I’ve been asked by many people how did I manage to get over 32,000 followers in a few short months. Do I use spam techniques? Did I find some magic bullets? Do I practice technological voodoo? Do I implement black-hat SEO tricks?

The short answer: No, I don’t spam. But I’m familiar with APIs of many social networks and with the newest tools and apps developed for those networks. And I use my own social marketing system to take a full advantage of those tools.

Growth in SuperComputer Power
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If you want to know the technical aspect of the story, then subscribe to my Social Marketing Secrets, and I’ll gladly share my knowledge with you.

Yet, the answer to quick and stable growth of your followers lies not as much within the knowledge of technology or marketing. It’s actually hidden within you.

You see, it doesn’t matter how many followers you are able to accumulate. What matters is, how many of them actually read your tweets and updates.

You need to have your own voice, something that differentiate you from the crowd and that makes your followers to pay attention to your tweets in the ever-growing noise of main Twitter stream.

This brings us directly to the matter of leadership. In order to stand out, you should think like a leader and act like one. It doesn’t matter whether you have 50 followers or hundreds thousands of them.

People who follow you form your own micro-community, and you become a leader de facto of this community.

Just remember that the leadership is given to you on a “trial basis”, so to speak:

  • if you don’t deliver according to expectations,
  • if you won’t give your audience unique content,
  • if your updates lack newsworthy spin,
  • if there’s no reason to believe that you’ll provide controversial/unordinary experience that they can’t get elsewhere,
  • if you throw at them viral junk,

they will un-follow you, and have every moral right to do so.

You might be asking: “What messages are you referring to as a viral junk?”
There are quite a few of them, served in many different flavors. One example would be messages about daily routines. IMHO, this kind of social communications don’t bring any value to the readers.

Let’s look at a few “chef-d’oeuvre” of this genre: “I just get up and I don’t want to go to work” or “I’m so tired and I’m going to bed” or (My Favorite!): “I need to go to the bathroom”.

Yes, I know that Twitter is meant to be a tool of personal communications. But what value do you really bring to your followers by informing them about your bathroom needs?

Of course, I don’t see anything wrong with reading a “so tired” tweet once in a while if a person really provides good value, and is just wishing goodnight to her/his followers this way. But the percentage of such “daily routine” messages should be rather low.

We live at the times of information over-load when you don’t have enough seconds in the day to digest even the most useful and interesting bytes and bits.

So, I don’t know about you, but I certainly don’t appreciate when my precious time is wasted in such a barbaric way. And such “social communicator” deserves to be un-followed quickly.

If you’re wondering why you have a very small following, assess your messages. Do you really provide value or you’re just shooting the breeze?

On the other hand, if you manage to transform yourself into a social leader, your following will grow exponentially. If your resources are of the highest quality, your followers will gladly share them with their own audience.

Why? Because your followers are in their turn leaders of their own micro-communities, and when they share unique information, they provide great value to such communities.

If your information is helpful, and enough followers shared it with their audiences, there is a possibility of the positive chain reaction otherwise called the “word of mouth advertising”. “Word of mouth” not only brings in a new wave of followers, it also includes the benefit of social proof. This is very powerful.

In my experience, rare marketing strategy can compete with a “word of mouth advertising” in regard to social proof.

Just give your followers as much value as you can. So much value, in fact, that they would think: “Wow, I would gladly pay for this information!” It’s your task, as a bona fide leader, to deliver unique content and unforgettable experiences to your micro-community.

That’s all you have to do. Then the law of reciprocity and the word of mouth will do the rest, sky-rocketing your business to the new heights.

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Subscribers of my InterPreneur Newsletter might remember that about a year ago I called one smart marketer “A Man with a Midas Touch”. 

Why?  Almost every project he does turns into a big success. Plus, I bought many of his products myself. And since I have a background in programming (among other things), I can tell you that he always delivers top-notch products.

I’m talking about JP Schoeffel. He just released new software product called “Site Profit Bot” that allows you to create a complete web 2.0 website with a few clicks of a button.

