Welcome to the GSCSC, Inc. Website, and welcome to the GSCSC, Inc. Website Blog. In this article, we will be discussing Twitter Marketing . Richard.

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Richard Goddeau Basics Of Twitter Marketing Explained | Twitter …

LOL … if the 60s had Twitter, this is what it might look like.

Twishitter: Twitter Apps Head Towards The Gutter. 64 Comments. by MG Siegler on May 5, 2009. picture-13 It’s inevitable. A platform becomes popular, gains mainstream appeal, and the race to the bottom begins. We saw this happen with the …

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Twishitter: Twitter Apps Head Towards The Gutter

Andrew Hyde has a great post today about how non-internet business can (and should) use Twitter for cheap and effective marketing . Andrew is an expert at.

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Post du Jour – Localized Twitter Marketing | Unto The Breach

Ok, so the title is a little sensationalist, but I had to get you here somehow so you could see the most bookmarked web-based Twitter applications of the moment!! Note that these has been put together on the basis of the number of saved bookmarks on delicious and clearly not THE definitive list based on registered users or traffic.

• twitter (13566)

1. twittervision (4282 overall)
2. twitterfeed (3867 overall)
3. twhirl (3319 overall)
4. tweetscan (2655 overall)
5. twistori (2631 overall)
6. twitter-search (2500 overall)
7. tweetdeck (2439 overall)
8. twitpic (2244 overall)
9. hellotxt (1979 overall)
10. twitterrific (1729 overall)
11. twitterholic (1612 overall)
12. tweetstats (1549 overall)
13. twellow (1527 overall)
14. twitturly (1460 overall)
15. twitter-grader (1431 overall)
16. twitscoop (1410 overall)
17. quotably (1334 overall)
18. twitterlocal (1319 overall)
19. monitter (1285 overall)
20. twubble (1264 overall)
21. twittearth (1191 overall)
22. grouptweet (1180 overall)
23. hashtags (1124 overall)
24. tweetburner (1113 overall)
25. twitbin (1093 overall)
26. twittercounter (1081 overall)
27. tweetlater (994 overall)
28. terraminds-twitter-search (966 overall)
29. tweetvolume (944 overall)
30. qwitter (935 overall)
31. friendorfollow (929 overall)
32. twitthis (902 overall)
33. twist (883 overall)
34. twitter-karma (854 overall)
35. xpenser (822 overall)
36. twittermail (813 overall)
37. twemes (803 overall)
38. tweetbeep (803 overall)
39. twitdir (770 overall)
40. twitxr (767 overall)
41. twitterfox (760 overall)
42. hahlo (688 overall)
43. twinfluence (654 overall)
44. tweetmeme (652 overall)
45. tweetwheel (647 overall)
46. twuffer (636 overall)
47. botanicalls-twitter-diy (631 overall)
48. twittersnooze (629 overall)
49. twtpoll (614 overall)
50. mrtweet (609 overall)
51. twittercal (605 overall)
52. remember-the-milk-for-twitter (594 overall)
53. snitter (593 overall)
54. twitterpatterns (585 overall)
55. strawpollnow (575 overall)
56. twitterfone (547 overall)
57. whoshouldifollow (539 overall)
58. twitbacks (539 overall)
59. tweetr (526 overall)
60. twitdom (525 overall)
61. tweetree (522 overall)
62. favrd (520 overall)
63. election.twitter (506 overall)
64. peoplebrowsr (501 overall)
65. tweetclouds (498 overall)
66. pockettweets (498 overall)
67. cursebird (488 overall)
68. twistory (480 overall)
69. twitterverse (470 overall)
70. tweetgrid (470 overall)
71. twittermap (466 overall)
72. tweetag (458 overall)
73. twilert (457 overall)
74. twitterposter (456 overall)
75. loudtwitter (443 overall)
76. twitterfriends (439 overall)
77. spaz (431 overall)
78. be-a-magpie (421 overall)
79. tweetake (420 overall)
80. twitter-friends-network-browser (419 overall)
81. matt (414 overall)
82. twitter100 (411 overall)
83. colorwar2008 (411 overall)
84. twitteroo (408 overall)
85. tweetrush (389 overall)
86. fuelfrog (385 overall)
87. twitter-blocks (383 overall)
88. tweeterboard (375 overall)
89. spy (373 overall)
90. twerpscan (372 overall)
91. splitweet (371 overall)
92. twittergram (364 overall)
93. twittgroups (362 overall)
94. brightkit (361 overall)
95. twitlinks (359 overall)
96. twitternotes (358 overall)
97. tweetwasters (354 overall)
98. foodfeed (352 overall)
99. twitterblacklist (348 overall)
100. twitku (347 overall)

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Is Twitter the real deal or just a fad? I heard this question repeatedly in public forums. People want to know if twitter marketing is potentially effective or just another hype.

It just makes sense. With the growing number of Twitterers, and people twittering about every topic you can possibly imagine, there are rooms for marketers to get their messages out there if they do it the right way.

Here’s a shocking truth. It’s shocking mostly because it comes from a social media evangelist.

Like with any new marketing technology, it is not a surprise that Twitter marketing is more of a hype-up phenomenon than reality. I’ve seen a few of them and I bet there will be more to come in near future. Very aggressive marketers will sell products that claim to teach how to make an insane amount of money with Twitter easily.

Twitter will be seen as a way to “chat” while make money.

A lot of new Twitterers will jump on the bandwagon and find the fact out the hard way. Some of them will eventually believe that if they could not do it, then it is a fad.

The truth is somewhere in the middle.

Again, we’ve seen it with blogs. We’ve seen it with podcasts. Now is the turn for Twitter wave.

