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Image by luc legay via Flickr How we interact with others can either cause joy, pain or leave no impression at all. What impression are you leaving behind you on Twitter and other social networks ? Pain is caused on Twitter when… - Spam and hacking occurs and we feel our safety and privacy is compromised. - An opinion we make is “flamed” by others or they fail to get what we are saying - We use Twitter to be negative about others. Think about high profile cases this year where it has been a case of “tweet in haste, repent at leisure” (or not leisure, in a world where reaction is global and swift!) To avoid causing the pain on Twitter: - Review your account often and report any spam appropriately - Make your posts meaningful and value laden - Don’t spam others, ratio your tweets about your biz with conversations and helping out others - Don’t get involved in an argument - Treat others as you wish to be treated yourself Joy of Twitter… Twitter can be a joy. It is a way to reach out to people, to build new relationships online, and to gain valuable feedback. Some tips to help keep your use of Twitter Joyful are: - Tweet about what you are interested in rather than what you think you should be tweeting about - Be mindful in your tweeting. Tweet from the heart. - Treat Twitter as one of your social media and other marketing activities and don’t get sucked in to feeling you have to be there every single minute – have some fun!! - Connect with other like minded people and use the @reply and RT to start great conversations - Reach out to connect and grow your relationship with your most regular twitter contacts The anonymity of neutrality… Sometimes on Twitter I think it is easy to get sucked into posting “for the sake of it” and this is where neutrality can sneak in. Think value, think connection, think first. And have a joyful time connecting using Twitter. © 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips . The Joy of Tweeting

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The Joy of Tweeting

As much as many of us like to think that we’re highly organized and efficient when it comes to our use of Twitter, there is in fact a lot we can do to make our lives easier. In the last couple of weeks I’ve adopted some fairly radical measures to streamline and improve my use of Twitter, which I’ll share with you here. 1 – Cut the Number of People You Follow The temptation when you first start using Twitter is to embark on a ‘follow rampage’. You add the news sites you read, the bloggers you respect, friends, family, colleagues, business contacts and in turn many of the people that follow or are followed by these accounts. This seems like a great idea at first, but you find you soon reach a tipping point – in my own case, by following close to 2000 people, Twitter had become nothing more than a never-ending deluge of noise, with useful and informative Tweets getting lost amongst the junk. Even by setting up userlists in Seesmic Desktop (the desktop app I use), I was finding it ever harder to keep up. A couple of weeks back I made the decision to cut back on who I followed. It was time to ‘purge’. Before hitting the unfollow option in earnest, I realised it would be a wise idea to set myself some criteria for who I should keep: - Is the person i’m following bringing any real value to me? The million dollar question. It’s very easy to follow someone just because everyone else is, or because you they have a job that gives the assumption that their tweets will be useful. Often this couldn’t be further from the truth. - Is the person i’m following tweeting unique information and links or are they mainly retweeting stuff i’m already getting from other sources? - Does the person i’m following follow me and if they do, do they ever communicate with me or retweet what I put out there? I’m sure there’s plenty of further criteria of your own that you could add, but this is what suited me personally. Next, I realised that as I was currently following so many people, it would take me many hours to go through everyone using Twitter on its own. Thankfully there’s some great tools available to help you. I used Your Twitter Karma , so i’ll describe the process I went through in using this tool specifically. When you log in to Your Twitter Karma (be patient – it can take a few minutes to load your details) you’re presented with a huge list of Twitter users. Under each itemised Twitter account it tells you whether you follow that person, whether they follow you, or whether you both follow each other. Clicking on the avatar brings up that person’s Twitter profile, so you can refresh your memory as to who they are, what they do, and whether their tweets are of value to you. Next comes the evil part! The purge… Select the users that you wish to stop following, by clicking the checkbox next to their avatar. This can be quite a time-consuming process, but it’s well worth it in the long run. When you’ve selected everyone you want to unfollow, click the ‘bulk unfollow’ button at the bottom of the page. All done! Now check your Twitter profile to check that your follow count has dropped to what you expect. Be prepared that your follower count may also drop slightly, as some people use auto-follow / auto-unfollow tools that will drop you if you drop them. 2 – Effectively Manage the Remaining People You Follow In my case, once I’d purged my account I was left with around 200 people I was still following – a drop of over 2000! In return about 200 people stopped following me. Once I’d got over what I’d done, it was time to effectively manage who I was left with. This next step is very easy to undertake. Most desktop Twitter applications (such as Seesmic Desktop and TweetDeck ) allow you to set up usergroups, whereby you can classify the people you follow into distinct groups, such as ‘friends’, ‘collegues’, ‘business’, ‘celebrities’ etc. In future when you get a new tweet for someone you have allocated to a group it will appear in the appropriate group column. This way you can find and read it with far less difficulty. Twitter now also allows you to set up lists as well, so you can group together people in a similar way. 3 – Be Prepared to Fall in Love With Twitter All Over Again I know that what I’ve described sound quite radical, but believe me, if Twitter has become an out of control stream of tweets that you can’t keep up with, it really is your only option. Now i’ve drastically cut the number of people I follow down to the bare bones, I’ve rediscovered my love for this great tool. Additionally, whereas before I wouldn’t have dreamed of using Twitter on my iPhone, now I can login to the likes of Tweetie and thumb my way through tweet after tweet of valuable information (and the odd piece of celebrity gossip!). The value is back! Please note: Undertake the steps I’ve outlined at your own risk. I can not be held responsible for anything that may happen to your Twitter account as a result of following what you read here. Also be warned that it is not advisable to bulk-unfollow Twitter accounts then bulk-follow new accounts, as Twitter may deem you to be mis-using their service and suspend your account without notice. © 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips . Why it Pays To Purge – Making Efficent Use of Twitter

