You are a brand.  Your products or services are your brand offerings.  When you add something new to your offerings, that becomes your brand extension.

Let’s say you are a successful author.  You’ve written a great book on marketing.  You’ve promoted the book with advertising, personal appearances, traditional media and even social media.  Your brand, to the consumer, is “marketing expert.”  Now you’re ready to add something new to your services.  You might add consulting, coaching, webinars or live trainings.  But if you were to add a cookbook to your brand, you’d have a great deal of work to do in order to bring people along with you as you evolve your brand from business to baking.  BUT, if cooking is your passion and you’re using cooking as a metaphor for blending, mixing and creating a product, you’d have a brand extension.  If the book were about your favorite cookie recipes, you’d need a new branding strategy.

It’s possible for a personal brand to evolve and include a wide variety of products and services.  However, adding things far afield from a brand’s original DNA is best done once the brand is mature and the brand leader (YOU) is well established and has a strong and loyal following.

For the rest of us, annual evaluation and planning for our emerging brand life cycle is an exercise worth doing.  As you plan your growth, ask yourself the following questions:

1. Where’s the money? What is my most profitable offering right now? In other words, what are people buying from me now?  When people are willing to part with their money to purchase your products or services, that’s the simplest and purest market research.
2. Customer needs: are my current clients or customers asking me for additional information or services I don’t yet provide?  If those services or products are within your skill set, this is the proverbial low hanging fruit.  Put energy and time into providing your current client base with what they are already asking you to offer.
3. Next offer: after I’ve delivered my first product or service to a client, and I know they are happy, what do I want to offer them next?  This is the beginning of your funnel.  Take note of the needs of your clients. See if there are natural additional ways to serve your client base.  Repeat this question after every new product or service to create additional offerings.
4. Brand extension: once you’ve developed a client base the trusts you and is thrilled with what you offer, you can begin to stretch your brand. This is best done in increments.  Taking our example, the marketing book author might now write about sales by making the connection in the consumers mind between sales and marketing and letting marketers know they also have to be salespeople, especially if they are entrepreneurs or small business owners.  Next, our expert might branch out and claim mind share as a provider of information about product development, distribution and even sourcing.  He or she might divide upcoming product offerings into categories that provide deep knowledge in the how-to aspects of each phase of creating new products or services. Then our expert could create speeches, live events, webinars, DVD series, more books and other creative delivery systems for those new products.

Brand development is like story telling. Don’t try to take your reader from “Once Upon a Time,” to “the wicked witch was dead” in two steps. Tell the full story. Lead the consumer through your thinking process by offering logical, helpful, inventive product and service development. And, every step of the way, double check to see that your brand development is ringing true with your customer base.

Do you have questions about extending your brand? Let’s talk.

Among the new features being rolled out this week from Facebook are the enhanced friends lists options which many feel was a response to Google Plus Circles, and the introduction of a Subscribe button with multiple implications and applications.

The subscribe button is, by far, the most radical of the changes and for the first time, allows people who are not your friends to see your personal profile updates if you enable the subscribe button.  So, Guy Kawasaki or Pete Cashmore haven’t accepted your friend request.  Bill Gates is ignoring your pokes and messages.  You can now subscribe to their personal profile posts if they decide to enable Facebook’s new Subscribe button.  Why should you or your brand care?  You should care because Facebook has just opened up an interesting option for celebrities, authors, entrepreneurs, speakers and other high profile public figures to create great reach for their posts, beyond their friendship circle.  However, this comes with some challenges, privacy concerns and the need for those users to understand exactly how this works and what they’ll be sharing.

What does this mean for brands, small businesses and entrepreneurs?

For business people who use their Facebook profile as yet another entry point to their brand, albeit a more casual one, you can now place a subscribe button on your profile.  This allows people who aren’t your friends access to those posts you mark as public. This will be useful to celebrities, speakers, authors or other very public Facebook users who have reached their 5,000 friend cut-off, but still want to allow new friends to see their posts.  If you use your profile strictly for personal communications with family and friends, you’ll want to skip implementing the subscribe button and continue to decline or ignore requests for friend connections with business contacts.

