By now, you may have read that Twitter can make you a better copywriter. The need to focus on getting your message across within 140 characters will improve your ability to capture the attention of your audience.

For proof, you need look no further than the list of Twitter users with the most followers. Many of them (with the exception of celebrities who attract followers due to their name alone) have developed a large following thanks to their ability to find and present relevant information in a way that makes other people want to read it.

Their copywriting skills encourage other Twitter users to retweet their messages, increasing the prominence of their username within the network.

So to help you get started, we’re going to deconstruct a few successful tweets to see if they share any common characteristics.

All we need is a friendly Twitter rockstar who is willing to have their stats audited. Step forward James Rivers, the Twitter Power Team’s resident Twitter expert.

So here, for the first time ever, we’re going to examine three of James’s top  successful tweets.

Let’s get started…

Tweet Number 1: 7,600+ Clicks

Still Don’t Know What #FollowFriday is? Watch n share (video) >> http://cli.gs/qmeHR5 PLZ RT

The first section “Still Don’t Know What #FollowFriday is?”, which broadly relates to the headline achieves three things;

First, it asks a question, which helps to build intrigue. This is a long established method used by traditional copywriters to attract their readers’ attention.

Second, it makes it clear what the post is about, which helps people to qualify whether they are interested in the post.

By this stage, anyone who has heard about Follow Friday and wants to know more about it will continue reading.

Third, it incorporates the #followfriday hash tag. This helps to categorize the tweet as information that’s directly related to the subject of Follow Friday. It will also help people to find this message if they look for “#FollowFriday” using Twitter search.

The second section “Watch n share (video)”, which acts as a sub-headline by providing more information, achieves two things;

First, it builds on the interest already generated, by telling people what to expect…a video.

Second, it provides a call to action. It asks people to watch the video and then share it with their friends and Twitter followers.

The final section “>> http://cli.gs/qmeHR5 PLZ RT” consists of three parts;

First, the two arrows help to separate the headline from the rest of the message and draw attention to the link.

Second, the link is shortened using the service at http://cli.gs/ Pierre, the creator of Cligs has been a good friend to the Twitter Power Team and his amazing service allows us to shorten the website address (the real link consists of 84 characters) and track the number of clicks that the links receives.

Third, “PLZ RT” is a shortened form of “Please Retweet”. This call to action helps encourage people to share the link with their followers.

Share #FollowFriday Video Here >> RETWEET

Tweet Number 2: 4,500+ Clicks

SHAQUILLE IS REAL - 50 Cent, Britney Spears Have Twitter Ghostwriters >> http://cli.gs/n5R6X2 Plz RT

Although this message has only been retweeted 7 times, it has generated overt 4500 clickthroughs to the MTV website.

The first section “SHAQUILLE IS REAL” is a short, powerful statement. Shaquille is known all over the world and he’s one of the top 100 Twitter users, so that is a great way to attract attention. The use of capital letters also helps to get the headline noticed and make it stand out from the rest of the tweet.

The tone of these three words also leads people to think “If he’s real, who isn’t?”, which sets up the next section.

The second section, “50 Cent, Britney Spears Have Twitter Ghostwriters” provides the pay off. Shock, horror, some celebrities, who are top Twitter users, don’t actually manage their own account.

So, well known celebrities + a topic that generates strong opinions among other Twitter users = Massive interest and drawing power.

The third section “>> http://cli.gs/n5R6X2 Plz RT” closely resembles the previous tweet, apart from the destination of the link.

Share “SHAQUILLE IS REAL” Post Here >> RETWEET

Tweet Number 3: 3,200+ Clicks

The Funniest 404 Page Ever (or most depressed…lol) >> http://cli.gs/Za5Dmv Plz RT

The first section “The Funniest 404 Page Ever (or most depressed…lol)” is short and direct. It tells people exactly what to expect, but builds up the intrigue at the same time.

The section in parenthesis helps to show the character of the post, while the LOL (laughing out loud) adds an element of familiarity to the message. It helps to bridge the gap between the writer and the reader, making the post appear friendly and less formal.

