Let’s say you’ve got an awesome twitter growth strategy. You’ve got quality content coming from your blog. You’ve got kick-butt social marketing integration that really ties the room together. There’s no question, if you tweet it they will come-but how do you steamline your social media for faster results, less invested time, and greater ROI?

Well, that’s easy. You let the wonders of technology do the heavy lifting for you.

At this point in the game there are only two pieces of twitter marketing software that you will ever need: HootSuite and TweetAdder. With them you can accomplish every task your little blue bird heart desires, including tweet automation, follower management, keyword searching, and more.

Getting Followers While You Sleep with TweetAdder

I have so much praise for TweetAdder’s marketing tools that in our upcoming “Essential Guide to Getting Twitter Followers” eBook I’m devoting an entire chapter to it. It’s the must-have twitter software for marketers, and that goes double if you’re managing multiple accounts. At $55 for a basic license (less if you use Retail Me Not) it isn’t cheap, but if you’re serious about marketing this tool will pay for itself a thousand times over. Here’s a quick breakdown of features you need to be using if you want to step up your social media game.

RSS - To gain followers organically you need to tweet, and tweet consistently. TweetAdder’s RSS function lets you automatically tweet new blog posts from your favorite sources throughout the day so that your feed never gets old. You can control the maximum amount of daily updates and variable timing between tweets. You can even set different hashtags to pin on, such as #marketing, so that you get the most interaction possible from each update.

Follower Management - Automatically follow those who follow you, and stop following once you hit a certain ratio (1.2 follows to followers, for example.) You can automatically unfollow accounts who do not follow you back after a certain amount of time, and control it so that only mass-added follows made with TweetAdder are affected.

Find New People to Follow - Search based on keywords to target accounts in your industry or area. For marketers, search your demographic and start reaching out. Add these accounts to a list that you can follow all at once or gradually follow over a period of time. You can automatically stop adding new follows once you hit a certain ratio.

Thank You Messages - This is a critical area for marketers, especially when we get into the hundreds of reasons you should be content marketing. Automatically direct message a thank you and an ebook, a blog post, or an offer every time you get a new follower so that you can drive traffic to your website or landing page.

There are oodles of other features in TweetAdder, but I consider those the most critical. Other features, such as automatically generating tweets, auto-RTing, and auto-replying, are tricky to use without making it blatantly clear you’re using a twitter bot. With TweetAdder you can manage additional accounts (for an additional price) making it very worthwhile for when you have a ton of clients on your plate. Just be careful with TweetAdder and user your powers for good, not evil. Nobody likes a spammer, and if you’re using the program correctly nothing should look out of the ordinary.

HootSuite: Monitor Everything You Need

TweetAdder is fine for automating your workload, but what about when you need to get hands-on? HootSuite is the best management software for the job, and if you’re part of a marketing team, it only gets better. Here’s a breakdown of my favorite features:

Full Social Media Integration - HootSuite isn’t just a twitter tool, it’s a social-everything tool. Post updates to multiple twitter accounts, facebook accounts, linked in groups, and more all at the same time. Or don’t. Post messages, photos, links, and more to only one of those things. It’s your tool, man, I don’t judge.

Monitor Multiple Feeds at Once - At a glance, monitor your outgoing tweets, your direct messages, your news feed, keywords, and people talking about you all in side-by-side feeds.

Tabbed Browsing - Switch between different feeds by clicking on tabs. How cool is that?

Detailed Analytics - Basic analytics support (interaction, click-throughs) comes from ow.ly, but if you’re willing to spend a little bit extra you can get incredibly in-depth breakdowns of your growth rate, interactions, follower demographics, and more. This is FANTASTIC when you want to be able to show quantifiable results for your brand or client.

Project and team-based collaboration - You can create projects, assign teams of users, and manage to-do lists all from within HootSuite, letting you effectively communicate with the rest of your marketing team.

HootSuite and TweetAdder aren’t the only game in managing your Twitter account, but they’re the big dogs for a reason, they’re comprehensive, and the price tag that comes along with TweetAdder and HootSuite Pro is low enough to not be an issue. It’s your ticket to better results, and you’ll notice the difference immediately.

If you’re an agency, another option well worth mentioning is newcomer Sprout Social. For managing clients and creating in depth reports, their eye-catching interface and analytics can’t be beat. at $59 a month per user it’s the Rolls Royce of social media management services, but in this consultant’s opinion, if you can afford it, it’s worth every penny.

Welcome back to the Affiliate Marketing Guide. We have now set the foundations in place for your online business and you are ready to go out into the big bad world! But, you still have a couple of things to consider and have a strategy around. You need clarity in order to maximise the opportunity. So, where to next?

1. Build a list. Stating the obvious but you need to build a list in order to have people that you communicate with and promote products to! So, you will need to set up a squeeze page, which is simply a one page site, which has as its sole objective to collect as many email addresses as it can. You will need to decide on what you are going to offer as a free giveaway in order to entice those who land on your site to give you their personal email address. One word of warning and advice – please respect those who give you their email addresses and never abuse it in any shape or form. They have trusted you with something personal to them and if you break that trust, you are not likely to get it back!
2. Produce valuable content. Set out your program of activities that ensures you have a continuous stream of content that is valuable to potential subscribers. These activities will include article writing, producing videos, commenting on blogs, social media etc. I know I keep on harping about it in this Affiliate Marketing Guide, and I make no apologies for that, but make sure your content is of value. Put yourself in their position – what advice, information, research or reports would they find of value? When you have answered those questions, then go about pulling them together.
3. Frequency and content of contact. Now you must decide how often you are going to communicate with your list and how you are going to mix promotional material with pure information giving. There is no magic formula for this, but my view is that it should be around 50/50 for content and about ¾ times a week for frequency. You want your subscribers to open your emails and they will only do that if they know that what you send is of value. They also know that you will be trying to sell them something but they do not want to feel that that is the only reason you send emails out. So, intersperse your promotional material with good content and then you will be perceived of value.

That’s the 3 point advice for today! Come back to the Affiliate Marketing Guide soon for the next 3 points to set you on your way.