What does this mean for you, the user?

As a user, you can subscribe to the posts of industry leaders, celebrities or political figures who set their personal profiles to allow subscriptions and you can decide what types of posts you want to see.  For example, you can hide all posts related to games so that you’ll never know when Lady Gaga hits a new high score on Bejeweled, but you’ll always be notified when she posts a new photo.

Facebook provides more details and the link to add the Subscribe button to your Facebook profile here. The profile owner can choose to be notified when someone subscribes, too. This is one to watch as it evolves in use.

Will you enable the Subscribe button?  Why or why not?

The successful entrepreneur will research, test, price and market according to the results of his or her testing or will go straight to market on a concept that has little or no developmental costs.  For example, a business coach who already has a program that he or she does one on one with clients could easily take the program to webinars without much testing by recording it using any number of programs such as Keynote for Mac, Camtasia or ScreenFlow to name a few.

If the entrepreneur has a product or service that delivers value, has identified the likely end user or client and is ready to test the waters, pricing strategies now come into play.

The number one question I get from entrepreneurs is “what should I charge?”

I can’t tell you what to charge for your product or service.  That depends on your niche market, the product or service itself, perceived value, quality of delivery, what your competitors charge and many other variables.  What I can share with you is that most marketing professionals see a significant drop off in opt-ins or purchases when a consumer is given too many choices.  In other words, make your offer simple and increase the chances of consumers taking immediate action and purchasing your product.

There’s a theory that offering more than three choices to people decreases the likelihood of purchase. They become overwhelmed, feel confused and in some cases, suspect that they’ll make the wrong choice and not get the best deal.  Here’s the pricing formula I see most often in researching internet marketing guru sites.  We’ll use consulting services for our example.

The A, B, and C Concept for Consultants

Package A:  This package offers people the chance to consult with you for your highest hourly rate and for the lowest commitment.  For example:  Two sixty-minute calls per month for $500 with a one month commitment required.   In the Package A scenario, people can commit to just one month and pay you $500 to “sample” your services and if your consulting proves valuable, you can convert them to a longer term package.  In this scenario, it’s essential that the consultant bring their A game to Package A, and deliver such value and solution based advice that the client can’t image themselves without your assistance going forward.  In our example, Package A works out to $250 per hour for a total client commitment of $500.

Package B:  This package offers the best value and is the one you really want people to choose because you know that you can make a bigger difference in your client’s business or life if you have more time to do so.  So you make it significantly more desirable financially to choose Package B, BUT you require the client to commit to a longer package and thus a larger financial investment.   For example:  Two sixty-minute calls each month for a three month period would be priced at a discounted $225 per call.  Clients save $25 per hour by committing to a three-month package.  Package B offers the client a total of 6 consultations at $225 each for contractual agreement of $1,350 and a savings of $150 over your standard hourly consulting fee.

Package C:  This package is your high-end offer and requires the longest commitment but gives the highest value.  Here you are rewarding clients who are willing to invest in intensive committed work with you by giving them the steepest discount BUT making them commit to the highest out of pocket cost.  If clients choose this package, they’ll be saving $3,000 over your regularly hourly consulting rate.  This package would offer one 60-minute call per week for a total of three months or 12 calls at $200 for $2,400.

The thinking behind these package strategies is that the clients who choose Package A are exploring.  The clients who choose Package B want to invest in their business but are cautious and careful and want experiential proof that you can deliver what they need.  The clients who choose Package C are ready to move forward in their business, believe you are the one who can help them and want to take advantage of the maximum financial discount you’re offering.

Whatever package they choose, your job there is to over deliver to the point that they feel they truly desire to have more of your time and they’ll contract for more or if their needs have been met, they’ll give you a great reference you can use to attract other clients.

At the end of any Package contract, always ask the client if their needs were met.  If not, work to rectify that.  If so, ask if they will give you a testimonial quote that you can use on your website.  Most people will say yes.  Then you’ll be promoting your services with positive, real life case study quotes.

