#9 How to Use Twitter

Podcast- How to Use Twitter
Autopilot Your Business Podcast Transcription

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.

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


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


2


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.


3


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


4


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


5


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


6


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


7


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.


8


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


9


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


10


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-


11


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?


12


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.


13


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.


14


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


15


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.


16


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.


17


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…


18


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


19


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


20


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


21


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.”


22


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


23


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.


24


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


25


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


26


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


27


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.


28


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.


29


**End of Audio**


30

#9 How to Use Twitter

Recomendados

Recomendados

Mais conteúdo relacionado

Destaque

Destaque (20)

#9 How to Use Twitter