney, let‟s say

you are a coach and your business actually did not rely on

YouTube to be only coaching. Let‟s say Wollongong for

instance… Now, if you were a vet or a doctor and you lived

in Wollongong, then it‟s pretty safe to say that your main

clientele is going to be coming from Wollongong. Now, if I

was a coach or a business coach and I would be like

coaching over the phone or via the internet then I wouldn‟t

have to have only my clients living in Wollongong; they

could be in Sydney, they could be in New South Wales, they

could be anywhere in Australia, really. So, if I was a coach

and I was going to put myself on Twitter, I may put down

Wollongong but I might also put down Sydney and New

South Wales because that maybe where my markets come

from. So, what‟s going to happen is in some of the search

results is that if somebody types in “business coach, New

South Wales”, your name will come up. If they type in

“business coach, Sydney”, your name will come up. If they

type in “business coach, Wollongong”, your name is going

to come up. So, give yourself a chance of getting your

name exposed as many times as you can.

Heather Porter: So, how would you list that in your location? Do you put

commas between the words?

Andrew McCauley: Yeah, you can put comma. Just use a comma, comma

space. I think there is a certain amount of characters – I

can‟t remember of the top of my head but there is a certain

amount of characters you can put up there so that you can

have a number of places that you can show up for. Don‟t








put “the world”, don‟t put “the universe” or anything stupid

like that because no one searches for a business coach in

the universe.

Heather Porter: Maybe some do, maybe some do.

Andrew McCauley: Well, they probably do, they probably do.

Heather Porter: But I hear you are saying “No, it‟s a good point.”

So, that‟s a profile, yes.

Andrew McCauley: That‟s a profile, yup.

Heather Porter: Alright.

So, let‟s move on to the meat of Twitter and that is a tweet,

a tweet, tweet, tweet.

Andrew McCauley: Alright, tweet, tweet, tweet. As we said earlier, there is

140 characters that you can use in a tweet. Remember

that the 140 characters, if you ever want to reference a

website, you often find that websites and the URLs can be

really long. In fact, some can even be longer than 140

characters which means if you want to paste that inside a

tweet, you would get cut off and you won‟t be able to send

people to that website. So, then use a think called a URL

Shortener and there is a whole range of different shorteners

out there. There is the Bit.ly URLs. There is HootSuite








URLs, Tiny URLs, Bug URLs – there are all sorts of things.

Just do a Google search for “URL shortener” and you will

get thousands of results.

Heather Porter: And we will also stick a few of our favorites to our resources

tab on our website as well. So that‟s

www.AutoPilotYourBusiness.com/podcast and in the

„resource‟ tab, we will put our favorites in there for you

guys.

Andrew McCauley: Yeah, good, good. Now, reason for using a shortener and

what it does essentially is it grabs the URL that are really

long that you want to send people to and it shortens it into

about 18-20 characters so you can add that into your

tweet. So, if you are going to send somebody to a

particular webpage, you want to say “Hey, check out this

webpage. I have really got some great value from it” and

you paste a short URL in the tweet, it will all match up

inside 140 characters, then you can send that off and

people will be able to click on that link and still get the

same result. Some URL shorteners give you some statistics

and analytics as well which I highly recommend to do that.

Heather Porter: And on the point of abbreviations as well, think about your

target market too. A lot of people still don‟t know what are

these crazy… well, „LOL‟ is quite popular now but there are

abbreviations that you might know if you are particularly

socially savvy but a lot of your audience may have no idea

of what you are talking about. So, be weary of what you

are abbreviating.

Andrew McCauley: Yeah. And I think for that text space, if you can squeeze a

proper sentence into under 140 characters, then try and do

it. Don‟t try and do the old texting, texting sort of cut-



http://www.autopilotyourbusiness.com/podcast






down talk because not everyone gets it. Some of you

people may no longer and you could be missing out on

valuable direction to people.

Heather Porter: Good point.

Andrew McCauley: So, the other thing I was going to say was manual versus

automatic on your tweets. Now, there is a whole range of

third-party applications and we will talk about apps a little

later but manually updating or sending tweets out is a good

thing. Automating is not so good because people start to

see the robotic rhythm of that sort of activity. So, make

sure that you are manually sending your tweets out. Now,

this can take a lot of time. You don‟t have to schedule

tweets but when you automatically send tweets like some

of these spinners that automatically send all sorts of tweets

with keywords in it, sometimes it doesn‟t even make sense,

don‟t do it because people will not even interact with you.

