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3 Forbidden Twitter Mind Control Tricks to Explode Your Marketing

October 1st, 2008 by Kenneth Read more about Creating Trust Online, Make Money, Online Community, Viral Marketing

warningWARNING: The tech­niques explored in this piece are purely to be used for eth­i­cal pur­poses, if you’re weak of stom­ach or of pure mali­cious char­ac­ter, then I urge you to please leave immediately.

Twit­ter can be evil.

Some less-than-scrupulous peo­ple can eas­ily take advan­tage it and wield fright­en­ing influ­ence over poor inno­cent subjects.

On the other hand, use it with respon­si­bil­ity and you per­haps have the most pow­er­ful relation-building medium online today.

Why? That’s because Twit­ter is cur­rently the clos­est app on Earth that repli­cates the actual thought pat­terns of the human mind. You see, the human mind does not really think in blog and arti­cle form. It does not think in huge chunks of information.

Instead, it thinks in a stream of con­scious­ness way, ran­dom dis­jointed thought lay­ered upon ran­dom dis­jointed thought.

That is why when you use Twit­ter, your mind is “tricked” into fur­ther recep­tiv­ity than it nor­mally should have, because it’s now in its most nat­ural environment.

It’s almost like you are com­mu­ni­cat­ing tele­path­i­cally with other peo­ple, because you’re able to uncover a 100 dif­fer­ent thoughts that are con­tained in a 100 dif­fer­ent tweets.

After all, what’s more inti­mate than the whis­per­ing voices in your head?

If you know how to take advan­tage of that state of mind, your microblog­ging can make you rich.

After a few months of test­ing and track­ing what works, I have dis­cov­ered 3 ways that Twit­ter can impact your busi­ness unlike any other site on Earth. Once you under­stand the Twit­ter user’s bor­der­line hyp­notic state of mind, these 3 covert tech­niques can pre-sell prospects on warp speed.

1) Psy­chic Mar­ket Research

Mar­keters often talk about the Robert Col­lier con­cept of enter­ing the con­ver­sa­tions in your prospect’s mind. Infor­ma­tion mar­ket­ing genius Porter Stans­berry says that our mar­ket­ing should start where they are.pocket watch

In other words, the closer you can align your­self to their top-of-the-mind thoughts, the more recep­tive to your mar­ket­ing mes­sage they become.

How­ever, the prob­lem is that more often than not, you don’t know what they’re really pre­oc­cu­pied with.

What’s worse, you some­times make harm­ful guesses and assump­tions. The end result is a bomb in your pro­mo­tions and a dent in your sales, because your offer is not in tan­dem with what the prospect is think­ing and feel­ing in the first place.

Good news. The whole inter­face of Twit­ter is one big web con­ver­sa­tion tak­ing place in a meet­ing of minds.

You see prospects exchang­ing rapid-fire thoughts, opin­ions, and ran­dom finds. In just one screen, you can read the hopes, dreams, inter­ests, fears and dom­i­nant emo­tions of your niche.

To do this, just use http://search.twitter.com and Monit­ter, put in your niche key­words and boom–you’ll instantly be trans­ported to the heart of the conversation.

Start your mar­ket­ing there and see the dif­fer­ence in your response.

2) Net­work Like a Viking

Vikings have a bru­tally effec­tive way of mak­ing friends, and meet­ing poten­tial mates.

They sail to ran­dom vil­lagers and within min­utes, they kill all the inhab­i­tants, pil­lage all the houses and cap­ture all the maidens.

Why are they so successful?

It’s because they catch peo­ple by sur­prise, and there’s lit­tle in the way of resistance.

And in the nearly spam-free waters of Twitter-ville, prospects are more often than not caught by sur­prise, and there’s really very lit­tle resis­tance and a whole lot of receptivity.

For one, Twit­ter requires very lit­tle invest­ment in expand­ing the social cir­cle, because you can securely fol­low and unfol­low peo­ple at will. As a result, it’s eas­ier to access the mar­ket lead­ers on Twit­ter because well, other than the invest­ment of click­ing a but­ton, they won’t really lose their pri­vacy by accept­ing you as a friend–unlike email or mobile.

