You’ve read it right — followers, not the people that I follow… I do realize that the more traditional way of learning that we use on Twitter, Google+ and other social networking platforms is to listen carefully to the people we follow, and learn from them. Well, if you know anything about me, you know that I’m a huge fan of transformational leadership. And the key principle of it is to stay open to learning from the people that follow you, allowing room to be transformed by them.

Today I’ve passed 5,000 Twitter followers mark:

As I saw it, I took a screenshot of the follower-count, and tweeted:

http://twitpic.com/87pn98 – Flattering to know that 5,000 people care to listen to my Twitter rumblings

But as I pondered on it for the next few hours, I realized how much there’s beyond followers following you. These folks have transformed my views and approaches in ways most of them don’t even know about. So, in my today’s post — with sincere thanks all these guys and gals — I’d like to outline the 5 things that they have taught me since July 16, 2008. These are:

Lesson #1: Don’t follow to be followed — I made this mistake initially (over 3 years ago), but quickly realized that it helps no one. So, a few months into my use of Twitter, I re-evaluated my approach to it, and started following only the Twitter accounts that were of genuine interest to me. And guess what? Some of these folks don’t follow me… But why should this even matter? I follow them to learn; not to be followed.

Lesson #2: Filter ruthlessly & courageously — That follow/unfollow button is a powerful one! It’s akin to our TV’s remote control: when you don’t like the show, you move on… Now the adverb “courageously” is an important one. Whatever anyone says about social media “snobbery”, don’t listen, and do what works for you. Your time is valuable. Cut the noise, filtering out what doesn’t add value; then rinse, and repeat.

Lesson #3: Engage in conversations — Most of the things that I’ve learned on/through Twitter, and all of the business that I’ve landed due to Twitter (and my estimates show that $80,000+ worth of contracts I signed were directly or indirectly influenced by my tweeting), was due to my participation in conversations.

Lesson #4: Share generously — One of the major goals of social networking platforms (including Twitter) to make social sharing (please, do not confuse with broadcasting!) an easier task. So, about a year ago I’ve made it my rule — share everything that I find of interest.

Lesson #5: Stay your authentic self — Some say you want to maintain separate accounts for personal and business stuff. It may work for some people, but being my own personal brand, I, like many others, have decided not to split my tweets. You’ll see me tweeting pictures from my fishing trips, and links to photos and videos that I find of interest. Of course, most of my tweets are about the things that fascinate me in the digital world (and online marketing, in particular), but keeping it all in the same place with the other things that matter to me has proven to be a good branding strategy. Kind of like Bill Marriott’s blog posts, only more personal, you know?

If you’re following me on Twitter, thank you for making it such an amazing ride!!

Yesterday, GrowMap blogged on What NOT to Tweet on Twitter, and when I first saw the post’s title (in Ann Smarty’s ReTweet) I thought the post was going to be on something else — namely, on things not to tweet for security or reputation management reasons. While I enjoyed that GrowMap’s post regardless, it also gave me an idea for this list. So here they are (in no particular order):

10 Things Not to Share on Social Media

1. Birth dates (and places) for yourself, your spouse, your children
2. Your mother’s maiden name
3. Your home address (neither entire, nor any parts of it)
4. Detailed pictures of your home
5. Details (dates/time) of your vacations or trips away from home
6. Pictures/scans of your government issued documents
7. Your home or mobile phone number(s)
8. Any information that may be used to retrieve/guess your password(s)
9. Your weaknesses, fears, insecurities, or anything that may be perceived as such
10. Work-related complaints (if you’re working for somebody)

In a nutshell, never tweet or share anything that may be used against you or your family — to compromise your identity and/or your reputation.

Have I missed something that belongs here? If you believe so, please post it through the “Comments” area.

It seems like only yesterday I blogged about reaching 16,000 tweets, and the wins of focused tweeting, but the day before yesterday I’ve already crossed the 17,000 mark, and am now approaching a major milestone — that of 4,000 followers. And, as tweeted yesterday I’ve decided to put together a contest around it.

The idea is simple: guess the date and time when I’m gonna reach 4,000 Twitter followers — get the prize.

Here are the full rules:

Conditions: Through the “Comments” area below attempt to guess the date and time, ensuring your time is listed in EST (i.e. GMT – 4:00)

Deadline: 12:00 pm EST on October 25, 2011

Prize: Autographed copy of any one of my 3 books.

