taken from thetechherald.com

For many parents in the 21′st century, Facebook, Twitter and the like have become terms that they hear from their kids daily. If you are informed parent, you probably already know what these sites are all about.  The issue that has presented itself now is how young or how old should kids be before they are allowed to enter these social networking sites. Should there even be such an issue? What’s the big deal anyway?

The bottom line is social media can be useful in communication. These days, even teachers are using these sites to post assignments and even exams so it’s not really all about fun anymore. With this in mind, should parent’s allow their minor kids to get connected to these sites? The key is teaching them to be responsible. Like one of the Coronado Mum’s Council members Morgan Benzian puts it:

Rather than turn the issue of social media and the Internet into a debate, I think it’s a wonderful opportunity to adopt an open-door policy and encourage communication. We should teach our children about how to use social media and the Internet effectively and with caution.

Since there is  an increase in the instances of cyber attacks, parent’s ought not to feel like they are invading their kid’s privacy if they set some rules about social media. Here are some practical things that can be done in this regard.

• Take charge. No doubt, your kids’ won’t like the idea of having you among their friends but since they are underage and are still under your control, you have the RIGHT to do it. Make them understand that if they want to get involved with these sites, they would have to come to terms with the fact that you will be  there to monitor them. The truth is, simply becoming their friends on Facebook will be good enough reason for them to ‘behave well’ online.
• Be open. If you discover that they have posted some ‘improper’ photos online, let them know. Kids are usually unaware of the long term effects their posts or photos may have. Many company’s are now carrying out background checks with the use of these sites. Explain to them that their reputation will be affected by what they post there.
• Teach them respect. Kids may  have the notion that they can get away with stuff online since it isn’t in person. The truth is whatever you do on these sites says a lot about you. Make your kids understand that positing harsh comments may get them to fights and ruin their reputation.

Most kids today have grown up with the internet. Social networking has in effect become part of their lives and we can’t see any hints that this is about to change. You can still be a ‘cool’ parent and let your kids’ use these social media sites while protecting them at the same time.

Read the source article here.

Watch this Twitter Marketing video now. Click to play.

There’s a Twitter marketing myth that’s really prevalent in the Twitter community, and it goes something like this:

“It’s about the quality of followers, not the quantity.”

Their rationale is, who cares if you got thousands of Twitter followers if nobody cares what you have to say.

I admit, there’s a grain of truth. If all you do is harvest followers, you’re nothing but a spammer. But here’s why this reasoning is flawed…

No matter how much so called quality Twitter followers you have, the dismal percentages remain the same.

2% click-through rate. 5% if you’re lucky.

Here’s 3 surprising reasons why:

1. There’s too much noise. Your followers follow hundreds of others. Hence  your tweets being lost in their tweet-stream as thy’re assaulted by noise.
2. Not everyone is on at the same time. The US has six different time zones. Then there’s the rest of the world. People wont see your tweet because they’re not online at that time.
3. Your followers are not targeted. People can follow you over a Chuck Norris Joke as much as sound marketing advice.

So here’s the deal, Guy Kawasaki says…

“Twitter is a numbers game.”

To overcome lower response rates, you need to get more followers to compensate that lack. And the good news is Twitter is phenomenal when it comes to generating leads really fast.

You see…

• The more followers you have, the more influence you wield.
• The more followers you have, the more chances of RTs.
• The more followers you have, the more SALES you make.

Here’s the simple answer that make pumping the numbers so much easier.

Hummingbird Twitter review

HUMMINGBIRD.

Honestly, I thought this Twitter app was a piece of crap a few months ago when I first bought it. It was so bad that I ended up doing my list building manually.

However, after I checked back a week ago, I was delightfully surprised that Hummingbird creators Mesiab Labs made massive improvements to this Twitter tool.

Hummingbird has truly become a push button solution.

With just one press of a button, and less than a minute’s work…

You can get up to 500 followers a day!

Skeptical? Here’s proof…

You saw right, since using Hummingbird over the past 7 days, I have got 2378 FOLLOWERS IN A WEEK.