Fur­ther­more, since you’re con­fined to only 140 char­ac­ters for your Twit­ter mes­sage, the effort for them to reply back to you is only a sen­tence and a click away. No rel­a­tively com­plex email writ­ing process.

And because one-liners are lot less threat­en­ing than blocks of text, so peo­ple instinc­tively resist the mes­sages less.brain scan

Plus, if they do get annoyed, the BLOCK but­ton is only a push away.

Mak­ing con­nec­tions has never been eas­ier, and as long as you’re not bla­tant with your pro­mo­tions, you can make friends and influ­ence peo­ple lit­er­ally at the click of a mouse.

So do the Vikings and plun­der prospect’s wal­lets away.

3) Estab­lish Your Place on the Mountain

Gary Vayn­er­chuk said this in his most recent keynote address for Web 2.0 Expo, “If you give good shit, peo­ple will follow”.

This rings true espe­cially for Twit­ter, because if you can share good stuff on a reg­u­lar rate, you’ll be per­ceived as a guru in record speed.

It’s because the Twit­ter user’s frame of mind is a very con­ducive one for mak­ing your­self larger than life.

Prospects get on Twit­ter to find out the lat­est gos­sip, to chat with their friends, and more importantly–to seek out impor­tant sum­ma­rized infor­ma­tion and short inspi­ra­tion and rev­e­la­tion quotes.

Once you do that, it’s like you are set­ting off flares in the mid­dle of the night, and your prospects will notice.

As you know, get­ting prospects through the sales fun­nel is always a num­bers game. The more good con­tent you get out there attached with your name, the more chances you have at con­vert­ing prospects to customers.

Because Twitter’s push-button easy way of deliv­er­ing mes­sages instantly with a low invest­ment of 140 char­ac­ters, you can keep send­ing out qual­ity stuff over and over again. Indeed, there’s unprece­dented oppor­tu­ni­ties for some­thing to snag or hook the con­sumer and keep them for life.

And with that new­found author­ity, you can use it to sell more stuff and make more money from your now pre-sold audience.

So the conclusion?

Twit­ter is sub­ver­sive territory.

When you under­stand how a prospect uses Twit­ter, get­ting your mar­ket­ing mes­sage across has never been this unfairly simple.

It is soft­ware built on the base of NLP pro­gram­ming. So even if you have not gone for a day of train­ing in your life, Twit­ter makes the mind easy pick­ings because it leaves the mind in a vul­ner­a­ble state.

So use these 3 secrets and profit from them. In fact, let me know if you’ve used them and seen results.

Because I have. Amaz­ing break­throughs have been hap­pen­ing since I hopped on to the micro-blogging bandwagon.

To see these con­tro­ver­sial tech­niques and other secrets I will not reveal here in action, feel free to fol­low me on Twit­ter: Email Copy­writer

Watch me closely, emu­late me, and apply them to boost response rates in your marketing.

Again, here’s the link to fol­low me on twit­ter:Â email copy­writ­ing

Last 5 posts by

About the Author

Kenneth Kenneth Yu is a tormented artist, but he was determined not to be a starving one. This is the primary reason why this D&AD award-winning advertising creative has plunged into the world of Internet entrepreneurship, and the rest -- as they say -- is history. Straddling both the creative and business realm, Kenneth combines bullet-fast ideation and his vast experience working with the big brands to alchemize marketing gold as the Head Copywriter and Marketing Strategist in MindValley. He shares more out-of-the-box marketing and copywriting tips (plus cool irreverent stuff) on his Twitter

Check out other posts by Kenneth

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55 comments, add yours! »

55 Responses to “3 Forbidden Twitter Mind Control Tricks to Explode Your Marketing”

  1. October 1st, 2008 at 10:19 pm 100kjob

    This is a great arti­cle. There must be a reason(or rea­sons) why twit­ter is be-loved and be-hated by so many peo­ple, some valid points revealed here.

