I am often asked about how to use Twitter effectively without spending a ton of time. While there are ways to automate some of your Twitter activity, an even better option is to participate strategically while you are there in order to get the maximum benefit in minimum time. The very first thing I advise my clients is to understand why you are even using Twitter. What is your strategy and what is your end goal? Are you trying to get more blog readers? Build your newsletter list? Find joint venture partners? Tweeting randomly and aimlessly isn't going to be very effective. Second, you'll want to spend a good amount of time interacting. There is nothing wrong with letting others know what's going on with you or your business. Just be sure to intersperse your tweets with some two-way conversation. This builds community and keeps things balanced and interesting. You don't want to be a "hit-and-run tweeter" who swoops in, tweets and leaves! Third, I tell people to follow the "10/1 rule"-- 10 non-promotional tweets to every 1 promotional one. You don't have to hit people over the head. I saw a good example of this recently where a pet accessories seller regularly tweeted a "bizarre animal fact of the day." It's a way of promoting indirectly while still providing your community with value and interesting (and memorable!) tidbits of info. Fourth, you want to find and follow people in your target market so that they are able to hear your message. Twellow.com and Wefollow.com are Twitter directories you can search by category. They're essentially the Yellow Pages of Twitter. If your business is local, a great way to find other local Twitter users is to use nearbytweets.com. You can use this site to search by both location and keyword. A lot of people like to use tools like this to set up "tweetups" which are basically local meetups of Twitter users in your area. These can be great for networking. Another technique if you are already following some people in your target market is using whoshouldifollow.com or mrtweet.com. Both of these sites recommend you new people to follow based on whom you are following already. Finally, don't let your fear that you have nothing interesting to say stop you from tweeting. People want transparency and authenticity. They want to connect with real people. You probably have a lot more interesting things to say than you give yourself credit for. If you are still stumped for what to tweet, here are some suggestions:
- Share links--some can be to your own stuff, but mostly link to others'
- Go to Twitthis.com and grab the bookmarklet to drag to your toolbar. This allows you to share content that's on any site outside of Twitter and post it to Twitter without even having to login
- Ask and answer questions--this often triggers conversation and helps you engage with others
- Use Twitpic.com to upload a picture, Utterli.com to post an audio tweet, or 12seconds.tv to post a video clip--these types of tweets add variety
- Re-tweet others, thank someone for re-tweeting you, be supportive, tell a joke, share a fact, offer a tip, comment on someone's twitter picture or background, congratulate someone, live-tweet an event, invite others to an upcoming event of your own, share an inspiring quote, solicit for guest bloggers, suggest someone to follow on #followfriday, post a poll...you get the idea.
The list is endless! At first glance, it may seem like this is a lot to do. In reality, you could implement these strategies a couple times a day or even just a couple times a week. It's the cumulative effect you're going for--which will pay off in the end! © 2009 Communicate Value. All Rights Reserved.Christine Gallagher, The Online Marketing and Social Media Success Coach, is founder of Communicate Value, where she is dedicated to teaching small business owners and professionals how to conquer the overwhelming aspects of online and social media marketing to increase business and maximize profits. To get your F.R.E.E. 5-Part E-Course and receive her weekly marketing & success articles on leveraging technology, building relationships and boosting your profits, visit http://communicatevalue.com.
When we begin speaking in terms of marketing, invariably the question comes up, are my marketing efforts true marketing efforts or are some viewing them as spam?
Spam is about taking the choice away from someone and delivering them information about products and services without their permission. Spam comes in the way of unsolicited emails, junk mail and telemarketing.
Spam leaves a bad taste in our mouths and for good reason. We have not asked to be inundated with the information that we find floods our inboxes these days.
Marketing when done responsibly can be fun and witty. Commercials that reach us emotionally are effective marketing tools. People who care about their audience take the time to consider their message and how it will reach others.
On Twitter we each have an option as to who we will follow. And one might suggest it is that choice that gives others the right to “spam”. Wrong. Spam is irresponsible and annoying. More will tune out than tune in.