Getting Unfair Advantages as an Early Adopter of Twitter

Experience has told us that early adopters to a marketing technology that works is going to give an unfair advantage over others who come in much later.

Bloggers who got started a few years back can easily create a blog, posted short updates a few times a day and grew their traffic to a few hundreds or even thousands in a few short months.

Try that approach today. I’ll save you time to do that. It doesn’t work.

As competitions get stiffer, quality of content is compulsory if you want to stand out in the crowd.

Problem is, early adopters always have to figure things out by themselves. Often through trial and error.

You don’t have to do it if you don’t want to. There is a way to get such advantage and at the same time enjoy the advantage not available to your competitors (yet).

If you monitor the twittosphere and blogosphere closely, right now you’ll be able to see early results using specific strategies by social media marketers. Study how that works and adopt it to your business.

It requires work, but if you do it right, you will still be able to penetrate your market quite easily in this relatively new medium.

The Best Advice I Could Give…

This is the best advice I could give about integrating Twitter into your marketing mix at this moment.

Just do it.

No, not that kind of slogan but more about taking action and move toward your goal with the right plan and expectation.

For an example of setting the right expectation is that you may find people are talking about everything in Twitter but that doesn’t mean you will be able to grow massive amount of followers and buyers with Twitter alone but at least you can start building relationship and interacting with your audience.

So, the first thing to start with is a plan. Understand your (future) followers and plan on what you are going to do with Twitter. Here are some ideas:

• Broadcast news.
• Ask questions and get feedback / advice.
• Run a poll.
• Point to useful resources.
• Promote your content.
• Tell others about a new job or event.

Of course, the plan means nothing without followers, but in order to attract the right followers you must know what you are trying to aim with it. Here is a more complete guide on how to create a plan for using Twitter.

How to Increase Your Twitter Followers (and Following)

In Twitter, there are people who you follow and those who follow you. Obviously if you want to build an audience, you need to have more followers.

However, you also need to be following influencers and experts in your niche. If nothing else, you need to know what they tweet and how they do it. Establishing relationships with key people in the industry can only bring good things to your business.

You may start by following bloggers who showcase their Twitter profiles on their sites or blogs or use Twitter Search. In my Twitter tutorial, I listed five ways to find the right people to follow.

“But now, how could I get followers?” I hear you ask.

Instead of focusing on getting followers, you should put your effort on building value. Even as the result the number of followers grow slowly, if you do it the right way, most likely they will be much more responsive than if you mass follow everyone hoping that some of them will follow you back.

Think about building a small community instead of large followers who don’t even know you.

Twitter is about karma. The more you help others — or make your Twitter as a useful resource — the more you receive. It takes time to build followers and establish relationships with followers and influencers.

If you are interested in getting more followers for Twitter account, here are a few ideas you could use:

• Promote, promote, promote. Put your Twitter ID in the signature of every email. Mention it in your blog. Whenever you have a chance to drop a hint about your Twitter, do it. Of course, that presumes you are communicating with the right audience.
• Organize a contest through your Twitter profile. This is effective only if you are able to get participants who will in turn talk about the contest. Assuming they also have followers, soon you will be able to grow your followers.
• Guest blogging. Writing for other blogs is very close to stealing other people’s traffic. You provide content while they drive you some traffic in return. If you target the right blogs, you are going to build your Twitter folowers in no time.
• Cross promotion. Explicitly ask a Twitterer to mention about you or your content and in return you do the same for them. This may happen automatically if you promote other people’s content but a little self promotion doesn’t hurt either.
• Create linkbait. Superb quality content gets its share of publicity through social media, links from blogs and web sites and people tend to pass it via email or Twitter. Certainly many people are wiling to follow you if you are able to create such an interesting and useful piece of content.

General Tips for Interacting with Twitter Followers / Following

Getting followers to your Twitter account is just half of the battle for twitter marketing. You need to interact and cultivate relationships with your followers. Each tweet is an opportunity to reach out and get in touch with them. Make them know you better. It is a process, but definitely something worth doing.

Here are a few suggestions when it comes to interacting with Twitter followers / following:

• Use your personal brand as Twitter ID. If you are known as the traffic expert, you can use that, but generally a name is good enough for personal brand. Just remember that Twitter ID should not be too long. It saves some characters when people reply or refer to you in their tweets.
• Join the conversations. Follow the right people and join in the conversations to start expanding your network. Twitter is not a one way broadcast medium so you should not use it as such. If someone @reply to you, make sure you answer if answer is necessary.
• Share valuable information. Don’t be hesitant to promote your findings, even if it is your competitor’s content. Twitter is about giving away valuable stuff and make following your account enjoyable, so people pay more attention to your tweets. They will appreciate the fact that you are follower-centric.
• Find out who follows you. At the very least, read his/her bio. If you are involved in other marketing activities like blogging, knowing who is doing what will open up new opportunities. Guest blogging in other people’s blogs, for instance, not only drive you traffic, but also increase your Twitter followers. But first of all, it is a conversation starter.
• Know who reply to you. If you are not using an advanced Twitter client, consider grabbing RSS feed to your personal brand search onto your favorite news reader.

Twittosphere is an entirely different social media world that you should be listening to besides the blogosphere. If you omit either one of then, you are only getting a part of the equation.

Source

Alright I admit it, I’ve drank the Twitter kool-aid. For a while I was in the “I don’t care what you’re doing right now” camp, but have since discovered that it really is a great way to keep up on current events, find interesting people and keep in touch. And like a number of geeks, I carry several mobile Internet devices at all times. So I gave as many mobile Twitter clients/services a try, and here’s what I’ve found.

ceTwit

Works as advertised. The author tests on an HTC TyTN II (AT&T 8525) and a Samsung Blackjack, but he has tried to make it Smartphone friendly. For what it’s worth, it worked like a charm on my HTC S621. Well, user icons weren’t displayed, but I would consider that a feature not a bug, as it uses less bandwidth (Canadians will appreciate that). Update: I got in touch w/ the author, and he confirmed that the Smartphone version doesn’t support avatars, intentionally. Of all the Windows Mobile Twitter clients I tried, this is the one that remains on my Smartphone. Download here.