The dot com’s, dot net’s and dot co’s will still be the mainstay, however, because the new branding opportunity for companies to use, say .Nike, will come at a steep price.

According to Mashable.com, these new opportunities will cost hundreds of thousands of dollars instead of the usual $9.99 and the annual renewal could be as high as $25,000. So the majority of businesses and entrepreneurs will still be using the generic URLs.

Will there be a massive “land grab” for .socialmedia, .food, .organic, .Auto? On your mark, get set, go.

Can you put your core offering into one compelling sentence?

I always ask them, for the purpose of achieving those goals, to shift their focus from the end result to the first challenge; clearly stating their unique value to a potential customer.  This “why to buy” focus helps businesses center their marketing, branding and public relations messages around the most important point of all—their offering.

F.O.C.U.S stands for “Find Our Core Unique Service.”  Figuring this out helps companies address one of the four key elements of branding; variation.  Asking the tough questions, doing the research and creating clear, concise communications will save entrepreneurs and even bigger companies time, money and frustration.

Some questions to ask to help define the unique service or selling proposition are:

How is this service or product different from all others in the competitive set?

• Less expensive, more detailed, easier to use, more conveniently located?

Does the personality of this business or service give it something special?

• Is the business or service provider more highly qualified, more experienced, personally enriched by the product usage?

Why would someone choose this product or service from all other choices available?

• Better customer service and support, first to market, more stylish packaging, more rave reviews, higher perceived value?

Try to put your core offering into one compelling sentence.  This exercise will tell you if you’ve nailed your F.O.C.U.S.  I invite you to post your F.O.C.U.S. statement here and I’ll give you my opinion on whether or not your statement conveys your F.O.C.U.S. to me.  Go.

Secret Millionaire stars share some common practices entrepreneurs can adopt to create their own success.

Dani Johnson was homeless at 21 and a millionaire at 23. She now speaks, writes and conducts virtual home study courses and live events designed to help people get out of debt. Her story is compelling and inspirational.  The tone of her communications is all about having experienced the fear and frustration of financial debt herself. By sharing her personal story, helping people identify with her, then modeling a success route, Dani acts as a mentor, cheerleader and coach to those who follow her program.

James Malinchak is a speaker, consultant and internet marketer who models hard work and reward.  He is everywhere, all the time, with boundless energy and a message that you can create the life you want if you just have the will.  He’s a mindset coach and people aspire to the life he has created for himself through relentless hard work and strategically brilliant marketing.  Among other things, he coaches people on becoming paid speakers, something he is very good at doing himself.  He understands creating ambient awareness and brand connections. His newest offering is called the Millionaire Apprentice Program, which piggy backs his programs SEO nicely with the buzz Secret Millionaire is garnering, and authentically ties in by teaching the techniques that helped him become a millionaire.

Gary and Diane Heavin are the founders of Curves, the fitness franchise for women. They have a different model.  They’re not internet marketers.  The majority of their work is hands on, with people who buy a Curves franchise. They model the in the trenches, “do it with you,” style of business. Even though they’ve created the largest women’s fitness franchise in history and have become very wealthy in the processes, they still operate like entrepreneurs. Gary’s philosophy is “Entrepreneurs don’t get paid on effort. They get paid on results.” He and Diane believe “success is not about who runs the fastest but rather who gets up the fastest after they fall.”  This year they’ve teamed up with Zumba to create a new Curves Circuit with Zumba Fitness class to add to club offerings and are in the process of adding a diet counselor certification program through the Cleveland Clinic so clubs can provide better diet counseling to their members.

Ali Brown is a high profile coach for women entrepreneurs.  She’s offers a tiered system of coaching programs that go from free webinars all the way through a very elite high priced personal coaching program and she has clients lined up to work with her.  Her personal story of leaving corporate America and struggling as she launched her own business helps entrepreneurs identify with her and her “my gamble paid off and yours can too” mantra is appealing.  She models success, glamour and adventure.  And, she works hard.  From that first business in her living room, Ali has expanded her brand into a magazine, an online style boutique, women’s retreats, info-products and more.