The final section “>> http://cli.gs/Za5Dmv Plz RT” once again follows the tried and tested formula. The arrows, link and call to action helped to generate 34 Retweets of this message, which is impressive given that fewer people know about 404 pages than 50 cent or Britney.

Share “The Funniest 404 Page Ever” Here >> RETWEET

These three tweets have generated a total of over 14,000 clicks

The Recurring Themes of These Successful Tweets Are:

One: Make it clear what your message is about.

Two: Make it clear what they can expect from clicking on the link

Three: Provide an element of intrigue.

Four: Provide a call to action that will encourage them to check out the link and share it with their friends and Twitter followers.

It goes without saying that you should only recommend links and resources that provide value to your followers, otherwise it will lower your reputation and reduce the number of people who will click through on links that you post in the future.

One final thing to bear in mind when constructing your tweets - If possible, keep your tweets under 120 characters in length.

This makes it easy for people to add RT followed by their username and stay within the 140 character limit without having to alter your original message. This one simple consideration will make a great difference to the number of times that people retweet your messages.

Ultimately, the repeated practice of creating your Tweets, the discipline of sticking to the point and learning how to persuade in 140 characters will transform your copywriting skills. And as the skill is transferable, the ability to craft emails, classified ads, sales letters and advertising campaigns will help to transform your business.

Have your copywriting skills improved since you started using Twitter? Have any of your tweets gone viral and been retweeted hundreds or even thousands of times? If you have any Twitter copywriting tips or interesting Twitter stories we’d love to hear about them.

Recently, while reading an excellent article by Jack Humphrey The 90-10 Rule For Successful Twitter Networking on the TwiTip blog, it started us thinking…so here are a few ways that you can provide your Twitter community with massive value 90% of the time.

Of course, you should aim to provide your followers with value 100% of the time, but we’ll leave the remaining 10% of self-serving value until another time.

Number 1: Answer Questions

In addition to asking questions, either to specific people or your group of followers in general, it’s important to spend time answering questions posed by your followers.

Every day, spend a few minutes looking for questions in your Twitter feed to answer. One of the best ways to achieve this is to use Tweetdeck.

The left hand column will display the last 200 messages in your account. Just type a question mark into the search filter at the foot of the column and it will show you all the recent questions that have been asked in your Twitter feed. Take a quick look and reply to any questions that you feel qualified to answer.

This is a powerful way to add value to your network of followers (both the people who ask the questions and others who may be facing a similar problem).

If everyone did this, just imagine how valuable it would make your Twitter account.

Whenever you needed a question answered, all you would have to do is ask your Twitter community and within minutes the answers would begin to roll in.

That’s the true power of networking - harnessing the combined experience of several hundred or even several thousand like-minded people.

This also explains how it’s possible to follow several thousand people yet still bring value to your community. You may not be able to interact personally with everyone every day (it’s doubtful whether anyone could sustain that level of interaction beyond following any more than 20 people), but by answering random questions you become a potential source of help for everyone that you follow.

Number 2: News

One of the best ways to find a constant stream of relevant news stories is to sign up for a Google Reader account. Once you’ve done this, subscribe to relevant blogs. As you build up a collection of blogs, it will provide you with a valuable news flow to share with your followers.

You can also sign up to receive Google alerts for keywords that are relevant to your topics of interest. Whenever new material which matches one of your selected keywords is indexed by Google, you will receive an email alert.

These techniques also carry one additional benefit - It will help you to keep up to date with everything that happens in your area of interest.

Number 3: Motivational Quotes

Motivational quotes are another great source of value. Whenever you find a quote that inspires you during the course of your day, consider sharing it with your followers.

They are quick to read and will provide many of your followers with an insight which will help to improve their day.

Number 4: Retweets

Retweets represent the real communal spirit of Twitter.

It spreads valuable information based on your own editorial criteria and allows important news to spread through the Twitter community with incredible speed.

So if you find a Tweet that provides you with good information, share it with your followers.