Hahlo

Another web based Twitter client designed specifically for iPhones and/or iPod Touches. So no jailbreaking or software installations required - just point Safari to http://hahlo.com. Of the web based clients, this one was the most “buggy” for me. A direct message sent to a friend apparently just disappeared into the ether. With that said, it does have a lot of features and the UI is decent.

Jargong

I’m actually glad I don’t have a supported phone. This is another one of those “the entire world in one” applications. Here’s their schtick - “Jargong is Social Networking (Flickr and Twitter), Instant Messaging (MSN, ICQ, AIM, Yahoo, Google Talk and Jabber) and Feeds (Google Reader) in a single client application”. Phew. If you’ve used this app and have some thoughts to share, by all means do so in the comments and I’ll update this paragraph accordingly.

Jitter

Jitter is Java based, so it’s almost guaranteed this one will work on your phone. Very minimal, low bandwidth, text only. A tiny bit ugly, but certainly functional. I’m a little confused why it had people in the “send a direct message to” list that I’ve never added to Twitter, but eh, no big deal. Perhaps the coder assumed everyone adds Scoble to Twitter.

MobileTwitter

I think this was the first actual Twitter app for jailbroken iPhones and iPod Touches. I could be totally wrong. It’s functional, not ugly, what more can I say. It looks a lot like the web interfaces (PocketTweets etc). But it has a cool icon for your Dashboard. Install it via Installer.app.

PocketTweets

Another web based interface to Twitter, but very specifically created for the iPhone and/or iPod Touch. Just visit http://www.pockettweets.com from your iPhone/iPod Touch. It is very slick, loads quickly and it’s pretty feature rich. Of the web based Twitter interfaces for the iPhone, this one is my favorite.

psychzzz

Very plain. Kinda blah. Only allows you to update Twitter, not read friends updates etc. But it gets the job done, and it’s certainly low bandwidth. Just point your mobile browser to http://mobi.psychzzz.com. You an also run a few other tools from the page, like “Domain Checker” and “Site Ping”.

SQIJ

I try to stick to the saying “if you don’t have something nice to say, don’t say anything”. I’m making an exception here. Seriously, don’t download this software if all you’re looking for is a Twitter client. SQIJ is actually a collection of “Applets”, and Twitter happens to be one of them. If the other Applets appeal to you, and you want a Twitter client, maybe this software is for you. Things that annoyed me: you have to run a setup.exe w/ your phone docked (just give me the .cab please), you have to create a SQIJ account in order to add the Twitter applet and it was slow as death. With all of that said, the actual UI wasn’t totally ugly or hard to use.

ThinCloud Twitter

This is a web-based Twitter client designed specifically for iPhones and/or iPod Touches. That means you don’t need to have a jail-broken device, just load https://twitter.thincloud.com/login in Safari. I preferred PocketTweets, but you may not.

twitter2go

Uhhh something’s awry at twitter2go.com. Or at least in Internet Explorer Mobile. The “bookmark” function (which is a bit of a security risk as it saves your username and password in plain text) doesn’t work, trying to view someones status will only display one specific user (no matter what name you enter). The update feature, however, works perfectly fine. Even if you’re determined to find a simple web based Twitter client, I’d skip this one.

Twitter Email

There are a few 3rd party services such as http://emailtwitter.com, but I’m not sure I’d recommend them. Though you can set up an account with them so you don’t have to email your password each time you want to update, it’s still not ideal. A better solution might be to sign up for tumblr, find the private email address used to update your tumbl blog (it’s in the “goodies” section”) and then use http://twitterfeed.com to import your tumble blog RSS feed.

Twitteresce

For some reason, Twitteresce fails to install (on my Java J2ME enabled phone). I transferred the .jad file to my phone several different ways, and I get a default “this Midlet failed to install” error. Such is life. If you have an experience using this client, please feel free to leave a comment below and I’ll update accordingly.

Twitter Flashlite

I don’t have a Flashlite enabled phone, so I couldn’t give this one a try. From the dev: “The application just updates the status message but I am thinking to add support for other Twitter APIs. There are bugs in application (not saving credentials in SharedObject, bad graphics, bad user-interaction (UI, soft-key-mapping). I would post the code later after fixing/cleaning.” I’ve tried leaving a comment on the devs site asking for some screenshots, but I’m not sure it went through. Ah well.

Twitter IM

From: http://help.twitter.com/index.php?pg=kb.page&id=28

Twitter asks that you verify your Jabber, Gtalk and Live Journal chat addresses, just to make sure that you’re you. If you haven’t added your IM address to Twitter, follow the first set of instructions. If you’ve added your IM address but your updates aren’t posting, skip down to the second set of instructions.

1. Log in to Twitter.
2. Click on the Settings link in the top navigation bar.
3. Click on the Phone & IM link.
4. Click to verify your IM account. That should do it!

Twitter Mobile Home

Point your mobile browser to http://m.twitter.com/login. Login. Done.

Twitter SMS

First see: How to activate your phone for Twitter

Then text your update to:

Let’s get really wacky. Let’s figure out how to use Twitter to help a Big Pharma company. That should be an interesting challenge.

Everybody who uses it tends to fall in love with Twitter, and meanwhile everyone seems to pretty much despise Big Pharma … is there a twitterific way for one of these monolithic drug companies to soften our distaste?

