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Twitter Marketing – Are You Taking The Road To Failure?

admin — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 17:18:23 +0000

Twitter isn’t a passing hobby, a fun way to share your daily outings, or a tool simply to ignore. Instead, Twitter is a great way to connect up with prospects, and find a whole new venue for growing your business. But like any business, you have to treat it like a business.

Do you have a Twitter marketing plan in place? Do you know why you are Tweeting? Do you know how you’re starting 2010, and how you’ll finish out the year? Take a look at these 7 things to incorporate into your twitter marketing plan.

It’s All About Me
Some people just don’t get that Twitter isn’t about self-promotion. It’s about building a relationship. Sure it’s okay to occasionally send out a Tweet about your new product or service. As long as you’re filling in with quality information and resources that make you a value to the community.

Bull Horn Approach
Imagine standing on a street corner screaming out your message at 4am on a Sunday morning. Will a few people hear it? Maybe. But you’re missing a huge opportunity. Don’t head out to Twitter once a month and Tweet out six messages in a row. Spend 5 minutes per day adding one or two quality Tweets, and spend some time re-tweeting and making conversation.

A Glamorous RSS Feed
Twitter is more than a resource for you blog posts and RSS feeds. Simply feeding in your RSS is a surefire way of getting your followers to quickly unfollow. Twitter is all about relationships first, content second.

I’m Off To The Store
I’m off to the store. Taking the kids to the park. About to eat a snack. The occasional personal Tweet helps show your human side. But everything needs to be done in moderation. Unless you’re tweeting solely with personal friends and family, keep the personal stuff at a minimum.

Lurking, Not Speaking
I played this game on Twitter my first few weeks. I didn’t know what to Tweet, so I lurked and read what other people were writing. It took awhile, but eventually I developed my own knack. You can’t grow your Twitter account if you remain a lurker. You have to jump in, give it a try, and use it on a regular basis.

Try Something New
If you’re on Twitter and haven’t tried out some of the amazing sites and tools connected with Twitter, you’re really missing out. Head over to Twitter Links to find a list of sites that will help you use Twitter together. Some of my new favorites are MuckRack, StrawPoll and TweetValue.

What’s My Purpose?
What are you trying to accomplish on Twitter? What’s the end goal? If you don’t plan from the beginning, you’ll quickly see yourself wasting hours of time. Stop and write down your expectations, and the Tweet accordingly.

Looking for some help in creating your Twitter marketing plan?

Finding Twitter Applications – Use OneForty.com

admin — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 15:26:53 +0000

I finally had a chance to read December’s edition of Entrepreneur magazine. As always, I use it to find a bunch of cool new sites online.

In this issue they has an article on Twitter (no surprise there), and in it I discovered a new resource. OneForty.com is a database that provides links to over 2100 applications based around Twitter.

While its easy to find lists of Twitter applications everywhere these days, what I liked about oneforty.com is the functionality of it. Click on any of the categories, and you’ll find lists of applications that can do, well, just about anything. They also use a five star rating scale, so you can choose the applications that have success.

Twitter Tools – Life Applications and Other Fun Stuff

admin — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 16:51:01 +0000

Xpenser
Xpenser helps you record your expenses from anywhere with your mobile device and Twitter.
TwittyTunes
Share your favorite tunes as you are playing them with TwittyTunes.

TwitterKeys
Enhance your Twitter conversations with TwitterKeys. Let’s you ad tiny pictures to your tweets.

TwitterLit
TwitterLit serves of literary teasers by posting the first line of books to its Twitter feed.

TwitHire
Looking for a job or have a position avialalbe? Post it to TwitHire.

TweetWhatYouEat
On a diet or want to track your calorie intake? TweetWhatYouEat will track it all in an easy application.

RememberTheMilk
RememberTheMilk provides direct messages to help remind you of your daily tasks.

TheMattinator
TheMattinator is an application that allow you to manage more than one Twitter account at a time.

Click&Win
Try your game of chance by clicking on the “clickandwin” button when lotteries start – right now you can win $10 Amazon gift cards.

