What Is Twitter All About?

If you want to take advantage of the opportunities on the microblogging platform Twitter, start off doing thing correctly.

Let’s look at how you join:

You join for free at www.twitter.com and here are some important tips about signing up:

Choose your username carefully. Although you can now change it easily, you should think about how you want to represent yourself or your business on Twitter.

The username you choose may also impact how you get Twitter followers. (People follow you on Twitter in contrast to friending you on Facebook or connecting with you on LinkedIn.)

Upload a clear head shot photo of yourself (preferably without your pet, child or girlfriend/boyfriend). Again, the photo you use can impact how you get Twitter followers.

Put your own name – even if you write tweets for your company – in the field where you are asked for your name. And, once again, this can impact how you get Twitter followers.

Write a good 160-character bio and include one URL. For the fourth time, what you write here can impact how you get Twitter followers.

Why can all these four “simple” steps impact getting Twitter followers? Because people on Twitter want to interact with real people, not companies, even if the real people are representing major corporations. Thus it’s important to represent yourself truthfully and as a real person.

Let’s move on to the next step:

As soon as you do the above, enter two tweets so that people considering following you can see the type of tweets you plan on writing. Therefore, give some thought to how you want to present yourself.

Now you can start following other people:

To find people who tweet about subjects that interest you, enter search terms in the search box on your home page. Once you are taken to a page with tweets mentioning the term, click on a username to go to that person’s profile and decide if you want to follow him or her.

If yes, simply click the FOLLOW button – that’s all there is to it. And if at a later date you no longer want to follow this person, just return to his/her profile page and click the FOLLOWING button to unfollow.

What happens next is that many of these people will follow you back, and you have begun to build your Twitter community.

You may be saying to yourself: Why should it matter to me how many people are following me?”

The answer to this is that Twitter is an incredibly powerful social media marketing tool if used correctly. (Many people on Twitter do not use it correctly.) The more people who are interested in what you’re about and who follow you, the more of a target audience you have connected with on Twitter.

One more thing that you do NOT want to do:

Once you are on Twitter you will be followed by people who will offer you all kinds of software programs to quickly add a large number of Twitter followers. You do NOT want to do this.

First, you can get kicked off Twitter for spamming. Second, you want to grow your Twitter community organically by following and being followed by people who are interested in the subjects that interest you.

In conclusion, do not worry if some of this information seems somewhat confusing. Twitter is deceptively simple. Because it is only 140 characters (sort of like IMing) people assume that there’s nothing “to it.” Take my word that there is a very great deal “to it.”

I predict that, if you keep an open mind and learn Twitter gradually, there will come a day when you say to yourself: “I can’t believe I ever got along without it.”.

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Monetizing Social Media Is About Targeting First, Everything Else Second

About 60 days ago, my team was working on an email program with an online retailer focused on expanding participation in their loyalty program. Unlike previous programs, the call to action of this email was not to “click a link” and join the loyalty program; rather; it was to share the experience of the loyalty program with their friends and encourage them to join as well.

This was no simple share-to-social initiative. The retailer created several incentives to motivate sharing behavior. Next, they tracked the number of invitations each customer sent to their friends and attributed those that actually “subscribed” to the loyalty program back to the initial inviter.

The results far surpassed previous email campaigns; in fact, the social program described above generated three times the number of subscribers than the previously launched un-socialized programs. Major results included:

• 1 new member for every 1.8 peer-to-peer invitations
• 10% of new members went on to purchase
• 4.3 emails sent, on average, by each influencer

While the program clearly extended reach and subscriptions to the loyalty program, the team believed there was an opportunity for optimization — and implemented two minor yet critical tweaks, both focused on enhanced targeting of the socialized campaign.

The company looked at their loyalty program members and created a segment based on engagement metrics: for example, how long a subscriber was part of the loyalty program. Targeting based on engagement is not a new concept to email marketers. Transactional email programs garner a higher response rate than broadcast campaigns do, because they target the customer at the point of maximum engagement: during a purchase cycle or some other lifecycle activity.