First let’s pick a Big Pharma company. I’ll choose Pfizer.

Now let’s look at some of the diseases that Pfizer drugs try to tackle. “Clinical Depression?” That works. Depression seems to be on the rise. Pfizer offers a drug called Sinequan to help manage clinical depression. A quick Google Blog Search reveals over 12,000 hits mentioning this drug. That’s enough critical mass to warrant a campaign like the one below.

Now, on to Twitter. (I need to assume that you are familiar with Twitter. If not there are many posts out there that can explain it all to you.)

If we’re a marketer from Pfizer, we can create a new Twitter account called “twitter.com/sinequan.”

Of course we could also choose usernames like “Pfizer” (too broad) or “Depression” (too depressing – who’d want to publicly “follow” a Twitter account with a name like that?) The username “Sinequan” is kinda mysterious-sounding; only those who have a prescription (or know of friends/family on the drug) will catch on to the import of the name; and besides, we’re not trying to HIDE; we are actively trying to be FOUND – just in an unobtrusive way.

Now we go to Terraminds to conduct some twittersearches on the term “depression.” (Apparently Twitter will offer this functionality itself, soon.)

Plenty of the microposts that mention this term via Twitter are inappropriate for our purposes, e.g., “Watching an episode of Scrubs about depression” or “ Looks like that tropical depression (#10) has broken up.” We can safely ignore those.

But this same basic search quickly turns up tweets like these:

“Online test scores me at 76% for adult ADD - but notes that depression and anxiety must first be discounted as causes.”

“Feeling very down… today has not been a good depression day… Hate being a freak.”

“I’m still not in the mood to write a new sensible post because of my postnatal depression… was I even pregnant?”

(Before you bitch me out for insensitivity for “outing” these posts, please keep in mind that these were written and posted in a public forum! Clinical depression is horrible & debilitating; using the Social Media techniques described in this post is not intended to exploit but to help these sufferers.)

Ultimately (and sadly), it seems that there are scores of tweets containing the phrase “depression.”

Now, the Pfizer marketer who manages the “Sinequan” account on Twitter can begin to “follow” any & all of the twitterati who use the word “depression” in an appropriate way in their tweets. These twitterers will receive an email that “Sinequan is now following your updates on Twitter. Check out Sinequan’s profile here: http://twitter.com/sinequan.”

Most twitterati I know can hardly resist the urge to check-out the profiles of any new “followers.” At the “Sinequan” profile page, they’d find a Web link pointing to the official Sinequan webpage maintained by Pfizer. Actually I’d recommend that Pfizer create a beefed-up landing page for folks who find it via Twitter, e.g., with info on “Why is ‘Sinequan’ following me on Twitter?”, with quizzes (“How can you tell if you are clinically depressed?”) – and, with info on community resources … in other words, a page designed to help sufferers whether they become Sinequan users or not!

And “why is Sinequan following me on Twitter?” – This could be easily explained. “If you found this page because you saw that ‘Sinequan’ is now following you on Twitter,’ it’s just because you once posted a tweet that used the word ‘depression.’ If you think you might suffer from clinical depression, this site may help you. If we got it wrong, we’re really sorry: just let us know through this web form and we’ll remove our subscription to your tweets. (No need to give us any personal info beyond your public Twitter name.) Thanks!” Short, sweet, human.

(Speaking of “human” … Ideally there’s a true human personality behind the “Sinequan” account. It would be nice to introduce them via this beefed-up landing page.)

Now, what should “Sinequan” tweet about? Because once “Sinequan” has started “following” a few dozen (or few hundred!) twitterers, we can assume that a decent handful will reciprocate and start “following” Sinequan’s tweets. A community will form. A community “founded” by Pfizer’s Sinequan rep, sure, yet also a community of people with similar issues who might also start to help each other out. A virtual support group.

Here’s what Sinequan should NOT tweet about: Sinequan. If this becomes a Pfizer commercial in execution, it’s a campaign that deserves execution – as in “death.”

Rather, the Pfizer rep could use the “Sinequan” account to microblog about Clinical Depression. I envision statistics (“National survey: 25% of the population reported having symptoms severe enough to warranty the diagnosis for an anxiety disorder”), news (“Study: Employers benefit from treating depression”), helpful tidbits (“Pregnant Smokers May Suffer Depression”), etc. Any one of those tweets could change a sufferer’s life.

Will Sinequan sales soar? Not likely. Will more people who may suffer from clinical depression seek out a doctor? – maybe ask their physician about Sinequan? No doubt.

More to the point: would anyone object to this use of Twitter? If it is handled with sensitivity, I think not.

And that leads us full circle. The use of a Social Media tool like Twitter – used with subtlety, grace and in adherence to the idea of contributing to the community – could make a Big Pharma company like Pfizer look downright humane. Maybe even human. Whodathunkit??

Source

Apparently micro-blogging is getting more and more popular by the day and consequently its biggest platform on the web, Twitter, is rapidly growing as well. This means there’s a whole new emerging market of tech savvy, blogging experienced users that’s just waiting to be grasped. A great opportunity indeed!

But first, for those a bit unfamiliar with micro blogging and more importantly twitter, let me explain a bit how it works. Twitter is basically a service that allows you to update your status with short messages, of up to 140 characters, just like a SMS text message. What makes it so special is that it also has social elements, allowing users to befriend each other; in twitter this is called “following.” Whenever you’re following somebody on twitter you’ll be able to instantly receive their updates and keep up to date with someone’s status. Furthermore because mobility and fastness are of the utmost importance in micro blogging, twitter allows you to update your status via the web page, IM, mobile phone, blackberry or various other third party applications.