So now, I’m unabashedly recommending Hummingbird to get big on Twitter fast. Put the massive lead generation and traffic generation of Twitter for your business right now.

Due to a special arrangement, your Hummingbird order can get a WHOPPING 15% DISCOUNT when you type the word RECESSION into the coupon section when you order.

Hummingbird guarantees you see results in as little as 3 days, so check it out now while this special offer remains:

Yes, I want 500 followers a day on Twitter now!

Some people on Twitter have wished me ill. Somebody even asked me to choke to death.

Why do I incite such animosity?

It’s because I have a way of doing business on Twitter that ticks off a lot of people.

I have opinions on doing Twitter marketing that ruffles a lot of feathers.

And before you go on, a warning to people who do not use Twitter for marketing nor use Twitter for business: with all due respect, if that’s the way you connect on Twitter; if you don’t actually use Twitter to make money online, then you don’t have to read on because this blog post isn’t for you.

It’s for those who want to make money on Twitter and want to know what the fuss is about on Twitter in terms of marketing and business-building online.

This is, in a sense, an open letter to all my haters, and this is my totally biased opinion on how to do Twitter marketing online.

There are several objections I get on my Tweetstream from the people who write back to me. They’re generally very nice people and they write back to me asking why I do things the way I do. Now, I’m going to address 3 such objections.

The first is this:

1. Why do I tweet so much?

Most people equate a lot of tweeting — or tweeting the same tweet over and over again — as being a spammer. But I say sometimes, it’s necessary because there’s just so much noise on Twitter. Most people follow more than 30 people on Twitter, and statistically, if you follow more than 30-50 people, you will already be overwhelmed with tweets. And 30-50 is just the bare minimum.

Most people follow between 400-500 to 1000 people on Twitter. How do you keep up with everybody if you’re following so many people? The bottom line is this: your message will actually get lost is a crowd of 500-600 people; you need to shout louder in order to be heard.

You might have the most well-crafted tweet in the world with the best copy, and the best headline or bullet, but if nobody sees it, there’s no point. And that is why I Tweet as much as I do. I don’t tweet this way about a lot of things though– only when there’s a launch or something coming up, and I want to get a lot of traffic to one site. I have done my research — the more you tweet, the more traffic you’ll get.

It’s the same way in which if you’re doing autoresponder marketing, the more emails you send out, the more money you make.

Of course, the thing to really consider is this: are you willing to ruffle the few feathers that will be annoyed? Because the truth is, some people will be annoyed. Are the people you’re bringing in through the funnel enough to supplement/make up for those who unfollow you? That is what you have to ask yourself.

If you are not brave enough to do this, please don’t.

2. Kenneth, why aren’t you using Twitter to build a relationship?

Isn’t Twitter about building relationships? Why are you just trying to sell stuff?

The thing is, Twitter IS about building relationships, it is. But what’s the end result you want on Twitter? Is it to have a good time? Do you have a service you want to introduce to the world? Is it to interact with the people you connect with?

Those are all good reasons, but if you’re a marketer who’s using Twitter to measure ROI, to spread your product and boost your sales, if you’re using it as a marketing channel, then you need to look at your relationships form a profit-potential point of view.

Don’t get me wrong. I am about relationships. There are many people that like me.  If you look at the favourites tab in my Twitter profile you’ll see that I’ve got tons and tons of raves because I do give out a lot of value and a lot of content, and I do get a lot of retweets.

I really do want to talk to everyone and converse with everyone, but the only problem is time — you can’t be on the Tweet stream the whole day.

And that’s the little sneaky confession I’m making, I do use automated posts/tweets from time to time in order to allow me to stay on top of things (because I now have a wife, and I need to take care of my wife; if I tweet too much she’s gonna divorce me).

At this point in time, you want to create relationships that make your followers so familiar and so friendly with you that they will trust you and hand you over their money to. They’ll even spread your marketing messages (which my fans do).

I believe I’ve cracked the code to doing this; there is a reason why I’m called the Puppet Master. And that is because I use accelerated intimacy techniques rooted in human psychology and in a bit of persuasion in order to simulate a bond that otherwise wouldn’t be there.

