Twitter is a great way to connect with others and share ideas. However, once you get more than a few hundred friends and followers, it can get a little difficult to keep up with everything and if you can’t communicate effectively, there’s not much point in using Twitter. Right?

I primarily use Tweet Adder (Not a Free Tool) to handle most of my daily Twitter activity, but some things it doesn’t do. Like tracking who is talking about me. So, here are a few useful free Twitter tools I use in order to stay in touch with my friends and followers.

Useful Free Twitter Tools:

TweetReach – I use this site to track mentions and ReTweets related to my Twitter account, @tmbeaudoin.

Because I follow so many people and have so many followers, I miss a lot of tweets directed at me. But, with TweetReach I can see what I’ve been tweeting and what others have been tweeting about me. Just go to TweetReach, enter your Twitter name, click Go and check out the 50 latest tweets with your Twitter name in them. Click on their Twitter name to be taken to their Twitter page where you can communicate with them as you like.

I rarely get mentioned in tweets more than 40 times in a day, so I typically only check TweetReach once or twice a day. With everything in one place, I find TweetReach very useful and more convenient than Twitter’s interface for finding out who has been tweeting about me.

Tweepi - Tweepi is a good site to manage who you are following on Twitter.

Tweepi is a useful site for most people just starting out on Twitter or are looking for an easier way to manage their account. I primarily use Tweepi to clean up people I am following but who have not been active recently. There’s no point in following dead accounts, right?

Tweepi has a couple of features you might find useful:

1. You can use Tweepi to get rid of people you are following, but they are not following you.
2. You can automatically follow people who are following you.
3. You can see the list of people you are following and sort it various ways like number of followers, when they tweeted last and if they are following you or if it is a mutual follow.
4. You can see who is following someone else and follow them.
5. You can see who someone is following and follow those people.
6. You can select people from a list and follow them.

Now, you can do all of this from Twitter itself, but Tweepi lets you see each person’s stats so you can see how active they are to help you decide if they are worth following.

Managing Direct Messages (DMs) – I have yet to find a site that is better than Twitter itself for managing Direct Messages. However, there are free applications like TweetDeck out there that handle them well enough. I used to use TweetDeck and it was useful for managing DMs and mentions, but as my account grew, TweetDeck became too cumbersome with the constant messaging and I just stopped using it. I still recommend it to people starting out though. It is useful and it is free.

I hope you find these free Twitter tools useful and wish you the best with your Twitter adventures.

I finished the Walk MS event yesterday in an astounding 2 hours and 5 minutes. Went home, collapsed on the couch with the dogs for an hour or two and relaxed for the rest of the day. Oh, and I only slept for 11 hours last night.

Thank you again to everyone who made a donation. I haven’t reached my goal of $1000 yet, but, if you haven’t already, you can still make donations through May 27.

If you would like to help me reach my goal, please visit My Donation Page and make a donation. There is no minimum donation and it is tax deductible. So, please consider helping me and the other 2 million people around the world with Multiple Sclerosis with your gift. We would all greatly appreciate it. Thank you.

As a follow up to My Review of “Rich Dad, Poor Dad” by Robert Kiyosaki, I went and found a video series put out by Mr. Kiyosaki called The New Rules of Money. In this series of seven videos (about 45 minutes long total play time), Mr. Kiyosaki explains how and why the economy of today is so different from the economy of 50 years ago, why the rules have changed and what you need to do to keep up.

Check out the complete series here.

“He who fails to plan is planning to fail.”
– Winston Churchill

Ask yourself these questions:

• Do you have dreams?
• Do you have goals?
• Do you know where you are going?
• Do you know how you are going to get there?

• Where do you see yourself in a year?
• Where do you see yourself in three years?
• Where do you see yourself in five years?
• Where do you see yourself in ten years?

In my experience, when I have planned out what I wanted to accomplish, I have achieved what I set out to do. When I did not have a plan, I accomplished much less.

Basically, if you do not know where you are going, it does not really matter which way you go. If you do know where you want to go, having a plan is the best way to get there.

Now, if you have hopes and dreams, but are not sure which way to go, a personal development plan will help you figure that out and help you get there.

Saying and thinking it is not enough!

In case you did not know, writing down your goals has a measurable effect on increasing your success. Writing down your goals and the plan on how to achieve those goals has even better results. There is even research to back up the theory:

Gail Matthews Written Goal Study Dominican University

Having research to back up these thoughts is nice, but I am a big believer in doing what I have personally experienced and had success doing.

Here is a simple Ten Year Plan Template I put together. If you print it out, there is not a lot of room to write, but it will at least give you an idea where to start. If you would like the original Microsoft Word file, Contact Me and I will send you a copy.

Keep in mind this is not something you fill out in five minutes. You need to take your time and really think about what you want and how you are going to get it.

