The first connection I list was not spawned from Twitter.  I just think it can be used as a learning tool for all you marketers out there.  The second connection was made in a similar manner than the previous ones.  And since I didn’t want to end with just two, a lesson can be learned from the other pseudo-connections.

If you would like to start this practice, use the #fridayconnect hash tag to let everyone know what new people you have conected with this week. You can also read my previous Friday Connections blog posts.

 #1 @5within22 
This connection is a lesson in salesmanship and marketing.  I received an email last Friday from Ed.  A Google alert sent him to MaryMargaret’s web site. Not Kids Are Heroes, but her personal web site that is helping her raise funds so she can go to the Junior National Young Leader’s Conference this summer.  He is a student entrepreneur that was offering us his product to mark up and sell as a fund raiser.  I like the fact that he’s a student, but did not respond to the email as I am skeptical of other people that I perceive may be trying to “cash in” on what we are doing. So I let it go.  Sometime during the week I received a phone call from the same gentleman.  His manner was very professional, soft spoken and not pushy at all.  After he reminded me of who he was I was very frank with him and told him why I did not respond to his email. Since he was a student I gave him a longer rope than I normally would. (I have no patience for unsolicited phone calls or similar such things – right or wrong – in case you haven’t detected that yet.)  He explained what his product did and how it worked and how it could help us. As I tell everyone these days I suggested he get on Twitter.  “We are on Twitter and we followed you a couple of days ago.”, he said.  I asked him if I followed him back to which he said, “No.”  Now that was odd, because I do follow back the majority of people that follow me. I asked him his ID and looked up his profile. I saw that he had no @replies in his Twitter stream. He wasn’t being spammy, just didn’t seem to engage with anyone.  I told him why I did not follow him.  He told me he was new to Twitter and did not know all the ins and outs.  I sent him my Twitter Do’s and Dont’s post in hopes that it would help him.  After reading the post, he graciously asked the etiquette of reposting to other Twitter friends.  “Flattery will get you everywhere” I told him and he shared it with his partner.  So the long and short of this is that here is a student who is just starting up his own company.  I would not classify him as a typical salesman – he probably wouldn’t have gotten this far with me if I thought he was one. But he was persistent without being obnoxious and even though we haven’t decided yet whether we will try and raise funds with his product, he made a connection – good for him.  I now follow him and his partner @aveleroy.  I will give him a plug for two reasons: 1) I liked his controlled persistence and 2) MaryMargaret likes his product.  These are note cards that can be shared among tween friends that interact with their web site. Their pitch is: “BFF Notes is a notepad that allows girls to pass secret coded notes to their friends. It also serves as the gateway to a secure online social network exclusively for tweens.” Check them out at BFFNotes.com.

 #2 @inspiringdesign 
Justin has been hovering just under my radar screen for quite some time now. He has been quietly retweeting some of my posts. Now that I look back at his tweets I’m really not sure why I didn’t mention him sooner. I see that three weeks ago he made a very nice #followfriday tribute to me.  This week he retweeted one of my posts and I thanked him.  His response to my thank-you was to tell me that he tried to come to our Music for Life! fund raiser but was unable to. That made me realize that maybe my marketing wasn’t falling on deaf ears.  We had a decent showing for the 10:30 seating but a sparse turnout for the other two. All in all we raised $600.00 so I the event was indeed a success, but we all know every charity is suffering during this economy.  But sometimes I felt alone out there when the response wasn’t what I had hoped. Justin reminded me that maybe people really did want to come but for whatever reason just couldn’t make it. That simply made me feel better. The lesson learned here is to be persistent when trying to connect. Some people (like me) can be slow to react sometimes. Now I am not saying that Justin was trying to get noticed by me this whole time and I ignored him – if that were the case he wouldn’t have gotten through to me. He was just being a good guy and doing what you are supposed to do on Twitter: retweet posts that you like and give tributes to people you enjoy following through the #followfriday tradition. That is a natural way to connect with people.

