Check out this recent contest he had on his Twitter stream:

Step 1.  Bait your followers:

Step 2.  Give people a reason to follow you. Larry does a great job with opportunities for for fans to “win” something.  With Larry baiting fans, he  makes them pay attention to his Twitter stream.  (It doesn’t always have to be about controversy and getting fired over Twitter with athletes!)

Step 3.  Make it fun – He makes it fun for his fans, and makes them “earn” it, not just “reply” back with an answer or something.  I use to love when Shaq did this, and made people find him, or go to some crazy location.  It keeps fans on their toes and makes them connect better.  It’s brilliant!

Step 4.  Ever wonder how to bring sponsorships in without being obvious? This works great.  Good for Larry, and good for Coldstone!  Who knows if this really was planned by the two, but its awesome.

Step 5.  Getting people to interact on your Twitter stream – Uploading pictures, talking about you – all of this is making you more popular, and I promise its getting Larry more followers.  This works for everyone, of course it may be on a smaller scale for us normal people that are not superstars, but the basic concepts are still there – if people are interacting on your Twitter stream and talking about you, other people will want to know you and follow you.

Step 6.  Wait for it. Drag it out, why not.

Step 7. Kick Ass Prizes – If you are going to have contests, then make sure your prizes are kick ass.  I would take 2 tickets to the Vikings game please … and you know they are good because they are Larry’s tickets! (Oh, AND I get a signed jersey – yes please)

Other professional athletes should take a lesson from Larry.  He is doing social media right.  He gets Twitter, and understand how powerful it is to connect with and find new fans.  He is an Arizona Cardinal, but did you notice that it was a “nationwide” contest.  The NFL can take a lesson too from Larry, They need to stop banning players from social media and help them better understand it.

We can all learn from this too, its basic – give people a reason to follow you, be interesting, get them talking and gain new followers.  It really is brilliant.

Twitter sent me lots of traffic but the average time spent on my site was just seconds. Compare that to another site that had people who stayed 4 minutes on average on my site. I can now see where to focus my linkbuilding and build my credibility.  I’ll focus on the sites that are sending me quality traffic – it’s much easier to convert. Think of them as warm leads.

This is the audience who will read my blog posts, come to my webinars and who I have built trust with (maybe even buy my online PR book). I can build that relationship by offering to guest post, commenting on their content and otherwise

Develop a list of contacts to build out your network. I like JibberJobber as a CRM to help manage my contacts. Then when you have an article or are starting a new campaign, be sure to contact your network to let them know. If you’re like me my networks are different on every site I’m on and I need to keep track of them.

Where is your audience online – where are the people you want to reach? Are they on forums? Commenting on blogs? On Facebook? You need to know. This post has a list of tools to help you find your audience online.

Here are some tools that I like:

Backtype – You can search for people and follow them to see where they comment. When you hear someone speak or read their blog, find them here and see the places they visit online. If they are new to you see if it’s a valuable place for you to network too.

Twitter Grader helps you find Twitterers by location and other categories.

TweetReach helps you find the people who are tweeting most about a topic. You can put in a hash tag like #SEO and on the right hand side you’ll see who is tweeting about SEO. It shows the numbers of times they’ve used the hash tag. Then follow them. You can also search for your name, your competitors name, etc.

Find the community that likes you and start building relationships. And while you’re at it, if you liked this article, you can join my community. www.Facebook.com/OnlinePRBook or on Twitter at @Newspapergrl.

Here is Janet’s story:

I twitter every day and have been building a network there for over a year. First it was a way to talk to friends and follow what was happening in my industry. Then it became a valuable networking tool for my business. One day a few months ago, I logged on and my password didn’t work. I tried again, same issue. I was sure it was the right password.

I went to my twitter account page, www.newspapergrl.com and it said, “this account has been suspended for suspicious activity…nothing to see here, mozy along” or something simliar. My first response was panic. Later it was anger.