Why You Should Use Twitter

When I first started out using twitter, about 2 months ago, I was very skeptical regarding its actual utility and purpose, as I found the notion of knowing what people were up to kinda irrelevant. “Off eating dinner,” “My flight just arrived in San Francisco,” “Walking my dog.” Why should I care about anything like this? Well if you, like I have in the beginning, think that’s all there is to twitter, then you’re just making mis perceptions. Truth is there’s more to it then meets the eye my friends.

After I first register an account I felt a bit out of place and lonely, because I wasn’t following anyone and no one was following me. I soon started twitting a bit though, followed a bunch of people I knew and started socializing. After a while I soon realized how powerful twitter can really be and what kind of benefits it can bring. It’s been widely proven that twitter can be easily used as a self-promotion tool, to pitch your content, services and products with ease. This is done by broadcasting your message, although short, to your followers. Sounds familiar ? That’s because twittering resembles a lot blogging, except your messange is broadcasted in “real time” to your reader. It’s this mixture of blogging, RSS and social networking that makes twitter so appealing.

Still not convinced? Here’s a few more reasons why twitter rocks.

1. Traffic. Although at fist glance it might seem like twitter isn’t capable of directing any respectable amount of traffic, truth is, if used properly, it can provide your blog with quite a “few” new visitors. The traffic from twitter isn’t too shabby either, in terms of quality, most of the visitors being pretty targeted, that stick around, read your posts and even subscribe. You can send traffic by entering your blog’s url in your twitter profile (this will be responsible for most of the regular traffic you’ll receive from twitter) or by twitting one of your post’s url. The amount of traffic you can receive from twitter is directly proportional to number of followers you posses.
2. Awareness and branding. Just like any other social network, twitter can be used as a powerful tool to build your brand and raise awareness. If you browse a bit through twitter you’ll undoubtedly find twitter users for a lot of popular online and offline brands, that simply track their day to day progress and update with valuable breaking news. The thing about twitter branding is that it’s a lot more personal, probably thanks to it’s IM like environment, helping you to thin the line between you and your readers.
3. Promote your content. This is more of a combination between the first two posts. A lot of bloggers nowadays, realizing the huge potential twitter possess of leveraging their content, have begun to publicize and promote their blog posts on twitter. This means either they post their blog post url, along with a short description (what can you expect in 140 characters or less?) or the url to various other social media websites like digg, reddit or stumbleupon for example, so that their followers can vote them. A nifty little twitter tool, available on the web right now, that’s been getting a lot of attention lately, is TwitterFeed, a great twitter application that will automatically post your latest blog posts titles, along with the respective url of course, without any interference from your behalf.
4. Fast help and feedback. A few weeks ago I asked for some urgent help on twitter, when I updated my status saying “I need some critical help from a PHP guru, please add AIM Qotsa ftw.” Frankly I didn’t expect any results or help coming in any soon, but I was pretty desperate. In a matter of minutes about four talented programmers added me on AIM and offered to hear me out and help, free of charge! Where else can you find this kind of fast response? I soon found that twitter can be an extremely efficient environment for collecting honest and live feedback, ranging from anything like design, to writing, to the over all reader experience.
5. Find a new audience. At the beginning of the article I stated that twitter is a emerging market, that’s beginning to explode on the web with hundred of thousands of users, meaning there’s a whole new vast audience, that’s just waiting to get exposed to your blog. Use twitter in conjunction with my 10 other ways of finding new readers and you’ll soon boost your stats and break the plateau.
6. Latest news. Because twitter is so instant and spontaneous you can now find out about the latest industry and scene news in a particular field of activity you’re following, within minutes of the actual event. If you thought RSS feeds are a good way of keeping up with news and new content, wait till you try twitter.
7. Inform people of your status. While telling people what you ate for dinner won’t appeal to many, a lot of people might be interested in what’s your business plans for the day or who’ll you’ll be meeting. Status live updates come especially in handy when you’re on conferences and witness first-hand world premiers.
8. Networking. Twitter is a great way to get to know new and like minded individuals, that share your same passions and area of expertise. Following them truly is a pleasure. This way you can see what your fellow peers are up to, open up to mutual promotional work and build future business relationships.
9. Marketing. As it’s the case with most social media services, you can use twitter to market and pitch your products. However twitter won’t directly help you market your content, but rather indirectly by helping build your brand name and authority. After you’ve established yourself as an authority to your audience, sales will follow as well.
10. It’s fast and mobile. You can user twitter from anywhere in the world, even from a mobile phone. Also updating your status on twitter won’t take more then 1 minute, you’re not gonna write essays in 140 characters or less, right?
11. Keep track of things. Just like a mini journal, I like to use twitter to record my progress through out the day. This helps me keep focus on my tasks and helps me get things done (even though ironically it can be a real productivity bugger). It’s a great way to write down ideas for further reference.
12. Provides inspiration. As a blogger you always have to produce a steady flow of new and original content. This can tend to get a bit difficult after a while, so any source of blog post inspiration can be considered a blessing. How does twitter fit in the big picture? Well, all you have to do is keep your eyes open on the people your following and you’ll see material for new content building up in your head. Some people have sparks or moments of inspiration concerning a particular topic, which they then twitter to get it off their chest. You can borrow their ideas and then build a post of your own around them. All the right reasons to follow important and intelligent people. Also you can always ask a question about something and your followers will soon answer it (I showed you how great asking questions can be with twitter in a point above), developing the idea, thus providing you with possible new material to work with.
13. It’s viral. Anything that spreads quickly and easily across a community makes a great social service anytime, in my eyes. Twitter works virally in a word of mouth kinda way. You as user may twit about something important, your followers will then take the story to their followers and so on.
14. Make money! By using twitter you can increase your income indirectly through social media marketing, but you can also make money directly by selling twits. This is totally against the twitter TOS and most of all unethical, but since when’s that reason enough for people to stop doing it. If you want to know more about the concept read these posts by Darren Rowse and Jason Falls, who’ve written the articles more as an experiment and joke, but have defined some great ideas, that will undoubtedly materialize in the future, as twitter develops more and more. Won’t be surprised if something like this exists somewhere deep underground…
15. It’s fun! There’s something special about twitter, that makes it real fun, but I just can’t put my finger on it yet. I always have a good laugh when I read a good joke on twitter or when someone shares a great link with me. It’s that kind of fun you find in a great social network like stumbleupon or digg and twitter has plenty of it.