CommuterFeed
CommuterFeed allows you to report traffic reports via your Twitter feed.

Twecipe
Have a few ingredients and don’t know what to make? Feed them into Twecipe and it will give you a recipe with your ingredients.

Twitter Tools – Twitter Mobile Applications

admin — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 23:14:49 +0000

One of the best things about Twitter is you aren’t limited to sitting at your desk – go mobile with it. Here is a selection of applications that will help you manage your Tweets while you’re out on the road.

Jargong

Jargong allow you to manage your social networking (Flickr and Twitter), plus your instant messaging and Feeds on your phone.

Jargong
Jargong allow you to manage your social networking (Flickr and Twitter), plus your instant messaging and Feeds on your phone.

Phweet

Instead of writing out 140 characters, talk to your Twitter friend instead using Phweet, and online conversation system.

OpenBreak

Integrate Twitter with your Blackberry using OpenBreak.

Twitterfone

Instead of writing out your tweets, phone them in instead with Twitterfone.

Logpost

Logpost provides Twitter applications for most major mobile phone platforms.

twitxr

Take a picture with your mobile phone and share it across social networking platforms and photosharing sites with twitxr.

Twittelator

A powerful Twitter client for your iPhone or iTouch. Twittelator allows you to post tweets, maps, video, audio and photos.

InstaTweet

InstaTweet is a push button iphone app to instantly post messages, photos and locations.

The Rules Of Twitter Follow/Unfollow Have Changed

admin — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 18:13:22 +0000

When you first signup for your Twitter account, the first thing you do is look for followers. But what are the rules for unfollowing? Should you believe all the automatic follow/unfollow rules that people write about? What are the implications of not following someone just because they decided to follow you?

I actually use a variety of Twitter accounts both for my multiple businesses, and as a social ghost writer for a variety of clients. So I’ve tried out various methods, and have watched things change over the course of 2009.

Here are my rules for following/unfollowing on Twitter:

Look For Quality People To Follow and Ignore The Rest

Twitter is a tool that you are using to try and grow your business. You may find a great resource that can bring in a lot to your business, either in resources and tips, or as a potential contact. Follow them and don’t worry about whether they follow you. Watch what they send out. Retweet them. If they are big on Twitter, they will notice your retweets, and watch what you do. It is possible to eventually connect with great people down the line just by providing quality information and staying steady to your cause.

Don’t Look At The Numbers

Would you rather have 500 quality people that bring potential to your business, or 5000 that just exist because they are on automatic follow? It’s easy to get high numbers. What’s not easy is getting quality people to your follow list that may actually help your business now or in the future. This isn’t “get rich quick” This is about building a quality marketing campaign that helps you now, 6 months from now, 1 year from now, etc.

Follow Because You Have A Desire To Learn

I may really like photography, yet have no interest in scuba diving. You may love photography and want to learn more about it – which is why you follow me. You follow to learn from me. Because I have no desire on scuba diving, and choose not to follow you, is no reason you can’t continue to follow and learn from me. Will we build a relationship in the future? Maybe. And maybe I’ll have more of a desire to learn about scuba diving in the future based on that relationship. Don’t cut off your learning source just for a unfollow “rule”.

Good Reasons To Unfollow

They spam your account, selling in virtually all of their tweets.
They are on a mission for numbers – following hundreds in one day to build the account.
Everything is me-driven. If it’s all about “me”, its time to unfollow.
Nothing of value in any of their tweets. It’s nice to be personal once in awhile. But if you’re not learning or gaining from a tweet-stream, unfollow.
Swear just to swear. Talk about offensive material. Adult-content driven. Enough said.
Direct message or reply again and again with links to MLM opportunities.
Stop tweeting. If you can’t find anything to say on a regular basis, your once a year post isn’t going to cut it.