Suspended Twitter Account

Several people told me I’d get back on quickly. I contacted another friend through Facebook who had the same thing happen to her. She said she was still banned and it had been several weeks. I started to think this might not be resolved as quickly as I hoped. Maybe it wouldn’t ever be. Luckily, I had reserved the more logical version of my profile name: newspapergirl. I thought I’d start over.

In a chat with another friend who had been banned I wrote: “If we get back on we need to backup our account so we could recreate it. I wish Twitter would just charge us for services instead of having to go elsewhere.”

Here’s a piece of an IM conversation I had about it.

friend: DID YOU GET SUSPENDED ON TWITTER TOO???? DAMN THEM!
9:08 PM me: YES
DID YOU???
friend: yes.
sucks
me: no way
friend: yes way

I could start a new network, but I had so much history, so much content that I couldn’t piece back together. I couldn’t remember all the people I was following or who followed me.

Finally I contacted friends asking them to vouch for me. A few days later I logged back in. Since then several of my friends have been banned. Once your account is gone you realize how valuable it is to you and how much work and time it would take

Back up your Twitter account

to rebuild if you lost it.

The end of Janet’s story and the beginning of mine.

After hearing Janet’s story I started asking myself the question — how valuable is my Twitter account? and what would I do if I lost my account, it got hacked, or it was suspended.  It’s not like Twitter is just suspending accounts for good reasons here and there, you can read this article from Jesse Stay at Stay N’ Alive where he talked about Twitter suspending accounts by the hundreds of thousands for no apparent reason.  Honestly, I don’t know what I would have done until I found out that Bloggled offers a Twitter backup feature that allowed me to totally back up my Twitter account, followers and all.  The process is simple and painless and give me some comfort knowing that if something crazy does happen I have a Twitter back up to fall back on.

The Power of Twitter

I had an amazing meeting this afternoon with 3 of the coolest guys you would ever be so lucky to meet. These guys are clients of mine, who wanted to discuss Twitter as well as the best ways to leverage its power. Everyone of these guys (up to this point) were WAY TOO COOL to use (or be found dead on) Twitter. By the end of the 2 hour meeting (which really did FLY by) they were ALL ready to get their own personal Twitter accounts setup (besides the corporate one I had already helped them set up).

Why the change of heart for these hardest of hard core “cool dudes”?

It really is simple - I showed and helped them understand the power of Twitter and what it would/could do for their business (as well as what it could do for them individually).

Businesses for the most part, still just don’t get Twitter. They feel it is simply a trendy fad and you’re less cool for being a part of (I admit that it is a fad).  My clients were actually worried that they would look like sell outs to all the hard cores out there in their specific industry. True or not, they need to be taking advantage of what it is doing for businesses right now, just like they will be needing to take advantage of whatever fad is helping businesses in two years from now.

I explained to them, there is at least one reason to get a corporate Twitter account, which is to get your business (Twitter URL) name locked down before the competition (or worse – someone who hates you more) does and causes you some major online reputation management problems. How would you like to have someone out there pretending to be you, promoting stuff you may not want to be promoting, and getting fans and followers (and money) off of your good name that you have taken the time, and spent the money to gain? This piece of advice really opened their eyes. I am always surprised that more businesses do not understand this.

Now, these guys are not idiots when it comes to social stuff (in fact they do very well on Youtube and other social forums, but they still have a long way to come when understanding the overall pictures of social media and reasons that a business must embrace it. This is one of my most important challenges as an Internet marketer – helping businesses understand and grasp the “big picture” of online marketing strategies. You are not simply “tweeting” ONLY to make sales, or creating amazing content that will FP Digg just because it will make you initial sales. There is more to it… which I will explain as you read further.