Using Twitter Effectively

If you’re still reading this, then I’ve probably convinced you to try this micro blogging mambo jambo out, now it’s time to see how we can actually properly use the twitter service at its fullest and better leverage its potential. Bellow I’ll try to list a few pointers I’ve learned by actively participating on twitter during the past weeks, that will help you do just that. Experienced twitter users should pay close attention to the following points as well.

• Follow other users. Like in any other social network, profile building is extremely important and such is the case with twitter as well. Here when building an authoritative twitter profile the most important aspect you should look after is your followers. The more you have, the more popular you are and consequently the larger the influence your twits will posses. I think most of you are familiar with the you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours philosophy. Well this applies on twitter as well. Whenever you choose to follow someone, the respective twitter user will receive an e-mail notifying him that a you’re following his updates, then based on weather your profile is interesting enough he’ll follow you back or not. Who to follow though? Well all of the people I’m following are either: the authors of a blog I’m faithfully reading, people that chose to follow me and post interesting stuff, interesting and humorous people, authorities in my niche, sources of breaking news and updates or people that are simply my friends be it on or offline. Don’t over-follow though, or else you might find yourself overwhelmed with twits. I’ve found that following around 200 is the most optimal number.Worth taking note is a controversial aspect of twitter concerning reciprocal following, namely whenever you choose to unfollow someone, the twitter user, from whom you unsubscribed, will not receive a notification that you’ve done so. So basically you can befriend a bunch of people, wait for them to follow you and then unsubscribe. This is a terrible glitch if you ask me, because it lets twitter spammers and well… lame ass people to abuse the system.
• Interact with fellow twitters. You need to get people to notice you and the simplest way to do this is letting them know you exist. If following them didn’t get their attention try messaging them, using the “@” feature. Type @username message and the respective twitter username will receive the message under his replies tab. You won’t be sending private messages either, these twits will be visible to all your followers and profile guests, the only difference is your twits will be targeted towards something specific in mind. Notice whenever you contact someone via the @ feature a hiperlink that leads to his twitter account will be automatically created. Now image if you’d, hypothetically speaking, ask Scoble (lol @ first photo <3) a question via twitter and shortly after he’d decide to publicly answer it. In doing so he’ll link back to your profile thus exposing you to all of his followers and seeing as Scoble has the most twitter followers in the world, it’s easy to imagine what will happen next. Of course he’s a busy man and that won’t probably happen, but you can do this for any other user. The key here is to network and interact.
• Be useful, original and contributive. Just like you’d do with your blog, you have to put yourself in your followers shoes, analyze and then ask yourself some questions. Why would people want to follow me? What can I provide them with? There’s thousands of twitter users, what sets me apart from them? And so on. You need to give twitter users enough reason to follow you and of course to keep on following. You can achieve this by either being useful, original, funny or preferably all together. Whenever you find something interesting on the web, that might captivate your followers, don’t hesitate and twitter it. If you’ve got an interesting idea or topic for conversation, share it with your followers and thus actually add some value to your twits. If you’ve got a more humorous and sociable personality, then don’t keep it all in, let it shine on twitter as well; people always like to be around funny people. And remember if you’ve got nothing to say, it’s probably for the best you keep it that way.
• Don’t over-twit. Now if a prolific blogger may post one or more posts daily, then expect a prolific twitter users to update a lot more often. But is there any risk of over-twitting? There sure is alright. I’ve followed a few fellows recently that were silent for hours and then started spitting loads of twits (mostly ramblings) during short intervals of time. Of course I got extremely bugged and unfollowed them. So what you have to keep in mind here is not to exaggerate with your twits and keep your personal ramblings to a minimum, unless they’re interesting of course.
• Don’t under-twit. Over-twitting is bad, but how about under-twitting? While it probably won’t lead to loss of followers, under-twitting will undoubtedly hurt your profile’s growth. Like in any other community, you have to be active to reap it’s rewards, this means twitting at least a few times a day. A lot of people’ve been telling me they can’t keep up with twitter because they simply forget to update. You can solve this little impediment fairly simple by setting your “notices” (can be found in the settings tab). There you’ll find a neat option that will cause twitter to send a “nudge” whenever you fail to update your status during 24 hours.
• Don’t over-publicize. As a blogger your sole interest in twitter may be just to promote your own content and blog brand. While there’s nothing unusual with this, I’d advise you don’t over-pitch your twits with self-promotional updates, otherwise you might get labeled a spammer by the community. Between links to your own blog posts and social media stories, try updating with interesting links from other blogs and various twits. Like I said: be useful, unique and contributive.
• Brand your profile. Earlier in the article I mentioned how twitter can be used a powerful tool to enforce your’s blog brand or social media persona. You can achieve this easily by customizing your twitter profile; this means changing your account’s background, avatar and overall design. Be sure to particularly change your avatar, otherwise you’ll get stuck with the ugly default one; just put in an avatar that you know people recognize you by or even yet, your blog’s logo.
• Reply to twits. If you’re active on twitter, people will often reach you via the “@” feature, so be sure to regularly check your replies tab on twitter to see what other people are saying about you. Here you’ll regularly find answers to the various questions you might ask, random comments about your activities or even questions addressed to you. I’d advise, for productivity purposes, to reserve a fraction of your time every day to respond to various comments, this way you’ll both network with your current followers, but also draw new ones as well. All that “@” user inter-twitting will get you noticed by your follower’s followers and so on, proving the viral nature of twitter.
• Publicize and promote your twitter account. Whenever you get the chance to promote your twitter account, do it! Put a link leading towards your account on all of your other social media profiles, like digg, stumbleupon, mixx and so on. Also twitter allows the possibility of integrating some cool badges on various social networks (facebook, myspace etc.) and most importantly on your blog.