Just remember to include the person’s username with the message when you retweet. For example, if the original tweet is from @peterfrancis make sure that you add

RT @peterfrancis

to the front of the original message. This will provide your followers with quality content and make sure that the person who created the tweet gets recognition for it.

Number 5: Links

Due to the 140 character limit imposed by Twitter, posting links to other sites and blogs is a great way to provide value for your Twitter followers.

Focus on providing links to material that is interesting, entertaining and relevant to the type of information that you normally post (long-term, building a community based around a common set of topics will be far more valuable than a broad based community).

Number 6: @ Replies

And finally, @replies are an essential part of adding value to the Twitter community. It allows you to build rapport with different people and shows your followers that you’re sincere about building relationships.

Ultimately, if you spend time providing your followers with massive value you’ll build up a vast pool of knowledge, experience and goodwill that you can call upon when you need help in the future.

How do you provide value for your Twitter community?

If you have any useful advice that we haven’t covered here, please leave your comments below.

This post is going to show you how to become a Twitter super snooper. If you disagree with these practices, please look away now.

But for the rest of you, pull your chair closer and listen up…

If you want to spy on other Twitter users to help build a network of business contacts, let us introduce you to a powerful service over at www.TweetStats.com

Step 1

Head over to www.TweetStats.com and enter your Twitter username. This will present you with a range of graphs allowing you to see how you use Twitter, including when you post, how you post, who you post to etc etc. And clicking the “Tweet Cloud” tab at the top of the page allows you to see which words and subjects appear most often in your tweets.

That’s pretty cool, but I expect you already know most of that stuff.

However, I reckon the most perceptive among you know what’s coming next…

Step 2

Now you know how the tool works, you can use it to check the stats for any Twitter user (insert evil laugh here).

Look up your friends, family, colleagues, competitors, industry leaders, ex-spouse. Find out who they speak to, what they speak about and when. Use this info to build up a complete profile of anyone who uses Twitter.

Step 3

Once you’ve got over the novelty of being able to snoop on your friends, consider how you could use this to strengthen your Twitter network. Here are a few examples;

Number One: Timing

Let’s say you want to use Twitter to catch the attention of a leading figure in your industry. Top Twitter users receive hundreds or even thousands of tweets, @replies and DMs every day. So even if you send them a message, they may not notice it or have time to reply.

However, a quick look at Tweetstats will show you which day they’re most active on Twitter and which part of the day they post most messages. Using this info will allow you to send your message on the exact day, at the exact time calculated to increase the chances of them seeing it.

Number Two: Language

Use the Tweet Cloud function to look at the words they prefer to use and incorporate some of them into your message. This will subconsciously make them more receptive to your message as they will feel that you are on the same wavelength.

Number Three: Infiltration

If you want to get in contact with a leading figure in your niche, you can use Tweetstats to muscle into their own mini community and attract their attention.

First, find out who they send most @ replies to. This will give you a clue regarding the most trusted people in their Twitter community. Select 5-6 of these people, visit their profiles and find something to start an interaction with them. In many situations this will be easy as they will belong to the same industry.

Do whatever you can to converse back and forth in public (using @ replies) with this small group of people. When you eventually send a message to the person that you initially wanted to contact, they will be more likely to notice it because they will  have noticed your username (either consciously or subconsciously) several times before in timeline of his/her Twitter friends. Think of it as gaining trust/recognition by association.

Get creative, work out how to use this Twitter spy tool to your advantage. Occasionally you’ll gain an insight into the Twitter lives of other people that will help you to build lasting business relationships.

Would you be comfortable using these techniques, or do you think that social media spying has gone too far? Let us know what you think. Likewise, if you think of any additional ways to use Tweetstats we’d love to hear from you.

If you want to get the maximum benefit out of the content that you create on Twitter and promote your profile to the entire world, it’s time to start promoting your static Twitter pages.

Not everyone is aware of this fact, but Twitter creates a static URL for every message that’s posted to the network. And with a little extra work it’s possible to improve the SEO potential of your Twitter account.

