Twitter away

Posted by admin

Lee Oden did it again with a great post on a microblogging survey that they conducted.

According to that survey, the maximum percentage use (almost 30% of the people who use twitter) use it to share links to items of interest. That really got me thinking…

Imagine if YOU were the item of their interest. Yes YOU! Lets suppose you’re about to launch your product and have rolled out an elaborate marketing campaign. Your launch has create a stir in the market and people interested in knowing the progress. The interest makes them start to update each other using microblogging tools, such as twitter, about whatever piece of news they can find about your launch. (“I think they’re going to launch a phone this time. imagine that. they call it the iphone or something..”). The microblogging aspect of it significantly increases the hype curve. You can launch when the timing is perfect and people are most receptive.

Now, during the launch event, keep the excitement rolling. Don’t stop there. Use their third party tools like LiveTwitting to give live updates on the event. Have competitions over these platforms if you want. Get creative. You have all the tools that you need to offer mind-blowing launches - all you have to do is find creative ways of using them.

I’d say. This is a great tool, so twitter away. Psst. Follow me?

More Twitter Insights, Opinions & Even A Nice Video Introduction To Twitter From The Blog World Around Us…….

Twitter Waffles On TOS, Treats It Like A Game of Darts - The Twitterverse was all aflutter over the past 24 hours or so as Twitter was used as a venue for online harassment. As soon as I started seeing the harassment accusations flying across my screen in Twhirl (my desktop Twitter client of …

Twitter Series B Funding: Done. Raises $15 MM - I spent most of the day digging up more information on Twitter and its Series B round of funding that I reported last night. The update is that Twitter reached an agreement with investors today to raise $15 million in funding at around …

Video: Twitter in Plain English - This 2.5 minute video is a result of feedback from our fans. We’ve received a number of requests from people who want their friends to use the micro-blogging service Twitter, but can’t seem to explain it well. We hope this video helps. …

Twitter: A community or a utility? - I’ve been kind of out of the loop thanks to the mesh 2008 conference, so I’ve missed the furore over Ariel Waldman and her attempts to get Twitter to ban a user that she says has been harassing her. According to her account of the …

Twitter begins to communicate with their users - Today Twitter began to communicate with their users, which they are to be commended and congratulated for. A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step, there’s a long road ahead, and everyone’s going to learn a lot as we …

Simon U Ford (SUF.EDBD)

Today’s tip! Twitter delivers Events Listed more traffic than Google search on any given day. Become immune to the Google slap by managing your Twitter campaign professionally.

Social Traffic - Event Marketing In A New Media Scape

If you enjoyed this post, please consider leaving a comment or subscribe to the feed and get future articles delivered to your feed reader.

kboode

It took me a while to grasp the concept, but I am now convinced of the value of Twitter.

There clearly are two completely different uses for Twitter. One is the personal use, where you connect online with the people you have a relationship with offline. The video "Twitter in plain English" applies to this group. You may be interested in what a friend is doing at a given point in time, but this certainly is not the case where it concerns business.

That brings me to the second group. When you use Twitter for business, you will be using it more to stay in touch with what is happening in your world and to send people to your sites/blogs. The type of message is different in this group vs. the other one. In this case it is not as much what you are doing, but more about what is new and/or interesting.

The nice thing about Twitter is, that you can get a lot of followers in Twitter, without ever having to ask them for their info. It is much easier to get a large following than it is to get a large list. And in essence, they are the same. That is, they serve the same purpose. I don't know what the difference is in click through rate from followers vs. opening of emails by people on your list. One thing I know for sure though it is free and it is does not require an autoresponder etc. to make it work. A free list! How much better can it get!

addytseng

I found this post and it addresses some of my feelings about what I see on Twitter.

http://www.twitip.com/5-things-every-band-shoul...

Be Human.

Maybe I'm not following humans. ;-)

EventsListed

Addy,

If I am to be human I would focus on 10 people in my life. I do that in my personal life. I care deeply for 10 to 15 people, people who see me as very human and I would die for most of them.

In business I am very human towards maybe 20 good associates or JV partners who I would drop anything to take a call from.

