Twitter Tip Tuesday Don't Forget to Mention...

I've recently become a huge fan of Marie Forleo and if you have not had the pleasure of watching her videos, you're robbing yourself of educational enjoyment! So I recently red her book How to Make Every Man Want You:How to Be So Irresistible You'll Barely Keep From Dating Yourself . Slow your role! I'm straight, that's the TRUTH. As a marketer you read people's stuff to figure out and learn from the people who are already successful... she is quite the teacher and I can relate w/her on a few levels. Plus I figure I needed to get inside the head of some successful women. So I gave her a shout out on twitter because I really did enjoy her book. It's AWESOME by the way pick that sh*t i up! Marie being the ever so approachable woman as she is, of course responded w/in 24 hrs. Do you think she know's how to connect with her audience? There's so many people missing the boat this. Don't be that guy! Or gal.

Now that you have made a few tweets and your posting away. Posting your thoughts, feelings, your projects, and what's going on in the world. Are you also building friendships? Are you asking questions? Are you giving shout outs?


In Dale Carnegie's, How to Win Friends & Influence People. There's no sweeter sound to someone than to hearing one's own name. Or at least in twitter's case, seeing one's own name. Remember, in the world of social media or word of mouth marketing, it's not what you're saying about yourself. It's what other's are saying about you. So if you have a cool website, logo, or product and someone else is commenting about it. That's a good thing. People like the LOVE but are so caught up in what they're doing most forget to even say thank you for following. Not a big deal though. If you really want to make friends and build up a following take the time to mention others especially if they're in your niche, city, organization, or even if you're just a fan of what they do.

@replies or mentions about others will get you noticed. I know you can't really keep track of what thousands of people are doing daily. But you can keep track of the ones who mention or engage with you. All you have to do is click on home from your twitter page and click on @ mentions. The way you're followers and following lists are listed is by the most recent. So as long as you're looking at your list periodically most of those people or at least the ones who are actively engaged should stay top of mind. Just take a few mins to go out of your way to acknowledge as many of the real tweeps as possible and give em a shout out or two. :)

Twitter Tip Tuesday! WORD!!

Sunday is normally the day I start to frame my article for twitter tip Tuesday. I figured because I was starting to get the hang of this blogging thing, the procrastinator in me would and could figure out what I was going to write later. As I was researching some profiles on twitter, I was wondering how so many people I had come across didn't tweet anywhere near the amount I did, but had TONS more

Twitter Tip Tuesday; B.E.

Using twitter the first few times I remember typing out some tweets and following a few people of interest. For the life of me I can't remember many of those people. I do remember being surprised to find others that I knew who were following me.  Now I realize, then I had no clue as to what I was doing. I remember even thinking to myself this is stupid, why is everyone talking about this. I'll say it again, this is stupid... why is everyone talking about this.

Millions of other people had already realized the value in such a POWERful tool. Me I just was frustrated and out of frustration I simply gave up and labled it stupid because I understand the tool fully or realize it's value. A friend once shared w/me... if you ever want to learn anything, chances are there's a book already written about it. Boy he was right. So I went to the bookstore and bought a book about
twitter, if you read my bolog you already know this.


There's millions of conversations going on at one time. When most people learned that you can pinpoint and connect to your customer on social media. Droves of people and businesses wanted in. In case you haven't noticed, over 70% of the US population is on facebook and twitter is still growing at an obscene pace. The things people like and buy, where and who they associate with, what they're talking about is all out there. The same with twitter, just in 140 characters or less. Everyone wants to be where the eyeballs are and so do the businesses. Unfortunately, social media platforms as a whole have turned into an absolute pitch fest in most cases. Why? I have people trying to sell me stuff and they haven't even asked my name or learned one thing about me. I sat back and asked myself, do I do this? And after thinking about it. Being TRUTHful with myself I realized...  at times sure. So I asked myself, what should I do to change what I'm doing. I thought back to the social media basics. Know, like, & trust. Be Engaging!