Here is a breakdown of some of the “eye opening” things (to these guys) I told my clients today in terms of helping them to understand the direction they need to take Twitter with their company:

1. Online Reputation Management - making sure you are the one that is in control of your name and brand socially.
2. Customer Service – if people know you can be reached via Twitter, they will reach you. You can often help people much quicker and easier through Twitter. (140 chars, or less baby) Saves a ton of time from annoying phone calls, am I right??
3. Tips – These guys are in an industry filled with people looking for tips, so what better platform to put your tips out there?  Get in front of the millions of people who are using Twitter everyday. Tips are a great way to get people checking back and can help increase the number of followers you have tremendously!
4. Services – Let it be known why you are on Twitter, and how exactly you can help people via Twitter (what services you are willing to offer etc).
5. Humor - Just because you are on “trendy Twitter” does not mean you can’t be yourself and make people laugh. In fact, the more you are yourself and let people know its the real YOU, or the REAL COMPANY that they have grown to trust and love, the more likely it is going to do you good – and get you more followers.
6. Videos - Again, if you are in a field that has videos, Twitter is a great place to share them – especially if they are going to make people laugh, teach them, or in some other way “enlighten” them!
7. Content promotion – Got a blog? Well make sure you put up a “tweet” every time you got a new post live. The more people that like it will re-tweet it and share it. The more people share it and pass it around, the better it is for you (but that should be a no brainer huh?)
8. Product promotions – Its OK to promote products that you offer on Twitter – it really is. Just make sure you are doing other things with your Twitter account besides just “promoting”. You are more likely to make sales and gain (not lose) followers by mixing it up!
9. Contests – A great way to gain new followers and get more people interested (or knowing) about your brand. Offer something that will get people talking about, and linking back to you. This is very powerful when done right!
10. Reach new customers – You want to be doing everything you can to be finding new customers. The old hard core base is great, but the only way to expand and gain more customers is by stepping outside the traditional methods of marketing. I had to help these guys understand that traffic from Youtube is great, but why not throw in 10 more sites that will do 10x better for them? Lets hit ALL areas people!!! Are ya with me??

Finally, I ended it by sharing some reasons (and personal experiences – you have to be my client to hear – hah) as to why I am on Twitter personally and how it can help make money and grow you as an individual.  I think that was the final thing that did it for these guys. Basically, I told them that there are people looking for stuff and asking questions on Twitter all day long – if your company can provide those answers (or services) and get paid for it – then WHY ARE YOU NOT DOING IT?

My meeting ended with one of the guys throwing down his pencil to say “DAMMIT MAT, now I am going to HAVE to go get a Twitter account when you put it that way.” We all had a good laugh, and they accused me of being the reason their business was going “soft” but it was all in fun and games and was a truly amazing breakthrough.

How Do I Get More Followers On Twitter

I’ll get right to it – I am always getting asked how to get more followers on Twitter, which to be honest I think is funny because I really don’t think I have a “TON” of followers myself. However; I am sitting close to 1100 followers and feel I have a pretty good idea of how to make Twitter work for business and marketing purposes.  I want to help those who are asking me this specific question understand how I got, and continue to get more followers on Twitter.

Experiment Time:

Before I get to answering the question, I was wondering what other people who follow me on Twitter get asked the most.  It appears my number one question is not the number one question of most of the people following me.  Most of the people following me seem to get the “WTF is Twitter” in some form or another!  Check this out:

Questions Asked About Twitter

(Thanks to everyone on Twitter who answered me too BTW @cyandle @alainsaffel @localseoguide @DavidWallace @BasketWorks @factive)

It is pretty interesting to me that most people out there still don’t get Twitter, even with all the main stream media giving it so much attention.  I have been on Twitter for over two years now and am amazed that its just now getting some main stream attention.  I hope that some of this attention does not ruin it though.  That is my only fear with Twitter!  The main thing we can all learn from this Twitter feedback is that there is still MUCH opportunity for using Twitter to grow your business!  Now, onto answering the question of how to get more followers on Twitter.

Do you know how to be a good neighbor?

I ask this question because I really feel it is one of the most important steps in social marketing.  If you have ever moved into a new house then you know what its like to meet the new neighbors, and make new friends.  If you see everyone always going over to the neighbors house for parties, the only way you are going to get invited is by getting to know them and interacting with them.   Look at it this way – if your new neighbor comes to your house and offers you a basket of goodies to say welcome to the neighborhood, are you going to slam the door in his face?  No, you are going to take the gift, invite them in, have a conversation and get to know them better.