I mean, you can take the hard way and take 10years to build a following, or you can use what I use and get fans and followers who are warm to you from the first tweet, from the time they follow you. These are some of the powerful strategies I have in my arsenal.

The other objection is this:

3. Why do you follow so many people, since you can only keep up with a few?

For me, the answer is this: that’s a valid but misguided mindset. Because when you follow tons of people, it’s not about you – it’s about them.

You see, in a recent article from TechCrunch, they said that Twitter is a thought-stream, which basically means that Twitter is a stream of people’s hopes, fears, dreams, thoughts, comments and opinions.

What you have right now is probably the most powerful marketing device in the world. If you only follow a few people, that’s alright too — but you only get updated with your group of friends, your own clique.

You won’t really know what’s going on in the marketing world, though, because not even Google can tell you what Twitter can.

TechCrunch says that while Google is good for what people are searching for at the moment, Twitter is amazing for what people are thinking of at the moment.

Robert Collier said that the key to good marketing is to enter the conversation in your prospect’s mind, and Twitter is one big conversation. I use Twitter for Psychic Market Research.

Right now, at my fingertips, I know what works instantly. I know that when I tailor my marketing in a certain way, people will bite; I mean look at how many retweets I get for my links; how many click-through I get for my tweets — they work because this is what people want, and I’m just giving it to them. That is why I’m wildly successful at what I do.

These are only 3 of the objections — there are probably a lot more issues that we can address, but if you want to know more about them, I encourage you to sign up for the Twitter Salvation System Teleseminar that I’ll be hosting this Tuesday night, 31st March, 9pm EST.

I invite you aboard to sample and witness my unorthodox style of doing Twitter marketing. Again, it’s a free call: no strings attached.

There a re a lot of ways to do Twitter Marketing online, but I believe although other methods may works, my methods works and is proven. you can check ROI, you can track and test, you can really build your presence online not on touchy-feely things like being a rockstar but on how to really build a business online using what I believe to be the most powerful marketing device on earth.

I welcome you and ask you to come aboard.

UPDATE: The call replay is available here:

Twitter gives you a lot of opportunity to be famous in your niche.

In fact, they seem to have an organic system that actually rapidly elevates you to maven-hood if you play by their loosely defined rules.

There are several ways to put your personal branding on steroids, but one of the best ways is through Follow Friday.

In case you do not know what Follow Friday is about, go here. This blog post however is for those who not just know what Follow Friday is about, but who also want to be the belle of the Twitter ball.

#followfriday

Getting endorsed on Follow Friday really reaps tremendous benefits. And it’s not just for stroking for your own ego, even though that’s nice.

For starters, you not only enjoy an easy way to gain followers, you get ‘em WARM. Master persuasionist Joel Bauer says that you “live vicariously through the opinions of others”. In other words, the more endorsements you get from an outside party, the more credible you become. As a result, those who follow you from a recommendation are  likely to be more predisposed towards you. Consequently, that means they are more willing to ReTweet your Tweets, listen to your (marketing) message and eventually–BUY YOUR STUFF.

Here’s something even more potent. Dr. Rachna Jain, president of MindShare and social media expert, says that familiarity leads to likability. This means that the more people see your @username appearing in Tweets, the more they’ll actually think you’re cool. This is because they’re thinking that if large amounts of people are endorsing you, you must be a pretty okay person. So even if they don’t bite the bait and follow you the first time round, they will EVENTUALLY come to you because they keep seeing your name everywhere.

I’ve personally experienced all the social proof positives. @emailcopywriter is a frequent fixture on the #followfriday listings, with an average 15-20 shoutouts from people per week. As a result, I’ve been making pretty brisk sales with my products–nearly exclusively through Twitter–since I not only get followers, I get FANATICS.

You probably think that you must do something really spectacular to get that kind of word-of-mouth treatment. Or be one of those internet celebrities. Far from it. Honestly, it takes very little to appease the human mind. Here are 3 shortcuts to pull off some voodoo to make your Friday the best of the week!