In addition to developing targets based on engagement, the company did more analysis to identify “Super Influencers” within their recipient lists. Super Influencers in this case are customers who already have a defined Web presence within a specific vertical.

In the retail space, there are a number of “Discount Bloggers.” These bloggers aggregate special offers on blogs or personal Websites. These customers can have a huge impact on campaign performance, since they already have a following relevant to a specific space with people looking for new content or the next great deal. The identified “Super Influencers” were added to the segment and the optimized campaign was ready to go.

The email program was launched to the new, targeted segment with the same offer and creative. The result? The targeting impact was off the charts.

• 420% Increase in loyalty member subscriptions from the initial campaign
• 326% Increase in purchase conversions from the initial campaign
• Thousands of additional subscribers and hundreds of new purchases

The lesson is a simple one: Do not abandon the best practices you have grown to rely on when developing programs in the social space. The same email strategies you have been applying for years need to be relied upon as you activate new channels.

At the same time, it is critical to understand that not all customers are created equal on the social Web. There is a big difference in extended reach between me posting an offer on my Facebook page and a serious blogger embedding the offer for their followers to take action on.

32 Spectacularly Useful Twitter Tools

Like millions of other Twitter users, I use Twitter as a serious business tool, to enhance my business interests. But I also enjoy using Twitter for the fun aspect that is inherent in its DNA.

Let’s face it, Twitter is a lot of fun! And it has spawned an entire industry of amazing Twitter tools that are not only fun – but can also help you maximize the power of Twitter, as well as enhance your business interests.

Following are 32 Fun and Useful Twitter Tools. Enjoy!

1. BackType Plugins
backtype.com/plugins

Backtype.com is a real-time conversational search engine that helps users find, follow and share comments from blogs, social networks and other social media. Very, very cool.

2. CureCRMcurecrm.com/net

CureCRM is a Twitter CRM (Customer Realationship Management) tool. It works on your desktop and gives you the ability to automatically record email conversations into salesforce cases, contacts, opportunities, and leads entries. It also schedules meetings, manages your calendar, and reminds colleagues to attend meetings.

3. Friend or Followfriendorfollow.com

This is my favorite Twitter tool. It tells you who you’re following who’s not following you back. This tool allows you to stay on top of your unfollows, as well as “trim your Twitter fat”, so to speak.

4. Featured UsersfeaturedUsers.com

Featured Users is a Twitter application ad network. It appears to be affiliated with the aforementioned Friend or Follow.  Here’s how it works: When you purchase impressions, your Twitter profile is displayed on the Twitter applications in the Featured Users network. The more impressions you purchase, the more often your profile is displayed.

It actually looks pretty cool. I haven’t tried this one yet, but I’m seriously thinking about it. They also have a user referral program that will allow you to make money when you refer customers to their program.

5. GeoFollowgeofollow.com

Geofollow bills itself as “The Largest Location Based Twitter Directory on The Net.” GeoFollow allows you to list yourself geographically, and categorically, simply by sending a twitter reply. Pretty cool.

6. GoTwitrgotwitr.com

GoTwitr is a Twitter referral service. However, what makes GoTwitr different from other Twitter referal services is the fact GoTwitr gives you the ability to preview in detail everyone you follow or unfollow.

That way, your community will be made up of people who actually share your interests.

7. HootSuitehootsuite.com

HootSuite is yet another free professional Twitter client. Here are some of the functions that HootSuite performs: Manages multiple Twtitter accounts, tracks how many people click the links you tweet out, pre-schedules your messages, submits your blog feed to Twitter and more.

8. OpenBreak (Formerly TwitterBerry)orangatame.com/products/openbeak

Billed as “The evolution of TwitterBerry,” OpenBeak is mobile client for posting updates to Twitter. It works over the data network, so you don’t need to use SMS. OpenBeak is the evolution of TwitterBerry, and the new name allows the app to grow beyond both the Twitter platform and BlackBerry smartphones.

