I’m putting together a bundle gifts to give my followers and promote some of the best Tweeps I’ve met in 2008

You can read how this came to be here

We know that the power of our network grows as each member grows.. so it’s only natural that we want to promote tweeps in the network with a shout out here, and in Twitter messages.

And a lot of FUN!

Here’s some of the goodies in my gift bag so far

	Simply Getting Results! from @keithdb
	One Year Membership to FitBusinessWoman from @fitbizwoman
	How to Get Rich by Going to Yard & Garage Sales, Moving & Estate Sales from @edaugusts
	Master Your Time & Live Your Dreams: Conversations w/ Coaches & Creatives Who Get it Done! from @profcarol
	FatWallet Care Package from @troyredington
	Fast Money System from @mrebay
	Custom Joomla Installation from @LADwebdesign
	Me, Myself, and Why? The Secrets to Navigating Change from @MeMyselfandWhy
	Copywriting 101 for Small Businesses, Entrepreneurs, Coaches & Consultants from @allisonnazarian
	Traffic Generation Made Easy with Willie Crawford from @Henry_Griner
	Mompreneur Laser Coaching Session from @SarahRobinson
	Online Video Rock Star Training from @loubortone
	Cash In On Speaking from @FeliciaSlattery
	7-Week Shortcut to Public Speaking Confidence from @LisaBraithwaite
	The Lifestyle Fitness Program: A Six Part Plan So Every Mom Can Look, Feel and Live Her Best from @themojocoach
	Using PLR Videos Tutorial Bundle from @superaffil
	Signed copy of “The Toilet Paper Entrepreneur” from @ScottBradley
	1 Year Full Use www.VideOptin.com Optin Increaser from @mike_wesely
	Creating Membership Website Ebook and Blog Assessment Session from @kimbeasley
	Dog Treat Sampler of All Natural Treats and Organic Shampoo from @BullyStickGuy
	Group Mastery Success Pack from @wendyybailey
	Secrets to Lasting Body Transformation from @coachlaura
	Consult by The Breakthrough Specialist-Prosperity Coach from @prosperitygal
	Secrets of the Young & Successful from @ysnjen
	Quanta Change Sensory Quotient from @SaraAvery

I’m working through the list of gifts submitted for my Happy New Year 2009 gift giveaway and noticed that there were some questions about what makes a good gift and some common misconceptions.

I do a lot of “list building” promotions and we use gifts for readers that want to get a newsletter and more information. The “gifts” have to be easy for many people to get and it’s common to make that a simple e-book or Mp3. We call the gifts because they are free, and very little obligation (you can unsubcribe).

Today, I’m putting together a gift basket (or baskets) with one gift from each partner. So the guidelines are a bit different.

Maybe this will help you get more from value from giving gifts online

1. Make it a real gift If you send everyone to the same page with an free report signup and then offer that as a “special gift” on another promotion it’s not special
2. Don’t make people sign up for your mailing list 
3. Give away something that others are paying for. That shows it has real value right now
4. Make it a wide appeal. No need to give your lead generating gift when it’s publicity for you, your site and your business.

These guidlines for for contests, charity gifts etc. There are plenty of times when a “free download” gift is perfectly right.. on your sites landing page or in as a bonus for someone buying at a partners site. That’s what we call a “lead generation” marketing program.

I ask myself this question when choosing a gift: “Would I think this was a good value if I wasn’t doing this for a living”

We gave away thousands of copies of Twitter Handbook before releasing Twitter Revolution: How Social Media and Mobile Marketing is Changing the Way We Do Business & Market Online. If you’ve seen the ebook, it’s got almost as much information as the real book and tons of value. We knew that the people like you that download it are early adopters and the kind of people we want in our network.

The law of reciprocity says that when you give a real gift, without demanding quid pro quo, you create a bond with the recipient. In marketing, we know that some of the people will come back and that the publicity value will outweigh the small investment in the gift.

Ultimately, giving away real value in gifts gets you the best results. Free can be more valuable that charging.

Pretty cool, eh?

Master Your Time & Live Your Dreams: Conversations w/ Coaches & Creatives Who Get it Done!

2009 is only hours away. Time to tweet so love to my followers.

I’m giving away some gifts tomorrow, January 1st 2009 via Twitter.

Like most of our Twitter projects, there are no rules when we started this. About a week ago, someone offered me a piece of artwork to give to my 5000th follower.

I had done the milestone follower bit a few times before. Usually without any warning.. I’d grab number 600 or number 2000 from the email notices Twitter sends, and send out some love via Twitter.

Most of the time, there no “gift”.. just tweet from me, comments on blogs, and a bit of promotion to help them gain some new followers.

It was so much fun, I started doing it all the time.. like “who needs a reason?” <grin>

So when the idea came up for the 5000th follower, my first reaction was that I did not want to create a rush of new followers just for the number. Instead, I decided that I’d use the occasion to give away MORE GIFTS.

This morning I tweeted that I needed some gifts. Response has been huge. There are some fabulous books and “real world” items and lots of digital products and even some services.