Now are this stage, you may be asking yourself why you would want to spend time promoting content that already exists on your main Twitter profile, and in the timelines of all your followers. Good question.

These pages can rank extremely well in the search engines (especially since the main Twitter domain has such a good reputation with the search engines), allowing hundreds and thousands of additional people to discover your Twitter posts. All you have to do is point a few links to these static pages and wait for the results.

The pages already exist, the content already exists, so it only takes a little extra effort to leverage the massive power of the search engines to extend your reach beyond Twitter. This will help to promote any links in your message and your Twitter profile to a much broader audience.

So with that in mind, let’s get started.

Step 1: Find Your Twitter Static Pages

The URLs for static pages on Twitter are hidden away in a rather obscure place (perhaps that’s why so few people use them). There are several ways to find this information, so we’ll use the quick and easy option.

Login to your Twitter account then click the profile link at the top right of the page. Scroll down the page looking for the orange RSS icon in the right hand column, below the matrix of picture showing some of the people that you follow.

Click the link which should say “RSS feed of USERNAME’s updates”. This should take you to the RSS feed page for your Twitter account showing the last 20 messages that you’ve posted. If you want to view more than the last 20 messages, click subscribe at the top of the RSS page and subscribe to your Twitter feed using a feed reader such as Google Reader.

Clicking on any of the links will take you to the static page for that message. Collecting the URL is then just a case of copying the address in the URL bar at the top of the browser.

For example, the RSS feed for the @powersystem Twitter timeline can be found here; http://twitter.com/statuses/user_timeline/18032292.rss and at the time of writing, here is an example of a static page for one of our most recent posts; http://twitter.com/PowerSystem/statuses/1174519649

Step 2: Promote Your Twitter Static Pages

Once you’ve got the URLs of the static Twitter posts that you want to promote, you can apply all the traditional and social media techniques.

Include the links on your social media profiles, squidoo pages, hubpages, your website, blog, article bio boxes, audio/video sharing networks, forum sigs, social bookmarking etc

The more relevant links that point to each static page, the better they will rank in the search engines for the keywords contained in the message and the anchor text used in the promotional links.

However, due to the balance between effort and reward, it’s best to limit your promotions to your best Tweets which contain keywords likely to attract search engine traffic.

Get creative and before long you could have several additional pages ranking well in the search engines helping to pull you towards social media success.

Use the comments feature below to post your best static link. It will help your page to rank better in the search engines and provide everyone else with an example of the type of posts worth promoting.

Favorites are a much underused Twitter feature. And if you get creative, they can provide you with much more than a way to store your favorite tweets.

The technique that I’m about to describe provides a great way to make sure that your followers pay close attention to your future tweets.

Post a message to your followers asking them to send you their favorite tweets. But put a limit on the submissions, such as the first 20, within 24 hours or before a certain date and time. For example;

Send your top tweets. The best will appear on my FAVs page. First 20 only. Post: @powersystem Fav tweet + Static Twitter Page URL

Only accept tweets for consideration if they are submitted within the timeframe that you stipulate. This creates an element of scarcity or urgency.

If you want to provide your followers with more instructions and outline the benefits of participating, you could create a page on your website/blog with all the instructions, then link to the page whenever you request more favorites.

For example;

Send your top tweets. Best will appear on my FAVs page. Rules http://is.gd/xxxxx Post: @powersystem Fav tweet + Static Twitter Page URL

After the time limit has passed, select the best posts and add them to your favorites (click the start icon to the right of the messages that you want to select).

To obtain the maximum benefit, you should repeat these steps every week or month, but don’t make it too predictable. The aim is to make your followers read your posts waiting for another opportunity to submit their favorite tweets.

Then it’s just a case of promoting your Twitter favorites page as much as possible. All the normal promotion methods are available, however, it’s also possible to increase the reach of your favorites page by linking the RSS feed to your other sites and social media pages.