Take time to consider your message and how it will connect with your followers. Are you sharing a valuable service, product or resource? Do you take the time to share on a personal level as well as sharing on a business level? Have you established a relationship with your followers? Is the information you are providing timely and appropriate?
If you can answer these questions with a yes answer then your message can effectively be considered marketing rather than spam. Your followers will welcome your post rather than turn away from it. Share your tweet with others and in turn respond in kind to their own messages and tweets. After all, marketing is all about the relationship and spam is about nothing more than the bottom line.
Many of us have taken on the social networks as marketing tools for our businesses. And in doing so, we have decided to use Twitter. Now we have accounts, at which we stare blankly.
What should we be tweeting about?
We have 140 characters to work with and while that seems easy, it can prove more difficult to provide a valuable post in 140 characters or less. We want to engage our audience, but the question then becomes how.
What should you be sharing with your followers? What is it that they want to see?
They want great conversation. Give them a statement worth replying to. Reply in kind and open the lines of communication.
They want to get to know the person behind the tweets. Give them the opportunity to get to know you, your personality, as well as your company and services.
They want links to great sites, videos or information. If you find it relevant and useful, chances are someone else will appreciate the resource as well.
They want a tweet worthy of sharing with their own followers. Whether that comes in the form of a particularly humorous quip or a great article you have read, give them something they can retweet.
While you want to engage your followers, they want to engage you as well. Don’t be afraid to jump in and get involved yourself. Join in on the conversations, thank a fellow Twitterer for sharing a resource you found helpful. Retweet their posts as well.
In any good relationship there is balance, give and take. Don’t ask anything of your audience that you are unwilling to give yourself. If you are afraid to take your social networking to the next level, don’t expect that others will find you approachable and worthy of their time and effort.
Give them what they want and what you will get in turn will be invaluable to you and your business.
Knowing who to follow on Twitter is important in your marketing efforts. You want to follow those who are of interest to you. You want to follow those who are of use to you and your business. Your hope is that they will in turn follow you back, if they aren’t already following you, thus opening up the lines of communication between your business and your audience. There are several tools that can be used to make these efforts easier and more streamlined. http://mrtweet.com/ Mr. Tweet - Show the influencers and followers you should follow and suggests you to enthusiastic users relevant to you. http://justtweetit.comJust Tweet It - A user directory for Twitter organized by genre to allow for users to easily find other Twitter users to connect with. http://www.retweetrank.comRetweet Rank - Retweetrank lets you find rank of any twitter user. With the rank, latest retweets of the user are shown and an RSS feed can also be grabbed for the same. http://www.twellow.com/Twellow - A directory of public Twitter accounts, with hundreds of categories and search features to help you find people who matter to you. http://twitterel.com/TwitteRel - By using Twitterel.com you can make your life a lot more interesting, we thought of a way to connect to other twitter users who share the same interests as you do. http://friendorfollow.com/Friend or Follow - Who are you following that's not following you back? Who's following you that you're not following back? http://twitoria.com/Twitoria - Twitoria is a web app that tidies up your Twitter friends list by revealing inactive friends that haven't tweeted in a long time so you can unfollow them. http://topify.com/Topify - Twitter application that improves Twitter's email notification and allows to follow and reply to direct messages by email. http://tweepler.com/Tweepler - A Twitter application that allows you to organize followers. http://twimailer.com/Twimailer - Tired of shallow e-mails from Twitter when someone follows you? Want to know more about the people who are following you? Twimailer is a free service that delivers that information right to your inbox! http://www.tweetertags.com/tagsTweeterTags - Get the most out of Twitter by finding the right people to share the conversation: Tweeter Tags makes it easy to declare your interests and find new, like-minded friends. Have a question you need answering? Find relevant people on Twitter to ask.
