Last week I had the pleasure of being a guest on Lara Galloway’s Blog Talk Radio show.  Lara is known as “The Mom Biz Coach” and is a highly sought-after coach to many successful Mom Entrepreneurs.

Lara had me on to discuss social media and how to take advantage of it in your business without getting overwhelmed.  We had a great chat and in the process discovered we both have very similar views on how to best use Twitter.

Lara and I have both had a lot of success with Twitter in terms of using it for business opportunities, joint ventures and obtaining new clients.  While all of that is great of course, what we both agreed was one of the coolest things about it is the way many people will happily spread the word about you without you having to ask.

After the interview Lara asked me to give her a call and we ended up talking about all the different things we both do that help make Twitter work so well for us.  We realized we both get a lot of the same questions from others, such as…

“I’ve been on Twitter for months now, how come I feel like I still don’t get it?”

“Why does everyone else seem to talk about how easy it is to grow their businesses and find new clients using Twitter?”

“How do people grow their lists of followers so big?”

“How do I talk about my business on Twitter without coming off sounding pushy?”

“How do I get results with spending all day tweeting?”

…and on and on.

Because of these frustrations we decided to join forces for a special 90 minute webinar on Twitter which will have plenty of time for Q and A.

Webinars are great, especially for something like Twitter because you have the whole visual element.  I think it’s going to be a lot of fun, and we are both looking forward to teaching people about all the tools, applications and strategies that have allowed the two of us to have so much success.

If you want to get a lot more out of Twitter and learn how to make it work for you, you’ll definitely want to join us on the webinar on Wednesday, August 26th at 8:30pm Eastern time.  Even if you can’t make it live, every person who signs up will get:

• Recording of the entire webinar once it’s completed

• Checklists of all the tools, websites, applications that will be covered by Lara and I during the webinar

• A 20 minute brainstorming session with Lara and Christine (individually) to get your specific questions answered

and…

The confidence and know-how to get business done on Twitter!

Join us on August 26th by registering at this link: Twitter Power Strategies Webinar

Hope to see you there!

*This is one in an occasional series aimed at communicating the different ways social media has changed and continues to boost my own business.

Yesterday I had the distinct pleasure of being contacted through Facebook by one of my favorite authors and “jobless muse” Barbara Winter.  (@joblessmuse on Twitter)

Barbara wrote what I consider one of the best books around on becoming self-employed, expressing your creative self through your work and making an income doing what you love.  She calls Making a Living without a Job—originally published in 1993 and slated for a revised and updated release this month—her “handbook for self-bossers.”

It’s a fantastic guide and one that certainly brought me great enjoyment and comfort over the last several years while on my journey of re-discovering what it is I want to be “when I grow up.”

Starting the Conversation

I came across Barbara on Twitter several months back and we began following each other.  I put on my gushing fangirl hat for a moment and let her know how much I loved her book and appreciated all she does on her website over at JoyfullyJobless.com. She provides a lot of support for entrepreneurs and wannabe-entrepreneurs through her blog, teleclasses, seminars and learning courses.

Over the past few months we exchanged several replies and direct messages, including some silly ones about our love for the Swiffer commercials with the bad 70s and 80s music.  I appreciated how Barbara would often re-tweet some of the info and links I provided related to growing a business with social media as well as some advice she provided me through Facebook recently.

She contacted me yesterday to find out if I would be interested in presenting a teleclass with her on social media marketing for her community.  We chatted on the phone about it and have scheduled the call for Monday, August 24th.  I was honored and excited to say the least.  It’s a great example of how sites like Twitter can 1) connect you with with great people you admire and can learn from 2) expose you to new communities that you may be able to help 3) build relationships that lead to opportunities and partnerships in your business or career and 4) cause you to do a happy dance because you get to work with a kick-butt author and all-around cool lady.

What it Really Means to “Connect”

If I hadn’t cultivated the relationship with her over time I might have well been just another Tweeter who likes to post social media “stuff” in her Twitter stream.  But by reaching out, making the effort to engage and responding to her questions and comments while at the same time providing helpful content, tips and info not necessarily directed just at her—I’ve been able to enjoy this opportunity to present to her “folks.”

Gotta love Twitter power!

As of May 2009, Twitter received more than 20 million unique monthly visitors, surpassing many big media sites such as NYTimes.com. Although the exact number is not known, Twitter is now reported to have an estimated 9 million users.

Abandoning ship

There is speculation that a lot of those Twitter accounts have been opened and then abandoned by people who never quite got the point of it.  It’s understandable because for something that appears so simple on the surface, it can actually be quite complex.

Personally, I hear lots of different objections on a regular basis.  Just the other day someone bemoaned that they were done with Twitter because  “No one is following me except spammers.”

The offenders

It’s actually not difficult to build up a good-sized following (of non-spammers) on Twitter.  But here are some reasons why you may be popular with spammy types—and not many others:

1. You protect your updates
2. Your twitter stream doesn’t show any RTs or @ replies
3. You follow a lot more people than follow you
4. Conversely, a lot more people follow you than you follow (This is common with celebrities…yes, obviously a lot of people are still choosing to follow, but the imbalance does discourage some folks.)
5. You have no or very few updates
6. You promote too much
7. Every tweet contains a link but you’re not showing any of your personality

For myself, when I am checking out someone’s Twitter page and deciding whether to follow, these are some of the things that I notice.

