A long time back I read a book titled the magic of thinking big. The author had a view point that if we took to seeing life from a view point where we paid attention to the larger picture than the smaller one then we might be able make significant changes to our lives.

I am extending this philosophy of thinking big to the practice of making money online or blogging and twittering. I read somewhere that Twitter brings in more leads than Facebook and many other social media sources present in the cyber space and hence the post. There are lot of ads on the internet which I see repeatedly and more often than not they will repeating the technique of making loads of cash while sleeping.

We know that doesn’t work, your readers know that that doesn’t work and everyone else too knows that. What works is the big  picture. The picture of changing the mind-set of taking  traffic to be  an unmoving,faceless mass to a live,responding, eager train of people who know what they are seeing. If you can take the big  picture then you are on the right track.

I read a post on Problogger where the author described how we can learn success secrets from Ted Turner and apply them to blogging. Ted Turner started as a college dropout managing his father’s bill board business. He then went on to become a Media mogul- gobbling up CNN, TNT,MGM studios, Cartoon Network on the way. Shortly before his father died he gave Ted one single advice and that was of conceiving goals which one couldn’t achieve in a lifetime. That way work would inspire us to move forward consistently, to never rest on our laurels. That advice was in a way what I call seeing the big picture. Setting goals high is thinking of a big picture.

Do you know what Steve Jobs said in a convocation ceremony held at Stanford shortly before he died.

“ You have very little time, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma- which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition”.

Just by deciding to live his own life he went on to create a product, many products that define what should be the standard of what’s coming next. Apple became the bench mark for style, sense, user friendliness and all that defines the smart phone industry today.

Whenever Apple did something it was light years ahead of what the industry was doing.

How will thinking big help you on twitter?

Do you know why I hate the word traffic? The reason is that traffic seems to me like comparing human beings with a commodity. Exchange traffic, buy traffic, get traffic- What is this? Are you trying to substitute real human engagement with such statements? One genuine follower on twitter is better than the 50k you get at fiverr because that one person retweeted my posts while the 50k brigade did not notice that I existed. Can such exchanges buy me the same loyalty and followership that I could have had when a person shares my post after liking it, really trusting me with the information that I have provided?

What will the number game do to me. I need only one single person who likes and reads me to make my blog a success. 

So if you want Twitter to work for you then you should do things that work on Twitter. As I said above, the crazy marketing hype of $2000 under your ass in two minutes won’t be clicked but they will be avoided in the same way like Chicken pox at a time when there was no vaccination.

Nor will selling stuff which speak of losing 30 kilos without moving a muscle do well here.

Have you got something genuine, something that worked for you. It can work but then you need their permission to market it to them.

With the internet attention span of 3 short seconds how will you convince others to like you. To be on the brighter side of Twitter you need to be an honest person genuinely interested in people. Rather than going after huge celebrities follow people related to you target group.

Forget traffic, think people to grow your blog.

Who is you target group?

If you are an internet marketer finding people to follow is an easy task. You need to follow those people who are trying to make it big. Mostly those people will be following some big names in the industry. Just browse through that list and make it yours.

What will you target audience be if you are selling laptops. It will not be Samsung’s official twitter page but the people on that. Search for hashtags, conversations. Hop in and share what you know.

When you have got your audience what will you do?

Here comes the harder part. We can all fake engagement, but few of us can really mean it. Stand out from the crowd. Show that you care. A freelance writer I know sends out a personal message to each new person who joins his network on linked in. He got two gigs only because of the personal message he bothered to send. So engage with them in a real way. Retweet their tweets which you find interesting, give them interesting content which need not be from your blog, mention them in your tweets, participate in their quizzes, ask them for advice. Who will stop you from growing?

For three years John chow dot com was not on Google. He was on Twitter and the majority of his traffic came from there. The first message he sends out to his list are the links to his facebook, twitter, linked in and pinterest profile.

Whenever you follow someone on twitter a message goes out to that chap. Make that message a bit more emotionally engaging.

Once you start adding value to your tweets and show real engagement then something magical happens. They start liking you. That was what was needed. One single person who likes you can share your message across many platforms, to many people to many many interested people whom he personally knows, recommend you( word of mouth) and then a chain reaction goes off.

What I think of buying Twitter followers?

My answer would be yes and no both. My answer depends on the expectations you have from the people who follow you on Twitter. If you want to make money with Twitter then I would suggest following people naturally, the way I described above but if you want to show social proof then you could go for an occasional Fiverr gig which promises so and so number of followers. The quality will be crap.

More people will follow you if they see that you have 10k followers than having none but those numbers don’t mean a thing.

I came across a post by Dean Saliba where he was talking about using the Twitter follower to increase his followers. The number of followers did increase but only for a short time. As soon as they had the credits, they un followed him. People whom you buy on Twitter are not really interested in you. They are interested in getting more credits to have more followers. But in the process they forget that others would also do the same thing to them. No one wants to be drowned in a endless chatter of tweets raining 24*7. The first thing they will do after following you is un follow you.

Where you get the twitter followers is very important so they at least stay with you. And you knows that if you pump up muscles in such a way then Twitter may decide to ban you.

At the end of the day all I can suggest is to be true to yourself and others. Fake methods of growing your fan ship will not benefit you.