You Know You Are A Twitter Addict When …

admin — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 20:14:32 +0000

You know you are a Twitter Addict when:

You are out networking face to face, you ask people what they are @ instead of what they do.
You’re in a seminar on social media, and you announce you have more Twitter followers than the speaker.
You can’t make it through a dinner conversation without talking about your Twitter friends.
You lie in bed at night thinking up clever ways to get retweeted.
Your kids introduce you to their friends by saying “she tweets”.
You run to the television every time Twitter is in a commercial.
The highlight of your day is Tweetup invitations.
Tweetdeck is the first application to load on your desktop.
You use the Twitter bird on your birthday cake.
You buy a house on Twitter Road.
You upgrade your phone to Tweet better.
Twitter t-shirts are the only gift you’ll be giving this holiday season.
You Tweet the details of your vacation.
You spend 30 minutes brainstorming ways you are a Twitter addict. (Yes, I must confess…)

Okay, I’m sure you can add to this list. Let’s hear it. You know you’re a Twitter addict when…

Twitter Tools – Research Tools

admin — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 19:59:35 +0000

Research Tools help to quickly obtain information in Twitter. We have put together a list that will help you organize the Twitter experience.

AskOnTwitter

AskOnTwitter.com is a simple application that collects all tweets with the phrase ‘Does Anyone Know’ in it and displays them on these pages, for everyone to see – and to answer!

BackTweets

Search for links on Twitter – track and monitor links that spread on twitter. Check out advanced mode to search specific date ranges and users.

Cherpa

Follow keywords on Twitter and keep up to date on trends

GigaTweet

See how many tweets have been posted on twitter.com

Hashtags

Realtime Tracking of Twitter Hashtags – #hashtags

Monitter

monitter? what is it? Simple. It’s a twitter monitor, it lets you “monitter” the twitter world for a set of 3 keywords and watch what people are saying. Cool huh?

ReTweetBot

ReTweetBot is a Twitter bot service for creating groups out of a Twitter account. Hundreds of users can follow a single account and chat with one another without having to follow everyone. The service is currently in Beta.

spy

spy can listen in on the social media conversations you’re interested in. What do you want to listen for?

Top Follow Friday

If you are using #followfriday to endorse your friends …

… TopFollowFriday.com will let you see who endorses you, and who endorses who!

Topsy

A search engine powered by tweets

Tweet Answers

Get your questions answered via Twitter

tweet beep

If you love Twitter, you’ll love TweetBeep! Keep track of conversations that mention you, your products, your company, anything! You can even keep track of who’s tweeting your website or blog, even if they use a shortened URL (like tinyurl.com).

Great for online reputation management, catching all your @replies, finding job/networking opportunities, keeping up on your favorite hobby, and more!

TweetListings

Real time job listings from twitter

Tweetr

Send files to your friends, but just dragging any file on to Tweetr. Tweetr will automatically upload your file and when it is done will provide a short url to send to your friends

TweetScan

Search Inside Twitter Content -
Tweet Scan is a real-time search engine for Twitter posts. Just enter your term plus a user name (optional), and the system will scan Twitter to show you the results.

Twitdom

Retwitteger tabulates retweeted messages and displays the most relevant tweets of the last 30 minutes, 2 hours, and 24 hours. For each tweet, it displays the number of times it has been retweeted.

TwitPwr

Is it really the number of followers you have, or is the ability to get your followers to Take Action?

Twitscoop

What’s hot on Twitter right now

TwitStat

Find out all of the stats from a twitter name

TwitterGrader

Twitter Elite – These users have earned our respect and admiration for having the highest Twitter Grade. Their power and reach in the twitter community is a whole lot of awesomeness.

Twitterholic

Shows top 100 popular twitters users. Updated every 24 hours

Twitterless

Twitterless tells you who stops following you and graphs your follower history over time, making this info available in a variety of useful views.

Twizon

Where Twitter Meets Amazon -
A mashup between Twitter and Amazon. Twitzon lists all the tweets that reference Amazon deals so you can find out what’s popular and hot right now.

Twollow

Auto-Follow people on Twitter – useful for adding friends quickly.

Twoogle

Search Twitter vs Google – Recent results at the same time

UserName

Is your name taken on other social sites? With this quick tool, you can search to locate social sites and grab your username.

Twitter Tools- Community Tools

admin — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 17:26:36 +0000

Community connections in Twitter allow you to interact with similar groups or users in your area. We have put together a list that will help you organize the Twitter experience.