I keep my goals short and simple. Keeping them short and simple means they are easier for me to remember and easier to remember the plan. Once I filled out my plan, I printed it out and put copies on the wall behind my computer monitor and on the bathroom mirror. Two places I see every day, multiple time a day. This way I am constantly reminded where I am headed and why I am going. Having a purpose and the vision to reach my goals makes sleeping at night much easier.

If case you are wondering, I am currently in year two of my ten year plan. I have been writing down my goals for years, but had never planned anything out farther than a year or two despite having success with the shorter time periods. However, string all of those short term plans together and they work out to be a pretty successful 20 year plan.

“If you don’t know where you are going, you’ll end up someplace else.”
- Yogi Berra

So, the moral of the story is write down your goals and plans. It works!

If you’ve read the About Me section, you know I have Multiple Sclerosis. In the past I have participated in MS fund raising events as a “virtual” participant. Meaning, I raised money but did not do the actual event like bike riding or walking. Well, this time is different. I’ve decided to take on a more active role in raising money to find a cure for MS and will be participating in the Walk MS event here in San Diego on April 30, 2011.

Right now, my goal is to raise $1000, but will set it higher once that is reached. If you would like to help me reach my goal, please visit My Donation Page and make a donation. There is no minimum donation and it is tax deductible. So, please consider helping me and the other 2 million people around the world with Multiple Sclerosis with your gift. We would all greatly appreciate it. Thank you.

I’ve been using Skype for the past few years and find it to be an invaluable tool. Not only for maintaining my personal relationships, but it’s great for building professional relationships as well. And, the best part about Skype is it is free to use when communicating with other Skype users any where in the world. It also has some very affordable pay-to-use features as well.

Read My Review of Skype HERE.

There are a ton of free Twitter based products out there you can utilize to get thousands of Twitter followers pretty easily and at no cost. Yes, some of these are really products you can pay for in order to get more features, but you don’t have to if you don’t want to. Though, I do suggest you buy them if you find value in them. Someone put a lot of time and hard work into them and should be rewarded for their effort if you get value from it.

FOLLOWING PEOPLE ON TWITTER

Now, this is how I have grown my Twitter following to almost 27,000 at the time of this writing by using a software program by the name of Tweet Adder. It is not a subscription based service. You pay for it once and that’s it. Tweet Adder is an excellent tool to get thousands of Twitter followers automatically and fairly quickly. It has a “Tweet Search” feature that allows you to follow people based on which keywords you choose and when they used them in their tweets.

For example, let’s say you want to automatically follow people who have been talking about “basketball” in the past 5 days. So, you enter the keyword “basketball”, select the recency “5 days” and then Tweet Adder will automatically follow anyone who has included “basketball” in their tweets over the past 5 days until you remove that search. You can search for as many keywords as you need and can also search for phrases like “March Madness”.

Once you decide on your search parameters, you can have Tweet Adder do a manual search and then send out the follows in a group or you can set it to automatic where it runs its search, builds the list and then follows a person every few minutes. I prefer having Tweet Adder set to automatic as the follow process looks more “organic” to Twitter.

Because Twitter will only let you follow so many people based on how many people are currently following you, Tweet Adder will also keep your follower to followed ratio to whatever ratio you choose. To keep Twitter from being too concerned with your following habits, I suggest keeping the ratio at about 1.07 (107%). Although, if you are in a rush, with a brand new acount you can probably manually send out 50-100 follows a day for a few days and then set the ratio to 10.0 and work your way down to 1.5 over a few weeks until you have a few hundred followers. Once you hit about 1000 followers, I suggest setting the ratio to 1.07.

UNFOLLOWING PEOPLE ON TWITTER

People may or may not follow you back automatically, but a lot will. Those who don’t? Well, Tweet Adder has this nice feature to automatically unfollow anyone who is not following you. You can manually have Tweet Adder unfollow people in batches, but I recommend setting Tweet Adder on automatic and having it set to unfollow people every 3 to 5 minutes so Twitter doesn’t get too suspicious.

MY TWITTER FOLLOWER HISTORY

As you can see in this screen shot of TwitterCounter, I had 21,031 followers on December 30, 2010. So, I have gained almost 6,000 followers in three months. I have Tweet Adder set fairly conservatively as to not attract Twitter’s attention and according to TwitterCounter, I have had 65 new followers per day on average since they have been tracking me on January 6, 2010 (I started using Tweet Adder on January 4, 2010). Not great growth, but not everyone can be Charlie Sheen. If you didn’t know, he had a few million followers in about a week after joining Twitter recently.

MAKING MONEY WITH TWITTER

If you are planning on using Twitter to make money, I do not suggest following people using random keywords. Stay focused and choose keywords relevant to your business. Also, try not to advertise in any of your tweets for a few months. Building up your follower list takes time and jumping right in to advertising will drive people away faster than you think.

If you really do want to tweet, stick to every day tweets like helpful news items, your favorite quotes, or how you plan on spending your day. I have also found using keywords relevant to your business in your tweets helps others find and follow you.

