Tag Archive - Social Media

October 6, 2009

My 9 Favorite WordPress Social Media Plugins

The WordPress platform never ceases to amaze me. It’s by far one of the greatest pieces of software ever built, and to think that it is free is the icing on the cake. What really makes the platform as successful as it is, are the thousands of themes and plugins that the WordPress community contributes. These add ons turn what essentially is a blogging platform, into just about any type of site you want from community to content management systems to storefronts. It truly is amazing.

Over the years I’ve found some very useful plugins, and lately there have been some great developments with social media plugins as well. Below are my 9 favorite WordPress social media plugins. If you are running a hosted WordPress blog you should definitely check these out.

1. Sexy Bookmarks – I had been using Sociable and Add To Any for awhile, but stumbled across the Sexy Bookmarks plugin and just think this one looks better. A unique design, simple to use, and…well sexy.

2. Tweetmeme – Certainly you’ve seen plenty of blogs with retweet buttons on the top left of postings. Chances are they are using the Tweetmeme plugin. Easy to use, does what it’s supposed to do. Retweet.com has recently launched offering a similar service, but I like that Tweetmeme has established themselves already with a proven service.

3. Fbshare.me – This just recently launched and mimics the functionality of Tweetmeme but for Facebook. The facts are Twitter and Facebook are the kings of social media so having both prominently on your blog posts increases the chances that your readers will use them and spread the love.

4. Disqus Comment System – The Disqus plugin transforms your WordPress comments into a true social media friendly experience. The plugin integrates social media mentions in addition to your blog comments which helps consolidate all the “chatter” about your blog articles into one place. Comments load in real time, and users have multiple options regarding how to log in using any of there social media profiles. Very cool stuff. Oh, and did I mention it’s free?

5. Twitter Tools – The Twitter Tools plugin simply helps you be more efficient by automatically tweeting your blog posts once you publish. It also allows you to pull your tweets into your blog posts and offers a ton of customization features to fit your needs.

6. WP Greet Box – Anytime you can give your readers the impression of a custom or personalized experience, that’s a good thing. The WP Greet Box plugin uses Ajax to automatically identify how your users found your blog articles, and displays the appropriate referrer message at the top welcoming them and suggesting they share accordingly.

7. Fotobook -While Flickr still offers a more robust photo hosting experience, the reality is, most people are consolidating their sharing, and post the majority of their photos on Facebook. This nifty plugin allows you to easily “import” your Facebook photos and albums into your blog seamlessly.

8. Smart YouTube – This plugin is all about making it quicker and easier for you to embed YouTube videos into your blog posts. I’m personally more of a fan of Vimeo (check out a plugin here for them), but the fact is, most of the free world is using You Tube. Regardless, these plugins speed things up considerably.

9. Yet Another Related Posts – While this plugin may not directly be categorized as a “social media” plugin, it’s a must have. Social Media is all about sharing information, and when you get users to your blog, you should do all you can to share relevant information to them. This plugin automatically identifies similar articles in your blog, and displays them as related posts. It’s a great way to keep your readers engaged on your site and to drive down bounce rates.

Those are my favs. What are yours?

September 14, 2009

Vanns Community Manager Update: I Turned The Opportunity Down

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Because so many of my family, friends, friends of friends, etc. came out in hordes to support my Vanns Community Manager role video application, I felt it was important and appropriate to write a follow up for everyone.

I turned down the opportunity to be in the Top 5.

Some of you might wonder why in the world would I do such a thing after going through so much effort to win a spot. Well, it unfortunately came down to something that had I known from day one, might have deterred my involvement in the first place. The salary was WAY WAY too low to consider moving and supporting my family for. I received a call the morning of the Top 5 announcement telling me I was being considered as a Top 5 finalist, but they wanted to share some job details with me first. I was told the salary range first, and I was floored. It didn’t make sense to me.

From their site:

So how much will you make? Let’s say for the purposes of starting a conversation that you’ll make a wage that is commensurate with your experience level in a job of this nature and get to live in what is probably the most incredible place to live in the Mountain West – Missoula, MT.

I was offended that a role as important as this one, and one that was so highly publicized and recruited for, was as low as it was and/or they were implying that’s what they thought my “experience level” was worth. I know Community Manager and Social Media roles are still working on gaining credibility for themselves, but I was very surprised regardless. Especially considering the great lengths Vanns went to hire someone for this role. Yes, the cost of living in Montana is less then many areas, but I did my homework. Missoula is not a small town, and the cost of living isn’t that low. At least not for those newly finding their way there.

I have no ill will towards Vanns, the process, or any of the wonderful candidates that made the Top 5. They seriously are a group of talented, passionate, deserving individuals, and I’m sure Vanns will have a winner on their hands regardless of which direction they go. And everyone is different in their needs, cost of living, personal circumstances. Perhaps their range is well within other people’s situations. It just couldn’t work for me and mine.