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Why it Pays To Purge – Making Efficent Use of Twitter

Reading Biz Stone’s op-ed in the UK’s Sunday Times newspaper almost had me snoozing. Not that Biz is boring–he’s actually quite fascinating–but the article was just a recap of stuff we already knew. Then I saw these closing statements: ..It can be these things but primarily Twitter serves as a real-time information network powered by people around the world discovering what’s happening and sharing the news… In the new year, Twitter will begin supporting a billion search queries a day. We will be delivering several billion tweets per hour to users around the world… (Emphasis added) Er, did he just say billion? With a "b"? Does Google know about this? You don’t need to answer that, I know it knows. But seriously, Twitter’s serving 1 billion search queries a day–and it’s not even a search engine? No wonder Google and Bing rushed to sign partnership deals with the micro-blogging site. No wonder neither of them could find the right price to acquire the company! According to recent estimates , Google is handling around 300,000 to 500,000 million searches a day–about half of what Biz boasts Twitter is seeing. And, let’s not forget, Google IS a search engine. I can’t make up my mind the exact reason Biz slipped that into the piece. I’ve narrowed it down to two reasons. One: Twitter just wanted to fire a warning shot across the bow of traditional search engines. Put them on notice, if you will. Two: We’ll see a Twitter IPO in the next 12-18 months . Twitter has far more users than Google had when it went public. If it can reveal revenues anywhere close to $100 million a year, then I think investors will be tripping over themselves to buy in. Pilgrim’s Partners: SponsoredReviews.com – Bloggers earn cash, Advertisers build buzz!

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Twitter’s New Year Resolutions: 1 Billion Searches a Day & an IPO?