Heather Porter: And, guys, if you don‟t even know what a spinner is, you

don‟t have to worry about it. You just don‟t want to use

one. That‟s all.

Andrew McCauley: If you are manually typing your tweets in Tweeter then

that‟s a good thing.

Heather Porter: That‟s what you want to do, yes.

Andrew McCauley: They will interact with you, right?









So, there you go. I think that‟s about the length.

Heather Porter: Well, what else about tweets, like what do you actually

tweet about?

Andrew McCauley: Well, there is a wide range of stuffs that you can tweet

about – What you had for lunch today? What you had for

breakfast this morning?

Heather Porter: No, real tired of that, Andrew!

Andrew McCauley: Yeah. So, there is a whole bunch of different stuff you can

tweet about. Here is the real thing – you want to add value

to your followers. If you have got followers that are coming

along and they have decided to say “Yes, we will follow

you”, then make sure you reciprocate by giving them value.

And what sort of value can you give them? You can give

them stuff that are going to be interesting to them and

beneficial for them. It‟s a compromise. They follow you if

you give them good information. Don‟t give them spammy

rubbish or irrelevant information.

Heather Porter: I find what works really well… I am sorry, I got so excited

about what I was going to say, how to jump in.

I find what works really, really well is a combination of tips,

actually giving little bite-sized tips of what you can help

your clientele with and also questions to get them engaged,

photos – I am sure, Andrews, you have some tips on

photos – including photos in your tweets, even videos. So,

really, really mixing it up. So, thinking about having a full-

blown conversation over time.








Andrew McCauley: Yeah. It is fun time actually. Photos and videos weren‟t

allowed in tweeter, simply text. Now, I know you can put a

link that sort of stuff but now you can actually put photos in

there or even put links to YouTube and the video will

actually play in side tweeter. So, it‟s a pretty cool addition

to Twitter and if you haven‟t been on Twitter for a while, I

strongly recommend you get in and have a look at that.

The other couple of things that I wanted to talk about is re-

tweets which is when somebody else liked when you got to

say and they go and tell all of their followers. That‟s a

great thing to be having. If you have got some people re-

tweeting your information, then by all means enjoy it.

There is no need to really thank people for doing that.

People are expecting to be re-tweeted. So, as I said, there

is no need to and thank people individually for re-tweeting

your information.

And don‟t be a mean twitter. Don‟t go and tweet a bad or

everything about you, you, you because people get sick of

that pretty quickly.

Heather Porter: Yeah.

Andrew McCauley: And one other questions I often get asked is “How many

times should I tell people to go to my website or my self

page?” and I generally say it depends on the audience but

generally every sixth to eighth tweet should be about you.

So, you may add value, add value, add value six times and

then say “Hey, I have got a brand new book” or “here is an

article I have written” or “here is something on my

website”, so people can go there but they are not saying all

about you, you, you. People get turned off quickly.








Heather Porter: That‟s a really good point. I was something this morning

that‟s actually called a Tweetchat which we will talk about

later as well and how to do those for your business but I

was in there and we were all talking about basically the

value of building relationships. If you give a lot of value,

people are going to literally seek out more of who you are

anyway. So, they are going to go into your profile and click

on that link to go to your website to engage with you in

other spots. So, don‟t worry about constantly flaunting

yourself and your products. If you are doing a lot of good

value, they are going to come after you, they will find more

about you naturally.

Andrew McCauley: Yeah. And I will give you a perfect example of that and

that‟s these podcasts. We are doing a lot of these

podcasts, this is no. 9. We have done 8 of these and we

are already giving a lot of valuable feedback and people

coming through because they know we are giving good

value on these podcasts and people come to me back and

say “Hey, we want some more. What else can we find out

about?” So, this is an example of how it‟s working for us.

Heather Porter: It is. So, just be generous. If you have the knowledge,

then share it.

Another point on re-tweets too because, I guess, the main

question is how do you actually do re-tweet. There is a

couple of different ways, is there now?

Andrew McCauley: Re-tweet is rather copy the tweet that you have got and

put cover that is RT and then paste the tweet and that will

re-tweet that for you. Most applications in Twitter itself has

a little button that will say „re-tweet‟ and as soon as you








click on the RT, it just does a little of that copy and pasting

and re-tweeting for you. So, you don‟t need to do much at

all.