What to do?

So, if you are still wondering how to get more people to follow you, concentrate on a few things:

First, post interesting links and information that is likely to get re-tweeted—this exposes you to the people that follow your followers whom you aren’t connected to yet. Re-tweet others, put your Twitter username in your email signature, list your Twitter account as a website on your Facebook profile, list yourself on sites like Twellow and WeFollow, and use keywords that best describe your business and interests because lots of people search by keyword when they are looking for new people to follow.

Oh, and don’t let your fear that you have nothing interesting to say stop you from tweeting. Just let us know what has your attention, as Chris Brogan put it.  People want transparency and authenticity. They want to connect with real people.

You probably have a lot more interesting things to say than you give yourself credit for.

So what else would you add to this list?

Photo credit: 7son75

If you are confused about how to use Twitter to get more prospects, more clients and more cash flow in your business–then you’ll want to join me live on this call.

I make no secret of the fact that I LOVE Twitter. A few short months ago I had less than 300 followers and very few subscribers to my blog. Now I am close to having 4,000 Twitter followers and 600 blog subscribers—not to mention that I have tripled the size of my newsletter subscriber list. I tell you this not to toot my own horn, but to impress upon you that you can use Twitter to do the VERY SAME THING in your business.

The bridge line holds less than 100 people, but don’t worry if you can’t make the call. It will be recorded and all registrants will receive the audio as well as the handout. (But if you make the call live you will benefit from the Q & A at the end—as well as be eligible for an offer I’ll be announcing.)

Th. 7/21/09 8pm ET

REGISTER HERE: Free Twitter Call

Hope you can join me.

Names and faces blurred to protect the not-so-innocent.

These are direct messages I’ve received.  Now I know some folks are just a little misguided out there, but come on.

The first one is a very common message that’s been going around for months. You know, the “get 40,000 followers in 2 days without making a single meaningful connection!!” type.

The two middle tweets are just spamtastic.

The last one isn’t so much offensive as it is puzzling to me.  Nice of them to offer, but I don’t even know you yet!

By the way, you can use TweetLater to opt out of automated direct messages.  Saves me a lot of time wading through the junk ones.

What kind of direct messages or tweets have you received that would serve as an example of what NOT to do on Twitter?

Some Twitter users are in an uproar over the company’s decision to hide replies to people you don’t follow.

Twitter’s blog explains what this means–basically, users used to have a choice  between two settings: viewing the feed of people that they follow to see their replies to people whom they do not follow, or to turn this off resulting in less tweets in their stream that were not relevant to them.  Now, Twitter has taken away that choice and is hiding the replies to those you don’t follow altogether.

Confusing?  A bit.  But many users who understand what this means are not happy with it, as was made clear yesterday when my Twitter stream started to fill up with hashtags like #fixreplies and #twitterfail.

Some see this as Twitter, in effect, blocking communication.  One large segment of the Twitterverse, small business owners, are especially ticked.

Hmm, are they taking some of the “networking” out of this social network?

As for me, I do wonder why they don’t just leave it up to us to make the decision and leave it as a setting we control.  Apparently they are reporting that the feedback was that the option was too confusing.  I’m not exactly rioting over it, but it’s certainly another interesting phenomenon to watch go down in real-time in my feed.  Let’s see how Twitter deals with it.

Do you care?  Totally clueless as to what I’m talking about?  Talk to me tweeps!

Photo Credit: keiyac

I was on a message board recently where a question was asked by someone about a person who had unfollowed her on Twitter.  She wanted to know whether others unfollow those they have discovered have stopped following them.

She also explained that about fifteen people unfollowed her right after a comment she made regarding the medical diagnosis of a young relative.  She knew this because she was using Qwitter, a website which tells you who stops following you and when–down to the specific tweet you made before it happened.

One of those fifteen people was someone she felt was a very important business connection, and she wanted to know how to ask him to to follow her again.  She was going to approach him about it and wanted advice.

Hmmm, tricky.

Twitter Masochism?

I myself never wanted to use Qwitter because I figured I didn’t need the negative energy of seeing unfollows.  I have a general idea of my number of followers but I don’t keep track to the point that I notice when I have lost some.  Basically, I don’t care. 

I replied to her saying that occasionally glitches cause people to unfollow when they really never intended to. If she saw him unfollow right after that specific comment it may have been intentional, but I can’t imagine why 15 people would do so if all she mentioned was the diagnosis. Seems pretty harsh to me, but you just never know what’s going to “offend” people.

I advised her to think about whether it was worth asking him to follow her again. What if he did unfollow purposely–is that the kind of person she needs following her?

Plenty More Where That Came From

He may be the absolute best, most strategic business contact in the world, but there are so many twitterers in the sea.  Sites like Twellow and WeFollow can help you find other great business alliances in a matter of seconds.  And it is worth considering, what if he is not so nice when you ask him to re-follow you?

Do you pay attention to who unfollows you or use sites like Qwitter?  What advice would you have given in this particular situation?  I’d love to hear what you think.