After reading how you should plan out your tweets , I thought of how you can fully utilize groups when retweeting. There are many Twitter clients out there, but I use HootSuite to schedule tweets and create custom columns or groups of specific people you follow.  Creating these specific columns, which we can thank to Twitter clients, allow for you to keep tract of any tweet that you may have missed. Think about how much time you spend scrolling through your home feed and retweeting what was just tweeted. And when you usually make that retweet as soon as the person tweeted it.  Doing this not only wastes valuable time, but it makes retweeting the content a “joke”. What is the purpose of retweeting? There are times when something you retweet is valuable to the followers that are following you and not the person who originally tweeted. Then, there are times when you retweet what your followers already received from that person who originally made the tweet.  I believe the true purpose of retweeting is to help out the person who originally made the tweet by spreading out their content. Theoretically, if Pete Cashmore from Mashable tweeted “ Drunk Driver in Texas to be Named on Twitter “, his 1.8 million followers could all make two decisions. First, they could all retweet this to most likely everyone that has already seen the tweet, which would not be very valuable. Or they could spread out the tweet throughout the whole entire day, without Pete or anyone on Mashable having to tweet the article again, so anyone that might have missed it when it was first tweeted. How do you prevent yourself from retweeting right away? Create customized columns with your Twitter client. Think about the typical people that you follow and retweet what they have tweeted.  Group these people together and keep in mind that the more followers you have the more columns you will want to think about creating. For instance, if you have 1,000 followers or less than 5 columns should allow you to have all the retweets you want to make later all ready at the top and not “hidden”.  On the other hand, if you have say over 10,000 followers, I would consider that you create more specified columns. From doing this, you will ensure the mission of retweeting what you wanted to retweeted is completed and valuable. © 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips . Customized Columns for Valuable Retweeting

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Customized Columns for Valuable Retweeting

Darren and I would like to wish all who celebrate, a Very Merry Christmas! We’ll return to our regular posts next week. © 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips . Merry Christmas from TwiTip!

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Merry Christmas from TwiTip!

We’re in a new age now. As social media networks, particularly Twitter, become adopted by the mainstream media and corporate marketing firms, we’re seeing an evolution in the way that products are launched. Some might say that this is nothing new, that marketing has always been about capturing the current buzz machines and playing them to your needs, but I disagree. The difference between marketing methods of old and social media marketing is that customers have a say. The success of a social media campaign is dependent not upon how much money is spent, but upon the people being marketed to. If the message works and they like the product, the masses will Tweet it to the rest of the masses. If it doesn’t, the campaign might not even get past the initial push, and will likely spiral into oblivion. It’s All about the People There’s one factor that you can’t control, and that’s people. Knowing that, you have to make the most of what you can control, which are the tools at your disposal. In this case, we’ll be talking Twitter, but it also works for Twitter, Facebook, Email Marketing, and video. So how can you use Twitter for a product launch? Well, there are the obvious methods, such as using the TweetMeme plugin on your blog and product pages. People love to click these because it’s so simple, and I’m really amazed when I find a blog that doesn’t use it. Forcing Your Hand Another option is to create your own banner, with a built in link pointing to your launch page. Again, this works well because people can simply click and go…there’s no work involved. My friend Mike and I implemented this recently for our launch and within just a few days have noticed a huge difference in the buzz around our product. But just creating the banner might not be enough. If you want to create a contest or track the amount of ReTweets, you’ll need a hashtag or custom URL. We created both, so that we could track each message that we create. This is an example of setting a control, so that you can not only track the results, but split-test what works best. If one hash tag isn’t working well, you can try another. If one of your URL’s isn’t seeing the amount of on-page action that you’d like, you can adjust your copy to fix it. Real Time Tracking Once you have your campaign in place, and you’ve set the parameters, you need to find a way to track the activity. This is where Twitter Search comes in quite handy. However, since I’m not a huge fan of Twitter’s interface, I prefer to use clients like Tweet Deck or Seesmic to create custom searches. Of course, I’ll create a panel for my hashtag and possibly my URL, but I don’t stop there. The next step is to set up a Google Alert, using those same queries, so that you can catch any instances that Twitter Search might miss. This also allows you to capture the activity of sites like Topsy, which republish popular Tweets. Although Twitter Search will capture most of your action, Google Alerts will pick up the stragglers for you. Real Time Display Lastly, if you really want to take advantage of Twitter to capture the buzz and hype around your product launch, then it’s time to show the world what everyone is saying. You can do this easily by creating a custom search (they call them groups) in Tweetizen and then embedding the results on sales and contest pages. This does a number of things for you: It provides social proof It creates scarcity, which is a great way to capture a buyer’s attention It creates a sense of belonging when people see their name in the results I’ve seen a number of products use this recently, and even as someone that’s used to seeing this sort of thing, I was impressed by the sense of belief I had when viewing the results. The Total Package If you implement these techniques in your launch, you’ll have a set of controls that you can test and manipulate, which will help you know very quickly if your launch is going to be a hit. If you don’t see the activity you were hoping for, then you can either adjust your campaign or scrap it for another. If you pull it off, and the launch builds momentum, then you might get lucky enough to make the Twitter Trends list or get featured on a social media blog, like Mashable. The great thing about strategies like this, is that you don’t need any cash to get started, yet you can compete with anyone on the Web. Now that’s power. © 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips . How to Use Twitter for a Product Launch