I only have time to be human to at most 100 good high paying customers. I am even more human to 30 loyal evangelists. I can just manage that amount of human-ness by have staff helping me? On top of all this being human I also have the low paying customers who can be supported by staff who I need to manage.

As you grow on social media you need a balance between what old media was in terms of not being human and what social media is. In social media the relationship between publishers and their audience is not monologue, it's a more direct dialogue.

I'm on social networks for business,.. my sole objective is to build a business community. I preach quality relationships and I mean it when I do. In saying that, I'm here to tell you,...it's impossible to build quality, human to human relationships with thousands of people. It's also impossible to build a profitable customer base if your audience is limited to just hundreds of people that you're being human to.

Let the spectators be entertained,... the coaches coach and the players play Addy.

A realistic business strategy cannot involve holding each and every person in the same regard. Some followers are just numbers in your crowd. They follow you for information or entertainment only and yes you must appear human to them and we cannot exclude them from enjoying the benefits of what we give away to attract a crowd in the first place. We entertain to draw a crowd and appear as human as we can without being human because being human limits that crowd to 50.

What we need is a sales funnel for people can go down to invest more of themselves into quality, human relationships with you. Relationships and networking on social media need to be planned at different levels throughout this sales funnel. People in the crowd cannot enjoy human relationships with you unless they are prepared to invest more.

I can only be genuinely human with a limited number of people. I want those relationships to be as profitable as can be.

addytseng

Simon,
All I meant to do was admit I don't get it and start a discussion around why I don't get it. I hope I didn't start something that is more than just a discussion.

I understand and agree that one physically cannot have close relationships with more than 50 folks, and there are many levels of friendship. People move in and out of the different rings actually.

What I was getting at was more along the lines of these questions:

How do we see big corporations when they participate in Social Media?
Are they faceless entities or human?
Should the founder be the human face or can the corporate take on a human identity?

Obviously a corporation does not take their kids to baseball games. I might ask 'it' why their service is slow. I might ask about their new products, etc. So I could have an pseudo human relationship with the organization. Maybe it's ok. I understand it'll only be business related.

I''ve been asked to help a non-profit get on Facebook & Twitter. I've been debating whether the director should be herself (with all her human qualities and charisma) or should she be the hidden puppeteer.

Any thoughts? Anyone?

EventsListed

I think its the discussion of the decade Addy,...

I have clarity on where I stand from my experience. I once believed I had to be human / personable to everyone. I soon learned that If I am, I would not find time to earn any money through social media marketing making the benefits redundant.

I think its about transparency. If you're using your profile it should be you. If its a brand it should be the brand, if you auto feed content that's fair play too as people can see where content is streamed from.

I don't think it fair to pretend to be someone you are not or have another person be you. I use staff on my company accounts which is fine because those accounts represent a company brand not a person. I also have them perform tasks for me in my accounts. I won't ever let them be me in my accounts though. I think doing so is dishonest and at the end of the day it is what it is.

If someone is auto feeding great content but they are not being personable they will attract people who see value in that. Likewise the personable people will attract people looking for friendship,...as long as its all transparent.

Hope my 2 cents worth has helped.

Kari Lønning

Well stated Simon. I think people are having trouble with the boundaries between creating a business or a personal profile. (Artists have it easier. People expect us to be a little different.)

rebeccahappy

I am pretty well really enjoying twitter. There are real people behind some of the tweets. I find it jumps rapidly over hurdles when you need to access someone.
The old style spamming that people are still using mostly from lack of education gets a little tiring but I am free to unfollow. The tool itself can be a way of honing in your headline writing skills as an added bonus.

Lisa Lomas

Twitter can we wonderfully viral, but I note its a 3-4 day turn around. If you have a buzz, you must keep with it. I believe it jsut cuts out some of the fuss we have centred around communication. I was actually amused recently. I added a person to my skype, I forgot to say hello. So they sent me an email to make an appointment, I guess I shoudl say that is considerate. But sometimes, being to politically correct can be so so boring. Oh well thankful for twitter that keeps it all really really simple and powerful still.

Lilster

I love twitter. It is a 'headline' of 140 characters. Short, brief and attractive to most people. Great for business and personal submissions. I also like to use twitter like an informationscenter. When I need an answer on something to buy such as a new laptop, you can get answers within seconds! Very effective tool to network with and love the RT's! Can get massive exposure with RT's.