Dwellicious

Organize your properties with tags on your own personal Dwellicious bookmark page

Favrd

Top Twitter posts that are “non-commercial” or sales posts found within the Twitter community.

Feed Twitter

Feeds your RSS Items to Twitter with some Spice

Feedtweeter is a little service that allows you to link Twitter to your other activities. Basically it’s a system that keeps track of an RSS feed and processes any new items that appear.

Gridjit

Gridjit is a social portal that lets you view your web universe in a whole new way. The original Gridjit only supported Twitter but the new version has been redesigned to allow us to add more services. The next version will support Twitter and FriendFeed.

Group Tweet

Group message broadcasting for Twitter Problem: Malcolm, Zoe, Kaylee, Simon, and River all work together on the same web development team. They are avid Twitter users and want a similar way to broadcast quick messages and updates to everyone on their team. Since these messages may contain confidential information, the team doesn’t want them published to their public Twitter timelines or to any followers who are not part of the team. Solution: GroupTweet allows Malcolm and the gang to send messages via Twitter that are instantly broadcasted privately to only the team members.

Just Tweet It

The Tweeter Directory -
Choose a category and find other Twitter users or list your name to let people find you!

LinkBunch

LinkBunch lets you put multiple links into one small link which you can share over IM, Twitter, email or even a mobile phone SMS.

MediaOnTwitter

Journalists, Bloggers & Media Outlets on Twitter Gives you easy access to names, and an easy way to follow each contact.

MicroPlaza

Welcome to your personal micro-news agency. Discover relevant information filtered by the people you follow.

MuckRack

MuckRack – Journalists on Twitter. A running conversation of journalists and media sources that use Twitter regularly.

Nearby Tweets

Have you ever wondered if someone of your Twitter followers is living close to you. Nearby Tweets is the perfect app to check that.

Tweet Take

Back Up your Twitterings! – Backs up your friends, followers and tweets

Tweet Works

With groups and discussions, TweetWorks helps you get the most out of Twitter. How it works…

TweetBurner

Tracking the links you share on twitter and friendfeed

TweetChannel

TweetChannel makes it possible to create channels by twitter. Log in with your own twitter username and password in the sidebar and start right away (The twitter user tweet_channel will be added to your friends list). By adding #channelname in front of your tweets, your tweet will be listed in the channel discussion on TweetChannel.com.

Twellow

Twellow is a Twitter Directory to locate individuals in categories

twibs

Twibs allows you to find, follow and interact with businesses, apps and services on Twitter.

Twiddict

We love Twitter. We hate when it’s down. If you’re addicted to Twitter as well, tweet your heart out through Twiddict and avoid life-changing withdrawal symptoms during Twitter downtime. We’ll make sure your tweets end up where they belong.

Twiffid

See what your Twitter friends are blogging about! Twiffid shows you the headlines of the websites your Twitter friends have listed in their profiles

Twiggit

twiggit is an automated service that lets your friends on twitter know what articles you digg.

Twingr

With Twingr, you can create a microblogging community and communicate with friends and other people that share your same interests.

twitscoop

You can input a twitter username or keywords in the search box to track a conversation, topic or conference. The results will auto-refresh every 20 seconds:

Twitter Answers

Like Yahoo Answers? Twitter Answers is a substitute for twitter users

Twitter Badge

Official javascript codes that display badges showing what you are posting on Twitter.

Twitter Beep

If you love Twitter, you’ll love TweetBeep! Keep track of conversations that mention you, your products, your company, anything, with hourly updates! You can even keep track of who’s tweeting your website or blog, even if they use a shortened URL (like tinyurl.com). Now, how cool is that?!

Twitter Vision

See where all of the latest twitters are coming from. Shows on a map live.

Twitterless

Twitterless tells you who stops following you and graphs your follower history over time, making this info available in a variety of useful views.

twtvite

Create your own tweetups. Invite your friends, and manage your group all in one place. Great way to connect Twitter followers in a local region.