The RSS feed for your Twitter favorites takes the following format; http://twitter.com/favorites/USERNAME.rss for example, the RSS feed for the Twitter Power Team can be found at; http://twitter.com/favorites/powersystem.rss

Ultimately, the more popular your favorites page, the more eager your followers will be to win one of your contests. To make your offer ever more attractive, you could also offer to Retweet the best messages to your followers.

Let us know whether you use the favorites feature on Twitter, and if you do, how do you use it? Is there a better way to use the favorites list?

A few people have asked us about #FollowFriday and how it works, so here goes…

#followfriday is a great opportunity to attract relevant followers on Twitter.

But before we get into that, a quick word about hashtags. You may have seen people use the hash # symbol in some of their Twitter posts.

The hash symbol followed by a tag (for example #tps is the hashtag used for the Twitter Power System) is used to identify a topic on Twitter. Hashtags make it much easier to search for all posts on the same topic using the Twitter search engines.

#followfriday is a new phenomenon which we first heard at the start of 2009. The idea, which was invented by @micah, is that every Friday you nominate people who you think are worth following (perhaps the best new people that you’ve met over the past couple of weeks).

To keep up to date with all the developments, on Friday, just use a service such as Tweet Grid or Monitter and search for #followfriday. As the page updates, you will see hundreds or even thousands of people who recommend good people to follow on Twitter.

Alternatively, click here to see all the #followfriday suggestions: http://search.twitter.com/search?q=%23followfriday

Follow Friday provides you with three major opportunities to attract new followers;

First, if one of your followers nominates you as a good person to follow, this will create a certain amount of interest in your profile.

Second, it will give you plenty of ideas of who to follow, and

Third, as more people are tuned in to the idea of finding new followers, they’re more likely to follow you back.

To take part, just post the Twitter usernames of people you recommend that other people follow, then add #followfriday to your tweet so that oher people can find it.

To make your contribution more valuable, you may want to group the people that you recommend into a certain category. For example, the top 5 cartoonists to follow etc. Alternatively, in each post you could recommend just one person and include a few words about why people should follow them.

So this Friday, make time in your schedule for Twitter and get ready to find a range of new, high-quality followers.

Still Want More?

Watch Our #FollowFriday Video >> HERE

By now you should have heard about the latest phishing attack to hit Twitter.

On the 3rd Jan I received 2 suspicious direct messages through Twitter. On the 4th Jan I received at least 8 bogus direct messages and a couple of them were from accounts that I know are owned by genuine users of Twitter.

So this post is part of our contibution to stamping out this attack before the viral nature of this scam spreads through Twitter like a disease.

The Problem

You receive a direct message from someone that you follow on Twitter. It says something rather innocent and intriguing such as;

“Check out this blog type website. you need to see it..” and

“hey look at this funny blog”

There may be other variants, but you get the idea. I have removed the links, but anything on the access-logins.com domain should be avoided.

When you click the link you arrive at what looks like the main Twitter login page. Only it’s not genuine, it’s a cloned site. And if you use this cloned site to enter your login details, your username and password will be recorded and used to access your account.

This could be devastating for both the Twitter network and legitimate users, especially if you use Twitter for business or professional purposes. It can take months or even years to build a good reputation online. If people have access to your Twitter account and start posting unauthorized messages, your reputation can be severely damaged within minutes.

To make sure that you don’t get caught by this trap or others, the best policy is to make sure that you don’t login to Twitter when you arrive at the site through a link. Open a new browser and type in the address http://twitter.com

The Reason

Why is this happening? Who knows! It could be people who are bored, jealous of Twitter’s success or even training for a career in cyber crime. But the most likely explanation is money. Phishers do what they do to make money. So how can they possibly hope to make money from a series of stolen Twitter accounts?

Off the top of my head, I can think of four potential methods;

a. Twitter Spam

They plan to build up as many compromised accounts as possible, then flood them with spam (either promoting affiliate products/services or selling the spam potential to a third party) to make a quick buck.