Some Nifty Twitter Tools

Whether you use twitter for personal use, business, clients or just for fun, a set of tools that can help you in your endeavors is always useful. Bellow you can find my favorite twitter tools currently available on the web.

1. twhirl. This is the most popular desktop client for twitter on the web. I personally prefer to use the default web client for twittering, but this is a great tool for catching up with what other people are twittering. Found it particularly useful when replying to twits and when I’m in a hurry too.
2. TwitterFeed. Already talked a bit about this great tool above, but it’s worth mentioning it once more. Again what it does is it pulls your latest post urls from your blog’s feed and posts them on your twitter account. alongside their title.
3. LoudTwitter. Now this is a real useful one. Basically it’s the bridge that posts to your blog your daily tweets in one single digest. A clear example can be found at Jeremy Wright’s blog.
4. Twitter Tools. This is a wordpress plugin, developed by the infamous Alex King, that creates an integration between your WordPress blog and your Twitter account. The plugin can pull twits from your twitter account to your blog (much like LoudTwitter does) and also allows you to twitter from within wordpress.
5. Twitt-Twoo. A nifty little plugin for WP, that allows you to update your twitter status from inside your blog’s sidebar. Personally I won’t use it, because it would cluster the sidebar, but I’ve seen it on tons of blogs and I’m sure a lot of people will find it useful.
6. TwitThis. The following tool will add a nifty little button at the end of every post, much in the same way the various social media buttons, you see at the end of every blog post, work. Only, instead of submitting a post to digg or stumbleupon, when hitting the button, the url of the respective blogpost will be copied to your twitter dashboard. You can then share the post with your friends.
7. Twitter Badge. The official javascript codes and widgets that display badges showing what you are posting on Twitter.
8. Tweetscan. A great search engine for twitter, that you can use to see what people are twitting about you, your blog, brand, company, product etc.
9. TwitterNotes. I told how twitter can be used as a great environment for taking and keeping track of notes. Well this tool will do just that helping you better keep notes on twitter, by tagging them.
10. RSS to Twitter. A excellent PHP script that feeds RSS to twitter.
11. TwitterFox. This is a great Firefox plugin that allows you to send and receive updates, right from the browser’s status bar.
12. TweetBeep. A great service for twitter, similar to Google Alert. It even checks links masked by tinyurl.
13. TweetMarks. This will help your bookmark your twits, keeping all of the links you share organized.

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Why Twitter?

Twitter can be an amazingly powerful platform for connecting to your community as well as driving traffic to the various properties you want people to go. Having an event? Tweet it out! Launched a new bag? Tweet it out!

The key to Twitter is the level of listening you do as well as talking. It is definitely supposed to be an interactive program. And, in fact, this is where you build the majority of your Whuffie (aka social capital). The more you interact on Twitter, the more people will interact with you, which attracts others to you as well.

One of my favorite quotes about the benefits of Twitter is from Tony Hsieh at Zappos:

You send an SMS text message to Twitter with your note, and your message will be automatically broadcast (like CB radio) to whoever is choosing to follow you (your friends). If people don’t care what you’re doing, they won’t follow you, so don’t worry about sending out trivial messages.

At first, it will seem really weird and unnatural for you to do this, but just trust me on this one. You will find that it’s actually a really good way to stay in touch with all your friends and know what’s going on in their lives.

…I was flying in to the Vegas airport, and I twittered “Just landed in Vegas airport.” I would have never texted anyone that message, but in the Twitter culture, that’s exactly what you’re supposed to do. It just so happened that someone on my Twitter network was about to fly out of Vegas, so we met up at the airport bar and had a drink. I would have never known otherwise that this person was at the airport, nor would I have ever sent him a text message or called him that I had just landed. Source

I love that story because it is exactly what Twitter does for us all of the time: it accelerates serendipity.

What are Some Good Examples of Corporate Tweeters?

What kinds of interactions are beneficial? Well, take two very popular Tweeters: Zappos and JetBlue. Here are a few examples:

@ZAPPOS:

Some photos of our company picnic are up now at: http://blogs.zappos.com - I think we had 1000 people show up!

I want to meet more customers. On Monday, I will select a random @zappos follower for free trip for 2 to Vegas for office tour & lunch w/ me

At Vegas airport now, waiting a couple of hours until my flight to San Jose, CA.

@wisekaren I’m wearing Donald Pliner shoes to the wedding.

Finished photo shoot w/ Forbes. 4 hours & they choose 1 photo. Behind the scenes: http://www.facebook.com/pag…

@bryanbartlett now says he can’t make it. Anyone else want 1 ticket to van halen at 830 tonight at mandalay in Vegas?

Just landed in Vegas. Got lots of twitters about our new beta site http://zeta.zappos.com Thx for all the feedback, keep it coming!

—–

@JETBLUE:

@laughingsquid Thanks! Just wait until our new terminal at JFK opens! http://t508.com/ (Hope you had a great time in NYC)

@BookingBuddy We’re happy to support Runner’s World, but don’t worry, you can still channel surf and eat blue chips if you want!

