If you have come to this page from following me on Twitter you have come to the right place. Thank you for the follow!

My name is Greg Martin and I have some very brief information here that will help you benefit from using Twitter in a big way.

Just below here is an introduction to how I am using Twitter to automate and market. As you may already know there is power in automation and what I have below for you is exactly what I am doing right now to build a Twitter following and market to that following on complete autopilot.

Below that there is some background on me for those that like to know who they are dealing with. I hope you like it and that we can connect.

If you haven’t come here from Twitter and you would like to follow me then you find me here @web2greg

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Twitter Marketing Tips

Here is a brief overview of what you could be doing…

Promote other people as much as you can - this shows people that you are not just interested in pushing your own agenda and that you have others interests at heart.

Post valuable and helpful information - that hasn’t come from you that you think would benefit those who are following you. Remember that people are looking for answers to their marketing problems and if you are providing valuable content that helps them you will be seen as a valuable person that is worth following.

Post valuable information that you have created - finally it’s time for you to promote your own content. There is nothing wrong with promoting yourself as long as it isn’t all sales and spammy. I like to direct people through to content on my Blog that can help others in a big way. My goal is quality first before quantity.

Answer the questions going on in your followers minds - This is an important tip, like any other form of marketing online you need to consider what the conversation is that is going on inside your prospect or followers mind. They have followed you for a reason and you need to be catering to that reason.

I personally think it’s ok to be posting non-marketing content like “having dinner at my favourite restaurant”. But if that is all you do then your followers will get a little tired of that. Your postings still need to be targeted to the niche of people who are following you and that is best achieved by asking yourself the question “what is going on right now in my followers mind?”

Thank people for following you - this is the right thing to do but it can become a time consuming issue if you don’t automate your activity. I will get to automation in a moment but thanking those that follow you is very important and you need get this happening ASAP.

Engage in conversation - This is a powerful way to get followers. You need to realise that whenever you do this the entire following of the person you are conversing with gets your posts with your Twitter name on it. This works powerfully when you are conversing with top industry leaders who have large lists.

My first encounter with this was with @Mike_Dillard who at the time had a following of over 12,000 people. From the brief conversation I had with Mike I saw my follow numbers escalate for almost a week. Believe me it works.

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Twitter Automation

This is seriously awesome and worth your attention. Automation is your key to growing a profitable list.

Social Oomph combined with Twitter has become the fastest method I have ever engaged in to create traffic. Twitter is very responsive and by using this service you can be guaranteed of instant response to your postings.

Social Oomph is a free service which is great to get you started however you may be interest in the Pro account. With the Pro account you can create a series of posts that can be sent to your list 24 hours a day completely on Autopilot.

Of course there is a fee for the Pro version but the return I am receiving from my Twitter marketing more than recovers the cost of the Pro service. It’s a great way to generate leads and revenue at the same time.

Rather than me telling you about it here just follow the link and check out Social Oomph.

Check Out Social Oomph Here

Check Out My Twitter Spam Post Here

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Automatic Exponential List Building

I would like to introduce this totally free service to you as a great way to build your following on Autopilot. I don’t recomend that this be your only way of building your following however it is a great way to at least get started… and very simple to use.

I guess you could say that this is a combination of Twitter and network marketing.

Check out Tweeter Getter Here

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Follow Those Who Interest You

Another great tool I use for folliwing people automatically who are in the same market I am interested in is Twollo.

With Twollo you can automatically follow anyone that uses certain keys words. For example if you are into Search Engine Optimisation or SEO for short, you can enter SEO into Twollo and it will automatically the person who posted SEO in their tweet.

I have dozens on word combinations I am tracking and have followed hundreds of people automatically with this tool. And they are all discussing the subjects I am interested in.

How cool!

Click Here To Go To Twollo

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Advanced Twitter List Building & Marketing

Once you have grasped the basics of Twitter etiquette & automation it’s time to get involved in some serious list building techniques.