When you meet anyone for the first time, what do you do? Chances are you ask them a question? The powerful thing you can ever do is to ask someone a question. Obviously you can make a statement or pay someone a compliment. Just asking for help, directions, or a simple how are you is the spark that can get the fire started and is the first step in 'building a relationship.' After all, you wouldn't walk up to someone in Dunkin Donuts and say I have this great lead generating system! Their response would be,"who the hell are you" and "wtf would I need that for." However, in this day & age of the Internet and social media chances are she knows someone who could  benefit from using this system.

So why not do things the old fashioned way in a new world. Be Engaging! Say Hi, learn my name and let me learn yours. Take notice of what people are doing. Allow me to do the same if I want to. If we like each other, then let's help each other.  IF we LOVE what we do, lets share it with the world always keeping in mind the 80-20 rule (others/self). So while you're out there; BE friendly, BE passionate, BE nice, and BE you. Hi I'm Danny it's nice to meet you. <handshake>

Danny Fortes is a social media entusiast who is navigating his way through the world of social media one day at a time. You can connect with him on twitter @xDannyFortes

Twitter Tip Tuesday; Can You Cut Through?

In a room of 200 or so people, if you were just broadcasting what you wanted to say to Jimmy who is all the way across the room in the corner, do you think he would hear you?

To get Jimmy's attention on twitter it would be a little tough if I was saying something out loud and just wanted jimmy to hear it even though he is all the way across the room. In twitter we have to learn to cut through the noise and get directly to Jimmy. There are two simple ways to this.


1. The @reply
If Jimmy is talking about the end of the NFL lockout and his Patriots signing a couple of questionable players. You could respond to Jimmy and whoever else is in the conversation. Your reply could look something like this;"@jimmyrice @patsfan do you really think Haynesworth is a good idea? Tell me the TRUTH!" This @reply is seen by whoever is following your tweets. Should Jimmy respond to your question his @reply would look something like this; "@backatcha only time will tell if he is truly has his head in the game." When others who are following Jimmy see that Jimmy is having a conversation about the Patriots, that common interest is where someone may follow you. Hence another follower getting in the conversation & building a relationship.

2. The DM- Direct Message
You and Jimmy decide you want to have a conversation over the speaker phone as to not being distracted by twitter. So you decide you want to exchange phone numbers, but do not want to put it over the twitterverse for everyone. The direct message allows for 2 people who are following each other the ability to pass twitter sized messages to each other privately. This is great for people and businesses. It's a very, very,  POWERful feature. If you as a restaurant or retail store want to pass on a free gift or amazing offer to your customers. One way is through DM feature. It's a very cool thing to use and that's connecting with your clients and community. With such a feature I can't for the life of me figure out why more people aren't doing this. Just think what kind of LOVE @firstsight relationship you can have with your audience. Don't believe me? There's a couple of examples just below. I would use my own account, it's just I haven't figured out how to use all this stuff just yet. Once I do I'll use all my own sh*t. 

CLICK IMAGE if Unable to READ

So why don't you try it! When you do and start to reap what you sow, you'll just have to spread the word for me and thank me later. Hint Hint!

Twitter Tip Tuesday, The Question?

They say the most POWERful thing you can do  when engaging is to ask a question. Twitter does that. Right at the top it says,"What's Happening?" That's why there's also a lot of confusion to the non-twitter users and the dynamic of social engagement. That's why it's perceived as the mundane of people just talking about what they're doing at work and what music they're listening to. There is someone in the twitterverse who is ALWAYS interested in what you're doing and what you're tweeting.