 #3,#4,#5 @homeschoolsegue @DaytonChildrens @ontheirway 
Maybe one reason this was a slow week for me regarding Twitter was because I hadn’t written a new blog post.  I have a “Citizen Blog” I must maintain for the local paper, plus all my other responsibilities. I also have no schedule to keep for my own blog so I only write when I am inspired.  I finally had that urge yesterday to write more about Twitter. I wrote a new post about people who don’t use Twitter because they ”Don’t Have Time” for it.  I also added to my Do’s and Dont’s post as a few things came up this week that were appropriate.  The people mentioned here all @replied to me thanking me for the Do’s and Dont’s post. They are all new to Twitter and were happy to get some insight.  I am always happy to help new people get adjusted. Twitter can be an extremely productive environment if you just use it right. I feel so sorry for those who just don’t know any better.  I was followed today by a person who was following 2000 people and had zero updates. Such a shame. Anyway, I almost forgot that writing blog posts can help you connect with new people.  These folks gave me a very nice reward for blogging: a simple and sincere “thank you”.

So far I have gotten a positive response from these “Friday Connection” posts. I urge you all to try it out.  Keeping track inspires you to go out and find new connections.  The connections I make are strenghthened in ensuing weeks. That is when it becomes really fun. So let us know about the connections YOU made this week – add your Twitter ID and those of the people you made connections with this week in the Comments section.

This week I made five connections.  I believe three of them were made by different methods than those used in the past.

 #1 angellr 
I saw a tweet from Bob asking if anyone knew of a utility that would back up his followers to his local drive.  It seemed to me I had seen something like this before during my travels.  I assumed that someone would have given him the answer right away, so I told him if he didn’t get the answer within a few minutes I could see if I could find the link for him.  Well, no one else reading his note had the answer so I googled.  I came up with a utility that sort of did what he wanted.  I sent that to him.  A few minutes past, and it was bugging me that I didn’t really solve his problem so I googled some more. I found Tweetake, a third party utility that did exactly what he wanted it to.  You can save all your followers to a text file on your hard drive.  I felt very satisfied to send it to him.  Bob was very excited and gracious to get this information.  So much so that he put me on his #followfriday list last week.  That wasn’t necessary but was appreciated very much.  This is one way of making a connection that I have talked about before.  A great way to connect with someone is to solve a problem for them.

#2 and #3 @MissBlondie919 and @Annagain66
Last Friday night’s Twitterthon was a blast.  I put these two tweeps together in my connections list because they were both in attendance.   There was a lot of participation last week and right at the very end I was going to announce to all to join our “after party” on Ustream.  Sadly right at that point I had used up all my allotted tweets for the hour and got booted.  This was even after taking the precaution of having @TeamCharlie send out the songs.  I DM’ed a few people about the after party (note when you run out of tweets you can still DM) and @MissBlondie919 and @Annagain66 came along with @jonkurozawa who got a Friday connection mention last week.  MaryMargaret read all the questions and it was more great fun.  @MissBlondie919 was getting many of the answers right.  When that happens I try and change things up a bit and ask something I think is difficult from another subject.  The question was this: “On what vegetable did an ancient Egyptian place his right hand on when taking an oath?”  I asked this question with a smug smirk on my face thinking, “They’ll never get this one!”  Miss Blondie quickly typed: “An onion.”  I’m thinking, “No way!!! How did she know that??”  So I asked her.  It turns out her grandfather was an historian and she would sit on his knee and listen to story after story when she was young.  What a cool fact to know about someone!  Even in a silly little trivia game you can make a connection.

#4 @rmolden
This is a good one.  One of my previous Friday connections, @hiannie, lives in Singapore.  She recently told me she put the Kids Are Heroes web site on her blogroll.  How cool is that?  Kids Are Heroes and Twitter are a perfect match because they are both global applications.  Being included in Annie’s blogroll made me think of ways I could reach other parts of the world more effectively.  The answer I came up with was to tweet about Kids Are Heroes during their day.  I googled for a utility that would tweet at a scheduled time.  The best one I found was FutureTweets, because it allows you to tweet at a scheduled time recurringly for free.  Not wanting to be obnoxious about it I scheduled it to tweet the Kids Are Heroes link just twice throughout the night.  Well the first night I did it I saw that it had been retweeted by @rmolden who lives in Sydney.  That was cool so I sent him a belated thank you.  Turns out he was still up.  He liked the link so much he asked for it again so he could retweet again!  Who would ever think you could make a connection on Twitter while you are sleeping?