I’ve been doing give away cross promotions for new best seller books over at ZeroCostPromotions.com for years. I know this works. We’ve seen business deals for tens of thousands of dollars come from the connections made by partners and had dozens of best seller books in the process. Giving stuff away build reciprocity and great relationships.

Next step will be to sort through them and figure out how to give them away. Most likely, you’ll be seeing tweets on January 1st announcing it. Maybe “9 prizes for 2009″ as the theme.

What can we learn from this experience?

1. People are willing to give. I didn’t promise to pay, or to make them money. People just like to jump on board then there is a fun promotion
2. You can’t plan social media from the top down.. It’s not going the way I envisioned. It’s better and the only limit is how much time I can spend arranging the gifts
3. You can connect and build a relationship quick. Tweeps contributed within seconds and you can be sure that I’m not going to forget them soon (nor will the winners)

Subscribe to this blog, follow me on Twitter and watch my twitter stream and the hash tag #Happy09 for more on the Happy New Year Gift giveaway

@WarrenWhitlock

2009, twitter promotion, twitter book, twitter revolution

Tonight’s http://TwitCastRadio.com was my Twinterview with @MattBacak, who was recently subjected to a Twitter Storm of negative tweets over a press release he issued about his social media activities.

Matt has been promoting online, teaching others how to marketing their books and businesses on the Internet and building several multi-million dollar businesses.

While the press release statements were true, they gave the impression that Matt was in Stage 2.. looking for a way to profit or use technologies like Twitter.

I knew this wasn’t like Matt. So I invited him to tell us what happened.

Listen to the interview now. I think you’ll agree that it’s a story of a sincere guy, who learns from his mistake. (no wonder he’s been so successful).

Do you think Matt was genuine on the call? I admit to not being totally objective, but I think you’ll hear that he is the man of integrety I know and love

Post your comments below.

bacak, twitter book, social media, twitter radio

I was thinking about the world social and especially what it means in social media.. preparing for my presentation at Increasing Sales With Social Media coming up tomorrow in San Diego.

(you can still get your ticket here, or listen to just my segment live at Friday at 9am Pacific on TwitCastRadio).

Is this play or work?

You may have heard me say “If you can tell the difference between work and play, you aren’t doing one of them right” .. but people in stage 1 or 2 keep telling me that they are looking for:

• How do I make more money with social media?
• Does Twitter get me more customers?
• What’s the ROI on using Twitter?

I’ve answered these question so many times. Told them that marketing in the future is dependant on meaningful connections and building relationships with real human beings.

Then I tell them a couple of stories about people making money with their social media connections, doing business faster and why meaningful connections will make their work more like play and play profitable.

I thought I really knew this stuff.

Then I get this tweet:

I have to admit that my immediate reaction when I read the post was “What a lot of nonsense! I have real work to do”

I’m literally sitting next to my front door, should be on my way to the airport.. and I’m reading a blog about playing tag?

Just then, I noticed @mvndrvrt’s photo on his web page with the caption that this was him in his work clothes

He get it. Work is play, play is work. Life is FUN!

Thanks for the reminder Mike

So here I am, not worried about being late for my flight.. playing tag on my blog.

You can read the rules here.. I’m breaking the rules (NO RULES.. remember) so subscribers to the blog and everyone I know on Twitter will get to be “it”

Tag.. Your it?

Link back to this post.. follow the rules on @mvndrvrt’s post if you’d like, but do follow @mvndrvrt for sure.

Then leave a comment here to let me know your thought on the difference between work and play.

Technorati Tags: blogging, tagging, social media tags, mvndrvrt, work is play, Twitter book

My quick answer is always “no rules”.. Follow whoever you want, and don’t feel that you are required to follow anyone.

That being said. You will get more followers and keep them if you follow back. But are numbers enough?

Here’s Seth Godin an social networking today:

I’ve been taking a look at the people who choose to unfollow me. With a large number of followers, this happens quite often. Even though the number of followers on my account rises every day, there are some people that choose to stop reading my tweets.

I don’t need to ask them why. It’s not going to offend me. But I did want to know about their motivation so I could do a better job of connecting with people.. and help my readers.

What I found was that most of the people unfollowing me were real people, quite interesting and not people I was following.

The more I looked, the more I found that the difference was between unfollowers and followers who remain are that those leaving had never really connected.

I really can’t blame them. Not only had I not followed them. I didn’t even know they existed.

I may have kept those followers, and increased my numbers by simply following these people. However. I think that would be a shallow win.. and really not of much value.

Instead, I decided that I want to put my efforts into meaningful connections. I can never have too many friends. I just want to make sure that my friends are real freinds.

With thousands of followers, it’s quite likely that I’ll miss many of them and remain superficially connected. But now my goal is to reach out to as many as possible.

I suggest NO RULES for who you connect with. Follow who you want. Don’t follow unless you want to, and why would anyone want to drop a connection with a real human being?

What are your thoughts on “follow rules” Do you have them.. why?

What if there were a way to plan your blogging and twitter post while planning your other marketing activities?