So what lessons can other entrepreneurs learn from these successful self-made millionaires?

1. Poverty is a strong motivator in each of their success stories.  A driving passion to improve your life can be a powerful influencer.
2. Creating a business from the ground up takes more hard work than anything you’ve ever done before.  Persistence is the key.
3. Continued success lies in continued reinvention. Successful people never stop innovating.
4. Financial freedom is a strong motivator and there are millions of people who want and need the information you may have on how to create financial security. A down economic climate may be the ideal time to launch a business that solves a problem.
5. Sharing your personal journey helps others envision themselves as potentially successful.  People want to do business with successful people and modeling success can produce powerful results.
6. A great career or business is less about making the next sale and more about building lasting relationships.

If you enjoyed this article, I’d appreciate hearing from you. Please leave a comment below or on my Facebook page and share your thoughts.

We now produce a billion tweets per week.

We’re alerted to breaking news, disasters, celebrity deaths, political unrest and emergency procedures through Twitter.  We talk, real-time, to the CEO’s of major corporations and expect them to pay attention to what we have to say about their brands.  We rapidly spread the word about political unrest and change the colors of our avatars and our home country information in solidarity with oppressed people to help them keep their anonymity in countries where they could be in harms way just for Tweeting.  We share, and sometimes overshare, from our computers and our mobile devices, a billion times per day, all in 140 characters or less. Books have been written and published on Twitter. Poetry, especially Haiku, is flourishing on Twitter.

In short, we’ve fallen head over heals for the micro blog. We’ve got a lot to say in a few short characters.  But as much fun as Twitter can be, the power brands have figured out how to utilize Twitter to drive customer actions, to create brand loyal communities and to enhance their business reputation.

A good business strategy always includes listening and monitoring.  So in honor of Twitter’s 5^th birthday today, I’ve compiled a short list of sites that will give you insight into your own Twitter habits. These stats can provide you with a clear picture of when you tweet, what keywords you use most, how influential you are in your Twitter circle and help you determine your course of action moving forward.

Tweetstats: This site helps you graph your Twitter patterns such as number of tweets per day, tweets per month, tweets per hour and provides a great visual look that can help you understand your patterns.  If you’ve been effective with these patterns, you can replicate them.  If you’re struggling with your Twitter marketing, then you knowledge about your previous patterns can help you adjust.  The bright, full color charts are great for presentations, too.

Klout: Klout is a social influence score based on proprietary metrics and takes into consideration your influence style, how often your network retweets or interacts with you, the influential scores of your close network followers, unique mentions, number of followers and also factors in your Facebook community, blog subscribers and your LinkedIn tribe. In the past year, some high profile events have been known to use Klout scores to determine which bloggers to invite to parties and press events. It’s clear that the ability to measure social influence is important to companies and paying attention to yours, might be worth your time.  Klout gives you suggestions on areas in which you might put more focus to raise your score.TwitterCounter: This site gives you a visual map of your recent follower acquisition, a ranking among all Twitter users, predicts your growth over the next 15 days and gives you an estimate of the time it will take you to double your following given your historical data.  A paid version will give you significantly more information and this site is well worth a look.  I particularly like the live link on the right hand side to follow other Twitter users who have recently visited the site.

TwitterGrader: This site gives you a grade from 0 to 100, uses their own algorithm to measure your power, reach and authority or your actual impact in the Twitterverse.  It looks at the number of followers, the power of those followers, the number of updates from your account, the currency of those updates, your follower to following ratio, the engagement between you and your followers and then calculates a grade.

Hootsuite: Hootsuite is a web-based Twitter management tool that allows you to monitor multiple Twitter streams in a glance.  It also allows you to pre-schedule tweets to go out to your account at different times of the day.  Hootsuite just rolled out a new suite of very useful analytic tools to help clients monitor their account activity.  Ow.ly is the Hootsuite link shortener and you can now print out and share with clients, a nifty color pie chart analysis of exactly how many people clicked on a given link.  This is useful for tracking the effectiveness of your messaging and the actions that message was able to create.  The “Quick Stats” report gives user, at a glance, their top referrers, percentage of followers from any given country, and their most popular shared links.  These reports can be exported, customized and shared.