Restrictions: No more than 2 guesses per participant. Will ship within U.S. only. Rest of the world – electronic copy.

Now, since with tools like TwitterCounter, it is fairly easy to pinpoint the date, it is essential that you list the time to participate. The person whose guess ends up being closest to the reality, will win.

I’ve just hit a milestone — 16,000 tweets:

Assuming that on every one of those 16,000 tweets I spent some 10 seconds, that’s 160,000 seconds, or 2,667 minutes, or nearly 44.5 hours spent tweeting. One would think: “what a waste of time!” writing these hours into the “Losses” column. I disagree.

Looking back, and analyzing the “Wins” I can say that if I had a second chance, I would’ve done it again. There are at least 5 very tangible outcomes to which my regular tweeting has contributed.

These are:

1. 3,000+ loyal followers — Think: spreading of blog content, crowdsourcing, support in contests like this one, ongoing education, and ability to find answer to nearly any question within seconds.
2. At least 5 speaking engagements — Several of these were paid ones, while those that weren’t helped me land several training, consulting and management projects.
3. Book contract with a major publisher — When speaking with a prospective author among the factors every publisher considers now is social media presence, and social influence.
4. Contribution to steady blog growth — Think: social sharing, traffic increase… and, ultimately, influence on such revenue sources as advertising, for example.
5. Connections, connections, connections… — …which resulted in interviews, leads, barter arrangements, etc.

Are you on Twitter? How do you leverage it? What do you get from it?

It’s been a while since I’ve posted my last Twitter list, but it’s Friday again (think #FollowFriday), and regardless of the numerous topics that I have already covered — blogging, SEO, affiliate marketing, email marketing, Internet law attorneys, usability, conversion rate optimization, web analytics, branding and PR, competitive intelligence, web design, social media, mobile marketing, neuromarketing, psychology & persuasion — there is one I’ve been wanting to blog about, but couldn’t find the time.

Today I’d like to turn to paid search marketing folks who maintain active Twitter accounts, and may be of interest to my blog readers.

So here’s my list of the 10 PPC experts to follow in Twitter (arranged by the number of Twitter followers at the time of this post; descriptions taken from each person’s Twitter profile):

1. David Szetela — President & Random Axe for NoNoyz.com; lead guitarist; street performer; installation artist. Recently single and looking for friends; you?
2. Redfly Marketing — Tweets from online marketing company RedFly LTD, PPC, SEO and Web Design obsessed search marketers and analytics addicts.
3. Larry Kim — Search Marketing Enthusiast – PPC, SEO, Social Media. Founder and CTO of WordStream.com.
4. Mary O’Brien — aka PPC Summit, or #1 Resource for Pay Per Click Advertising – Google Adwords, Yahoo, Microsoft adCenter.
5. PPC Hero — PPC Hero’s mission is to educate the world on the basic techniques and finer skills of successful pay-per-click campaign management.
6. Brad Geddes — PPC Geek & Official AdWords Seminar Leader. Author of Advanced Google AdWords.
7. Dan Perach — Represents PPCProz, SEM = Search Engine Marketing = SEO & PPC & SMM.
8. Pamela Lund — Spreading smiles like they’re herpes and being awesome at PPC management.
9. Jen Sheahan — Internet Marketing PPC specialist who loves random things like Skittles, beer, and traveling to warm, sunny places.
10. Alan Mitchell — PPC / SEM specialist and owner of Calculate Marketing, helping businesses in Australia improve their return on investment from PPC marketing.

Of course, make sure you’re also following (i) Google AdWords’ official Twitter account, (ii) Yahoo! Search one, and (iii) Microsoft adCenter’s one too.

As always, if I have missed a helpful expert (or company) that, you believe, belongs here, please do post about them utilizing the “Comments” function below.