Actually, it could be done in 30 seconds. I don’t particularly like the name of the product, since bots have rather negative associations in my mind (usually related to hacking).

So, “Site Profit Builder” or something similar could be better. But don’t pay too much attention to the name, let’s see what this product can do for you.

All you do is just enter one keyword, and in seconds a full-blown website is generated for you. And it’s not some dull-looking adsense template (I’m sure, you’ve seen tons of those).

This website pulls in keyword-related content from different social media sites, and features videos, podcasts, content from related forums and blogs. This software researches press-releases and official news, and publish it all on your site. So instead of spending many hours of doing this research, you’re done in minutes.

Plus, all this content has your affiliate ids and adsense code automatically built-in, so your site is monetized right from the start. Plus,  website could be easily updated with new content, just enter a few additional keywords- and you’re done!

Amazing, isn’t it? And you can grab this soft for a price that you will likely be able to get back within 1-2 months of using this sitebuilder.

The only problem is, JP is going to significantly raise the price in a few days… So if you want it, go get it right now.

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Disclaimers lately became both a fashionable marketing trend and a buzz-word extraordinaire, simultaneously triggering the reaction of the two most important elements of the buzz marketing.

“Fashionable trend” in this case is not generated by curiosity or popularity. It’s generated by one of the most unpleasant yet effective “buying triggers” used in marketing – fear.

Of course FTC is not selling you anything, and it was probably not its particular intention to generate such unhealthy rush about the upcoming event (I’m talking about new FTC regulations that go into effect on December 01, 2009, more about these guidelines in a moment).

Nevertheless the trigger that did make this “law and order” event known almost instantly to millions of people in America, is the same that is used in many high-converting sales letters online. It’s a factor of fear (played as scarcity within internet marketing community).

If you want to read complete guidelines released by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, go here: New FTC Regulations

It’s a long read. So let me make it easier for you.

Short Version: You’re screwed.

These regulations influence every marketer, blogger, advertiser, website owner and operator in the world. And if you’re one of those, you should immediately take some action to comply with these regulations.

FTC says that regulations affect you only if you live in the US or promote your products and services to the US market. In reality, if you’re on the Internet, and are promoting something on your website, chances are pretty big that sooner or later somebody from the US will find it and buy it. Especially if you’re ranked high in the SERPs for your keywords.

Of course, if you live in another country, it will be more difficult to FTC to go after you, since international laws will probably complicate this process.

But if you live in the US, and especially if this is the first time you read about the upcoming FTC changes, you have no time to waste. If you want to know how to avoid a $11,000 wrist slap per each violation, read this post to see the easiest way to comply, and then immediately go and put all the legal stuff on your site.

Before I actually tell you what to do, let me follow the trend and throw at you my disclaimer. Ready? Here it is:

“I am a blogger and social marketer, not an attorney. So, nothing you read on this blog (and on this post in particular) or on any other of my numerous websites and blogs, could be considered a legal advice.

If you have legal questions about your specific situation you should seek advice from a qualified attorney.

Furthermore, any and all comments I make and reviews I write about various products and services, here or on any other blog, website, social network or any other source of information available in this universe, should be considered my opinion only.”

There you have it. It might sound a little ridiculous in some parts, but the sad reality is that the disclaimer I just showed you is a modified sample of only one legal document that you now have to put on every website and blog you own or operate. And there are tons of such documents.

It will take many hours of consultations with qualified attorney to put all your websites in compliance with new regulations. So if you have one and are ready to pay tens of thousands of dollars in fees for legal consultations, go for it.

I, however, suggest another route. How about paying a one-time fee of less than $100, and get all the required legal documents? Well, there is such program, and a respected one at that.

All the documents are written by Internet Law Specialist, the attorney who specializes in Internet, copyright and contract law. What is even more important, you get a life-time updates, so when FTC rules changes, the documents are updated to reflect those modifications.

Go to AutoWebLawPro now, download all the legal documents you need, and put them immediately on your sites. Of course nobody knows at the moment if it will be enough to cover you from FTC. But hey, the attorney that actually specializes in this stuff, probably know much better than you and I, right?