You can add your own personal touch to it and often that

gets a bit more interaction because it‟s not just a re-tweet

button. You may say “Here is a great article that I saw”

and then hit the re-tweet button so that you have got your

opinion matched with…

Heather Porter: You brought up a really good point. If you want to be re-

tweeted, then leave space in your tweet for others to

actually pick it up and then leave their own little comments.

So, try and make it as short as possible.

Andrew McCauley: Yeah. You don‟t need to fill 140 characters…

Heather Porter: I am just thinking backwards a little bit here, thinking

about… well, we were talking about the profile and

everything but where do you actually go to do a tweet

because if you are on your profile, it can get quite confusing

if you are actually not using these other third-party tools.

And if you are on Twitter.com on your profile page, where

do you actually make tweets? How do you do that?

Andrew McCauley: If you are on the profile and you are looking at your own

profile, then you can just go to your home button and the

home button will take you straight there. You click on the

home button and you will see a box with a number of

followers and the number of people following you have got

and it will say “compose new tweet” and you enter into

that. Clicking the home button will get you out of trouble.








Heather Porter: Perfect. And then the other quick tip on that too, if you are

new to Twitter, is that there is a… what‟s the tab at the top?

Interaction or it‟s the @ symbol, right?

Andrew McCauley: Yeah, it‟s called @connect.

Heather Porter: Yeah. So, if you click on that, you can actually see the

people that are engaging with you with replies or re-tweets

and things like that.

Andrew McCauley: Yes, exactly. So, that‟s a good part. The @ symbol before

you name means that everybody on Twitter gets to see that

particular tweet. So, you are doing an @ symbol meaning

that if will be directed to you but everybody of that‟s person

followers gets to see that tweet. If it‟s a direct message – a

direct message is like a private message and that‟s a

message between you and the other person; no one else

gets to see it.

So, if I write down “@HeatherPorter, this is a great

podcast”, it gets known to Heather Porter, her Twitter page

will get to all my followers, they get to see that too. It‟s

almost like having an open conversation with the rest of the

universe.

Heather Porter: Exactly. And I certainly wish that my name Heather Porter

was still available when I registered for Twitter.








Speaking about it, if you want to engage with us, I am a

business hostess, so I am @businesshostess. And what are

you, Andrew?

Andrew McCauley: I am the @The_SM_Bloke. If you do a search for “The

Social Media Bloke”, you find me.

Heather Porter: Perfect. So, if you actually use the @ symbol and our

handle, our Twitter handle or user name, what we just told

you guys about, then you can type something after that

and that would actually come up in our interactions area of

Twitter. We can actually see you are commenting to us and

shared a message with us.

Andrew McCauley: Please let us know when you are listening to podcasts,

jump on Twitter, do the @ symbol and you got names and

you just say “Listen to their podcast”.

Heather Porter: Pretty great and they will respond back to you and you say

“Hello!”

Andrew McCauley: Yes, awesome, awesome.

Heather Porter: So, there is so much to cover really with Twitter, I am

already feeling that this is going to already turn into

another episode. Are you also …?

Andrew McCauley: Well, I can definitely do that. In fact, there is a whole…








And the other thing is I was looking for some info about

some of these Twitter products that are out there and there

is not a lot out there. So, I think I am feeling a new

product coming on for us… a Twitter product coming out

pretty soon.

Heather Porter: I like it, I like it, I like it. It‟s very good.

Andrew McCauley: We are working on that.

Heather Porter: I mean, just alone knowing how to do a Tweetchat, that

was the funniest thing this morning.

Andrew McCauley: So, tell me about that? I know it‟s fresh in your mind and

just for people listening, Heather said “Hey, I want to

Tweetchat” and we get started too a little bit late starting

the podcast. I said “I am going to get on this Tweetchat

and I am going to it up.” She said “Good, check it out.”

So, I went ahead and looked at it but quickly just give us

an overview of what is a Tweetchat. What‟s it all about?

Tell us how it works and why you have been on it.