  2. October 2nd, 2008 at 12:30 am Simon Leung

    Inter­est­ing per­spec­tive!
    Thx for shar­ing :)

  3. October 2nd, 2008 at 2:40 am David

    I have never heard Twit­ter dis­cussed in this way before. Some­thing to think about, and tweet about. :)

  4. October 2nd, 2008 at 5:46 am Tim

    Def­i­nitely reminds me of those early “What’s in your wal­let” TV com­mer­cials with the vikings and the cap­i­tal­ists. I almost went right out and designed my own Capi­tol One card. Now who needs pil­lag­ing today? Any body know some unsus­pect­ing vil­lages we can go plunder?

  5. October 2nd, 2008 at 7:28 pm Artemis

    http://search.twitter.com/ is one of my favorite ways to find like minded peo­ple and join in their conversations.

  6. October 3rd, 2008 at 11:23 pm Richard Muir

    Ken­neth,

    Love your stuff, great post!

    Rich

  7. October 4th, 2008 at 11:04 am JP Micek

    Good points Ken­neth on the mar­ket research and get­ting atten­tion of your Tribe. Very pow­er­ful sub­ver­sive ben­e­fits of Twit­ter. Suc­ceed­ing at those does pre­sup­pose a per­son knows how to keep them­selves from falling into a hyp­notic state them­selves; while at the same time not com­ing across as most inter­net mar­keters do on Twit­ter — like one-track robots.

    Oh, and just an aside.… I get your “viking” anal­ogy. But do you think the 55–60% of the users of Twit­ter (women) will get it? Or will they “shut off” after mak­ing the anal­ogy of their own actions to peo­ple being slaugh­tered or maid­ens car­ried off to a for­eign land?

    Just a thought. ;-)

  8. October 7th, 2008 at 8:49 pm AZMike

    I love your refresh­ing per­spec­tive with this post, it must be kismet in action for me. A friend of mine invited me to twit­ter just recently, because of all the mar­keters dis­pens­ing advice and him know­ing I am an info junkie. Well last night I thought I would fol­low a few twits from the NLP crowd so I used the above men­tioned search tool on twit­ter and a page and a half of them came up, not very many. Now hyp­nother­a­pists on the other hand had 6 pages with very lit­tle updates of their own.

    As for tribal seduc­tion, I think the cus­tomers most mar­keters are going after will be quick to block those mar­keters. The good news for the real mar­keters is they will estab­lish that “feel good” rela­tion­ship first and I sort of think the ones that have great prod­uct wont need to sell. The one’s with great rela­tion­ship skills will be the “new Vikings” that will use Ross Jef­fries style of seduc­tion to fleece a good per­cent­age of those “smart” women of their wal­let, com­mon sense and ???

    Seri­ously, if you have a good prod­uct or ser­vice most peo­ple will be glad to invest in it. For the rest head on over to Ross’s site.

    AZMike

  9. October 8th, 2008 at 8:46 am Techie Teri

    I am new to Twit­ter, and very much appre­ci­ate the insight. :)

    I am try­ing not to mar­ket too much, but also not be too banal with the “I am drink­ing a diet coke now”, “I am going to the bath­room now” (ha ha) type posts either.

    I think the “pro­vide good shit” approach is a great idea and I do think peo­ple will look at more of your “stuff” paid or free when pro­vided with intel­li­gent, cur­rent infor­ma­tion on a topic they are inter­ested in.

    “Techie” Teri

  10. October 14th, 2008 at 7:09 am Michael Cayley

    I guess I will have to watch my maid­ens Kenneth.

    I hope that you will review my ChangeThis man­i­festo and eBook on your blog.

    See you at http://www.socialcapitalvalueadd.com

    Cheers,
    Michael

  11. October 18th, 2008 at 3:15 pm emarketed

    Wow! Great post Ken­neth. I look for­ward to try­ing some of these tech­niques out.

  12. October 25th, 2008 at 3:51 am Nickolove Lovemore

    An insight­ful look at the seduc­tive­ness of Twit­ter. I must admit that when I was first invited to Twit­ter I couldn’t see the point.