If you've done any reading on the Twitter marketing, you probably realize that tweeting can be an effective, cost-free or low-cost solution for marketing your business. All too often, however, we may be left wondering what to tweet about our businesses. We are under the mistaken impression that we simply have nothing worthy of sharing. A good tweet can not only inform your followers about new developments in your company, but it can also educate, inform, or entertain them. .Once you achieve visibility, both your company profile and your client prospect levels will rise. The word of mouth that can come from a particularly intelligent tweet or series of tweets can result in hundreds or thousands of dollars in free advertising. If you provide tweets that appeals to your followers, you'll gain credibility and be on your way to forming a valuable relationship. This can be very powerful from a marketing point of view. If you’re looking for things to tweet about in relation to your business, consider some of these ideas. This is a list of 19 reasons to tweet about your business and help you get started today in utilizing this amazing promotional strategy for your business:
- Starting a new business
- Celebrating a company anniversary
- Publishing of a new article or series of articles
- Publishing of a new blog post related to your business
- Publishing of a book or ebook
- Promote a book signing
- Receiving an award
- Announcement a partnership
- Promote a specific product, service, event, contest or fundraiser
- Promote a product or service that is holiday themed
- Promote a sale or holiday sale
- Promote a campaign using your company products that promotes a cause or creates awareness about something important
- Announce that you're available to speak on particular subjects of interest
- Promote a public appearance on television, radio or in person
- Launching of a website or blog
- Website or blog anniversary
- Announce free information or resources are available
- Sponsoring a workshop, seminar, conference or tele-seminar
- Announcement of a new strategic partnership or alliance
While there are many other reasons to tweet, these ideas should help you jumpstart your creativity.
Twitter and Facebook are not the only social media sites out there--not by a long shot. But they are of course two of the most well known and widely used. They are also very similar in that they both essentially function as "status updates." Because of this similarity, some really great tools and applications have come out which allow users to integrate the two. Here are six of the tools I have used and like:
Twitter clients like Seesmic or Tweetdeck: These are two Twitter desktop clients that allow you to browse your friends' Facebook status updates and update your own status right from their interface--no need to have a web browser open or be logged into the Twitter or Facebook sites.
Twitter or Selective Twitter Status applications: These two Facebook applications allow your tweets to automatically be posted to your profile. Selective Twitter Status is great because you decide which specific tweets go to update your Facebook status by adding #fb after them. This way your friends who aren't familiar with Twitter lingo aren't confused by your frequent status updates. Vlingo application: Vlingo is a free application for the Blackberry, Nokia and iPhone. It allows you to update your Facebook or Twitter status using your voice right from your phone! FriendFeed application: If you use FriendFeed, which consolidates all of your social media activities across different networks in one place, you can add the Facebook FriendFeed application. If you are importing your Twitter feed, every time you tweet it will post to your Facebook wall. This may be preferable to updating your status with every tweet such as with the Twitter for Facebook application. Tweetpo.st: Tweetpo.st is a very cool site which allows you to post tweets as Facebook status updates, post links you tweet on your Facebook wall (so your friends can watch videos and see pictures right in their News Feed), ignore @replies, change @mentions to real names and more. It does all of this by using Facebook Connect. Custom Profile Box or Extended Info applications: Finally, if you are just looking for a way to let your Facebook friends know that you tweet and encourage them to follow you, you can add one of these Facebook applications. They both allow you to insert a graphic or text, which you can then easily link to your Twitter profile. For example, I added a clickable Twitter bird logo that reads "follow me on Twitter." Now you can save time and expend less effort on the two most popular social sites by using these helpful (and free!) social networking tools. © 2009 Communicate Value. All Rights Reserved. Christine Gallagher, The Online Marketing and Social Media Success Coach, is founder of Communicate Value, where she is dedicated to teaching small business owners and professionals how to conquer the overwhelming aspects of online and social media marketing to increase business and maximize profits. To get your F.R.E.E. 5-Part E-Course and receive her weekly marketing & success articles on leveraging technology, building relationships and boosting your profits, visit http://communicatevalue.com.