1) Give a lot of quotes, especially inspirational ones

For some reason, the human mind is attracted to inspiration. We live in big bad stupid world, so when it sees something that’s positive, insightful and thought-provoking, it’s like an oasis in the desert of the mind. Quotes get ReTweeted A LOT. And there is a measure of gratitude for the person who introduced the quote, which you can cash in on later. Becoming a treasury of quotes is easy; just log on to BrainyQuote.com, Tweet the quotes you like on the front page and voila, #followfriday magic!

2) Be a Twitter gossip

For perhaps obvious reasons, Twits dig Twitter-related Tweets a lot. Be it a how-to, news items or blog posts, anything Twitter related gets tweeted a lot. The rationale is simple–your followers are probably thinking, “I’m here on Twitter, so what I can do to maximize the Twitter experience?” They will appreciate any help they can get. Better still, you don’t have to come out with any of your own, just ReTweet someone else’s. Bonus if it’s in list form (3 ways, 5 secrets, etc). Lists are irresistible.

3) Get personal

Unless your mom is on Twitter (and mine is), you can tweet your hopes, fears, dreams, aspirations, failures, success, etc. Vulnerability is seductive and will set you apart as human in a world of bots. People are attracted to nudity. Do a twiptease dance and dazzle people with your heart-to-heart spell. DISCLAIMER: Just veer away from emo teenage brat territory, unless your target audience is other emo teenage brats.

Now, these 3 ways should get you more #followfriday recommendations nearly effortlessly.

But you know something? #followfriday is really child’s play, relative to the sheer moneymaking potential that Twitter can offer your business.

Through Twitter, I have made friends with the top dogs in my industry. Through Twitter, I have BECOME the top dog in my industry. Through Twitter, I have been able to carve myself a nice living when the world outside collapses. Honestly, right now I have to turn down projects since I already have so much on my plate.

There is such a wealth-attracting force to Twitter that goes beyond any “15 k followers in under an hour” BS or some rehashed Clickbank eBook.

With a few simple tricks, you can unleash 5 different income streams through this micro-blogging platform.  call on Twitter Marketing; monetizing Twitter the RIGHT way.

There’s too much fluff out there, it’s time to bring some proven techniques on maximizing Twitter for your business to the table. I want you to be sure that each and every piece of marketing material you send out hits its target point blank.

… Wait, did I just say marketing material?

Yes, I must admit I am selling something. And what I’m doing now is to whet your appetite. Twitter Salvation System is now available, and I’ve worked day and night to have all the components in place.

However, instead of doing tired “Buy or Die” tactics, I decided to give you some sound advice to demonstrate the full potential that my little labor of love can do for your business.

Indeed, I used these very same principles to launch a 5 figure biz from scratch nearly exclusively using Twitter—and that was even before I discovered any of the Twitter tools. Purely by using the web interface we’d made $10k in 3 weeks—with no list, no name and very little money. And now by replicating these same techniques over and over again, I have got a sizable income rise, speaking engagements and more JV projects that I have to turn down.

Here’s a sneak peek of the 3 BRAND NEW MODULES that I included with the package:

• How to get 1000 followers in a day, and transform them into evangelist—with just 1 Tweet? Yes, it’s possible. A sprinkle of persuasion magic is all it takes!
• How to unleash the power of social influence marketing. Often, it’s not the what but the who that matters in marketing. If you’re respected, everything you say holds more weight. A simple way to accomplish mavenhood in as little as a month.
• A step-by-step Twitter for newbie’s module. Look, I know some of you came in from the nudging of Ashton  and Oprah. It’s nothing to be ashamed about. Here’s a quick and easy blueprint to get you up to speed. You’ll be tapping into Twitter as a lucrative marketing channel in no time.

Here’s the thing. There are strictly limited copies available.  We’re limiting it to 500 copies because me and my wife Laura do all the customer support ourselves –we believe in personalized support for each and every client we handle.

There’s been quite a bit of buzz about the Salvation System so I want to make sure you get first dibs on one of the hottest Twitter products around. Don’t miss your chance.

Twitter Salvation. Here.