The Desperados Youtube channel http://www.youtube.com/user/desperados has creatively replicated the look and feel of Youtube in an interactive flash-based format.

The online promo was designed from the ground up with the intention of increasing branding exposure through social media and hopefully trending towards going viral.

Because the ad is for alcohol, Desperados have to prequalify viewers in the attempt to exclude underage drinkers, which in todays day an age is a near impossible task over the internet. But to avoid any legal ramifications they started the advert by asking viewers to fill out a form detailing age, location and sexual persuasion. This not only pre-qualifies viewers, but also surveys their audience to get a better understanding of the type of demographic watching the video.

This form of interactive marketing is very effective from the point of view that it involves the audience in the storyline, allowing each individual to not only participate but also include and share the experience with their Facebook friends… hence the viral aspect.

I suspect that this type of marketing is only on the rise, but from the perspective of Youtube publishers, being able to provide such a unique experience is a perk and benefit of being selected as a Youtube partner.

This is definitely a trend that will grow with other social media websites such as Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin.

So what can we learn, take away and apply to our own marketing?

• Try to come up with creative ways of making your social media content more interactive
• Successfully include other social media properties as part of your ad to not only increase exposure, but also increase the likely-hood of your ad going viral
• Remember to qualify your audience through clever copywriting and/or web forms.
• …And finally survey your viewers, this can give you a valuable insight into your target demographic that you perhaps may not of had before

What did you think about the Desperados Youtube campaign? I’d love to hear your thoughts and any ideas on how you are currently using interactivity in your social media marketing.

If your thinking to yourself that the answer is… everyone who is listed in your followers column then you’d be half right. Not all of your followers actually give you 100% of their attention.

So how do we distinguish devoted followers from cold feet followers?

The answer lies within the powers of communication. See Twitter allows you to communicate on a couple of different levels. Via tweets and direct messages. Everyone who followers you, does not necessarily give you the permission to direct message them. Which effectively limits the amount of people you can converse with privately.

In the past, Twitter made it quite easy to differentiate these two types of followers. But due to a clever site redesign, this fact has been concealed. And for good reasons, Twitter is trying to prevent the mis-use of their micro-blogging service.

A new popup menu makes it very hard to acknowledge just who is and is not directly following you. This makes it impossible to manually unfollow mass amounts of people, to make room for more followers. And thus you are restricted once again.

That’s where automation tools come into there element. These tools have been specially designed to do this task in one click. Letting you get on with your life, socializing with friends.

There are numerous automation tools currently on the market, but how do you choose one, that’s not going to get your Twitter account suspended and possibly deleted? Or cost you a load of cash in the long runner?

Whilst the answers to these may allude you, let me point you in the right direction.

Here’s a FREE automation tool called “mutuality” that I’ve found extremely useful in addressing these issues I’ve just discussed.

Not only will it unfollow all who do not follow you back, but it will also Follow all who follows you. Plus it process your tasks in real-time.

http://www.huitter.com/mutuality/ …Check it out!

If you enjoyed this video and would like to get more information, just visit socialfollowing.com, by clicking on the link in the top right hand corner.

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Thanks for watching!

With that said, I’ve decided to put together a few more videos that delve into using Twitter as a marketing tool. These are techniques and strategies that you can put to work immediately.

So in this video, I’d like to talk about how I grew my Twitter account to over 21,000 followers in less than 12 weeks and that my friends was being lazy. That’s right, I only implemented a few techniques, most of which can be automated.

So, how do you grow your social following on Twitter in the shortest period of time, 
with the least amount of effort.

Lets take a look at what rules are in place to prevent spam on Twitter. These rules will give you an understanding of the boundaries in which you have to work. Understanding your limitations will help you in rapidly growing your followers in the least amount of time.

Before we start, I’d like to stress that these rules are dictated by Twitter and can change at anytime.

RULE #1

You’re only allowed to follow 500 new followers per day. This figure is not disclosed by Twitter, but is quite evident.

RULE #2

Twitter does not limit the number of people who can follow you, but they have put limits in place to stop people from aggressively following others. Everyone is allowed to follow 2000 people. This following limit can only be overcome by generating more than 2000 followers.