No wonder twitter is growing at an astounding rate? And best of all - it is FREE!

michaelqtodd

Agree with your comments too Simon and Kari.

Twitter is a simply amazing way of connecting with like minded people or people in your niche or target market.
You need to define who you are not as Simon has taught us.In my main account I personally lose around 50 "followers" a day but also gain around 200 and of those around 20 are ones I am targetting.
I now have over 10 accounts and am starting to get how it is done.
90 % conversation is the best rule

michaelqtodd

LOL
You beat me by 30 seconds to Digg this Kari!

Kari Lønning

Too funny Michael!

EventsListed

Ahh great to see you guys competing for submissions. Welcome to the world of power diggers,...no better of learning than by doing,...<-;

Kari Lønning

Addy,
Remember how we were able to get people to think about EarthDayBirthday? Back then we had a conversation and were sharing it with eachother. It's true that without a network or common topic, there is a lot of noise. This is a particularly good example of Simon's advice to build a network, a community slowly, and there by drawing people to you. I've been meeting/networking with a few AMAZING people and every now and then there are quantum leaps of depth and scope, due to people knowing who I am. I love Twitter (a bit too much I'm afraid). It holds the potential to link up with people I'd never otherwise meet. Compared to the length of real time it would take to meet these people otherwise, time here is compressed and moving along quickly!

addytseng

Thanks Kari. Glad it's working for you. I am not shy to say I don't get it. :-)

When you start with a group to promote a campaign, you can tweet about the same thing and feed off of each other and create curiosity that way. If you are by yourself and you are just tweeting and not responding to anyone, it is like TV ads. TV ads still work. I'm just saying they are one-way communications.

Oh yes, I think you can find amazing people on Twitter. But ultimately you have to start conversations, don't you? Definitely, online communications compress time and space!

addytseng

I'm not sold on Twitter as a business-bulding tool. It is a social networking tool and I feel a lot of folks use it like TV ads. They are yelling out what they want to say, not asking for a response, and not expecting any. I find it very noisy.

All I see are links....to what? Some don't even have comments ('cos they don't have any characters left maybe). Why would I click them? They haven't piqued my interest.

Potentially it's a great way to ask for help e.g. with a software problem, your dog ate the goldfish..... I see some good quotes but when they are churned out one after another, it doesn't give me the feeling that any of the quotes were relevant to the persons' life that day. Twittering for the sake of twittering. Why?

Twitter was built to let people describe what they are doing. I look for conversation starters and actually find few. LOL And when I reply, I don't even get a response to my response, which makes me think it's all one way broadcasting!

That's okay. I agree I don't get Twitter. I probably need to watch this video again. "Twitter in plain English". http://www.commoncraft.com/Twitter

But I would like to ask you "Why do you Tweet?"

EventsListed

Twitter is an alert system to me Addy.

As a business tool its better than Google. I am getting more traffic to my website from twitter than I get from Google search engines.

People don't have to opt-in to my email lists or subscribe to my RSS feed they just need to follow. They can then see everything I publish, favorite and comment about across the web from the one portal and on mobile.

It's not designed for conversation or commenting. Its a 160 character alert system that attracts roughly 4% of my total followers to click through onto my content when ever an alert goes out.

Between my team and I,... we have over 160,000 followers. Multiply that by 4% of that number and 3 alerts pointing to my content amongst 20 other feeds daily and tell me its not a good business tool when I pay nothing for this traffic. Our followers are all regionally grouped by city as well.

If I want to build conversations in comments around content hang out in Facebook and or Friendfeed, they are designed for you to chat about feeds off the content site but to be honest I don't like the idea. I did that and I got little benefit from doing so in terms of traffic into my sales funnel. I try and get people to engage in commenting on my blogs itself. Where the content lives, under the posts not on Facebook or Friednfeed.

Twitter does exactly that.

jkoritz

twitter is a great avenue to expand our presence and place on the web, we may grow as much as we like or not grow

Twitter away

Related Posts

About the Author

Whats Inside?

Blog Networks

Whats Happening

Our Blogs

Our Links

Planners