Twubble

Looking for more people to follow? -
Twubble can help expand your Twitter bubble—it searches your friend graph and picks out people who you may like to follow.

We Follow

A user powered Twitter directory

My Twitter Strategy: It’s A Rose Garden

admin — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 14:33:01 +0000

I’ve spent the last 18 months or so on Twitter, at first trying to find out what it was all about, and over 2009, trying to keep up. Yes the world has gone Twitter crazy, for better or worse. Being one of the old timers on it, I’ve seen things that work, and things that don’t. People stay, and mostly people go.

So what is it that makes a good strategy? Can you really do business on Twitter? Can it really make you money?

As I use Twitter day after day, I’ve found myself thinking of ways to describe it to people as I’m out speaking. And I finally came up with the Rose Garden analogy.

It’s always about planning for the future

One of my favorite things about summertime is being out in my gardens. I’ve got a quarter acre, so it keeps me busy.

When you start with a garden, you have to think about what doesn’t show before you concentrate on what does. Which means you have to have great soil, a ton of nutrients, a sunny location, and a lot of water. You have to have potential even before decide to plant.

Same with Twitter. You have to have potential for growing your business on Twitter before you start to use it. Are your customers on Twitter? Do you have any potential whatsoever of finding quality clients? Do some research. Search out people that are likely to buy from you. Are they active on Twitter? If not, what’s the point?

One you have potential, its time to plant. You choose the best quality plants for your area, and carefully place them in the soil. When you first plant, you spend extra time caring for it. Extra water. A little extra fertilizer. And you watch it closely for changes just in case it needs something in addition.

When you first jump on Twitter, you’re excited. You grab a couple dozen friends, and you write a few tweets. But if you sit there and watch your Twitter account, it’s kind of boring. Your 50 new followers aren’t saying very much, and how many times can you say what you’re doing? Yet this is the time to spend all of your energy making it work. Don’t sell, just prove your expertise. Write as if the world is reading. Do a little searching to find more followers. Spend time growing your account – adding the extra water and fertilizer just to keep everything moving forward.

By the end of the summer, the roots have taken hold and are now a part of a healthy, growing plant. Maybe its doubled or even tripled in size. Maybe it’s producing a ton of blooms. Maybe it regenerates every couple of weeks, giving you beauty again and again.

If you work your Twitter account like a marketing strategy, you know you need to keep at it to make it work. Just like your rose plants, you have to keep trying, keep growing, and keep changing your approach. Provide resources 90 percent of the time, sell 10 percent. Don’t sell directly, do it through blog posts, or by talking about other clients. Nothing sells like case studies. And people are more likely to share a case study then they are a direct sales message.

Brand yourself. Prove your expertise. Keep at it, and Twitter may just become one of your favorite ways to grow your business.

Twitter Links – Twitter Tools Part 2

admin — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 16:16:38 +0000

We have put together a list of Twitter connections. Sites that help with your social experience on Twitter. Our resouce list has become too big so we split it up into multiple pieces.

Tools Part 2

Twemes

Twemes.com follows public Twitter.com tweets (messages) that have embedded tags that start with a # character. These are sometimes called hashtags but we like to use the term twemes. Through the use of twemes, we can all view what people are talking about across the whole Twitter universe. In some sense, this can be thought of as an adhoc chatroom. We also pull in recent public photos from Flickr and public bookmarks from Del.icio.us. Twemes.com is particularly useful for keeping up on the real-time activities associated with a live event such as a conference. People who attend an event can choose an obvious tag (i.e., sxsw for South by Southwest) and use this tag as #sxsw in tweets, sxsw in uploaded Flickr photos and Del.icio.us links. Twemes.com also allows for adhoc polls to be created associated to a tweme.

twickie

It’s the Easiest Way to Archive a Twitter Response Thread

Twist

View trends on Twitter in a graphical format.

Twitdom

Twitdom is a database maintained by fellow tweeple like you.

Twitly

Seperate the groups you follow on Twitter

Twitsay

Call a number, Record your message, Listen on Twitter

Twitster

Twitster is a PHP application that lets you display tweets on your own web site from everyone you follow in Twitter.