Two days left to win two trips on JetBlue to “The Simpsons Movie” premiere in LA. Enter now! http://tinyurl.com/2×6ql3

The term ‘Interwebular Chronicle’ makes me laugh.

View this month’s selection of first-run movies from Fox InFlight Premium Entertainment: http://tinyurl.com/2o8q46

To all of our Twitter friends: enjoy your weekend!

As you can see from these selections, both companies are really great at balancing promotional tweets (”View this month’s selection of first-run movies from Fox InFlight Premium Entertainment” and “Got lots of twitters about our new beta site http://zeta.zappos.com”) with personal tweets (”The term ‘Interwebular Chronicle makes me laugh.” and “At Vegas airport now, waiting a couple of hourse until my flight to San Jose, CA.”) with conversational tweets (”@laughingsquid Thanks! Just wait until our new terminal at JFK opens!” and “@wisekaren I’m wearing Donald Pliner shoes to the wedding”). They also have fun contests (”I want to meet more customers. On Monday, I will select a random @zappos follower for free trip for 2 to Vegas” and “Two days left to win two trip on JetBlue to “The Simpsons Movie” premiere in LA.”) to help increase their follower numbers and keep people reading.

Stuff to Tweet About

There are no rules about what you should tweet out, here are a few suggestions for you. It is important that you balance the ‘outbound’ with the ‘inbound’. In otherwords, the announcements with the conversations:

1. Personal thoughts and reflections that suit your brand - this helps people feel more trust towards you and your brand and strikes up conversations
2. Events (both your own and other events your audience may find interesting) - this makes things interesting and, perhaps, gives you a way to meet your followers
3. Contests (”The first three people who answer this trivia question get….”) - they drive more followers and interest in what you tweet
4. Replies (@twittername) - this comes from listening to your followers (you have to follow back to see their tweets). The more personal the reply, the higher the impact.
5. Direct replies (d twittername) - this isn’t in the public timeline, but it helps build deeper bonds to talk directly to someone like this. This is helpful to answer people when it is a private matter or when you want to show concern (i.e. someone reports an accident, etc.)
6. New blog posts - you should keep these to one per day at the very most and you should also promote other people’s blog posts that are of interest
7. Announcements - if it is interesting, tweet it
8. OH’s (overheard) - someone say something in the office or when you are out and about that cracks you up? Type OH: “well, if you don’t mind, im trying to work on my love life” or something else funny (sometimes used to offset potentially racy comments…if you didn’t say it, but are just REPEATING IT, then it’s okay)
9. Rickrolls or other fun internet games - this shows you are a bunch of fun and has people trying to do the same for you. Spreading as many internet memes as possible is good.
10. Lyrics and quotes - especially fun are the lyrics: ?Never give the game away | Try to keep me entertained, baby | Don’t make it too easy | Leave something for me and my imagination? as the musical notes make for lots of questions
11. Links to media you create - video is fun, podcasts, perhaps interviews that are posted online about you, etc.
12. Shout outs - @twittername rocks! Thanks for the great link: http://insertlink.com These make people feel great, too.

Tweets that make people laugh are awesome, but tweets that make people think are even better.

How to Tweet Without Losing Your Soul

So, before you even ask. Yes. Twitter takes time. It takes a bunch of attention and love and care. There ARE ways to minimize the work and keep up to date, though:

1. Run a twitter client on your desktop and connect it to Growl. For desktop clients see: http://twitter.pbwiki.com/Apps My favorites are: Twhirl, Snitter and Twitterific
2. Take twitter on the road! If you have an iPhone there are great sites like Pockettweets or the twitter mobile site. You can also just send your text messages to 40404. That’s pretty simple. Check out the apps page again for more options on other phones like Blackberries.
3. Keep a good track of who is talking about you, so you can reply back! With Tweetscan you can track all sorts of keywords there as well as watch who is replying to you (there is also a tab on the main website for your replies). You can always plug the results into your RSS feeds…
4. Put a twitter widget on your blog!
5. Hook it up to your Facebook page! Only update your status in one place at a time and have it show in multiple places! Details here: http://explore.twitter.com/

There is also a great listing of fun apps to use with Twitter here. Watch out, though. It’s totally addictive!

How to Talk Twitter

There is a glossary of terms over here where you will find that MOST terms used on Twitter start, not surprisingly, with ‘Tw’. Like tweet, meaning one post on twitter, and TweetUp, which is a Twitter Meetup. But the basic terms you need to know are the commands to put in front of what you are saying. Like:

D twittername - direct message (not public, goes right to the Tweeter in question)
@twittername - public reply
Follow twittername - start following someone
Leave twittername - stop following someone
on - turns your notifications on (on your phone or however you are receiving tweets)
off - turns notifications off
help - accesses the other commands as you may need them

there is more here: http://twitter.com/help/lingo

There are also some things that have come out of the community like:

hashtags or # - put a hashtag in front of a ‘tag’ for easier tracking (i.e. This speaker is really nailing it. I think her slides are brilliant! #web2expo). This is really useful for conferences, events and specific topics of interest. You can read a little more about the history here You can track hashtags at Twemes.

A Couple of Extra Things

Before I wrap this up, there are a few other ‘Tweet like a pro’ ideas:

1. Shorten your URLs at Tweetburner where you can also track stats on these links!
2. The mother of all places to find everything awesome Twitter is: http://twitter.pbwiki.com/
3. Want to set up a ‘group’ tweet? This is way cool: Grouptweet (have multiple employees send messages to d companyname with a message that you can aggregate at @companyname)
4. Give people beer for good deeds with Foamee

Now you are ready to tweet like a pro!

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