The program that has opened my eyes in a dramatic way to building a large list fast is Brute Force Twitter. Using the techniques described in the training I am watching hundreds of people follow me everyday. Some days I have had close to a thousand follows but you need to keep in mind this is being done over multiple lists.

As of this writing I am still in the early stages of my list building activities so what ever you do, don’t take my word for it, go and check out the guys page and read it for yourself.

Click this link to visit Brute Force Twitter

Additional Notes - As of July 2009 I have just updated this post now to include this new tool I am using called Hummingbird. In fact after using Humming Bird for two months now I can safely say that there is simply nothing else you should be using to build a large Twitter list with.

Click here to check out the Humminbird Review I did… and click here to check out the Hummingbird site.

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Engaging The Twitter Community

You may have already noticed that using the Twitter website to interact with the community is a proverbial pain in the butt. It’s not designed for ease of use.

The best tool I have come across for to engage with my Twitter following is either Seesmic Desktop or Tweet Deck. If you haven’t yet used these services then you are not getting the best out of Twitter. It’s an absolute must.

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Tracking Your Traffic & Clicks

If you are thinking of marketing like a professional on Twitter then you are going to have to track your traffic and clicks.

As of this writing I am receiving around 1,500 to 2,000 clicks per day from two lists of around 12,000 followers. These tweets are being sent for different blog posts and for different target audiences. But that’s the overall result as it stands now.

That’s not a bad effort and the way I can know how I am doing is by using a service called Bit.ly I have also used Budurl but I like the graphs on Bit.ly better.

Google those terms and open your free account, add your links and include the shortened links into your tweets and your away.

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Who Am I And What Am I Doing?

In May of 2008 I started using the Internet to help me build my home business that I was involved in. Since then I have studied and learnt from some of the top Internet marketers on how to use the net for marketing and attracting prospects to you to build a successful home business.

I now have people from all over the world contacting every week wanting to know how they too can use the Internet to build their home business. I currently build more than one home business as well as being involved in marketing many affiliate products online.

I also consult to successful home business builders that are wanting to use the Internet to build their home business.

If you would like to connect with me then please feel free to click here and visit the contact page. I appreciate all enquiries. Or you can network with me below…

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Network With Me And Market Your Business

I am building a nice little online community and I would love to see you there. It’s called That’s Business… Check it out and maybe I can market your business for free on the internet.

Click here to go to That’s Business

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Find out more about Greg Martin here

I am perplexed about this topic of Twitter SPAM so I thought I would write this post to give my angle on it but also to get your opinion as well.

Who knows I may even get some “hate” tweets from this as it is such a hot topic of debate.

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How Did It Start?

Someone tweeted me this message about an article I wrote called Twitter Marketing Tips…

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“Your article sends mixed messages; you rightly say don’t spam, then promote automatic list builders like a prime spammer”.

This person was upset because I mentioned in that post that you should not spam but then promoted an auto posting service called TweetLater. I think in his mind he related automatic posting to SPAM for some reason.

When I read this persons tweet my first thought was this…

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“Does the use of an automatic posting service mean that your posts become SPAM”?

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Scenario Example

I am currently promoting Hummingbird and TweetLater as the two tools of choice for building a list fast and then posting to it while you’re not at your computer.

Now if I send out a single post to my Twitter lists that goes something like this…

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Hey this tool has really helped me build multiple Twitter lists in virtually no time at all – Click Here

Is that a SPAM posting? Most people I think would say that it’s not SPAM as it is only single tweet. It’s ok to promote your product through Twitter like that. After all most people are promoting something on Twitter… aren’t they? And it is only a single tweet right? How could that be considered SPAM?

Now let’s say that I take the same post and manually Tweet that out say 4 times per day. Does that make it SPAM? Can a single post tweeted multiple times over a day or even over a week make it a SPAM tweet?

Ok now let’s say for the sake of convenience that instead of posting manually which can become very tedious and boring, I decide to employ the facilities of a service like TweetLater which is an auto posting service? And instead of sitting at my computer to create these tweets and manually post them, I rather set them up to be automatically posted at a time that is convenient for me.