In this case, established Twitter accounts are far more valuable than recently created accounts as they are far less likely to trigger the anti-spam techniques that Twitter are likely to be using.

b. Twitter Account Ransom

They plan to demand ranson from legitimate account holders who have built up a fair bit of social value and reputation using their Twitter account. Let’s face it, some legitimate account holders could find it difficult and/or time consuming to prove that they are the real owner of their Twitter account. Could you prove that you own your Twitter account?

c. Selling Twitter Accounts

They plan to sell some of the hijacked accounts, especially the well established accounts with generic names. So if you’re offered a Twitter account with 3000 followers for $50, don’t have anything to do with it. Better still, take the details and pass them on to the team at Twitter.

d. The Long Game

They plan to use the reputation and integrity of Twitter to launch an even bigger assault on the social networking community. So take extra care of the way that you use your other social accounts and keep an eye out for news of the latest scams.

The Danger

The great danger is the speed at which this attack could spread. Every account that is hacked provides the phishers with more power to distribute their messages containing links to the cloned Twitter site.

Unfortunately, that’s the negative side of viral marketing.

The danger gets even greater if some people have used the same name and password when they signed up for other Twitter related services.

After hacking someone’s Twitter account, the phishers could have speculatively tried a whole range of third party services (such as the services which provide automated or scheduled direct messages) and used them to perpetuate the attack.

So your main Twitter account might look okay, but your automated direct messages will continue going out to your new followers, spreading the dangerous links, without you knowing anything about it.

The Solution

1. Check Your Twitter Account

If you can still login, change your password. It’s good practice to change your Twitter password on a regular basis

If you can’t access your Twitter account, try resetting your password. This will send an email to the address associated with your account, allowing you to set a new password. If you don’t receive this email, check your spam or junk folder. And finally, if you still haven’t received this email, contact the Twitter support team, providing them with as much information about your account as possible.

2. Use Different Passwords For All Your Twitter Related Accounts

If you use any Twitter related third party service that allows you to set your own username and password, make sure that you don’t use the same details as for your main Twitter account.

If you have been using the same login details for other accounts, make sure you change the passwords to something different as soon as possible. And if the service in question was for sending scheduled or automated Twitter messages, make sure that nothing has been altered in your account.

3. Keep your Twitter Password Private

This might sound obvious, but due to the number of third party Twitter services that have developed, there’s a great temptation to use your Twitter username and password “just to see what the service does”.

Blogger Chris Pirillo, who was one of the first people to write about this Twitter Phishing incident has suggested that the only way to avoid being a victim is to make sure that you don’t login to your Twitter account using any other site apart from Twitter.com

This is good advice which will further amplify calls for an official verification system (so that you know you’re giving your login details to the right people) to be developed for services using the Twitter API.

4. Make Regular Backups Of Your Twitter Account

If you use Twitter regularly and have invested a lot of time building up your account, it’s important to backup your data.

But following the advice from number 3, don’t use any of the 3rd party services (at least until a system of account verification has been developed).

There is a way that you can use the Twitter API to backup your lists (both followers and the people that you follow) that I’ll cover in a future post.

These backups will help to protect your information if Twitter has a major loss of data. The big fail whale has happened before as far as I’m aware.

A record of your lists will also help you to rebuild a new Twitter account in the unlikely event that your account is hacked and you can’t convince Twitter that you are the original and rightful owner.

5. Let Your Followers Know About This Problem

Education can help to put a stop to this. And Twitter is the perfect platform to spread the word about this threat. So once you’ve made sure that your account is secure, send a short tweet out to your followers.

Safe Tweeting!

According to a recent poll, the average Twitter user has 70 followers. This number seems rather low, until you consider the different ways in which people use Twitter.

On the one hand, there are people who use Twitter to keep in touch with a group of personal friends and acquaintances.

On the other hand, there are people who use Twitter to build a network of contacts which will help to boost their business.

We suspect that people who use Twitter for business purposes will have far more followers than average (perhaps 5 or even 10 times more than average), but there’s only one way to test this theory. So if you’re a Twitter business user, this poll will either confirm our theory or make us look rather stupid.

[poll id="3"]

If you have anything else that you”d like to add on the subject of follower numbers, please add your comments below.