9. PeopleBrowsr
peoplebrowsr.com

PeopleBrowsr is a real time data mine and social search engine. It allows you to monitor your brand, manage feedback, share accounts, run campaigns, track keywords, build widgets and engage across multiple social networks simultaneously.

10.Ping.fmping.fm

Ping.fm is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that enables users to post to multiple social networks simultaneously. This is a really great tool!

11. Qwitter
useqwitter.com

Qwitter is a Twitter tool that notifies you when you get un-followed. Qwitter checks your followers and notifies you as often as it can, depending on how many people are using it and how many followers they have.

Now here’s what’s really cool about Qwitter. Not only will it alert you as to who is no longer following you, but it will also show you the tweet you posted that (may or may not) have caused the person to unsubscribe. Very useful.

12. Seesmic Desktop
seesmic.com

Seesmic Desktop is a Twitter client and desktop app which allows you to view multiple accounts in one window. Not only will you be able to view multiple accounts, you will be able to view the window in columns (similar to Tweetdeck).

13. SocialOomph (Formally known as TweetLater)socialoomph.com

SocialOomph is a free Twitter tool that lets you set your tweets to be sent at specific time intervals, track keywords, automatically send welcome direct messages (DM’s)to new followers, purge your direct messages and more.

14. Trendistic
trendistic.com/_help

Ever heard of Google Trends? Well, Trendistic is similar to that. Trendistic is a tool that allows you to track trends on Twitter, similarly to what Google Trends does for Google searches. It gathers tweets as they are posted, filters redundant ones and compiles the rest into one-hour intervals.

15. TwitterMailtwittermail.com

TwitterMail is a service for users of Twitter that allows them to redirect email to their twitter account.

Here’s how it works: When you give TwitterMail your Twitter credentials they supply you with a unique TwitterMail email address. For instance, abc123example@twittermail.com. If you send an email to that address it will be posted to Twitter.com (By the way, that’s a fake Twittermail address, so don’t use it).

16. Twitbin
twitbin.com

If you’re a Firefox user, this one’s for you. Twitbin is a Firefox extension that allows you to keep up with all of your Twitter conversations right from your browser sidebar. Twitbin allows you to send messages, receive messages, share links, and more. Great Firefox extension!

17. Twibbon
twibbon.com

Supporting a cause? Twibbon allows you to promote your cause through Twitter. Twibbon overlays a small icon onto supporters’ profile images to create a ‘Twibbon’, making an impactful online statement. The user’s Twitter account automatically tweets to let everyone know about their affiliation.

18. TweetMeMe
tweetmeme.com

If you’re an article marketer like I am, you’re going to love this tool.  TweetMeMe is a retweet button for website and blog publishers who want to encourage viral activity of their content on Twitter.

The button shows a live count of the number of times your content has been tweeted. I love this tool!

19. TweetDeck
tweetdeck.com/beta

TweetDeck is your personal social networking dashboard for staying in touch with what’s happening now on Twitter, Facebook, MySpace and other social networking sites. In fact, you can do so many things with TweetDeck, you are limited only by your imagination.

20. Twitterfeedtwitterfeed.com

Twitterfeed allows you to publish updates from any RSS feed to your Twitter account. You then have the ability to decide how frequently you want Twitterfeed to check your feed updates and how many updated articles to post to Twitter.

21. Twitpictwitpic.com

As its name suggests, Twitpic allows you to share photos on Twitter. You can post pictures to TwitPic from your phone, their API, or through the Twitpic site itself.

22. TwitterCounter
twittercounter.com

If you have a lot of Twitter followers and want to show them off, you’ll find this is an interesting tool. TwitterCounter is a statistics tool which allows you to display the number of Twitter followers you have on your blog.

It will also display whether your followers are increasing or decreasing. The service also has a Twitter Remote widget that you can add to your blog sidebar for more interaction with your followers.

23. Twitterholic
twitterholic.com

Want to know who has the most followers on Twitter? Then Twitterholic is the tool for you. But Twitterholic goes one step further, not only does it allow you to see who has the most followers, it also allows you to check your own ranking in the Twitter universe. Great tool!