Of course, I can’t help but offer some feedback on the whole process being as passionate as I am about community managment. Especially some misses from a community perspective that Vanns really missed out on to capitalize on the great idea:

1. Be more transparent. Vanns really should have disclosed a salary range from the get go. I don’t know; maybe I was the only one burned on this one, but if you are going to do a nationwide search for candidates to this degree, AND put people through a ton of work just to apply, you need to disclose this to negate those that can’t consider the offering. “Commensurate with experience” was not entirely accurate.
2. Be more involved. Besides a few Twitter updates notifying followers of new videos, there was no company interaction with the site. Nothing to continue the momentum, encourage dialogue, or get people excited about the milestones. Yes, they obviously are hiring someone for these things, but it certainly wouldn’t have been too difficult to be more engaged.
3. Be more efficient. The whole process took to long. Interest waned during the down times.
4. Media execution. The process of the video portion of the application was a patch work solution. It was too confusing for many users to figure out how to vote on the videos, and many of the applicants didn’t get the system working correctly from day one. Don’t reinvent the wheel when you don’t have to. YouTube (and Vimeo for that matter), offer robust, fully featured video hosting solutions that could have accommodated all the videos and voting mechanisms without requiring any registration to do so.
5. Involve customers. Vanns already has a community site up and running. Why not have involved them in the process? Put out questions or poll the community to get feedback on what they would like to see in their community manager. Offer prizes, incentives. Something to turn the experience into something more viral.

I can’t give the constructive feedback without the good. Here’s what I loved:

1. The platform. By far one of the most innovative, slick presentations on recruiting a position in your company. It’s obvious the idea was a winner. I personally scored two news stories based on their innovative approach (here and here).
2. Social Media. Great use of Twitter and Facebook to evangelize the opportunity. There was plenty of chatter going on throughout the campaign.
3. Vanns Site Integration. Not only did the publicize the role on their main website. They prominently featured it frequently on the front page. Bold and shows how important they view this role.
4. Bottom line…it worked. Despite my criticisms, let’s be honest, the idea worked. They may not have gotten as many applicants as they would have liked, but at the end of the day, I assure you they will come out much farther ahead from the process as opposed to if they went the traditional route.

So another chapter closes. I loved making the video, I loved evangelizing it, and if anything, it’s provided quite a bit of visibility for me in other areas. Good luck to Vanns, their future Community Manager and continued success. In the end, it all works out as I have some exciting things in the works that will involve doing my own thing. That’s always who I’ve been anyway.

More to come…

September 9, 2009

Twitter Auto DM: Just Say No!

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The absolute #1 pain in the neck Twitter nuisance for me these days are the hordes of Twitter auto direct messages I receive after following someone. It has practically made Twitter DM a useless tool for me. If anyone actually sends me a legitimate DM, it’s lost in a sea of spammy auto DMs encouraging me to check out ‘insert product/service/website here’.

I understand that it is impossible to manage a large following by personally welcoming each person that follows you, and it’s not my expectation that anyone would do this. I rarely do unless there are unique circumstances such as someone I’ve stumbled across that has much in common with me. But let’s be honest here, people and businesses are using Twitter auto DM to pimp something, which I get. This sort of thing has been done for years on a variety of different mediums. What makes it so frustrating, is that Twitter has not released features that allow it’s users to combat this. Much like an email spam filter, there needs to be ways to block these auto DMs. I know recently SocialToo has launched some options to help, but it’s certainly not as useful as a Twitter supported feature could be.

I’m certainly not the only advocate for seeing this trend go away. Sites like StopAutoDM.com are springing up to help buck the trend. There’s also some useful chatter on the subject on a recent TechCrunch article.

Some of you might say, “Just unfollow those that auto DM, you have the power to filter it out”. Yes, this is true, but just because someone is utilizing auto DM, doesn’t necessarily mean that person or or organization has nothing valuable to offer. Often times people just don’t realize that some of the tactics they use are not an ideal way of communicating. While I disapprove of the tactic, I don’t automatically categorize the user as spam. In some cases, yes, in many, not necessarily.

I’m not implying that auto DM tactics should not be available to those who wish to use it. I’m all for businesses, organizations, and people having the freedom and ability to evangelize their products and services in ways that make sense for their business. What I’m saying is that as an end user, I should have access to tools that allow me to control whether I see those messages or not. Yes, Twitter is a free service, but it’s not like they are making money through these tactics to keep the service afloat. I can tolerate some small, targeted advertising in exchange for using a tremendous tool like Twitter, but we’ve certainly reached a point where we need some tools to better manage Twitter.

I can’t imagine that the click through rates to links in Twitter auto DMs are that high, let alone conversion rates, but it would certainly be interesting to see. I haven’t found any studies on the subject, but Mashable posted some interesting finds on overall click through rates for Tweeting as a whole here. If the CTR on tweet links is roughly around 1.5% or so, it’s got to be much lower on auto DMs.

So, if you utilize Twitter auto DMs, I’d be interested to hear your take. Why do you use it, and what are the results? And if you knew that your audience hated them, would you stop?