When it comes to Twitter, I always stress to clients that results don't happen overnight. This is not to discourage them from using it to enhance their marketing--but to help them understand the power of regular, personal interactions and the cumulative effect this can have on their business. Each time you engage others on Twitter, you are planting seeds that can have potentially big payoffs in the future. Once I explain this concept, the next concern is usually that this will be a huge time investment. It's not--if you leverage your time by applying a few of the select strategies I discuss here. 1. Re-tweet: Re-posting others' interesting tweets is one of the simplest and most effective ways to be discovered and gain more followers. For the people that already are following you, it's a quick way to get on their radars. 2. Thought-provoking quote: People just love great quotes. You have a good chance of being re-tweeted with these. The ones you choose also help you share a slice of your personality. 3. Feedback on someone's link: Take a minute to visit a link someone has posted. They will often preface the link with what it's about. If it interests you, check it out and share your thoughts with the poster afterwards. 4. Answer a question: Know the answer? By all means, share your expertise. If the question pertains to your niche, that's even better. 5. Ask a question: By the same token, people like to share their own knowledge. Give them an opportunity. 6. Thank someone for their re-tweet or compliment: Gratitude is powerful and people appreciate and tend to remember when you've expressed it. 7. Respond to @ replies and direct messages: Try to respond to both the public and private messages you receive. It's just common courtesy. Plus, there are many people who unfortunately do not do it--so exceed others' expectations by making a habit of doing so. 8. Participate in #followfriday: FollowFriday is simply a fun event every Friday on Twitter where people recommend others to follow. They add the hash tag after they've given the Twitter usernames. If you have people in mind you think would be good to follow, tell others--there's a good chance those you've recommended will return the favor. 9. Use Blip.fm: If you're a music lover (who isn't?), try using Blip.fm. All you have to do is set up a free account on their site and you can start playing DJ. Choose the option to send the songs you've "blipped" to Twitter. Music really does bring people together. Of course, you don't want to fill up your entire Twitter stream with blips, but once in awhile share your musical tastes with others. 10. Post a poll: Do you need feedback on something? Yep, there's a hashtag for that: #poll. People love participating in these. By choosing to put a few of these strategies in place each day, you'll build momentum, raise your profile and start to notice others engaging and re-tweeting you more. As in real life, it's about personality. Let that come through and it will pique others' curiosity, drive them to seek out more information about you, and eventually cause them to click through to your site. Commit to implementing these techniques regularly--it essentially comes down to two things, interacting and providing value--and you will begin being perceived as an expert, see yourself getting recommended by others, and be well on your way to building your own "tribe" of raving fans. Now, you can't say you don't know what to tweet about. :) © 2009 Communicate Value. All Rights Reserved. Christine Gallagher, The Online Marketing and Social Media Success Coach, is founder of Communicate Value, where she is dedicated to teaching small business owners and professionals how to conquer the overwhelming aspects of online and social media marketing to increase business and maximize profits. To get your F.R.E.E. 5-Part E-Course and receive her weekly marketing & success articles on leveraging technology, building relationships and boosting your profits, visit http://communicatevalue.com.
Recently, Tweetdeck announced an upgrade and this made a lot of people very, very happy. The reason? Tweetdeck used to experience some bugs and Adobe Air did not make that any easier. Now, Tweetdeck is back with an improved interface and a fabulous new iPhone app.
However, some people are still perplexed at why one should use Tweetdeck over just going straight to a browser, accessing it via a mobile device or using something over Tweetdeck.
Here are three ways to use Tweetdeck to improve your Twitter experience:
1. Categorize Your Twitter Followers
Tweetdeck has these things called "groups" and you can setup as many of them as you want. Once setup, you have the ability to then list them in columns for easy access and so you can see them at all times. Some of the columns I recommend include: clients, team, favorites, tech tips, etc. Categorize the things that are most important so you can converse with your rock stars in a much easier way.
2. Use Tweetdeck to Clear Replies You've Seen
Do you ever find your @ replies just get to be overwhelming? If so, use Tweetdeck to "mark them as read" so that you know you've either seen it or actioned it and you can now move on. The worst thing about the browser interface is that you can often forget if you've replied or not and then spend a lot of time going back into your history. Tweetdeck eliminates that.
3. Setup Notifications to Play When Tweets Come In Directed at You
Now, some people may find this distracting but as more and more people use Twitter as their primary means of communication, you can use Tweetdeck to be notified immediately as to when someone mentions your name or messages you directly. This will help you stay on the top of your game without being too distracted by e-mail and telephone.