We’ve talked about TweetLater and how a good balance of live, real time tweets mixed with some scheduled tweets about your current promotion can save you time and get results.

Now you can co-ordinate these tweets with blog posts, status updates to other social media sites and your schedule for business, marketing and even your personal life.

The service is called PostLater. This is a highly configurable tool for every blogger. You will want to add this to your blogging arsenal

In my consulting practice, I deal with successful authors and business people that are reluctant to blog or post to social media sites because they are concerned about the time commitment involved.

I know this is an issue for most bloggers. Most of the successful bloggers that are blogging as a part time activity use some form of schedule to get it all done. Some resort to paying an assistant to handle all the posting to make sure that posts go live at the times readers expect them.

One client writes most of his business advice posts weeks in advance. He has a strong following and great content. When I asked him how he did it with his busy schedule of speaking and consulting, he admitted that he paid a full time assistant to handle it.

By regularly posting useful original content that is helpful to readers, authors build up a following online and receive requests for interviews, business propositions and an increase in leads that are looking for more of what they see you do online.

Imagine how much money he’s saving by switching over to PostLater. When I told him how it’s only $9.95, he asked “is that per post?”  The price is really so low that you’ll wonder if it’s a mistake. No, that the cost to you for as many accounts and posts as you want each month.

Have you been using TweetLater, PostLater or similar scheduling tools?

Please share your experiences, results and ideas below.

Technorati Tags: postlater, schedule tweets, twitter tools, social media marketing

The Affiliate Summit is the #1 show for those using affiliate networks on. The next show is in January 09 in Las Vegas

Tweeps are already buzzing about the show using #ASW09 as a hash tag in their tweets

The show will be one big Tweetup. Send me a tweet if you are coming and follow @affiliatesummit

I’ve been thinking about things that Twitter might add to the service. Since you “talk” to Twitter by sending a message by text, web or desktop application… Anything that can be triggered by a keyword or command could be added.

There are actually very few commands for Twitter. The server picks up uses “DM” and “@” to sort messages. “follow” at the start of a tweet add the user. Search catalogs the words and counts their occurance

Other apps read the stream an do cool things.. the operating system remains wide open for expansion.

I’m reminded of the old text based system online. Compuserve, AOL, etc would inturpret commands such as “go news” or “go email” and change their behavior.

Great Apps You Can’t Use That Will Improve Twitter

@ev announced on on the Twitter Blog that Twitter has hired Rael Dornfest and acquired his company Values of n

Rael Dornfest is a famously talented engineer, author, and entrepreneur. Before founding Values of n, Rael served as Chief Technology Officer at O’Reilly Media and is known for his pioneering work on RSS as well being the series editor of O’Reilly’s celebrated Hacks books. I met him personally a number of years ago and have always thought he was one of the smartest guys I know.

A short while ago it became clear to Rael that while the innovative personal productivity and information management applications his startup had created were useful products with a loyal following, Values of n was not going to meet its huge expectations as a standalone business.

Rael is @rael on Twitter. He is the author of several books and proflicic programer.

Two of his applications may be just the technology that Twitter needs to invent the next step in the Twitter revolution:

SANDY: ” your new assistant. I’ll remember the details so you can focus on what’s important.”

• Kick off your morning knowing what’s on for the day.
• Keep your day moving forward with reminders right when you need them.
• Books to read, people to call, your cousin’s birthday — I’ll remember it all.
• Stay organized with everyone in your life — effortlessly.

All of this is done from your email IN box or by text message. Sound familiar?

STIKKIT: “little yellow notes that think”

Stikkit makes organizing your daily details as simple as jotting down a note or firing off email. Stikkit’s “little yellow notes that think” talk to the productivity applications you already use, as well as to friends, coworkers and family, giving you a universal remote for your life.

Both these sites will shut down on Dec 8th. @Rael wrote this post to explain

What Would You Add To Twitter?

It’s pretty obvious (even stated) that Twitter will be adding some of the technology from IwantSandy and Stikkit to Twitter.

Add a comment on this post now. Let’s make this open ended and postiive. What feature would you add to Twitter first?

I’ll review and comment on what I think might happen on tonight’s TwitCast. Join us at http://TwitCastRadio.com at 10pm Eastern or 7pm Pacific

I want sandy, twitter future, twitter revolution

I’ve posted here many times about how a story where Twitter helps spread news is not news anymore. (kind of like reporting that journalist use telephones).

Now there is no need to sit glued to the 24 hour news feed. Just scan your feed for references that interest you and use Twitter Search to instantly see what’s up.

This morning, while replies to the many people who gave thanks for clean water, I notice a tweet that said “stop tweeting #Mumbai seems to be working”.

I’d read about the Mumbai violence a few times, it’s been a trending topic since the incident started.

But this was different. Could it be that a government was annoucing such nonsense? This I had to check out.

A quick click showed that many people were retweet (copying someone else’s tweet) with the message that looked like a rumor.

I don’t know @BradMays from Dallas. I’m sure he meant well. I’m also pretty sure (the RT at the beginning of the tweet) that he didn’t research the story and, since the RT was from a tweet from