Heather Porter: Gosh! It‟s the simplest thing that you can use and it was so

much fun this morning. Basically, all you need to do is

come up with a term that is… let‟s say, a chat that you

want to have. So, I will give you an example of one that I

was on. It was for speakers. So, the organizers came up

with a hash tag #speakerchat. What I mean by that is

basically the hash sign or pound sign, Shift+3 on your

keyboard, and then the word, all one word. So, in this case

it was #SpeakerChat. And what they did is they researched

and they found that this was a term that was not yet used,

so they could kind of own it on twitter and then every week








once a week they are going to have a live chat, a live Q&A,

in Twitter with a particular expert on speaking, on being a

speaker. So, how you do it? It‟s really easy. You basically

jump on to your Twitter account and you use that hash tag,

the #SpeakerChat and then you type a question, you type a

comment, to really engage in a chat. You use, as we were

just saying before, the @ symbol. So, I might say

#SpeakerChat @The_SM_Bloke “Wow! Thanks for the tip”

or “What do you think about this?” and what happens is

that that little comment will show up in ones space on

Twitter. We were directed this morning to a place called

TweetChat.com. So, it was

TweetChat.com/room/speakerchat and by being in there, in

real time, I can see every single person around the world

that is using the hash tag #SpeakerChat and literally

engage with them and it was incredibly cool because now

suddenly I am talking to some of the top experts in this

space of speaking…

Andrew McCauley: So, let me clarify this. You are talking to them but you are

not really typing to them, right?

Heather Porter: Yeah, I am engaging, I am typing to them by using the @

symbol and their username and asking them questions and

we are talking about really powerhouse of people around

the world that I normally wouldn‟t have access to and here

we are having a conversation typing on twitter. How cool is

that?!

Andrew McCauley: Wow! That‟s awesome.

So, that‟s a great point you bring up. The thing with social

media these days is that it brought so many people that

was so far, untouchable – the celebrities are out there, the



http://www.tweetchat.com/

http://www.tweetchat.com/room/speakerchat






industry leaders, the Fortune500 CEOs and that sort of

thing – it‟s brought them within reach of the everyday

person and you can really start to connect with some of

these people on a level you have never been able to do

before and Tweetchat I should say is a great way to do

that.

Heather Porter: And it‟s really… imagine that you just… all you have to do is

come up with your own hash tag, send an e-mail out to

your database and say “Hey guys, we are going to talk

about” – fill in the blanks with your topics – “You can ask

me anything that you want on this specific time in Twitter.”

Now, what‟s exciting about that is not only do they engage

with you, those that have Twitter accounts, but it also

becomes viral because, remember, all these people that are

communicating with you in this chat, it‟s also showing up in

their own feeds. So, their own followers are seeing what it

is and they are “Wow! What is this? I want to know what

this hash tag thing is. I am going to go jump in and see

what it‟s all about.”

Andrew McCauley: Yeah, right, right. So, how long did the conversation go

for? Is there a set time or something? What‟s the limit

there?

Heather Porter: The best thing to do is just set a time and then you mention

that throughout the actual chat when it‟s happening. In

this case it was an hour of chat and it was just an interview

with an expert and we could ask her whatever we wanted

to ask her and then she would engage back with us.

Andrew McCauley: Wow! That‟s pretty good. Now, I have heard some other

people like even Barack Obama and some of those have

been involved in some of these start chat things whether








it‟s on YouTube chat or whether it‟s Facebook chat and that

sort of stuff. So, this platforms are starting to get this

whole interaction thing and they are getting it done pretty

well, right?

Heather Porter: Oh, yeah. It‟s becoming a really big chunk or piece of such

a media strategy for businesses because again it‟s a very

fast, quick immediate way of connecting with your followers

and your public and finding out what they want more of.

It‟s the quickest way I can think of.

Andrew McCauley: I am looking at it now and thinking that gone are the days

when we just used to use phone for connection. We have

got… if you can‟t get someone on a phone, you find him on

Skype; if they are not on Skype, they are on Facebook; if

they are not on Facebook, they are on LinkedIn or maybe

on one of those apps like Viber on your iPhone or WhatsApp

or… there are a hundred different ways to get people these

days, you really can‟t hide anywhere, can you?

Heather Porter: You really cannot and that‟s why transparency in really

being who you are is so important. Whatever you say, you

have no idea when it‟s going to be picked up and put out

across the internet in one way, shape or form.

Andrew McCauley: That‟s really true. I got some post recently the other day.

Within one day this one post of me was on two hundred

people‟s websites. I thought “Wow! I didn‟t even…”. I

don‟t know how they are connected but they found me all

of a sudden I am out in front of all these people with my

blog post and I am like “that was pretty quick.”








