Archive for the ‘MicroBlogging – Twitter’ Category

It’s pretty common to create a Twitter account and then say to yourself “I don’t get it”. Twitter itself is designed as a platform and does not provide any real end-user tools or training. The power of Twitter is in the distribution of your message and in providing a means for you to be found and to find others. It’s all about connecting with your customer.  But how do you get started?

Follow others

Many people are set up to autofollow so when you follow them, they may follow you back. How do you find twitter followers?

Check twitter directories, do a keyword search, search profiles and connect to people who you meet.

Be selective of the people you are following

You can follow anyone you want to, and they may or may not follow you back. That is okay. At first you may notice this and be sensitive to it, but as your followers and following increases, you don’t really notice it. Just follow the people who tweet something of interest to you, and others will be doing the same.

There are restrictions to how many people Twitter will allow you to follow. If you follow more than 2000 people, this is what twitter has to say:

Every user can follow 2000 people total. Once you’ve followed 2000 users, there are limits to the number of additional users you can follow: this limit is different for every user and is based on your ratio of followers to following. When you hit this limit, we’ll tell you by showing an error message in your browser. You’ll need to wait until you have more followers in order to follow more users—basically, you can’t follow 10,000 people if only 100 people follow you.

There are some tools that are useful in determining who to follow:

• Twubble – Twubble recommends people to follow by spidering the people you’re already following and recommending users that they’re following.
• Who Should i Follow? – Enter you Twitter username into Who Should i Follow? and the service finds users who are similar to those you’re already following.

Tweet consistently

• Mr. Tweet – Your Personal Networking Assistant to Find Great Twitterers & Discuss Great Topics. Personalized based on YOUR friends + tweets. Get relevant tweets using email summaries & lists.
• Twittoria – How many friends are you really following? Twitoria finds your friends that haven’t tweeted in a long time so you can give them the boot!

Market your twitter handle

Twitter is just another way for your customers to find you and connect with you. It’s another communication tool and its free. As other communication tools, such as your email address, you should include it in your communications as yet another way for your customers to engage with you. Here are some suggestions as to where you should list your Twitter handle.

• Email signature: include it in your email signature
• Website: add it to your website
• Blog homepage: add it to your blog
• Blog post: occasionally add it within your blog post
• Email newsletter: add it to the bottom of your email newsletter template.
• Presentations: Include your Twitter account on the last slide of your presentation and when you tell people how to connect with you.
• Business Card: Include it on your business card.
• Article writing: include it in your byline
• Guest blog posting: include your Twitter handle in your byline.
• Retweeting on Twitter: Use “@” symbol when retweeting. When they respond to you in kind, they will be promoting your twitter account to their followers.
• Networking: use the @ symbol to communicate

For more resources on using Twitter, check out the Twitter guidebook from Mashable.

What have you done to get more Twitter followers? Please share your successes and failures in the comments below.

How to get found on Twitter

A free way to get found on Twitter and the web is to keyword optimize your twitter profile and your tweets. In this way your Twitter account will show up in Twitter searches and even search engines like Bing and Google when someone conducts a search for your keyword.

Here are some tools your customers may use to search on specific keywords to find your tweets and then you:

• Twitter People Search – twitter’s built in search. You can find people, organizations, or companies you know that already have a Twitter account.
• Tweepz – Tweepz lets you specify parts of a Twitterer’s user information (like name, bio, and location), filter results by follower/following numbers, location, and other terms.
• TweepSearch – TweepSearch let’s you search by username to search friends and followers, or just a keyword to search all bios currently indexed.
• TwitDir – TwitDir let’s you search by name, a screen name or a location. It also has a number of Top 100 Lists that are interesting. You can now add yourself to this directory in case your account isn’t already indexed.
  

Another way to get found using Twiter is to optimize the keywords used in your tweets to attract more followers. So when someone searches on a keyword your tweets show up. This may also improve the likelihood that your tweets show up in Google or Bing. This should be part of your overall keyword strategy.

Here is a tool that recommends followers based on keywords used in your tweets:

• Twitterel – How TwitteRel Works: Insert a keyword (or more), Find twitter users who tweeped this word then Follow these twitters. Twitterel helps you find twitterers who have related interests to you.

How to get Twitter followers

Once you sign up for a Twitter account, the question usually is “Now What?” Well, you need to follow people and get Twitter followers. One way to get Twitter followers is to submit yourself to Twitter directories. You can also use these to find interesting people to follow. Here is a list of popular Twitter directories you can use to find and get more Twitter followers.

• WeFollow- Find Twitter celebrities, actors, TV personalities, or new Twitter friends in your area. WeFollow is a directory of Twitter users organized by interests
• Twellow - A search directory of people by area of expertise, profession or other attribute listed in personal profiles on Twitter.
• Just Tweet It – Just Tweet It is a user directory for Twitter organized by genre to allow for users to easily find other Twitter users to connect with. You can subscribe to an RSS feed of people who sign up in a specific category.
• TweetFind – TweetFind answers the question How to Increase Your Twitter Followers.
• Geofollow Twitter Directories – Geofollow Twitter Directory & Search. There are many Twitter Directories, but we follow the top users.
• TwitR - TwitR is a Twitter user directory, free for anyone to join as long as they have a Twitter account.
• My Twitter Directory - Twitter users directory & groups organized by genre. Search, find, connect and network with users. Find twitter followers,business, app & people easily.
• Loaded Web – Local Twitter Directory. Add yourself to the Local Twitter Directory (about the local Twitter directory).

Which Twitter directories do you like best?

How do I automate the marketing of my blog?

Do you automate the marketing of your blog posts? Here’s what I’ve done.

My blog posts are relevant to small business owners and entrepreneurs who want to market their business better. As such, I have them automatically posted to places that small business owners can find them such as Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and more. I have spent some time automating this process so I can focus on the creation of content and not the marketing of it. Here are the methods and tools I used to automate the updates of my blog posts.

Twitter

I have two twitter accounts; the first, @expertmktgcoach, I tweet each post once, and the second, @debzimmer, I use to repeat the tweets throughout the day.

I use Hootsuite to import the RSS feed from my blog to twitter. This sends out one tweet per account. With Hootsuite, I can also schedule tweets on that second account so that the tweet reoccurs throughout the day.

LinkedIn

My blog headline posts to my LinkedIn status using Hootsuite. Hootsuite also sends the status to Ping.fm which updates numerous other sites that I visit less often.

My blog is then imported into my LinkedIn Profile using the LinkedIn WordPress Application.

Facebook

I use Facebook Notes to import my RSS feed into my Facebook Page. This creates a duplicate copy of my blog on Facebook. I can also use Hootsuite to import the headlines into my wall on my personal Facebook profile or public page.

Social Bookmarking

Using the WordPress Plugin tool for OnlyWire, my posts are automatically bookmarked to numerous bookmarking sites with which I have accounts. It creates bookmarks at more bookmarking sites than I can reach through Ping.fm. Ping.fm reaches other social media sites that OnlyWire doesn’t, such as Plaxo.

RSS Reader

I use Feedburner for those who want to get my blog posts in an RSS reader format.

Kindle

If you are a Kindle user, you can read my blog by subscribing through the Amazon Kindle Store.

SEO

Each post I write is search engine optimized. I use a number of tools including WordPress plugins to assist me with search engine optimization.

Email

There’s one more automation tool I’m considering but haven’t yet implemented. I see that AWebber is now integrated with Feedburner and can send the RSS feeds in email to your subscriber base. I think that sounds way cool. I just wish the tools I currently use offered that service.

That’s all I’ve got on blog marketing automation. Do you have any tools or systems you use that you particularly like?