Does that then turn the original single post message into SPAM?

Also… in this instance are there any hard and fast rules that are documented that would dictate to us what Twitter SPAM actually is? Who made those rules and where do they come from?

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The Comparison With Email SPAM

If we stop and think about this in terms of email SPAM, does that fact that an email that is posted to us either at a single time or multiple times change the fact that it’s SPAM? Not really, it’s still SPAM whether you received it once or many times.

SPAM email is SPAM email whether we receive it once or a thousand times. So then we really cannot use the argument that a single post promoting our content or anything that we sell is acceptable while multiple tweets of the same post are not.

When someone sends me an email that I do not want or haven’t subscribed to then it’s a SPAM email. It’s SPAM because I haven’t asked to receive it, and I didn’t want it. It was sent to my personal email address which they had no right to send to.

There are laws that are supposed to protect me for that crap.

To me it’s an invasion of privacy because I had no choice in the process. And I certainly did not choose to subscribe to the spammers email list.

But with Twitter you have a choice; you are not powerless over the fact that you receive tweets.

The entire medium of Twitter operates on choice. From the time you join you are either following people or people are following you by choice. You can’t use the software until you have followers. Who is going to receive your tweets?

So you receive tweets from others by choice and others receive tweets from you by choice.

It’s a medium of mutual consent.

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How Does This Relate To Twitter And SPAM?

When someone is posting advertising tweets either automatically or singularly on Twitter it’s totally unlike email SPAM. First of all it’s not addressed to your personal Twitter account, it’s just posted on the medium for all to read, and secondly you have complete control over whether you want to receive that persons tweets or not. You have the freedom to decide.

You are not powerless in the process.

Twitter to me is like a magazine with ads in it. You accept the fact when you purchase the magazine that there will be ads in it. It goes with the territory. You can’t gripe about the fact that the ads are there, they just are.

The ads or not there just for you alone, they are there for everyone. Some people will read the ad and respond while others won’t. But you can’t get upset and criticise the magazine because there are ads there. If you want to read them then read them, if you don’t then forget about them.

Twitter is the same… if you like someone’s Tweets and you want to follow them then follow them; if not then don’t follow them. But this also means that you will receive their advertising tweets as well. It goes with the territory.

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Subscribing To The Gurus List

Twitter to me is like subscribing to the “gurus” list.

Like most people on the internet you are more than likely subscribed to some of the marketing “gurus” around the place. I could name people I am subscribed to but that’s not necessary.

Ok you got me; I am going to name one. I am on Frank Kern’s list. Chances are you are as well.

Have you ever noticed that most of his emails are selling stuff? I mean how much real information does he put out there that’s educational and free? Not much, with Frank you have to pay for it.

But I stay on his list and it’s my choice that I do so. I want to receive Frank’s emails.

Now the truth is I have no right to call Frank up and abuse him for spamming me with marketing emails. He would laugh in my face and tell me to unsubscribe myself.

Do you see the principle there? I guess what I am saying is that a person really has no right to call another person a spammer on Twitter. To me that’s an absurd position to take.

I don’t accuse people of spamming… I just unfollow them. If I don’t want to receive Frank Kern’s marketing emails then I am in control over the process… not Frank. I can unsubscribe any time I like.

I have the power… and so do you.

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The Profile Of A Spammer

I want you to think for a moment about a real spammer… not a so called Twitter spammer. You will notice that someone posting marketing materials on Twitter has a totally different profile to an email spammer.

You will find that an email spammer operates anonymously in the background. They are sending you emails about products and services or whatever it is they promote and you may never know who they are. They don’t want you to know them.

They are not up front about themselves and they hide themselves away and prefer not to be known.

They operate from an angle of deceit and deception just to get you to open your wallet and purchase what they have sent you. And they certainly have not gained your approval to send them marketing materials.