As you know I LOVE to read books. Especially in the areas of marketing and personal growth. And when I read a very good book I like to tweet certain quotes like most tweeple do because at the moment it's readily on your mind. Those profound parts of a book that makes you say, I have to tweet that! You can always find quotes from Malcolm Gladwell readers on a daily basis and from all over the world and that's the TRUTH (iI had to get that in). He's that popular. If you haven't read Outliers or The Tipping Point you're completely missin out. The aha moments we have to share with the world! Other people around the world are having those aha moments simultaneously and twitter is the easiest place to connect with those others doing or saying the same thing. It's a constant conversation. I don't know about you, but I can bet most of my friends do not read or do the same things that I'm doing these days. That's starting to feel more and more like a good thing. Especially all the new people I have met at Barnes & Noble most recently.


Truly connecting with like minded people is easy to do. People have so many different interests you can spend a couple hours a day on twitter and wonder where the time went. Discussions can range from the Red Sox, NFL lockout, the debt ceiling, and all the way to Antarctica. The only thing that is limited on twitter tends to be our own thoughts. So if you don't know what to tweet, check out the #trends on the right hand side and that's what most people are talking about right now. The creativity is there to explore and thousands of people to meet whether they're in your city of Phoenix or out of the country in Brazil. It is it's own universe... and feel free to jump into any conversation and ask a question. Just keep it to 140 characters or less.


You can always connect with me on twitter @dfortes99 

The POWER of Pound #

Another twitter tip Tuesday.

Harnessing the Power of twitter for search can be amazing if you're posts can resonate w/others. The hashtag (#), "number sign," or "pound sign" is used a variety of ways on twitter. It's used mainly as a way to index subject matter that people are talking about. Hashtags allow you to ZERO in on search by topics of interest to you and engage w/people who have similar interests.

Hashtags always Precede the keyword or keywords of reference about your tweet topic or subject of interest. So for instance, if I wanted to talk about books it would look something like this: #books. You can be specific like hashtagging the title of the book or author i.e. #napoleanhill. Hashtags can help you build relationships quickly. My case in point, here's an example of the power a hashtag can have.

I like to read books, as you already know, and I happen to be in the middle of a very powerful and controversial book by Napolean Hill titled, Outwiittng the Deveil. I felt so compelled to tweet some quotes about the book as I was reading it. After making a couple of posts I was connected w/someone who had finished reading the book. Her name is Christine and she lives in Maryland. She was able to view and read a whole stream of tweets about the book in the matter of seconds. The reason why she decided to contact me was because I had PLS RT & Connect. Up to that point, she had made me realize that I had never put the word connect in my tweets. There has been a whole segment of twitter that I have been missing out on and that is the ability to connect!!! Talk about an aha moment! So when we actually worked out the logistics of when we could talk we had an AMAZING conversation over skype where it just seemed like time just stood still. We talked about our passions, the books we LOVE, personal growth, our dreams, and our frustrations. The best part! Where we are in our lives with our relationships w/God and even though we are in different opportunities we both felt that people in our industries don't make the commitment  to help one another regardless of what our opportunity is because we both have the same goals as far as where we want to go in life. Too many marketers are missing the boat on personal growth and team success. We were practically finishing each others sentences and our conversation was just a lot of fun! I'm already in Christine's inner circle because she reached out and connected with me. I was fortunate enough to meet her husband and she connected me with another INCREDIBLE individual. His name is Roy! And that's a whole different conversation for a whole different post!!! The TRUTH is, GOD is Awesome and he is at work in all of our lives. We all can feel God is at work within all of us. And to have synergy like that in just a single afternoon is a true blessing and I want the same type of experience for you!

So use your hashtag to sift and sort through a lot of the twitter noise that's out there. Sometimes that's me causing some of it ;) Find those who have the same interests or who compliment yours. If you like to read but don't like to build web pages, build relationships with those web designers and share the important chunks with each other. Best of all you'll make new friends that will attract plenty of value and richness into your life while time will feel like it's standing still.


Danny is technically challenged and great with people. He is looking to connect with like-minded people in areas of marketing, personal growth, and all things social media. If you or someone you know is looking to serve God and others please don't hesitate to name drop... it's appreciated here.