Steven Brady

I’ve noticed that I get much more traffic to my sites when I tweet their URLs regularly.  It makes sense, doesn’t it?  However, Twitter terms of service prevent sites from starting up that allow completely automated tweeting.  And some days I just don’t have time, between work and everything I do outside of work, to make sure that enough tweets were scheduled with cotweet. That’s why I came up with my own solution.  I made a bash script that pulls random tweets from a text file and pushes them out using the command line client twidge. I create this last night, but got errors today.  After that this morning I made a new version of the client, then even another version of it.

So, as of right now I have made Tweet Cruise Control available.  I’m giving away 100 copies free.  Head on over to the site if you’d like to pick it up.  After that I’m not sure if I will charge or not.

So, a little while back when I first started trying to market using Twitter, I joined some train sites. They were very spammy, and I ended up changing my passwords. However, I thought they were still a good idea, albeit not targeted whatsoever. That’s when I had the idea to started a targeted train, where there were communities that one could join in certain areas.

First, I bought myself Twoo Twoo, a popular and inexpensive train script by BNCApps. I toyed with it in a development environment until I could find the perfect name. That’s when I got myself TargetFollowers.com. I’ve since spent all night setting up the script, databases, and the new Twitter account.

The site is now live, however I will wait until tomorrow to start pushing it (to make sure DNS propogates).

However, anyone that joins the site (under ANY or ALL communities) by January 31 and then comments here and tells me their Twitter name and the communities they joined, they’ll get one FREE month VIP membership to the site!

Communities: Lounge (for everyone), Foodies, Marketing, Music, Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Atheist, Republican, Democrat, Atheist, and Technology. Once the site picks up, I will certainly add more.

Ugh. Yesterday I tried some follower websites for my accounts for Nexus One News (nexusonenewsnet), Android App Review (androidapreview), and I Eat Out (ieatout), and found that these services seem to have caused more trouble than good. Moreover, I went to some less reputable sites (and ignored the Google Chrome warnings), and my lists are still being spammed. I’ve already changed some passwords, and will finish changing the others.

While people will say it over and over, and I didn’t want to listen, one day of that mess got me a huge list of people I was following, a limited list of who followed me, and none of them are quality followers.

While doing a Google search, I found an application called Mutuality. It’s a simple, web-based app that can follow all users that are following you, and unfollow all the people that aren’t following you. So, while I have a smaller list of users I currently follow, the fact of the matter is it’s helped me a lot with cleanup. I’m still reading how to get good quality followers, and I’ll certainly post anything that I find, but I will say WATCH OUT for the mass follow tools.