Now compare that to someone who is automatically posting on Twitter. I know with myself, even though I post automatically on Twitter, I have profile pages and Blogs that clearly identify who I am.

You can easily reach me. I am not trying to hide myself away from anyone and if you want to contact me through Twitter or my Blog then you can.

There is no deceit and no hiding. Just plain and simple marketing, if you like what you are reading then respond, if not then don’t respond.

I get feedback to my posts, and I have people retweeting these same posts every single day. It’s totally powerful. I also have followers telling me how great the information is and how much they appreciated it.

Compare that to a real spammer. Are you going to forward a spam email that was sent to you to your email list? Hardly!

In my opinion there is a big difference between a person that is sending spam emails and someone who is automatically posting on Twitter. The two are totally different.

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Conclusion – You Cannot Spam Twitter

This is my conclusion to whole Twitter SPAM argument.

There is no such thing as Twitter spam, it’s a medium for you to use anyway you want. It’s up to your followers to decide if they want to follow you or not and whether or not they want to respond to your tweets or not.

We have no right to accuse someone that is posting marketing materials on Twitter of being a spammer. Our only choice is to unfollow them. That is how the medium was designed to be used.

Twitter spam to me is actually on oxymoron (Conjoining contradictory terms, as in deafening silence). The two terms cannot go together. They are opposing terms that do not work together.

Now of course you are entitled to your opinion and I would love to here comments about this subject. And if anyone can help me see otherwise then please let me know.

But that is how I see it for now.

Well done if you have read this far. You are obviously very passionate about this subject and I hope you gained a lot from reading this post.

Regards, Greg Martin

Twitter - web2Greg

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PS… if anyone is interested in promoting their business and creating more exposure for themselves then you may like my business network that I have created here… That’s Business.

See you there…

Find out more about Greg Martin here

If you have ever wanted to see inside the Twitter automated follower software Hummingbird before you buy it then this video will show you how it works.

See for yourself how good it is…

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Click Here To Get Your Copy

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Twitter is about opt-in relationships between people. No one is under any obligation to follow you, or listen to what you say. And they wont, unless you are adding value to their feed in some way.

How you choose to do this is up to you, but take some time to emerse yourself in the Twitter community. Understand the culture and participate every day. Once you’ve established yourself as an authority, you will find that your Twitter growth becomes viral.

Controlling Who You Unfollow

Hummingbird lets you fine tune who you unfollow. For instance, we all have certain friends we want to protect from being unfollowed. Also, if a user with protected updates, gives us permission to view their tweets, we typically do not want to unfollow them either.

Hummingbird makes it easy to control these subtleties, automatically.

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Click Here To Get Your Copy

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Protect Mutual Followers

By default, Hummingbird will not automatically unfollow people who follow you back. These users are highlighted in green in Hummingbird.

Protect Previously Unfollowed

HummingBird has the ability to maximize your return on those you follow. The application acheives this by not following those whom you have previously unfollowed.

Those you unfollow are remembered (based on the Twitter account currently logged in) so that when checked those users will never be added again.

This also helps to prevent users from flagging your account as spam. If you continually follow, then unfollow users they will deem your account “spam”!

Protect Users w/ Private Updates

This is checked by default to protect your following of these users. If you unfollow someone who has protected updates, it is highly unlikely you will ever get to follow them again. Best to keep this safe-guard turned on.

Twitter Follower Limits Explained

You may notice the first couple time you use Hummingbird, Twitter stops you from adding more than 2000 users. This is the first limit you will encounter. Once you get the pop-up message from Twitter indicating you’ve reached this limit, press STOP. Your daily “add” is complete.

This is where you will wait the 24 hour period for people to get around to following you back. In order to add more users, you will need to “unfollow” some users. You will do this after the 24 hour period (recommended time frame).

Unfollowing all people who don’t follow you back is the preferred strategy in maintaining a strong ratio. Hummingbird does this automatically.

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Click Here To Get Your Copy

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Find out more about Greg Martin here