Twitterholic: This simple site takes a look at the date you joined Twitter, where you rank in terms of followers against others in their database and also gives you a ranking based on your location. This could help location based accounts see where they stand in their market.

Twitter, itself, gives you some great ways to monitor your marketing effectiveness.  Check your @replies, your DM’s and your @mentions daily for real-time valuable information about the effectiveness of your marketing message.

Using a variety of sites to listen and monitor your marketing and branding efforts on Twitter will give you an effective way to develop your own bench marks and success metrics.  The key is to monitor, measure, and adjust your business marketing strategy based on the valuable information that these and other sites can provide.  If you found this article helpful, I’d appreciate hearing from you.  Please leave a comment, ask a question or share any other sites you like to use, and be sure to wish Twitter a happy birthday today.

Twitter lists are an underused secret weapon in social media marketing.

Use Twitter lists to find people to follow and to group influential people together on Twitter so you can quickly and easily see what they’re tweeting every day. Twitter lists can also be used to demonstrate leadership in your area of expertise and provide something of value to your followers by offering them a convenient way to follow others.  And, for those with locally based businesses, Twitter lists can be a powerful tool for alerting  people to your area of influence, location and specific interest.

Here are 11 ways you can immediately implement the power of Twitter lists in your business.

1. Connect with Industry Leaders. Create your first Twitter list and call it (Your Industry Here) Superstars. Go to your Twitter account and enter the name of one of the most admired leaders in your industry in the search bar at the top of your screen. Click on the “Follow” button under the picture or avatar of @industryleader. Next click on the downward arrow  just to the right of the “Follow” button and a drop down menu will say “Create a List.” Click on “Create a List” and a pop-up box will appear. Here you can name your list “@MyIndustry Superstars.” Underneath you’ll have the option to describe your list. Enter: “People and organizations in My Industry that are helpful, show leadership and really know their business.” Then click “Save List” in the lower right hand corner. Now @industryleader is on your list. Your new list will appear on their Twitter profile page, at the top right hand side of the page under “recently listed in.”  People added to your list will  know that you consider them to be a superstar or whatever attribute you’ve ascribed to your new list, giving you visibility with top industry leaders.  Contintue to add to your new list as you find and follow other inspirational or educational leaders in your field. As you add new followers, put them into lists such as “My Industry Resources.” Keep your most important keywords in mind when creating lists and incorporate them whenever possible. Your lists will each have a unique URL and are, therefore, indexed by search engines.

2.  Attract a Local Based Following. Use Twitter Lists to find and follow quality leads in your local area. Go to the search bar on your Twitter Account and type in #yourcityname. Click on one of the Twitter accounts that comes up mentioning your city. First add this person to a new list called “MyCity Resources.” Next, look to see what types of other lists mention this person. Look for lists that fit your “resources” concept. When you find one, click on the list link. You’ll be taken to that list’s page. Across the top of this list, you’ll see the words tweets, following, followers. Click on Following. A screen will pop up with the Twitter names of everyone on this list. Go down the right hand side of this list and click “Follow” for those accounts you want to add to your “resources” list. Once you click follow, you’ll also need to click the downward arrow to the right and check the box that tells Twitter to add this person to your “resources” list.

3. Use Newly Created Lists for Visibility: Go to your homepage on Twitter. You’ll see these words across the top of your screen: Timeline, @Mentions, Retweets, Searches, Lists. Click on “Lists.” Choose one of your newly created lists and click on it. Now, the only tweets showing in your stream will be tweets from people on this particular list.  You can quickly scan their activity and choose someone to retweet, comment on, praise or ask a question. Simply mouse over the bottom of the tweet you’ve chosen and you’ll have the option to retweet or reply. Do this for at least one or two different people on your list every day to increase your visibility, to demonstrate a desired relationship or connection with this Twitter account, and to be seen engaging with resources and leaders in your area.  Make sure your tweets to these accounts add value, and not noise, to the stream.