    I’ve since been enlight­ened but realise that I’m still see­ing just the tip of the ice­berg. They will be study­ing the impact of Twit­ter on mar­ket­ing and social media in col­leges soon — if they’re not already doing so.

    Nick­olove

  13. October 25th, 2008 at 7:53 am PPC Student

    Great tips, Ken­neth. You’ve made me think about Twit­ter in a whole new way. I’m fol­low­ing you on Twit­ter now, so I’m sure I’ll learn a lot more and fig­ure out how to apply this to my PPC edu­ca­tion. Thanks.

  14. October 25th, 2008 at 10:07 am Susan

    This was a great post and I loved dis­cov­er­ing Monit­ter. Very cool. It has taken me awhile to get into the groove with Twit­ter but it’s both fun and excit­ing to get to know it.

  15. October 29th, 2008 at 9:16 am Deb Kolaras

    You just made me love Twit­ter even more…if that was possible.

  16. October 30th, 2008 at 5:40 am NaS

    You really are a good writer, period. (the rest is his­tory — ie. ppl will follow)

  17. October 31st, 2008 at 5:58 pm A Ghoulish Collection of Links | This Month In SEO - 9/08 | TheVanBlog | Van SEO Design

    […] 3 For­bid­den Twit­ter Mind Con­trol Tricks to Explode Your Marketing […]

  18. November 2nd, 2008 at 11:56 am Heather (Woman in Training)

    Great infor­ma­tion! I really need to fig­ure out what I’m doing here and whit­tle down my niche. Thanks for the tips!

  19. November 3rd, 2008 at 9:24 am Business Strategy and Twitter | Real Estate Internet Marketing by Union Street Media

    […] your strat­egy is enhanced by being per­ceived as a guru, this post quickly walks you through the listen-network-be-a-guru […]

  20. November 4th, 2008 at 11:28 am LizS

    Ken­neth — great per­spec­tive here and a won­der­ful way to hone one’s skills within the Twit­ter Uni­verse. I love stream of con­scious­ness think­ing and com­mu­ni­cat­ing; after all, as you say, it the way that we all func­tion every­day so why not har­ness it for the bet­ter (and self) good? Cheers!

  21. November 10th, 2008 at 12:28 pm Jim Labadie

    I par­tic­u­larly love the part about search­ing Twit­ter for key­words. That is bril­liant. I’m off to do just that right now. Thanks!!

  22. November 12th, 2008 at 2:49 am Ian T Taylor

    Hey Ken­neth, I love this arti­cle, some fas­ci­nat­ing tricks
    Thanks!

  23. November 12th, 2008 at 10:32 am Shahar Boyayan

    Great per­spec­tive. Twit­ter is a hid­den trea­sure if you don’t pay atten­tion to what is being said.

  24. November 13th, 2008 at 3:15 am Travis Millward

    Very good, arti­cle. I’m becom­ing a big fan of Twit­ter, and hope to learn how to use it more effec­tively. I look for­ward to see­ing what types of things you post.

  25. November 13th, 2008 at 10:34 pm Sue Sphapmixay

    Great arti­cle. In fact, I just started Twit­ter­ing and this is will help me greatly! Con­sid­ered this site bookmarked.

  26. November 15th, 2008 at 4:32 pm David Sandercott

    Thanks for the Info. I Am brand new do Social Net­work­ing for Mar­ket­ing Pur­poses. You pro­vided a High level of Value in your arti­cle. Spread The Love

  27. November 17th, 2008 at 1:33 am chuckypita

    This was an intrigu­ing arti­cle. Net­work­ing, regard­less of what busi­ness field you’re in, is absolutely cru­cial to your “build­ing wealth” destiny.

    Per­son­ally, I use Twit­ter because I enjoy mak­ing new friends from all over the world.

    Thanks for the great infor­ma­tion. I’ll be “watch­ing” you like my prin­ci­pal watched me in the 10th grade.