#5 @OKE_Menachem
Menachem is simply a nice man.  He has retweeted my tweets on several occasions.  He participated in our Twitterthon last week.  I made his #followfriday list this week.  He even donated to MaryMargaret’s Music for Life cause last week, as that is why we do our Twitterthons.  Thanks so much Menachem.  Now I’m not saying you have to donate to the Music for Life program to get a mention here, but it sure doesn’t hurt. :)

This is so much fun tracking all these new people that I meet on Twitter.  Remember if you want to do the same, use the #fridayconnect hash tag and mention the people you have connected with throughout the week.  It’s also fun to progress with the same folks each week.  If you have any #fridayconnect stories, please share them with us in the Comments section.

For those of you who didn’t read last week’s blog post this is all about Friday Connections (use #fridayconnect on Twitter). These are now weekly blogs where I recount the connections I have made during the week.  Twitter is all about connecting with people, so I make every effort to do so.  I hope to start a trend on Twitter where everyone makes a better effort to actually connect with (as opposed to sell to) people.

How it works is that you keep track of the NEW people you feel you have connected to or they you during the week.  It doesn’t have to be dramatic, just enough so that you know a bit more about that person when you see their tweets.  This will breed some sort of familiarity between these new connections.  As a side effect this is how you will develop followers in a natural way.  I have a goal of getting 10 new connections per week.  This week as of this writing I have 6. I don’t force them.  I will also say that the connections grew stronger with some of the people I listed last week.

 #1 @UBUIBME
Eric seems to like my posts. He retweets them often.  He added me to his #followfriday list last week.  This is without really engaging with me. I recommend doing this, but only if it is done naturally. The tweets you retweet must reach out to you. This is a great way to connect with people. Thanks Eric.

#2 @DarleneVictoria
Darlene reached out to me last Friday night just after my Twitterthon.  I was really frustrated at the time because Twitter booted me for some reason and I couldn’t tell people why I went silent all of a sudden. Once I was let back in and settled a bit she did what no other person has done since I have been on Twitter.  It was so cool I was embarrassed that I hadn’t used the same approach with other people.  She asked me a simple question. “Why did you start Kids Are Heroes?”  Now if that’s not a way to connect with someone I don’t know what is.  Find out a bit of what people are doing and ask them how they became involved in it.  So simple yet I hadn’t thought of it. Well at least up until then I didn’t.  I now try to do this at every appropriate opportunity.  Darlene plans to have MaryMargaret and I do a podcast for her blog and we are happy to oblige.

#3 @AJaneChambers
Sometimes it takes a few nudges to make a good connection.  Jane responded to one of my tweets.  Her response interested me so I looked at her profile.  Turns out she is from Ellicott City, about 30 miles down Rte 70.  “Drove past you on Wednesday!” she quipped one day.   On another occasion it was “Hello from Ellicott City.” The answer here is to keep at it.  Now I will know exactly who it is when I see her tweets and also know where to go if I need a lawyer!

#4 @ItzaBitza
This is a good one.  I read a tweet from @JesseNewhart about using Tweetdeck for following large numbers.  This definitely interested me so I saved it. I finally got a chance to watch the video and liked it so I retweeted it.  Margaret liked it as well so she responded back to me thanking me for posting the link, even though I had nothing to do with it.  We continued on and discussed our children and the challenges of our families.  I very much look forward to tweeting with her again.  This is all because I retweeted someone else’s post!

#5 @jonkurozawa
As many of you know, every Friday night MaryMargaret and I put on a Twitterthon from 8-10PM.  Last week we spiced things up a bit by adding a trivia game.  Jon was a frequent answerer.  He was also fun to have in the audience.  Now I’m not saying you have to put on a Twitterthon to connect with people. But if someone is trying to engage in an unique way then feel free to jump in and support them.

#6 @ShaneJohnston
This connection points to why I joined Twitter in the first place.  I joined Twitter to promote Kids Are Heroes.  Period.  (It doesn’t hurt that it’s also lots of fun.)  Shane had retweeted one of my posts.  Usually if I have time that alone will cause me to look at someone’s profile.  I noticed he was from Brampton.  This is a town in Ontario Canada. It just so happens it is also where my sister (@moelib) lives. I put that in the back of my mind somewhere.  On another occasion I noticed something about his avatar.  He appeared to be at home speaking into a studio quality microphone.  This was interesting to me so I asked him about it.  Now that little nudge got him to think about nominating his own kids for the Kids Are Heroes web site.  He also discovered the forms on the web site weren’t working and I spent most of the day scrambling to fix them – thanks Shane for the heads up!  Turns out his kids are doing amazing things creating sleeping bags for children in Haiti. Due to the similarities of what they are doing and what my brother is involved with (he lives about an hour away from Shane) I connected them up as well.  This type of connection is what I am really seeking because it benefits our web site which inspires other kids to become involved.  This to me is the equivalent of a signed contract to all you business people.  Success happens on Twitter, believe me.