4. Share Your Lists: Share your growing “Resources” or “City” list several times a week on Twitter to attract people in your local area and people interested in your business. Click on your list. Copy the URL of that list from your browser window. Paste the link into the “What’s happening?” window on your Twitter page and send this message: Check out this great list of fun places to visit in MyCity! If you need to shorten the URL to fit it into the tweet, go to bit.ly, shorten the link, then copy and paste the new shortened link into the tweet.

5. Add Yourself to Your Own Twitter Lists: Increase your visibility by adding yourself to your own Twitter lists. Just as we recommend going to the pages of other Twitter users to find lists to follow, they’ll be coming to you. When they click down the list and follow people, one at a time, we want them to find and follow you. To do this, enter your own @yourtwittername into the search bar at the top of your screen. When your twitter name shows in the stream, click on it. The right hand side of the screen will now show your profile. The words “Edit your profile” will be on the left and our familiar downward arrow on the right. Click on the downward arrow and check off the boxes for any and all lists to which you’d like to add your own Twitter name. It’s that easy.

7. Connect with Others and Make Yourself Known: Request to be added to appropriate lists of other leaders in your industry or city. When you find a list that you’d love to be on, send a @DM or @reply to the person and say “I’d love to be added to your New York City Businesses” list!  You can reciprocate by adding them to your lists to complete the connection.

8. Broadcast Your Lists to the Listed: Let others know when you add them to your lists. Whenever you add a particularly high profile or valuable networking contact to a list, Tweet to them and tell them. “@IndustryLeader, I just added you to my Industry Superstars list.” Then include the URL. You’ve engaged with them, added them to a list, promoted your list and increased your visibility all while building a relationship with them.

9. Follow Whole Lists at Once: At the top of every list, there will be a button that says “Follow This List.” This will copy the entire list and make it available to you on your page so that you can check it regularly. It does not, however, follow each individual user. Use this for very large lists from professional organizations you might want to check in on but don’t necessarily want to see individually in your stream every day. This will create a link from your page directly to the Twitter account that created the original list. A small icon of their avatar will appear next to the list on your page. Strategically, this is another great way to honor the original list builder and is a valuable way for you to connect with very large lists and high profile creators.

10. Increase Your Lists: Invite Twitter followers to be included on your lists. “Hey Philadelphia. Let me know if you want to be on my new “Philadelphia Resources” list.

11. Broadcast Accolades: If you’ve received awards or been praised in the press, let others know via lists.  Create a list that includes everyone who received accolades and name the list appropriately for that award.

I invite you to take a look at examples of these Twitter strategies on my Twitter account, and please let me know if you’d like to be added to one of my lists.  If you use Twitter lists in a unique and powerful way, please share your strategies here so we can all employ them.  If you found this article helpful, please leave a comment.

Get your digital Santa on with these fun apps for the whole family.

Brushes for iphone, ipad and itouch – $4.99 at itunes

Brushes is a mobil painting application and winner of an Apple Design Award for 2010. This nifty app will keep the kiddies mesmerized on long trips and let you appear to be thoughtfully researching important information in those long boring budgeting meetings. You can paint pictures using templates or freestyle and Brushes records your strokes so you can export them and replay them as a QuickTime Movie. Bring out their creative side with Brushes.  This app is ideal for children, creative adults who love to doodle, amateur artists and even sophisticated digital artists.

Robert Parker 3 W’s of Wine – $3.99 at itunes and $4.99 at eRobertParker.com for Java enabled mobile devices

If you’ve ever been asked to select the wine for a business event or wanted to impress your friends with your wine knowledge, here’s the app for you. A database of more than 2,000 affordable wine from top producers all around the globe are at your finger tips in this easy to use app that lets you search by region, color, variety or even food. Once you try a wine suggestion and like it, you’ll be able to add it to your personal “My Wines” list along with your comments. It’s like having the famous Robert Parker in your iphone, at your command. This is the ideal gift for young professionals, people new to wine drinking or casual wine lovers who want to learn more.