Don’t want to spend all day tweeting by hand? Tweet Adder can also automatically post pre-written tweets for you. This is a great feature with multiple tweeting options like when to tweet, how many tweets to make in a day and whether or not to have recurring tweets. Write up a bunch of tweets in a text editor (remember, only 140 characters!), import them into Tweet Adder and walk away. It doesn’t get much easier than that.

That’s about it. Most of the techniques I’ve described here will work with other Twitter services and programs, but of all of the ones I have used, Tweet Adder is my favorite. No matter which one you decide to use, remember to be patient and be smart. You really don’t want to get impatient, do something dumb and then get your Twitter account with thousands of followers banned.

Happy Tweeting and best of luck getting thousands of Twitter followers!

One of the most significant tools necessary for Internet success, or any consumer based business, is leads. Many early internet marketers built their companies on the foundation of purchased leads. But, are leads still a viable option in today’s Internet landscape?

Of course they are!

Leads fall into four different categories and they are:

• Pay Per Click (PPC)
• Purchased Leads (Co-Registration Leads, Real Time Leads, Surveyed Leads, Mailing Lists, Guaranteed Pre-Enrollees, etc.)
• Reverse Marketing Leads
• Self Generated Opt-In Leads

First a word of caution about leads. There are two main types of leads, incentivized and non-incentivized leads. Some companies offer incentives to get people to enter their information into a “lead capture” form. Others offer nothing in return for a person’s information.

Now, not all incentives are necessarily a bad thing. It depends on what is being offered. Many sites offer free downloads (e.g. eBooks, “important” information, free leads, etc.) and there is absolutely nothing wrong with giving people a bonus that makes sense.

However, you certainly do not want to be contacting people about your home based business if they are expecting an iPad, a free cruise/vacation or $5,000 in sweepstakes winnings. Leads that are generated with these types of incentives are misleading and are typically worthless. I recommend staying away from incentivized leads that are generated using an incentive that is not directly related to your business.

Pay Per Click
Pay per click is a great way to advertise to a highly focused audience, if you know what you are doing and are working with a decently sized budget. You bid on keywords and your ads show up on search engines, content based ads on web pages like the ones to the right, and free email accounts.

As the name implies, you pay a specific amount for each click through to your site. You are charged every time someone clicks on your ad link and the costs can add up very quickly. If your site does not convert visitors into enrollments, PPC advertising can drive you quickly out of business. I suggest not using PPC to generate leads unless you know exactly what you are doing.

Purchased Leads
Purchased leads can come in many different forms. In most cases, the vendor you purchase the leads from did not generate them internally. They bought them from a lead supplier. This does not always mean they are bad leads, but you should definitely ask some questions before purchasing any leads:

• How were the leads generated? Ask to see a sample of the advertisement and capture page that generated the lead.
• How many times does your vendor sell the leads? The more times the leads are sold, the less value they have.
• How old are the leads? Leads decline in responsiveness and lose their value with each passing day.
• Were the prospects enticed into entering their information and what kind of incentives were used?
• What information do you receive with each lead? Different information is required depending on your preferred marketing method.

In my experience, purchased leads are not worth the cost for home based business owners when you can generate current, high quality leads with less expensive methods like opt-in forms.

Reverse Marketing Leads
Reverse marketing is when you market your business back to someone who has approached you in an effort to sell you their product. There are many different ways to do this and is a subject for another time. However, once someone has contacted you through email, the phone, or given you their business card, feel free to add them to your list of leads. Remember, most home based businesses fail and staying in touch with these people can be very good for your business later on.

Self Generated Opt-In Leads
Opt-in leads are usually the highest quality and most responsive leads because they have requested information directly from you. Opt-in leads are generated through “lead capture” pages with forms requesting specific information about your prospect. Usually with opt-in leads, follow up is by phone, email, or both. This is my preferred method of generating leads on the Internet as the leads are typically of higher quality and the cost to generate them can be extremely low.

Once you have decided on how you will be generating leads, the next important factor is how you plan to contact your leads once you have them. This can make a significant difference in the type of leads you choose to use. For example, people typically select different leads for cold calling as compared to email marketing because your approach will be different for both.

Just as there are many different types of leads, there are just as many different ways to contact your leads.

The following list is just a few of the ways to make contact with a lead:

• Cold Calling – Most people dislike using this method.
• Direct Mail – Do you like junk mail? I don’t.
• Email Marketing – Probably the least intrusive of these four and still effective.
• Voice Broadcasting – Do you like pre-recorded messages? I don’t.

The main thing to remember about leads is there are literally thousands of choices you can make to generate leads. Do your due diligence, ask questions, check out the vendor (if purchasing leads), and decide on a proven marketing strategy. At the end of the day, leads are only as good as the system you use for generating enrollments in your business. Find a system that works for you and stick with it.