myTweetPack.com: What is an Alpha Wolf and Why You Should Care

myTweetPack.com is going live in a couple of days. This post explains how to use the GRRowth Portal. It's a walkthrough of sorts until I can get it on video.

After I post this piece, I'll add a "view/edit Alphas" button to the GRRowth Portal. That may make it easier to find.

Important note: If you have absolutely no interest in myTweetPack.com, please don't read any further. You'll only stress yourself out at what you wish you could do, but can't. You may also want to bitch-slap your Twitter Management System supplier. We wouldn't want that on our conscience.
Me

A bit of background

With apologies to Milos Djukic, the GRRowth Portal uses a variation of Influencer Marketing. Our big difference is that every user gets to choose his or her own Influencers. 

We call them Alpha Wolves.

Alphas are big, busy accounts that cater to the type of person you want to attract. Do not use competitors! You'll see why in a minute.

Think "affinity" when it comes to your Alphas.

Alphas are not cut in stone. You can change them, reclassify them, delete them, or add new ones. 

Right now, you have a limit of 5 Alphas per account. The jury is still out on whether that's too many or not enough. No worries, myTweetPack.com was crowd-built. Every feature was suggested by someone right here. If there's a good reason to increase it, we will.

Here are my Alphas and their account stats:

• John White (juanblanco76): 53.4K tweets, following 59.7K, 71K followers, 31K likes, 6 lists
• Content Marketing (CMIContent ): 65.3K tweets, following 33.5K, 201K followers, 5K likes, 9 lists
  
• Ann Handley (MarketingProfs): 54.7K tweets, following 125K, 376K followers, 8K likes, 4 lists
  
• Jeff Bullas (jeffbullas ): 278K tweets, following 234K, 502K followers, 2K likes, 5 lists
  
• Kim Garst (kimgarst ): 299K tweets, following 150K, 501K followers, 8K likes, 50 lists
  

Interestingly enough, they all follow me back except CMIContent. Humm, maybe I should swap them out?

Note that every Alpha is a big busy account. They will be the engine driving your growth. Fifteen minutes or even a half hour spent choosing them could spell the difference between insane growth and a lackluster one.

Choose wisely, Grasshopper.

What we do with Alphas or Why They are Important

Most Twitter systems tell you to pick an account, then systematically follow their followers. They say that's the way to build a large targeted account.

What a crock. 

Sure, it will build a large account. Targeted? Not so much.

Who says that following is targeted in the first place?

We do it differently. Many people noted that there is no option for following someone's followers at all. Others have noted that we don't blindly follow back whoever follows us. 

Both are largely a waste of time. 

No, to be fair, it's not so much that as there was no other option until now.

Let's review what we want to accomplish.

We want to build a large account made up of people who are interested in what we have to offer, and who are interested in our stuff.
Me, again

Sounds simple enough. 

It isn't.

Anyone can follow anyone on Twitter. 

Just because someone follows John White does not mean I should follow them. Heck, even John doesn't follow them all! There are nearly 12,000 followers that John doesn't follow.

The onus of proof of follow-worthiness is on them!

That's an important point. I'll repeat it.

The onus of proof of follow-worthiness is on them!
Me, yet again

They have to prove to us that we should follow them. 

No, I'm not kidding. That's exactly what the GRRowth Portal means to accomplish.

We don't follow Alphas' followings. We monitor Alphas' activity.

We see who Alphas retweet and mention. We see who retweets and mentions them. 

Those tweeps have proven their interest in the type of thing we offer, assuming we choose our Alphas wisely. All we need to do is follow them (sort of, but not really, that's the subject of another post). If they follow back within our pre-set grace period, they are interested in our stuff and are active enough for our purposes.

We also monitor who retweets and mentions us. Those tweeps are interested in the general stuff and our specific stuff.

It's all about getting your stuff out there.

We don't just monitor Alphas

We also retweet them. Why not? We retweet each other too.

Every tweetPack member sets how many Pack Tweets and Super-Pack tweets they want to tweet every day. Pack tweets are randomly selected from a list of Wolves you set. . . call them your friends if you want.

Here's my Pack. They are not all members of myTweetPack.com. Some have changed their handles. If they ever join, I will automatically support them with retweets. As new Wolves join, I get suggestions for addition.

Paul's Pack:  aaron_skogen AmanHoff1 beBee_stories DBgrinberg dkridingshotgun DLE41 DrGarySharpe EmotionalEmilia fsantaisabel GloOchoa InsightsOccur Invisitech JaredWiese javierbebee JBarbosaPR Jimbomur juanblanco76 juanbeBee Mamen_locutora Mialis79 milosdjukic011 MSweetwood MyTweetPack OutThinkingPD ParkinsonPeople PaulCroubalian PIWillia QuimojoTweets reneecormierpr riccikeeper RisingStarRes sarahelkins ScholtzGert TessGezzeSM trselbrede WayneYoshida

Super-Packs are different

Think of Super-Packs like topic groups. You choose your Alphas and you assign them to a Super-Pack. So, for me, they look like this.

Let's understand that I chose these Alphas and that I assigned them to these Super-Packs. Someone else may choose MarketingProfs too, but assign them to "Content Writing and Editing." 

Not a problem. 

We each choose our "influencers." We each choose how we want to look at them.

See that button that says "Who Alphas RT & Mention?" When you click that, the system will pull in all the tweets since the last time (up to 200) tweets from each Alpha. People they RT or mention that are not in your potential follows list will be added to it. People who are already there will have their "found" count incremented. 

Some people may have noticed I wrote "potential follows list" not just "follows list." Good for you. You'll see the difference in a future post.

That's not all we do with Alphas.

We already pulled all those Alpha tweets so we could mine the retweets and mentions. We may as well use them for other stuff too.

We compare each tweet to other tweets stored for that Alpha, and as assigned to that Super-Pack, by anyone. If it's new, it's added.