Elf Ur Face – Free download at itunes

Take a picture of yourself, family, friends, or pets and give them some elf effects to put them in the holiday spirit. Then you can email the photos or post them to Facebook, Twitter or save them to your desktop for that long, really interesting holiday letter you know you’re writing. This app will provide hours of fun for kids and adults alike and is just plain good fun.

Mrs. P’s Reader Challenge mobil app – Free download at itunes

Mrs. P’s Reader Challenge is a fun new game that helps kids develop reading skills and comprehension and is brought to life by the voice of TV celebrity Kathy Kinney as Mrs. P.  It features five stories from MrsP.com’s Magic Library: The Emperor’s New Clothes, The Princess and the Pea and The Frog Prince; and two are the Grand Prize winners of Mrs. P’s 2009 writing contest for kids: Pretty Princess and Funky Frog and Spattered Mud and Crushed Petals. Readers try to win a pot of gold by answering multiple-choice questions about the stories, assisted by funny and encouraging audio prompts from Mrs. P.  Great for kids 4-10.

Zagats To Go app – $9.99 download at itunes

The famed Zagat Restaurant Guides are available in app format on itunes and you’ll get a year’s access to fresh restaurant ratings and reviews from over 45 trusted guides; all for less than the price of  one traditional paperback guide.  This one download gets you ZAGAT for your iPhone and iPad.

Consistency, frequency, specificity, likability and careful monitoring will help you build a powerful Twitter presence.

Consistency and Frequency:  Because the Twitter news stream is fast moving, getting your brand message noticed requires that you be present with new messages every single day and several times per day for best results.  I try to post at least five times per day during peak user times.  When I do this, my account increases by 50-75 users per day without any additional efforts on my part.  I use a site called Hootsuite to schedule my posts so that even if I’m otherwise engaged during the day, my posts will still be present.

Specificity:  I want to attract clients and customers who are interested in learning how to use social media to promote their brands. Some of those clients will hire me as a speaker and others will hire me as a consultant.  Therefore, I focus the majority of my Twitter activity on education based marketing.  In other words, I share what I know freely to demonstrate my knowledge and attract people who want to know what I know.  I tweet about classes I’m teaching, speaking engagements I’ve done,  social media tools I find useful, social media marketing strategies and digital gifts.  I use the Twitter yellow pages, Twellow, to find new Twitter accounts to follow.  I follow about 100-200 new accounts daily, carefully selecting accounts that use the same keywords that are of interest to me.  In this way, I’m building a following of people interested in my area of expertise.

Monitor and respond:  You’ll learn what your followers want to hear from you by monitoring your account for feedback.  When you get no feedback at all, that’s a message.  Change your output regularly until you hit upon that portion of your brand message that resonates with your followers.  Check out the link called “Lists” on your Twitter profile.  This will tell you a lot about who your followers think you are.  After all, your brand is not what you think it is.  Your brand is what your followers think it is. Every day I check the @replies on my Twitter account and respond to anyone who reaches out to me.  I check DM’s as well. I follow anyone who follows me and I unfollow anyone who does not follow me back within a one month timeframe.  I want my Twitter account to be actively engaged people, interested in conversing and sharing ideas, so I’m not afraid to trim the account and delete those who are not interested in a two-way conversation.

Likability:  People do business with brands that they know, like and trust.  So personality is very important in your social media outreach.  I try to intersperse tweets that show who I am as a person, my sense of humor, my inquisitive nature, my pleasure in chatting with and helping others along with those education based tweets.  The kind of client I am trying to attract will want to work with someone who is smart, fun and nice.  I regularly mention people by name in my stream. If someone reaches out to me, I’ll reply with both their Twitter handle and their real name to let them know I’ve noticed them and appreciate their conversation.

Thought leader status is afforded to a brand who shares new information, links to sites that will be useful to followers, gives advice, discusses breakthroughs in their industry and provides information about live events that might be interesting or educational. If you do these things daily, your Twitter following will grow rapidly.  How do you grow your Twitter account?  Let’s share our ideas and tips with one another here.