Whether you are a blogger, a business, an entrepreneur, a politician or the homeless man that scares me outside of 7-11, I can almost guarantee you are trying to leverage yourself via social media. More specifically, Twitter. Twitter’s success is an enigma to all. However, it’s catchy, fun and more importantly has a massive following. I’ve read my fair share of “How to get a larger Twitter following” articles and while some of them offer some redeemable advice, the majority of the articles do not. This is due to people using their own success stories as a means to guarantee success to others. This obviously can’t be true, every business is different, and thus should be treated differently.

I feel I have a fairly firm grasp on social media as I’ve been successful in some of the larger networks. So, allow me, someone who has yet to accumulate a large following on Twitter, offer my advice on how to leverage your personal brand, or business on this anomaly of a social network.

Market via other social networks

To begin just like every other social network, if you are successful on one you are successful on all of them. Start by promoting your Twitter account on the networks you already contribute to. Even if I were to attract 1% of my entire following on MySpace that would mean roughly 130 Twitter followers – and I don’t even use MySpace anymore.

Invite your friends

Twitter is very new and has yet to really hit the mainstream (unless you live in San Francisco). One hundred percent of my friends already belong to social networks. Although, they may be just the mainstream network giants, Twitter was made not just to connect people globally but locally as well.

Make friends

Don’t shamelessly self promote. Give people a reason to follow you and actually offer something redeemable to them. Use Twitter Search to find conversations on topics of expertise to you and contribute to those discussions. For example a lot of people became successful on Twitter as a result of offering customer service help on products.

SEO your posts

Look at Google Search Trends and Twitter Search Trends and write about topics that are popular. This will increase outside network exposure.

Find friends with similar interests & Twitter ratio

I find a lot of the Twitter celebrities don’t even respond to my replies, regardless of how constructive they were. I have found that making friends that have a similar following:follower ratio greatly increases your chance of receiving an @reply. Replies are very key for promoting your name on Twitter.

Update regularly & constructively

Pretty straight forward, don’t spam, reply with information that contributes to the topic of discussion etc. etc.

Use 3^rd party apps and mobile updates

Utilize everything to make your Twitter experience more efficient. Twitter has about two hundred and forty million applications. Here is a really huge list of them: REALLY HUGE LIST OF TWITTER APPLICATIONS. Also, use the mobile features that Twitter offers to update from anywhere. This ensures a consistent stream of updates.

PUT IN THE HOURS!

In actuality, people should treat their Twitter like business. They should act as though there is no easy road to success and they should put in the hours needed to achieve success – and that’s a lot more than you think.

BTW @bensir me!

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I’ve decided to start doing shorter blog posts. Thus, I found this nifty, and super helpful if I may add, web site. Basically, whenever you forget if it’s Christmas - click here!

Hope you enjoy! Lol.

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We all have our nights of fun. Often the following morning we have to go to work, school or somewhere else where it wouldn’t be socially acceptable to resemble a homeless person. Over the years I have attempted to fortify my body’s resources to combat hangovers. As a result I have created both a possible prevention and a remedy for the common hangover. In order for this to work its best to remedy before you go to bed. However, it can still help to do it in the morning as well.

To begin, a couple weeks ago I discovered a drink that must be just entering Canadian convenience stores – Function Drinks. This stuff is my hangover guardian angel. The drink comes in a variety of flavors and each has a corresponding function - energy, brain optimization, stress reducing and even one thats used to boost your immune system. However, in this case we want to use their “Urban Detox” formula.

The Urban Detox drink helps fight hangovers and rids the lungs of airborne pollution. It has a massive amount of B vitamins, vitamin C, sodium and calcium as well as NAC. NAC (or N-acetyle cysteine) is:

N-acetyl cysteine is a powerful anti-oxidant (used everyday in hospitals to help protect the liver) that maximizes the livers ability to clear acetaldehyde from the body. In addition, medical research in 2004 and 2005 suggests that NAC protects the liver from the acute inflammation associated with excessive alcohol intake. Recent medical research also suggests that NAC protects the lungs and sinuses from free radical damage generated by airborne particulate pollution (e.g. diesel exhaust, cigarette smoke).

Sounds good enough for me. What I normally do, is drink one of these before bed and then another when I wake up as the B vitamins are a good source of energy.

Next I will eat any type of greasy food I can find. Normally, this entails a big fat old cheese and bacon burger, some fries and a milkshake. Not a fan of greasy food? Find something that is high in protein like Almonds or Peanut Butter. I will also try to be as active as possible between the times of having my last drink and falling asleep. This normally means if I am within distance, I walk home from where ever I may be.

Directly before sleep, I will take some Tums, Gravol and maybe some Advil with plenty of water. These will combat gas, nausea (the spins & vomiting), indigestion, diarrhea and will help you sleep. Try and get as much sleep as possible.

In the morning, I will wake up about an hour and a half before work as I have a process that seems to optimize how I feel. I will wakeup and make a high in protein breakfast - Eggs, Bacon, Peanut Butter and will have an Orange Juice to drink. I will then have a bowel movement and take a shower. After my shower, I will have about forty-five minutes to an hour of free time. I find that naps are very key to ridding yourselves of hangovers, so I normally have a nap during this time. When I wake up (minutes before work) I will have another Function Urban Detox (mainly for the energy in the vitamin B), some Gravol, Advil and maybe some Tums.

Then, I will be good to go! Also, I remember to drink lots of water and eat regularly the day after.

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