24. Twellowtwellow.com

Twellow is a directory of public Twitter accounts. It features hundreds of categories and search features to help you find people in specific niches.

Here’s how it works: Twellow grabs publicly available messages from  Twitter. Twellow then analyzes and categorizes each of the users responsible for those messages into the various categories found on its website.

25. Twaittertwaitter.com

Twaitter is a tool that allows team accounts, scheduled tweets, RSS integration, tweet calendar and more.

26. Twibestwibes.com

Twibes is an interesting Twitter tool that allows you to find groups of people who share your common interests.

27. TwitterLocaltwitterlocal.net

TwitterLocal is an Adobe AIR based application that allows you to filter Tweets by location. You can generate an RSS or XML feed, which allows you to receive Tweets from a specified area, including city, state, postal code and  mile radius.

28. TweetBrain
tweetbrain.com

TweetBrain is a crowdsourcing service powered by the Twitter community. It enables you to get quality answers to your Twitter questions quickly – sort of like Yahoo Answers for Twitter users. Very cool.

29. Tweetvisortweetvisor.com

Tweetvisor is a web-based, multi-column Twitter interface that enables users to better manage multiple Twitter accounts. Tweetvisor returns real-time updates about favorite topics, news and tweets – plus, much, much more. Nice!

30. TwitterFox
twitterfox.net

TwitterFox is Firefox web browser plugin that TwitterFox is a Firefox extension that notifies you of your friends’ tweets on Twitter. This extension adds a tiny icon on the status bar which notifies you when your friends update their tweets.

It also has a small text input field to update your tweets. In addition, TwitterFox allows you to view Tweets within your own web browser, in a popup menu. This is extremely convenient and eliminates the need to constantly go to the Twitter website.

31. Wickett Twitter Widget
wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wickett-twitter-widget

This is a popular WordPress plugin that display tweets from a Twitter account in the sidebar of your blog. It is without question the easiest way to add Tweets to Wordpress.

32. Yahoo Sidelineyahoo.sideline.com

Sideline is an Adobe AIR desktop application that allows users to create and group custom queries by topics of interest.

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Do You Have a Twitter Strategy?

A young adult asked: “I need help with regard to Twitter. Any advice on how I can attack this in a productive manner will be much appreciated.”

First, it’s impressive that this young adult realized that a productive plan is needed to use Twitter for business. Second, I like the phrase “attack this in a productive manner.”

Why do I like the phrase “attack this in a productive manner”? Because using Twitter effectively is similar to planning a battlefield strategy. Now, of course, our purpose is not to crush the other people on Twitter. But we do want to figure out how to engage in a way that they pay attention to what we’re doing.

Then I said the next step would be to write a bullet point list of what the person would like to achieve on Twitter, including which areas of interest to focus on.

Let’s say the person is interested in restoring antique cars. Now will this be a hobby or a business? First, as we’ve discussed before in terms of Twitter profiles, the Twitter profile should reflect this primary focus and whether this is a hobby or a business.

We’ll say for now it’s a hobby that you would like to turn into a business.

So you do a search (using Twitter search functions as well as third-party search applications) on words related to restoring antique cars. And we’ll say you find recent tweets from five different Twitter users with keywords relating to restoring antique cars.

The first thing is to follow these five people and then to engage with them in conversation about antique cars. For example, one of these people might tweet a question about needing help finding a part. If you know the answer, you would send a public tweet reply with the answer.

And if you are on Twitter every day engaging in conversation on this topic, you will be drawn into a wider conversation as you follow other people who engage about antique cars with your first five antique car Twitter users.

By sharing in this conversation you are beginning to establish yourself as someone with knowledge on the subject as well as someone who is wiling to share this knowledge.

When you are ready to take the next step, you get a website that supports your planned business of restoring antique cars and you put the link to your website on your Twitter profile. Now at your website you collect email addresses by offering a compelling freebie such as “5 Tips You Should Know Before Restoring an Antique Car.”