Heather Porter: Yeah and same with videos like I have had videos that

people use as a resource on their own website because it‟s

a tutorial video of mine that I have on YouTube and they

will just go and embed it on their site and this is powerful.

We have a whole other sort of, I guess, system that we are

developing right now around about this, exactly this

concept of one piece of content and how far and how fast

can it go out there on the internet for your own benefit but

that‟s a whole other episode.

Andrew McCauley: Stay tuned for that one too.

I think we should wrap up this. I know we only covered…

Heather Porter: Can we just talk briefly about followers to kind of close on

that… followers and lists and then I think what we can do…

because third-party applications are complex and I think

honestly we could spend almost an entire episode walking

through Twitter Deck next week.

So, we will do automation next on the next episode.

Andrew McCauley: Okay, cool, cool.

Heather Porter: Followers – a little bit more about that, how does that

work?

Andrew McCauley: I guess one of the big things about followers is this is not a

competition. You don‟t have to have the most followers in

the world. I would rather have a hundred people that are








going to listen to everything I say and buy my stuff than a

hundred thousand people who aren‟t even going to care two

cents what we say.

So, one of the ways best ways to grow those is just engage

people in everything we do, engage them in your

conversations, get them to know who you are, get them to

become related to you and what you are doing. So, keep

engaging people. Go and add people if you think they are

relevant. If someone doesn‟t respond, it‟s not the end of

the world but if someone‟s not engaging with you, then

there is no need to have them on your list; you can always

de-list followers if you like. And one of the cool things

about that is most people, most people don‟t take it to

heart. So, don‟t take it personally if someone says “they

won‟t find you”; think about it as no big deal.

Heather Porter: Yeah and there is a huge movement right now in social

media, especially to have a quality versus quantity whereas

at the start it was “Oh my Gosh! Get as many followers as

I can, get as many likes as I can.” It‟s not reverting the

other way because we want people to engage with us, not

just to collect followers or likes.

Andrew McCauley: Yeah. I think that‟s the big issue that people are learning

now and it is that there was the wild frontier of social media

for the last three or four years but now as people get on to

it more and more, they get savvy; they want to be dealing

with people that they want to be dealing with, they don‟t

have to be in front of hundreds of thousands of people

because they can still make great money for their business

in front of a handful of dedicated people that are going to

buy and be evangelists for your own business.








Heather Porter: Exactly! Yeah.

Andrew McCauley: What you don‟t want to do is go and ask people to follow

you – “Please come and follow me, please come and follow

me.” It‟s okay to put those little widgets on your website to

say “Follow me on Twitter” or “Follow me on Facebook” but

don‟t go and ask people in a Tweet to follow you because

that‟s just not going to work.

Heather Porter: And people still do that; it‟s one of the biggest no-nos.

What about lists? What are lists?

Andrew McCauley: Well, lists are a great way to sort of control the noise that‟s

coming through on Twitter. So, the thing with lists is that

you may have a selection of industry experts and you want

to just see what they are talking about. You don‟t want the

rest of your followers adding some bits and pieces and

adding links to that. You just want to go and clearly see

exactly what the experts are following. So, once again, if

are… let‟s say you are in the area of personal development,

for instance, and you might want to have people Anthony

Robbins, T Harv Eker and that sort of thing in the least

because you want to see what sort of content they are

delivering through their Twitter stream. You can easily log

into a list, you can just add them into the list, it‟s a very

simple process – just clicking your list would fill list with

those people in it – and then all you going to get in a

Twitter stream, like a normal Twitter stream, except it‟s

only coming with those people‟s tweets coming through.

So, it‟s a great way to concentrate on who it is that you

want to concentrate on. Now, I know companies do this

with their customers. They find the Tweeter names and

they will put the customers‟ into the list. So, their social








engagement sector or whatever they call themselves, that

part of the business, can just look through their customers‟

tweets and keep an eye on their customers‟ tweets and say

“Hey, thanks for…” and just respond to and add value as

their customers so that they have got interaction with their

customers at all times. It changes their role, it changes

their role completely when they know that someone‟s

interacting with them just because they can.

Heather Porter: So, like for a list, you can create your own list and you may

make one that‟s exactly your customers, maybe your

mentors, maybe industry news and then add different

people to each of those lists.

