How to Howl with the Best: A New Wolf's Guide

If you're curious about myTweetPack.com, start here. myTweetPack was created by writers for writers. It morphed into a complete Twitter-based promotional platform for anyone who has anything to promote.

That would be . . . everybody. If you don't have a product or service, you have yourself. If you don't have a corporate brand, you have a personal brand.

Promotion is promotion.

Just ask Donald Trump if Twitter is effective at promotion. Love him or hate him, there is no doubt that he used Twitter to his best advantage. It even got him a job.

If he can do it, so can you.

myTweetPack.com is not just a website. It's cloud software. Like all software packages, not everyone needs to use all its functions.  

Heck, I don't use all of them, and I wrote most of them!

I am considered an Excel power-user. I use many of its functions. I don't use them all. Of all the many thousands of spreadsheets, only three use Visual Basic scripting. None use pivot tables.

So what? I don't need that stuff. It's nice to have it if I do need it, though.

The same holds true for myTweetPack.

This post will be the first in a series of how-to guides. We will show you how to start as a tweetCub and work your way up to a big, bad tweetWolf. 

Just like with me and Excel, you won't need all the functions.

The initial set-up is what takes the most time. You need to tell myTweetPack what you want it to do for you. Once it knows, the sailing is smooth.

Count on fifteen minutes to run through these steps.

First step: Just Relax and Think

You've asked for a free trial and you're waiting for it to be processed. This is when you should start thinking about who your Alphas are. Alphas are your personal influencers. They are large, busy accounts that belong to players in your field. 

Yes, we'll use them to pick potential targeted follows, but that isn't their primary purpose.

Their primary purpose is to supply much-needed variety in your tweets. People don't like a me-me-me attitude. 

You are who you retweet.

Pick people that you wouldn't mind retweeting and who likely have the type of following you want to emulate. It's not just about size. We don't bother with who follows them. It's about affinity.

You can have up to 5 Alphas. I suggest you list 7-10. It's always nice to have backups if one doesn't cut it.

Consider your post inventory. How many blog posts have you written? How many beBee posts? LinkedIn? Medium? YouTube? Do you write for Big Media as well (Good Men, Forbes, Inc. Entrepreneur, HuffPost)?

How many of those are duplicates? Which is/are your primary content source(s)? Where do you want to drive traffic?

To start off running, it's nice to have a solid inventory of posts. If you have less than 50 distinct posts, your Alphas can take up the slack. That's what they're there for.

Two: Your account is active

Congratulations. Your first order of business is to sign in. That may sound silly. About 40% of people who sign up for a free trial never sign in at all. The funny thing is that, of the other 60%, the ones that actually try it, only 2 have not signed up.

One of them is the reason why I'm writing this series. He tried to do everything at the same time and got lost. What he did was like seeing Excel for the first time and diving straight into Visual Basic scripting.

Patience, Grasshopper. 

Take a few minutes to tell the system what you want it to do for you. We don't believe in cookie-cutter approaches. This is a one-and-done thing. 

Just take your time.

Okay, so you're signed in and the profile screen opened up. You see your profile picture and stats. You're good to go. 

Hit "Add to Or Remove from your Pack."

Your Pack is a list of people you want to support with retweets. Just list their Twitter handles without the "@" and separate them with a space. The system will suggest other tweetWolves from your Super-Pack (topic group). 

It doesn't matter if your Pack members are tweetPack members or not. If they ever join, their tweets will be available to you for retweeting. 

When you're done, hit "Write my changes." Sort them alphabetically if you like.  

Hit "My Dashboard, " then hit, "Retweet Preferences". This is where you will tell the system how often to retweet your friends (Pack) and your Alphas (Super-Pack or topic group). 

For most people, the defaults will do fine. The larger your post inventory, the smaller these numbers should be. Hit "Save Retweet Preferences" but don't bother processing them just yet.

Hit "Return to my Dashboard"

From the Quick Links bar, hit "GRRowth Portal" --> "Work with Alphas" --> "View/Edit Your Alphas"

Add the Alphas you chose. Adding Alphas is a two-step process. First, you add their Twitter handles without the "@." Then, you assign them to a Super-Pack (topic group).

Hit "Return to Account GRRowth Portal" -->"Growth Settings." Set your grace period for unfollows and the maximum number of daily follows. Slow and steady wins the race! I suggest 3 days grace and 200 maximum daily follows. Save.

Hit "Go To To-Do List"

The To-Do list is just that. It's a list of things to do every day or so, every few days, every week, and as needed.

For now, just hit "Refresh All Relationships." The system will pull in all followers and following (Twitter calls them friends) for all your accounts. This can take a while. 

Three: Start building your Tweet Inventory

While you're still on the To-Do list, hit "Process Alphas Retweets and Mentions." The system will pull in the last 200 tweets for each of your Alphas. That's 1000 tweets, it will take time. 

Once it's done doing its stuff, hit the link to refresh retweets up near the top of the page. If you don't see it, refresh your browser.

The next post

The next post will continue with more advanced aspects to the initial setup. It will show you how to automatically import and promote articles from your blog, beBee, LinkedIn, Medium, YouTube, or even Big Media outlets you contribute to.

Building up your tweet inventory has never been easier.

Watch for it.