And every so often on Twitter you can tweet about this freebie report. You can also tweet that you’ll answer questions on Twitter about antique car restoration. Also, you can create your own Twitter list of antique car aficionados.

While you may tweet about other things to demonstrate you are not a one-dimensional person, your battlefield strategy for engagement on Twitter will center around taking part in antique car conversations.

With attention to detail as in any good battlefield plan and staying focused on the prize, you should be able to carry out a productive business strategy on Twitter.

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How to Participate in a Tweetchat

You can get to know people on Twitter in your area of interest by participating in a tweetchat on a related subject.

What is a tweetchat?

It’s a stream of tweets on the same topic in real time. Imagine it as a gigantic instant messaging free-for-all on a stated topic.

First let’s talk about participating in one. Then we’ll talk about how starting one can help you market on Twitter.

Let’s take this scenario:

I announce that a tweetchat on #ficbkmkt (hashtag for fiction book marketing) will take place on a specific date and time. (I make sure to state what time zone in the U.S. this is.) I tweet about this ahead of time and get others to also tweet the topic, time and date.

At the specific date and time I use a third-party application to participate in a tweetchat in real time. This way I can follow the tweets of people I’m not following yet and people who are not following me yet can see my tweets on the subject.

While there are other third-party ways to participate in tweetchats, I like tweetchat.com the best. Just know that you can change the speed of how fast you get the new tweets. I’m a fast typist so I choose to get new updates every five seconds (the fastest). For others that may be too hard to follow and you’ll want to leave it at the 10 seconds default or even increase to a longer interval between tweets.

At the date and time I go to tweetchat.com and enter my Twitter username and password. Then in the room prompt I enter #ficbkmkt and I’m part of the conversation.

When I tweet from inside this “room” the hashtag #ficbkmkt will be automatically added to my tweet (which is why I don’t have the full 140 characters in a tweet).

If people not participating in the chat are following any of the people in the chat, these outside people can see in their regular Twitter stream the tweets with the hashtag of the people they’re following. And the outside people can respond from their regular Twitter stream but must manually add #fictbkmkt to their tweets so these tweets will show up in the tweetchat room.

Tweetchats are usually for an hour or more. Some are the same time every week and others are for a special event.

The regularly scheduled tweetchats may have a specified topic for each chat or they may be an open exchange of information. The tweetchat organizer decides the format.

I will admit that the tweets can fly fast and furious. Leaders of well-organized tweetchats often have a series of questions and ask people to put the question number before the reply to make it easier for people to follow the conversation. Thus a tweet reply inside the tweetchat that answers “How do you search on Twitter?” (which has been designated as question 4) may look like this:

Q4: There are numerous applications that allow you to search Twitter by different criteria. [hashtag of tweetchat automatically attached]

Now let’s say you want to host a special event tweetchat or start a regularly scheduled tweetchat:

Why would you do this? To establish yourself as a leader in a specific niche. To be known as someone who truly contributes to the conversation in this area. To help out someone.

For example, when getglue.com was new, I offered to host a special tweetchat with a representative from getglue so that he could explain to book authors how getglue could be used for book marketing. The tweetchat afforded book authors the opportunity to learn from the getglue representative and also share tips with each other.

Now I admit I offered to do a tweetchat for getglue for a self-interested reason: I wanted myself to understand how getglue could be used for book marketing. But I did put effort into promoting the tweetchat ahead of time plus I edited the transcript from the tweetchat and put it on my FictionMarketing.com blog so that others who didn’t participate in the live tweetchat could benefit from the advice.

This I utilized the Twitter marketing strategy of providing valuable information for others while learning information for myself.

One other hosting tip: Because many people on Twitter don’t know what a tweetchat is, when I sponsor a special event tweetchat I create an announcement through twitwall.com. This way I can have a headline about the tweetchat (which becomes the tweet) and then a link to the twitwall announcement with instructions about how to join the tweetchat.

P.S. And if you’ve added good information as a participant or host of a tweetchat, you’ll discover that a lot of people from the tweetchat who weren’t following you before will now be following you.

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