If you are able to make friends offline in the “real world”, recommend things, (like that new Chinese place you just ate at) and do a little interacting then making and growing friends on Twitter should be second nature to you!

Step One:  My step one here is not what I feel are the REAL steps to gaining more followers, but I have to include them in a post like this … so Be Real – get a real avatar and bio so you are not using the default Twitter avatar that will cry spam!  Don’t set up any kind of auto-follows or auto messages for followers.  That is crap and it shows people you really don’t care.  Remember – auto DMs are crap and spammy!  We hate them, most people hate them!

Step Two: Find people with common interests and follow them.  If you do a Twitter search for keywords related to your industry or interests its going to be pretty easy to find a huge group of people who are into the same things as you.  Look at what a quick Twitter search for “SEO” (which I am into) pulls up:

SEO Search on Twitter

This is just a few of thousands of results that kept coming up when I did a search for “SEO”.  I would now go through the tweets and find the people that are truly related to what I am interested in, follow them and start joining the conversation.  If someone is asking for a RT (re tweet) then do it.  If someone is asking for some feedback, then give it!  If someone makes a statement you agree with, or even don’t agree with – reply to them!   Just like you would not slam the door in your neighbors new face, you would engage these new friends on Twitter and join in on the conversations that are taking place.  You will get people following you just by being you, and doing what you already know how to do – which is being social!

Step Three: Bring somethign to the table.  If you have a blog, then make sure and set it up to post on Twitter.  I use Twitterfeed to automatically post my new articles, but thats the only automation I use on Twitter.  Other then that, when I share something its all me – not a robot!  If you read other blogs that you think are amazing and feel its worth sharing, then share it on Twitter.  Just by doing this and being real – you will get people following you.

Also, being yourself and tweeting about things that happen locally to you, or in your everyday life – you will get followers.  When you ask questions on Twitter – and I mean good questions, you will get people that find you becasue of the questions and get more followers that way.  This is where some people DON’T get Twitter, but the more real you are, and even if some people think “who cares” about the tweet you do that says “I am at a ice cream joint eating my favorite ice cream” the more Twitter will do for you.  It helps people get to know YOU, the real you and that makes more people want to follow you.

Step Four: Use the community often.   Lets say you only get out of your house to interact with the neighbors once or twice a year, then you probably don’t have a very good relationship with them.  If you are able to interact with them several times a week, then you do have a good relationship and are probably doing stuff with them.  With Twitter its the same, if you are only going in and talking, or replying to people once a month, they are probably not giving you a second thought.  If you are engaging with them everyday,  then that is a different story!  The more you interact with people on Twitter, the more it really will do for you!

Final Thoughts:

To me, Twitter is simple.  It is just real life, and if you know how to interact with people in your community, and make friends, then you will eventually understand Twitter and will be able to figure out how to use it for business.  I am able to tell people on Twitter about the produts I sell, just as well as I am to my neighbor, the only differene -  I have a world wide audience of potential customers and people that can buy from me!  All I have to do is learn to interact with my new worldwide neighbors!

Shameless Plug – ok, if I did not ask you to follow me on Twitter, then that would make everything I just talked about irrelevant!  So please!!!! Follow me on Twtter!

Twitter in Active Moms Magazine

I love when I see businesses who are using social marketing to its fullest potential.  I particularly love to see them incorporating their social media marketing into their offline promotions.  It is fun to see things I had not yet thought of.  I will typically write these strategies down and keep them in my bank of ideas that I think are cool, because I know at some point I might be using the same technique for myself or a client.