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How to Use Twitter for a Product Launch

OK, I have learned my lesson. I am going to tell you right out of the gate that when I read this piece of information about Twitter turning a profit in 2009 I was a bit skeptical. Now, the second part of this is that the source, BusinessWeek, is well, BusinessWeek so I tend to pay attention a bit more. Well, the times they are a changin’ for sure because the distinction between the venerable BusinessWeek and the rest of the Internet space may be less noticeable than before. As I went through the article I read the following In October, Twitter said it had struck multiyear arrangements that make users’ short blog postings available on Google.com and on Bing, which is run by Microsoft. Those agreements carry sufficient value to help Twitter achieve a small profit for 2009, say two people familiar with the company’s finances , who asked to remain anonymous because Twitter’s books are not a matter of public record. I added the italics because I now immediately place this story in the category of rumor. I suspect that if Twitter wants people to know that it turned a profit, no matter how big or small, they will let us know. Do I think they actually did turn a profit? I honestly don’t know because I don’t do their accounting and I haven’t spoken to ‘sources’ who think that leaking corporate data is cool. Now, of course, let’s not discount the possibility that Twitter allowed the leaks but now we are getting into silly territory. What this looks like though is that BusinessWeek is starting to sound more like the tech blogs and new world media that it has fought against. Verify facts with the company being covered? Nope. Two anonymous insiders will do because the story is “hot”. Oh boy. The one thing that is certain is that the biggest revenue generator (maybe only?) are the deals that were struck with Google and Microsoft for the Twitter feeds to be indexed in the search engines. These are rumored to be in the $25 million range with $15 million from Google and $10 million from Microsoft. If these numbers are indeed accurate I have to wonder what the $5 million difference is since the two companies are essentially getting the same data. Your speculation is welcome in the comments section here, as always. Another part of the ‘information’ that was ‘leaked’ to BW was the fact that Twitter has been cutting expenses and has now been left with people being the bulk of the expense to run the service. The company used to pay a lot of money to telecommunications companies for distributing billions of text messages over wireless networks. Twitter users can send and receive messages over both its Web service and text messages. Now that Twitter has become so popular, it has gained bargaining power with telecom companies and has managed to renegotiate so many deals with carriers that the company pays far less for the services. With 105 employees and estimates placing the needed money to run the operation at $25 million per year either those 105 people are making some nice coin or they have deals that are starting to look like being a pre-IPO Google employee. Either way, good for them. So as always is the tendency when looking at Twitter we must try to figure out just what will happen in the future to make more money through the widely used service. The BusinessWeek article tells us Over the last year, however, executives have started to talk about the various ways the company has been exploring to generate revenue. In addition to the search deals, Twitter plans an advertising program for early next year. The company also will charge for commercial Twitter accounts that would let businesses analyze tweet traffic. Get ready for 2010 to be a big year for Twitter as the world watches how they integrate advertising into the Tweet stream. Also, if you are a company you better make a little budget room for whatever commercial account services become available. Nothing was ‘leaked’ about how much that would cost so your guess is as good as ours or BusinessWeek’s or some anonymous guesser source.

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Twitter Profitable in 2009?