Twitt-Twoo

Twitt-Twoo is a simple little plugin that will allow you to update your Twitter status right from your blog’s sidebar. AJAX takes cares of the hard work, and means that your page doens’t even have to reload, allowing for quick and easy status updates.

Twittar WordPress Plugin

The objective was quite simple: create a plug-in that uses Twitter to show avatars in comments in WordPress blogs. But after discovering the potential of the Twitter API, the plug-in evolved into a complete “avatar for comments” solution for WordPress.

Twitter Bin

What is this?
TwitBin is an extension for firefox that brings the power of twitter right in your browser.

twitter browser

Browse your feed and your friends feeds

twitter mail

Post to your twitter account through a unique email account.

Twitter Safe

Twitter is the hottest Social Media Platform of 2008..but if you lost your Followers, Following, and Replies on ‘Black Tweetsday’, you know the panic and fear that raced through the Twitterverse. Oh the Horror! Now there is a solution, to keep YOU Safe..TwitterSafe! Your One-Click Backup and Restoration Vault! Protect Your Twitter… Click and Be Safe! TwitterSafe! Tweet On!

Twitter Search

Allows you to search keywords within twitter

Twitter Sharts

Shart’ your twitter status anywhere within your wordpress blog posts or pages.

Twitter Timer

Need to remember something? Send me a direct message, and I’ll tweet you back. For example, ‘d timer 45 call mom’ reminds you in 45 minutes.

Twitter Tools

This plugin creates an integration between your WordPress blog and your Twitter account. Pull your tweets into your blog and create new tweets on blog posts and from within WordPress.

Twitter Updater

WordPress plugin that sends a Twitter status update to your Twitter account automatically when you create, publish, or edit your WordPress post.

TwitterBar

TwitterBar allows you to post to Twitter from Firefox’s address bar. A small unobtrusive grey icon sits to the right of your address bar; clicking on it will post your tweet, and you can hover your mouse over it to see how many characters you have left.

You can also post by typing “–post” at the end of your tweet. Clicking the grey icon when visiting a webpage will send a tweet with the URL of the webpage you are currently viewing.

TwitterBerry

TwitterBerry is mobile client for posting updates to Twitter. It works over the data network, so you don’t need to use SMS.

TwitterCal

It’s a free service that connects your Twitter account to your Google Calendar. Add events in a snap from your favorite Twitter client. Follow the 5 steps procedure to get started.

twittercounter

Connect to other Twitter users and see stats on any twitter account.

TwitterFone

Send Messages to Twitter with Voice -
TwitterFone is free service that lets you update your Twitter feed using your voice from any mobile or cell phone. You call it, speak your tweet, and hang up. A short while later, your tweet will be posted on Twitter.

TwitterGadget

TwitterGadget is a clean, robust, web 2.0 style client for Twitter.com, designed to submit status updates to Twitter via your iGoogle homepage or Gmail Account.

Twitterlicious

Twitterlicious is a Windows application that makes using Twitter more fun. It handles all the hard work, leaving you to read and write tweets with the minimum fuss. Best of all, Twitterlicious is free!

Twitterlights

Highlight & save the best parts of the internet, with a virtual highlighter. Use it, share it and since i-lighter is web based, never lose it!

Twitteroo

Lets you send Twitter updates from your PC

TwitterSafe

TwitterSnooze

Want to quite the conversation of just some of your followers? Hit the snooze button on your “verbose” Twitter friends.

TwitterStat

Twitstat – Real time Twitter Analytics

TwitThis

An easy way to send Twitter Messages -
TwitThis is an easy way for people to send Twitter messages about your blog post or website. When visitors to your website click on the TwitThis button or link, it takes the URL of the webpage and creates a shorter URL using TinyURL. Then visitors can send this shortened URL and a description of the web page to all of their friends on Twitter.

Twuffer

Twuffer allows the Twitter user to compose a list of future tweets, and schedule their release.

Yakkle

Access your Twitter account and create tweets, view timelines, follow others and even cache your data.

Part One of Twitter Links – Twitter Tools