Offline Twitter Use #1

In a magazine – The whole reason for writing this post came from something I saw in one of those local free magazines that you get while eating out.  What was even more pleasant for me was that my wife saw it when she was looking through the magazine and was like, “cool, check out these guys promoting their Twitter.”  My wife knows the value of Twitter and understands how it can help companies.  This company also had a spot for Facebook (see picture), but my only advice would have been to include a little more info for people who may be less familiar with social networks like Twitter.  I might have said something like – “Follow us on Twitter for weekly coupons” or “Follow us on Twitter to know when we are having sales, rather than just stating “Follow us on Twitter.”  Don’t get me wrong, I think it was awesome they were smart enough to have the ad in the magazine, but if they just took it a bit further it would be so much more powerful for their business.  Additionally, I think they should have included their Twitter URL in the ad. I mean we are smart people and can probably search Twitter and find you, but why not make it easy?

Offline Twitter Use #2

On A Post Card – The other day I got a post card from someone in the mail who is following me on Twitter.  The post card was sent to ask if I would follow them back and tweet about their services (once I had tried them) if I liked them.  This is a great way to show people you are interested in their feedback.  It’s also a super way to attract new customers if you have a quality product.  Even though they were kind of spamming me, because I did not opt in, it was cool to get something in the mail that was about following on Twitter.  I guess its just the geek in me!  Here is an idea – If I owned a furniture store and had a Twitter account that was offered daily home decorating tips – I would work hard to get local people following me.  I would then send postcards with Twitter only savings, like “bring this card on Saturday and we will take an additional 20% off your entire purchase amount.”  Limit the deal/postcard to only people who follow you on Twitter.  After a few rounds of post cards, the word would spread, and wow will you have a following!  I saved the card for this post (so I could snap a picture of it and share), but of course when it comes time to post my blog, I can’t find the post card.  So, your imagination will have to do!

Offline Twitter Use #3

Follow me on Twitter billboards

Billboards – The other day I was driving (here in Phoenix) and saw a billboard with a HUGE follow us on Twitter promotion for a local radio station.  Again, I love it when businesses embrace social media and unleash the power that lies therein!  I didn’t take a snapshot of the billboard, because I was driving (and I am a good driver , so I thought I would come up with a graphic to illustrate it!  Obviously, not everyone has the budget for a billboard, but if there are any large businesses out there reading this blog post with a good budget – you know what to do!

Actually, in many places billboards are not as expensive as you might think.  I know of a highly trafficked area in Utah County, Utah off I-15 and while I lived there the billboards were running anywhere from $1500 – $3500/ per month.  That kind of money will not kill a large corporation’s budget.  I have checked in smaller trafficked areas too and the monthly budget is down to $250/ per month.  Very affordable for a small business to use as another marketing option!

Offline Twitter Use #4

Twitter URL on business cards

Twitter address on business cards – I have shared this one before, in fact I was one of the first to blog about including your Twitter URL on your business card.  Other big names in the industry like Danny Sullivan have also blogged about the importance of this.  It is just another great way to get more followers and help people to be interested in you.  Potential customers will get to know more about your and what your like when you invite them to follow you on Twitter.   I am sorry this picture is not a better one, but I think you get the point.  I also think by including your Twitter URL you can create better conversations with potential clients.  For instance, they may ask you what Twitter is, and you now you have the perfect opportunity to discuss social networks and impress them with your extensive expertise.  I know it seems silly, but it has happened to me several times and really is a great conversation starter!

In Conclusion:

These are just 4 of the things I have seen lately when it comes to really good uses of Twitter offline.  I would also love to hear of any other techiques that you guys have heard of or may be using.  I always love to find new ways offline to use Twitter and hope you enjoyed this post.   As a business owner, I appreciate any feedback you guy have!  Since this post is about Twitter – here is my shameless plug – please feel free to follow me on Twitter!

This kind of stuff damages the NBA – my father in law and I were talking about how we have stopped watching a lot of NBA because of all the ref scandals of years back.  We were talking about so many games we were wondering how come so many bad calls, and now we know … they were all fixed.  So why not call out the refs?  Are we sure they are not pulling the same crap?  We need to keep them in check and that’s all Mark Cuban was doing.

Makes me wonder when the first person is going to win a large sum of money for suing someone who “tweeted” something bad about them.  It will be all the new rage to making money via Twitter!  Thoughts?