I know there are a couple more but I forgot to write their names down. I’m sure I will run into them again and will post them for future Friday Connections.  Let’s hear about how you make your connections, so we can all learn from you.  That is what is so neat about Twitter – we are all lifting each other up.

How it works is that you keep track of the NEW people you feel you have connected to or they you during the week.  It doesn’t have to be dramatic, just enough so that you know a bit more about that person when you see their tweets.  This will breed some sort of familiarity between these new connections.  As a side effect this is how you will develop followers in a natural way.  So here goes. In no special order, this is my top 10 connections for this past week.

#1 @GreetingsthtGro
Anne brought her daughters to our Twitterthon last Friday and donated to MaryMargaret’s cause.  I’m not saying that one has to give us money to make a connection but it sure helps! :)

#2 @Fox5NewsEdge
Other stations should pay attention to what Fox 5 is doing.  Not sure who is behind the curtain on this one – sometimes I think it’s the producer and other times it is Brian the news guy but either way, they reach out with their personalities and they pay attention to what people say to them. They engage on Twitter which makes me more interested in their news show.  They broadcasted two of my tweets last week!  Now I’m not saying that you have to put my tweets on the air to make a connection, but it sure helps! :) 

#3 @BrianBolter
This is definitely manned by the Fox 5 News guy.  News anchors never get to show their personalities on the air so we think they just don’t have one.  Well Brian sure does and he proudly displays it.  He also responds if you @ him which is a classy move.  Also makes me want to watch their program.  To coin a phrase from the Guiness commercial: Brilliant!

#4 @BetsyCollings
This one is a bit different. I have known Betsy for a while in person.  To be honest I do not know her that well besides our bantering at our local Chamber of Commerce events.  She connected with me by saying nice things about my blog posts.  Don’t try this at home unless you are genuine, but that was very nice of her to reach out like she did.

#5 @RobCollings
This one is a related to #4 as you might guess. Rob is a Twitter “newbie” and Betsy recommended that he connect with me.  He did it in a very professional yet personal way which I greatly appreciated.  He simply @replied to me introducing himself.  Again, I don’t recommend you start @replying people at random for no reason, but if someone tweets something you like I think this is a great way to make a deeper connection with them.

#6 @Hiannie
The other day when it snowed I posted a innocuous tweet about how my daughter MaryMargaret enjoyed the snow falling outside.  I got a response from someone I had never noticed: “@KidsAreHeroes If it was snowing outside I’d jump for joy!”   It turns out this responder was from Singapore and was in the middle of a sweltering heat wave.  Now I read her posts whenever I see them thinking about what the weather might be like in Singapore.  That’s how you connect on Twitter – respond to people!

#7 @AlexKaris
Alex is an “uber-twit” that has close to 19,000 followers!  I retweeted one of his posts and soon after that he followed me.  He always responds to my @replies which is amazing considering how many followers he has.  I have adopted his habit of following people that retweet my posts.  The logic is if they feel the post is worthy of retweeting then we have at least that much in common.

#8 @BirthSource
I received a very nice direct message after I posted one of my blogs.  Tracey made a very nice comment and thanked me for posting it.  Since my reason for writing about Twitter is to be helpful I was glad to know it helped at least one person.  Very nice way to make a personal connection.

#9 @tumblondad, @marianmerritt
I cheated a bit here and added two for the price of one.  Both these folks made very nice comments on one of my blogs.  Whether it be mine or anyone else’s blog posts, if they help you or if you appreciate them please make an effort to comment on them.

#10 @DFS_Ellen
Ellen runs an online pet supplies store. She actually @replied to my @TeamCharlie moniker, which I periodically use to announce things related to Wags for Hope.  Ellen took the time to look up my bio and make a nice comment about Wags for Hope. That’s how to connect with people.

So here you see several examples of how to get people’s attention on Twitter.  This to me is putting Twitter to its best use. Look for all of these folks on my #followfriday list, and I hope you all start trying out the #fridayconnect practice.