We may argue about the effectiveness of social media presence/campaigns for business promotion and sales generation, but one thing that no one seems to doubt is that it is one of the hottest topics in present-day marketing. Whether fueled by a global hype or not, but Google Instant keeps popping suggestions on social media marketing even when I’m not looking for things related to it at all… Google prides itself with its prediction technology which helps it “predict the rest of your query (in light gray text) before you finish typing” [more here]. Well, here’s what I get:

1. When we type in “social”, “social network” is among the top 5 suggestions:

2. Type in “why marketer” and you get:

3. When you start with “how do marketer” Google Instant suggests:

4. If you type in “can you market”, the social medial outlets are even more prevalent:

5. And, finally, should you wonder about “effective marketing”, the suggestions go as follows:

Wow… You can believe in social media marketing or not, but clearly there’s no way to ignore it…

It is interesting to see where Gartner places social media developments in its annual “Hype Cycle” report of emerging technologies:

According to the above curve, out of social media technologies:

• Social analytics is on the rise. Gartner says “the value resides in applying” predictive analytics techniques “in new applications such as social analytics and sentiment analysis”.
• Microblogging (which predominantly happens on Twitter) is 2 to 5 years, and it’s on the bottom of the “Peak of Inflated Expectations”.
• Corporate blogging, social software suites, and wikis which were scored in the previous Hype Cycle report are no longer there, but should be in Gartner’s “Slope of Enlightenment” now.

I’m split on the subject of social media marketing effectiveness (I could certainly use more analytics data). I do understand how when properly handled social media efforts increase engagement with brands (personal or corporate) and facilitate loyalty growing “fans”; but I, personally, do not know of one marketer who could confidently compare the sales effect of social media efforts to, say, search engine-based paid search, SEO, or affiliate programs. But then again: shouldn’t we distinguish between the types of social media efforts? Blogging isn’t the same as microblogging (aka “tweeting”), and even within Facebook — a PPC campaign is very different from interaction with consumers via a “fan” page.

What do you think? What has been your experience? Does social media marketing work for you? The comments are all yours.

It is always fascinating to analyze who influences your thoughts (and, ultimately, actions!), and via what means. One of the channels through which mine are influenced is Twitter.

Klout is telling me that when it comes to Twitter I’m most influenced by @sunshinetricia @esnagel @smallbiztrends @thegrok and @rehan.

Awesome list! However, since some believe the number of retweets to be a good indication of influence rank, I’ve decided to compile a list of the people who have influenced me most judging by the number of times I’ve retweeted them this week.

Here’s the list I’ve arrived at (descriptions taken from the bios each of them posted on Twitter, or their website(s)):

Chris Brogan — President, Human Business Works.

Jeremiah Owyang — Industry Analyst (aka Catalyst) at Altimeter Group.

David Meerman Scott — Marketing strategist, keynote speaker, author of The New Rules of Marketing & PR.

Bryan Eisenberg — Marketing keynote speaker, author of Waiting for Your Cat to Bark, Call to Action and Always Be Testing.

Anita Campbell — CEO, Small Business Trends, an online small biz community reaching over 250,000 each month.

Shawn Collins — Affiliate marketer, runner, Yankees & Jets fan, Maryland Terp, future writer of the great American novel.

Performance Marketing Association — Association founded by industry leaders to connect, inform and advocate on behalf of this growing industry.

Dave Chaffey — Bestselling author, consultant and speaker who enjoys sharing tips, tools and techniques on SEO, PPC, Social Media, Email Marketing, Site Design & Analytics.

Mitch Joel — President of Twist Image. Blogger and Podcaster of Six Pixels of Separation. Speaker. Author. Journalist. Media Hacker.

Ann Smarty — Owner of MyBlogGuest.com, Editor of Search Engine Journal.

All of the above are terrific folks, which I highly recommend you follow as well. So, there you have it… My #FollowFriday post of sorts.

Very few people know it, but I have an unfinished Master’s level counseling psychology degree. As many of my blog’s readers (and marketers, in general), I too am greatly fascinated by everything connected with how our mind works and how brain influences what we do, and how we do it. Since it’s Friday again, I’d like to bring you a #FollowFriday type Twitter list, and focus on some of the greatest persuasion and psychology folks today.

Here is my list (sorted by the number of followers each of them has at the time of this post):

1. Daniel Pink – @danielpink – Author of Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us, A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future, The Adventures of Johnny Bunko,  and Free Agent Nation.

2. Malcolm Gladwell – @malcgladwell – Canadian staff writer for New Yorker Magazine, author of such bestsellers as The Tipping Point, Blink, Outliers, and What the Dog Saw: And Other Adventures.

3. Dan Ariely – @danariely – Professor of psychology and behavioral economics at Duke University, author of The Upside of Irrationality and Predictably Irrational.