RULE #3

After you conquer rule #2, Twitter restricts your account from following more than 10% of your followers count. (For example, if you have 3000 followers, you are only allowed to follow 3300 people on Twitter.) This rule becomes void once you reach 5,000 followers, as you are still only allow to follow 500 people per day.

RULE #4

You’re only allowed to post 1,000 updates or tweets per day.

Ok…

So now that we have a basic understanding of the boundaries in which we have to work, there are essentially only two methods of growing your followers count on Twitter…

NUMBER 1:

Follower other people in the hope of being followed in return.

NUMBER 2:

Maximize your account exposure through activities ON and OFF twitter.

Both of these methods can be automated and I will be discussing each in future videos.

The “following process” is simple, follow your allocated number of people per day and then wait 24 hours to unfollow the people who do not return follow you. This process is then repeated over and over again. By unfollowing all who do not follow you back, allows you to follow more people without being restricted by the “10% following rule” mention early.

Make sure you follow all whom follow you. In most cases people will unfollow you, if you have not returned this gesture.

In order to “maximize your exposure” you must increase your presence on and off Twitter. By that I mean, greater exposure leads to more followers.

How do you maximize the exposure of your twitter profile?

TIP #1

You are allow to communicate with your followers 1,000 times per day. Increase the volume of tweets you post will automatically increase your readership.

TIP #2

Ask all of your Facebook and Myspace friends to follow you on Twitter. Simple I know, but very effective.

TIP #3

Display your Twitter link to your profile on your blog and/or website clearly. Remember to include a call to action, explaining what to do and how to follow you.

TIP #4

How about running your own Twitter giveaway contest, all on complete auto-pilot using www.wildfireapp.com. This website provides a free service for operating competitions on Twitter. Ask your followers to complete a specific action. The action could essentially involve anything such as retweeting a message or just following you back in return, for a chance to win a free prize. The ideas are endless and well worth investing your time and effort.

If you liked this post make sure you leave a comment below. Thanks

So I thought I put this video together for you, sharing a couple of techniques that I use for locating prospects for my niche businesses. This technique I like to refer to as “piggybacking” because essentially, it leverages the success and results of others.

Now, here’s the reason behind why you actually want to learn, what I’m about to teach you… It’s 100% FREE and will work for any niche market… Plus it’s the quickest way I know of finding qualified prospects.

Here’s how to implement “piggybacking” in your niche market.

STEP #1

Identify experts within your niche. Experts that are widely recognized in most cases, have already developed an bond with your target audience. This represents a great opportunity for finding highly qualified prospects. Now… you can also use product or services providers to achieve similar results.

I’m going to use Aweber for this particular demonstration. Aweber is a Email Marketing Software provider. Now if I was competing against Aweber and had my own email marketing software, Aweber would be a great source for finding qualified prospects who are interested in email software solutions.

Now, once you’ve located your authority on Twitter we want to piggyback off their followers list. The lists on Twitter are completely open source, meaning that they are freely accessible by the general public.

STEP #2

Follow the individuals listed under your selected experts followers column. Now is worth pointing out that a certain percentage of the followers listed under aweber will be people that have stumbled across their twitter account. But the high majority of followers will actually be customers, who are keeping up to date with the latest news from aweber. You want to look for active accounts that have profile images, as most accounts displaying the default image are idle.

STEP #3

Once you’ve finished step 2, start generating conversations with your new followers. Develop meaningful friendships that are built entirely on trust. The psychology behind this is simple, people are more likely to buy from or refer, people they already know and trust.

Here are several Twitter directories to help you in your search:

The first is…

http://wefollow.com

Wefollow is neat because is lists the amount of followers for each user in the directory. Upon submission users are ask to describe themselves and their business using keyword tags. This is essentially how wefollow categorize their directory.

The second is…

http://twellow.com

Appropriately name and described as the Twitter Yellow Pages. Twellow lists a wide variety of categories, from the obvious to the obscure and can be a great place to start searching.

And the third is…

http://twibs.com

Twibs is a Twitter business directory with a twist. Anybody browsing can write customer reviews and rate the quality of service provided by a specific business. This is a novel idea and encourages social interaction.

If you like this video or hated it, make sure you comment below.