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With introduction and quick advancement of social networks it becomes obvious that popularity of short messages and their corresponding delivery formats (such as mini-blogs) are not going anywhere. They are staying for a long term, and, if anything, they might only get shorter.

There are many reasons for this trend. Among the most obvious I could mention the rapid development of new apps for mobile industry and the huge increase in usage of mobile devices such as smart phones, GPS, different trackers, etc. Interfaces of most mobile gadgets dictate a somewhat shortened format for information delivery.

Twitter, which is limiting its users to 140 characters per message, is a vivid proof of this trend’s success.

And there are attempts by other social networks to make communications even shorter than 140 characters.

All these leads us to the logical choice of using shorten urls while posting our messages to the social networks.

There are many online services that offer url-shortening. Here are just a few of them: bit.ly, budurl, buzzup, Tweetburner, SnipURL, Adjix, urlShort, kl.am, cli.gs, urlborg, idek.net, idek.net, chilp.it, krz.ch, shortna.me, Digg, migre.me, short.ie, rly.cc, dot.tk, trim.li, awe.sm, etc

They all provide a free interface to create a shorten url for your long link. And many of them give you some sort of stats for your clicks, etc. Many of them have some interesting additional features, so play with them at your leisure and see which ones you like better.

Yet they all lack one very significant benefit. They don’t reward you with additional traffic.

When you use those services to shorten your url, you can login later on to check your stats, but that’s basically it.

Today I will share with you 2 services (both are free to join) that actually reward you for using them.

First service also allows you to shorten your urls and provides you with stats, but in addition to that it gives you display credits each time your shorten url is clicked thus giving the ability for your add to appear when shorten urls of thousands of other users are clicked. This means a substantial additional exposure for you.

If you want to use this service, click this link: Viral Marketing Method, and when joined go to “promo tools” and look for QKR toolbar.

Second service shortens your url too. It doesn’t show you stats (if you want stats, you can simply wrap this url in another url shortener that does), but it gives you even more traffic.

It gives you credit every time you create a link, every time somebody clicks on your link, and you also earns credits from all the people that you refer (5 levels down).

If you were to only refer 5 people to this Url Shortener, your ad could be shown over 61,000 per month!!!

The conclusion. If you’re involved in any way in social networking, you will be using url shortening services more and more. It’s inevitable. You can either waste the potential or use url shortens creatively and drive a ton of additional traffic to your sites.

Choice is yours.

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In previous post I talked about RSS feed distribution through social networks, social bookmarking sites and different blogs. (I use web feed and RSS feed terms interchangeably throughout the blog as they really are synonymic in the their meanings).

With social bookmarking sites everything is straightforward. You just submit your RSS feed, and hopefully others will pick it up.

Other blogs can pick up your RSS feed from those sites too. But it’s better to fuel initial distribution by submitting your feed through different RSS submission channels.

For starters, you could submit a feed to pingomatic.com and pingler.com. Then research other submission sites. There are both free and paid RSS submissions.

Free ones will require some time on your part. Paid ones usually automate the process.

If you decide to go a paid route, I would recommend you to try FirePow.

It’s not cheap, but you can try it free for 14 days (well, almost free, it will cost you $1), and see if this is something you want to use.

This program automates many tasks. Essentially, it creates, manages on auto-pilot and promotes SEO-optimized blogs. Here is how it works.

  1. You choose a niche, and it creates SEO-optimized blog for you
  2. Firepow automatically adds content to this blog from Yahoo answers, YouTube, Google, article directories and many other sources. And if you choose so, it publishes new content each day for the specified number of days/months.
  3. It automatically submits your RSS feed.
  4. It also has a built-in tool for automatic social bookmarking. You select the social networks that are relevant to YOUR niche, and submit posts you to those networks AUTOMATICALLY.

The downside of this system is that this content is not unique, it’s all borrowed from other sources. Upside – once it’s set up you basically don’t have to do anything to get it going.

Whether to use “set and forget” system or to go another route generating unique content – it’s up to you to decide. I only show you the options.

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