Maybe I misunderstood but I had heard the other day that

you can actually subscribe to other people‟s lists or join

them. Is that true?

Andrew McCauley: You can go follow other people‟s lists. You can go and look

at other people‟s lists and that‟s a great way. So, it‟s the

list is public, then you can go and find them.

Heather Porter: So, you can set them to be public. So, that‟s brilliant,

that‟s another really great way of just putting yourself out

as an expert as well is if you end up in more of these lists

across Twitter, then people are going to start to go “Wow!

This guy really must be good at what he does. He is in a lot

of these sort of internet marketing lists or life coaching lists

or something like that.”

Andrew McCauley: Exactly, exactly. So, that‟s definitely a great tool to have

and I talked about list in Facebook too and now you can do

the same sort of thing in Facebook – go and segregate








people in Facebook too. You can go and just see what they

are talking about and concentrate on them and that‟s where

the other noises are going on as well.

Heather Porter: Very cool. And I guess as we start to wrap up, one last tool

that I really like to use is search.twitter.com. If I just feel

like going in there and explain what people are talking

about, I am going to go to search.twitter.com – that‟s

http:// and not with www – and in there you can type in

any keyword you want and a whole range of people will pop

up around that particular keyword. So, that‟s a great place

to research your industry, correct?

Andrew McCauley: Yeah, totally. That‟s the advance Twitter search tool and it

really lets you spy on the competition. You can put in

tweets that are going to a certain person. So, let‟s say a

competition‟s name was, their handle was

@TheCompetiton. So, you can put in @TheCompetition and

on the tweets that are going to that person, you can see all

of their mentions and happenings so you can spy on the

competition. You can find out tweets that are coming from

that person and we can find out all the tweets about that

person as well. So, it‟s a really cool way to keep an eye on

what‟s going on.

Heather Porter: So, guys, I guess as we start to close down on this episode,

because I feel like Twitter is an amazing tool and we have

really just gotten about to half of it, we would love for you

to use some of these tools and techniques that we just

talked about and come up with any questions that you have

and will happily answer them in our Twitter episode #2 that

we are going to be recording here shortly in the next week

or two. You can ask as questions either on our Facebook

page which is www.Facebook.com/AutoPilotYourBusiness or

our website which is

www.AutopilotYourBusiness.com/Podcasts and just look for



http://www.facebook.com/AutoPilotYourBusiness

http://www.autopilotyourbusiness.com/Podcasts






underneath this episode there is a commenting box area

there.

Another thing Andrew is quickly going to mention, if

anybody is just joining us now, welcome and we would love

for you to listen to our podcast #1 which is what this series

is all about. So, we go through what we are going to be

talking about, all of our topics, who we are and why this

podcast came to be. So, we would love you to start there if

you are just joining us now.

Andrew McCauley: Yes, totally, totally. And actually they can comment on

Facebook, like I said, and connect with us on Twitter, we

are always checking Twitter.

Heather Porter: Yes.

Andrew McCauley: In fact, we even have our own Twitter account as well –

@Autopilotyourbiz. So, join us there as well.

So, cool, Heather. I know you are… because otherwise, if

we don‟t stop now, we can get into a whole…

Heather Porter: The black hole of more information. So, we will dive into it

next time. I think this is a nice light dusting overall of the

importance of Twitter for business.

Andrew McCauley: Yes, yes, yes and check out TweetChat.com; that‟s a pretty

cool tool as well if you are looking at getting live chats. If

you have to see it pop up, go and have a look.



http://www.tweetchat.com/






Alright, our next podcast is going to be on a very special

topic. Do you know what that is?

Heather Porter: It‟s Twitter, right?

Andrew McCauley: We are doing #2 next time? I guess, we can, or do we

leave it and do something else and come back to Twitter?

Heather Porter: Okay, let‟s do another topic. Let‟s see what they say. So,

next time it maybe Twitter.

Andrew McCauley: Send us a message if you want more Twitter, tell us.

Otherwise, we will do something else and come back to

Twitter in a few weeks.

Heather Porter: Yeah. Either way we will continue on this conversation

soon.

Andrew McCauley: We will, we will.

Alright, Heather, its been great as always.

Heather Porter: Thank you, you too. Thanks everybody so much for your

support and listening to us. We appreciate it very much.

Talk to you soon. Bye, bye.









**End of Audio**



Documents

#9 How to Use Twitter