  28. November 17th, 2008 at 3:43 pm Tara Burner

    Awe­some info there!
    I love Twit­ter, for per­sonal use and biz usage too!
    Thanks for excel­lent infor­ma­tive article.

  29. November 18th, 2008 at 2:30 pm Maggie

    I do love search.twitter.com and will have to give Monit­ter a shot!

    Great topic btw– Twit­ter tricks are sure to get my attention.

    Mag­gie

  30. November 18th, 2008 at 7:11 pm Charlotte Howard

    This arti­cle was very infor­ma­tive. I am look­ing for­ward to learn­ing more from you about twit­ter and look­ing for­ward to our connection.

    Thanks,

    Char­lotte

  31. November 19th, 2008 at 12:10 pm Sue

    Great infor­ma­tion Kenneth!

    Look­ing for­ward to read­ing more articles.

    Still get­ting to grips with twitter.

  32. November 19th, 2008 at 7:13 pm Darren W

    Superb insight, Kenneth!

    I tried avoid­ing the Twit­ter craze as long as pos­si­ble, as I didn’t need one more thing to get addicted to, in addi­tion to MySpace, Face­book and YouTube. But the other night my guard was let down and I suc­cumbed to the Tweets. Now I’m hooked. I find myself tex­ting a Tweet from my mobile phone while I’m at work in the mid­dle of the day.

    But being new to the Twitu­nity, I was curi­ous as to how mar­keters could uti­lize this tool. Now, thanks to you, I feel bet­ter informed and have some new ideas rolling around in my head (which will prob­a­bly end up as Tweets later).

    Thanks so much!

    ~Dar­ren

  33. November 23rd, 2008 at 12:20 pm MoneyMan

    Take a deep breath…
    Your get­ting sleepy…
    Lis­ten to the con­trol Twit­ter post!!!
    Absorb the content…

  34. November 25th, 2008 at 10:54 am Amy Boyack

    Thanks for the great infor­ma­tion. You do have a way of mak­ing peo­ple want to click on your links and you’re great at twit­ter. I love what you have said and I hope to be able to use it as well as you have.

  35. November 28th, 2008 at 10:25 am E-Marketing

    I agree twit­ter is cool, but NLP? Mind control..isn’t twit­ter sim­ply SMS for the web?
    When SMS first came out peo­ple did believe it appeal.. why would peo­ple want to send awk­ward mes­sages when they speak on the phone..
    I think Twit­ter is still grow­ing, most peo­ple I know on Twit­ter are into online mar­ket­ing or high tech indus­tries so are early adopters it still needs to reach more of the gen­eral public!

  36. November 28th, 2008 at 10:22 pm elle

    Really unique arti­cle. I have to agree that short bursts of infor­ma­tion are much eas­ier to be digested. Twit­ter has most defi­nately opened the door to such sim­ple streams of open and easy social net­work­ing. Very inter­est­ing take on the con­cept, espe­cially the NLP piece… for those that use it in an open for­mat and are truly them­selves (such as Gary V) I can see how it does serve them well. Thanks!

  37. November 29th, 2008 at 12:53 am imago

    I know a lot of infor­ma­tion about Mind Con­trol in Rus­sia. But your infor­ma­tion is new for me. Arti­cle is very inter­est­ing. Thanks.

  38. December 2nd, 2008 at 8:25 pm Titlegirl

    Wow, Ken­neth! Awe­some insight! Being an NLP’er love to hear about folks get­ting inside other folks minds.…boooowaaahhhh! LOVE IT!

  39. December 5th, 2008 at 9:20 pm Online Marketing Promotion

    Ken­neth,

    This is a very imfor­ma­tive arti­cle on Twit­ter. I am a lit­tle bit new to Twit­ter, so the points that you have made are very helpful.

    The sug­ges­tions you make about using search.twitter.com and Monit­ter are inter­est­ing and I’ll be check­ing them out soon.

    Thanks.

  40. December 13th, 2008 at 4:58 am Jeff Grant

    Very Insight­ful!