4. Terry O’Reilly – @ageofpersuasion – Director of Pirate Radio & Television, host of the award-winning CBC Radio One/Sirius Satellite radio show, “The Age of Persuasion”, co-author of The Age of Persuasion.

5. RobertCialdini – @robertcialdini – Author of Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion and Influence: Science and Practice, Co-author of Yes!: 50 Scientifically Proven Ways to Be Persuasive and Social Psychology: Goals in Interaction.

BONUS: Paul Ekman – @paulekman — One of the most influential psychologists of the 20th century, author of Face of Man, Telling Lies, Why Kids Lie, Emotions Revealed, editor of the third and fourth editions (1998 and 2009) of Charles Darwin’s The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals.

If I have left out someone who must be mentioned here, please post their info and/or Twitter name below.

Regardless of what type of online marketing you are involved in, I am certain you will benefit from at least a few of the lists I’ve put together in the past. Today I’ve decided to compile them all into one big list (for better digestibility and use). You may find the list below. If you don’t see a topic/area covered, please do post about it in the “Comments” area under the post, and I will make sure to work on it in the nearest future.

Now here is my compilation (in no particular order):

20 Twitter Lists for Online Marketers to Follow

1. 10 Twitter Hashtags for Online Marketers
2. 10 SEO Experts and Resources
3. 10 Web Design Accounts to Follow
4. 7 Conversion Optimization Experts
5. 20 Must-Follow Web Analytics Accounts
6. 10 Affiliate Marketing Accounts
7. 10 Usability Experts to Follow
8. 10 Email Marketing Experts
9. 10 Neuromarketing Experts to Follow
10. 10 Marketing Professors on Twitter
11. 5 Blogging Experts to Follow
12. 5 Competitive Intelligence Tools
13. 15 Must-Follow Mobile Marketing Experts
14. 15 Internet Law Attorneys & Resources
15. 25 Small Business Advice Twitter Accounts
16. 7 Branding and PR Experts
17. Top 10 Online Retail Brands on Facebook & Twitter
18. 8 Must-Follow Accounts on Writing
19. 15 Twitter Accounts for Marketer’s Daily Reading
20. Digital Marketer’s Twitter 100+ Master List

Once again, if I have overlooked an important topic (or area closely related to digital marketing) that belongs here, please post about it below. Many thanks in advance.

When running an affiliate program on a tight budget you inevitably face a challenging reality: good tools normally cost good money. You, on the other hand, may not necessarily have enough to invest into all of the paid tools you may need. Do not despair! There is a number of great tools out there that are available for your use at no cost. Of course, you do not want to depend only on the free ones (and have a number of robust ones that you do pay for), but it is useful to know which good ones are free.

Here’s my alphabetical list of 10 such tools (all of which I myself use on a daily basis):

1. Facebook — if you haven’t done so already, create a fan page for your affiliate program (and use it as a part of your affiliate communication channel)

2. Forums — use affiliate marketing forums (like ABestWeb and Affiliate Summit’s forum in the US, or affiliates4u in the UK) to participate in the community and gently get the word about your affiliate program out

3. Google — yes, the search engine! you can use it to find potential affiliates (when there’s no contact info on the prospect’s site, use Who.is to pull it up)

4. Google Alerts — use it to monitor what competing affiliate programs are doing, as well as for recruitment of new affiliates

5. Google Website Optimizer — use it for testing and optimization of your affiliate landing pages

6. iTrademarkBidding — monitor affiliate violations of your paid search rules and restrictions

7. Omgili — use it to monitor what’s being said about you affiliate program, your brand(s) and your competitors in forums and other online communities

8. Quantcast — analyze the volume and type traffic your prospective affiliates get (for a better picture always use it together with Compete.com‘s data)

9. Twitter — monitor it to spot prospective affiliates (use both Twitter Search, and tools like TweetDeck for streamlining the monitoring process)

10. WordPress — if you don’t already have it, start an affiliate program support blog on it (I personally prefer the self-hosted solution; hence, the link to the .org site)

Have fun exploring these free tools, and if I haven’t mentioned a great tool that can help affiliate program managers in their day-to-day tasks of affiliate recruitment and monitoring, competitive intelligence and program optimization, please do chime in with your suggestions using the “Comments” field below. ↓