These are just three ways that you can use Tweetdeck to improve your Twitter experience. It helps with automation, ease of use and helps to keep that conversation going.
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Erin Blaskie is the owner of Business Services, ETC - A Global Internet Marketing & Implementation Firm. Her company helps businesses from around the world take their practice online and create huge success using various internet marketing tactics. Erin herself has been featured in three print books (”Becoming an Online Business Manager” by Tina Forsyth, “My So-Called Freelance Life” by Michelle Goodman, and “The Official AWE Emerging Trends Guide 2009” compiled by the Association of Web Entrepreneurs), honored as Office Arrow’s 2008 Runner-Up Business Woman of the Year, interviewed by countless gurus and media personalities (John Jantsch of Duct Tape Marketing, Sheri McConnell, Stacy Karacostas, Gina McNew) and featured in major news publications (ABCNews.com, Ottawa Citizen and Employment Journal).
You have probably noticed that Twitter is more popular than ever. As small business owners and solopreneurs we know how beneficial social media can be but are often overwhelmed at the thought of managing it all.
If you are looking to take advantage of Twitter in your business without it taking over your life, here are some great "shortcut" tools and applications to keep you in the social media game without sacrificing all of your precious time!
Tweetdeck: A desktop client that allows you to manage all of your Twitter activity without being logged on to the web. This is very popular due to its ability to organize your followers into groups. Tweetdeck has also recently added the ability to update your Facebook status from the interface as well chat with your Facebook friends.
Twellow: The Twitter yellow pages! Find Twitter users by category or geographic area. This is a good way to find new and interesting people to follow.
Tweetie/Twitterberry: For those of you looking for ways to tweet on the go, I prefer Tweetie for iPhone. I have also heard good things about Twitterberry, which is for the Blackberry.
GroupTweet: Group message broadcasting for Twitter. This tool gives you the ability to send private tweets to only a select group of followers which you choose. I've seen this used successfully for everything from web development projects and school assignments to diet and exercise accountability clubs.
Monitter: This is one of my favorite tools. It lets you monitor Twitter for a set of keywords and see what people are saying.
Twitterfox: If you use the Firefox browser, this is a nice extension which notifies you when your friends update their status on Twitter.
TwitThis: A way for people to send Twitter messages about blog posts or websites. When you click on the TwitThis button or link, it takes the URL of the webpage and creates a shortened URL. You can then send the shortened URL and a description of the page to others on Twitter. I love using this to quickly share the URLs of interesting articles or posts I come across while browsing the web.
Hashtags.org: Hashtags bring some order to the updates of Twitter users. For example, a couple of years back the hashtag #sandiegofires was used in order for those interested to easily follow this topic. Hashtags.orgprovides real-time tracking of all the hashtags being used on Twitter.
WhoShouldIFollow: This is a very simple tool which looks at your current friend list and recommends others to follow based on that list. One of the Twitter questions I am asked most often is how to find more people to follow. This makes it quick and easy to do.
TweetBeep: If you want to know when someone mentions your name, company, product or competitors you can get updates sent to you to stay on top of it all.
Twitterfeed: Allows you to quickly tweet your blog posts. Just sign up and enter your blog feed and Twitter login information. When you publish a blog post, it will be sent to Twitter automatically.
These are some of my top picks--there are too many tools out there to even begin to mention them all. However, I recommend getting started with some of these and keeping an eye out for any others you think would help streamline your Twitter experience and save you time. (You'll never have a shortage--there are new applications arriving on the scene every day!)
© 2009 Communicate Value. All Rights Reserved.
Christine Gallagher, The Online Marketing and Social Media Success Coach, is founder of Communicate Value, where she is dedicated to teaching solopreneurs and small business owners how to use online marketing and social media to communicate effectively and authentically and attract more business. To get your F.R.E.E. 5-Part E-Course and receive her weekly marketing & success articles on leveraging technology, building relationships and boosting your profits, visit http://communicatevalue.com.
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