  41. December 19th, 2008 at 2:10 am Andrew Murray

    Wow.

    That’s a wicked arti­cle.
    By the way, that Gary Vayn­er­chuk 15 minute speech from the Web 2.0 was smoking.

    Much appre­ci­a­tion for the arti­cle, mate!

  42. December 23rd, 2008 at 5:57 am Orlando

    Fan­tas­tic arti­cle, Kenneth.

    I’m a Viking and I’m here to con­quer your atten­tion! YAR!! (Is that what Vikings shout? Yar?)

  43. December 30th, 2008 at 12:30 am Susan/Unique Business Opportunity

    I find your arti­cle inter­est­ing, but to be hon­est, I’m not much of a fan of mind con­trol. That being said, I need to think about the point that you offer

  44. January 1st, 2009 at 2:11 pm Steven Wilson

    A very thought pro­vok­ing post.

  45. January 2nd, 2009 at 8:59 am The Last Word on Why You Need Twitter | Long Tail Treasure

    […] 3 For­bid­den Twit­ter Mind Con­trol Tricks to Explode Your Marketing […]

  46. January 2nd, 2009 at 10:11 pm X

    I think you’re on to some­thing
    here Ken­neth. Thank you for a
    well writ­ten article.

    Bet­ter than a well writ­ten
    arti­cle, I found this piece by
    fol­low­ing your trail — I already
    know you walk the talk.

  47. January 2nd, 2009 at 10:13 pm Twitter Vikings? : Black Books Blog

    […] It’s true: Twit­ter Vikings […]

  48. January 8th, 2009 at 9:18 am CouchSurfingOri

    That was really solid infor­ma­tion! I keep for­get­ting about that search tool. Great way of break­ing it down. Had to send this to my client, ’cause I’ve been try­ing to explain why they need to get on twitter.

  49. January 9th, 2009 at 5:50 pm Sam England

    Thanks for the unique arti­cle…
    Very well writ­ten and very infor­ma­tive.
    The first one to the top of the moun­tain always wins!

    Keep up the fan­tas­tic work.

    Best Wishes,
    Sam Eng­land
    http://www.whoissamengland.com

  50. January 15th, 2009 at 12:51 am Albert L.G.

    Good tech­niques!
    You can use “Brand mon­i­tor” from Splitweet to read key­words men­tions on Twit­ter for (1) Psy­chic Mar­ket Research:
    http://splitweet.com ;)

  51. January 15th, 2009 at 11:45 pm Lisa Lomas

    Now I under­stand your Brand, I have to say I am get­ting how you write, so cool.

  52. February 28th, 2009 at 3:40 am Sandy Priester

    So my ques­tion is… Is Twit­ter a device for the male mind. As a new Twit­ter user, (and female), I find the short­cut mes­sages lack­ing in the emo­tional con­nec­tions that women usu­ally want. I am now con­nected to 40 peo­ple (within two days) and almost all are men. I have been pon­der­ing this ques­tion. And, won­der­ing if that is why more of the peo­ple that I know are on Face­Book (most are women).

  53. April 14th, 2009 at 2:33 pm rooneycj

    ah ha — twit­ter viking. love.

  54. June 9th, 2009 at 8:14 am Tara

    Thanks for the great arti­cle… it was very refresh­ing to read! A new­bie to Twit­ter, I am find­ing it hard to keep up with all my new fol­low­ers that seem to be appear­ing out of nowhere (174 within 2 days)… I haven’t even started using it prop­erly yet, or mar­ket­ing my pres­ence on Twit­ter! Thanks for the use­ful info you pro­vided :)

  55. June 17th, 2009 at 3:45 pm Havoc Marketing

    Hi Ken­neth,

    Thanks for the great arti­cle. After read­ing your arti­cle, my opin­ion about Twit­ter is cer­tainly not the same as it used to be.

    You have opened my eyes to a dif­fer­ent and darker side of Twit­ter. I look for­ward to read­ing your arti­cles and tweets.

    Thanks again & Wish you all the best.

    Mani Raj
    Havoc Marketing

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