August 30, 2009

Socialnomics Book Review

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I debated whether to post a book review as I experienced flashes of high school busy work, but Socialnomics is certainly relevant to my world, and I enjoyed it thoroughly. Seeing as it is freshly released, I thought it might be useful to get a review out there for potential readers.

For those of you looking for the quick and dirty, Socialnomics reads quick, is filled with interesting real world stories, and is basically 265 pages of argument that social media is not only here, but ready to transform the way we live our lives and do business (his tagline actually). Socialnomics will not necessarily teach you how to use tools, convey strategy, or equip you with resources to act on. I recommend The Social Media Bible or The New Community Rules: Marketing On The Social Web if you are looking for a resource like that.

Socialnomics is written by Erik Qualman, most well known for his contributions over at Search Engine Watch and on the tradeshow circuit. He’s done his homework on this one as it’s filled with a ton of real world examples of how a handful of businesses have won and lost in the social media game. Whatever Socialnomics may lack in tactics and strategy, it more then makes up for in these extremely useful stories, case studies and examples of how social media has taken the world by storm. Most people with a pulse can tell you that Facebook and Twitter are all the rage, but Socialnomics drives it home with detailed examples from organizations that have embraced social media and found huge success (Obama’s campaign detailed in Chapter 4), to companies that have missed the boat (see Hasbro’s Scrabble incident in Chapter 7). It’s interesting stories like these that really drive home how powerful social media can be when taken seriously.

As I mentioned above, it’s not really a book to teach you how to integrate social media into your day to day strategy, but one to inspire you to do so. I’m not so sure social media “experts” (if there even is such a thing), will have too many “ah ha” moments, but it’s still a refreshing read, especially considering there are few books on the subject. For me, the real value this book brought me as a social media/community professional, was providing me with more ammunition to evangelize and sell social media and community building strategies to potential clients and employers. After reading the book, I felt more equipped to really take this evangelism to another level by being able to use the stories and case studies to share with others. Of course you can find things like this online for free in a variety of places, but it’s nice to have a hard resource like Socialnomics to reference and pull out when needed.

A few other tidbits that I really enjoyed about this book.
The book doesn’t necessarily have to be read start to finish. You could easily jump around and not miss a step as each chapter is it’s own self-sustaining topic not requiring the previous ones.
I love books like these that go the extra mile and summarize the chapter you’ve just read through bullet points as Qualman does here. It makes it so much easier to go back and get a refresher.
I also love Qualman’s writing style, very informal and narrative. Makes for a more enjoyable read.
Tons of notes referenced throughout the book at the end to dive into when and if needed, most with URLs to the source
If you haven’t seen the “trailer” for the book, it’s a must see.

For more information on the author, check out his Socialnomics blog here, his articles at Search Engine Watch or simply get the book. It’s worth it!

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August 26, 2009

Twitter Etiquette: Should You Follow Everyone That Follows You?

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In an earlier post, I talked about the idea of quality vs. quantity when it comes to building out your Twitter following. Since then, I’ve noticed two schools of thought when it comes to the art and science of Twitter following. Those that follow everyone that follows them, and those that only follow a select few no matter how many followers they rack up. Which one is the proper “Twitterquette”?

Let’s preface this discussion with a few omissions. Spammers, robots and automated accounts do not count. Most users aren’t interested in those connections unless they are providing some sort of value. Also, celebrities, sports stars and industry superstars don’t count either. You can’t expect them to really care too much about following every fan when they don’t have to. It’s not realistic nor necessary for them to do so. I’m talking about everyday, normal Twitter users with real human beings behind the accounts; those that choose to follow you for whatever reason. Do they deserve or warrant your follow in return?

I come from the school of thought that they do. I believe that by not following someone back I am in essence saying that I have more important things to say than they do. That’s not the vibe I want to give out. Don’t get me wrong, certainly there are instances where I don’t follow someone because they are simply not relevant at all, so not everyone applies here. However I work hard to ensure that I follow users that are relevant to me either socially or professionally so that the chances are better that they would in fact have useful information to share. Does this mean that I pile up quite a bit of follows that share information that isn’t relevant to me? Of course, but I don’t use Twitter to browse. When I need information, I use targeted searches that allow me to pull up the relevant information I need. What’s more important to me, is building up a large, relevant network of individuals that are interested in what I have to say. Since using Twitter more strategically, traffic to my blog from Twitter has increased to 14% (up 10%), and continues to grow. So this method works for me.

Some individuals use Twitter differently. They count on a clean, relevant stream of Twitter updates that don’t require searching through, which means not following all those that follow them. These users then either have to grow their followers through frequent, useful tweets and re-tweets, or they simply do not care very much about the size of their following.

So what do you think? Is it more valuable to return the favor for all that follow you, or to be more selective in who you follow?

August 19, 2009

How To Use LinkedIn Groups To Drive Website Traffic

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Everyone knows that Linked In is THE social network for professionals, allowing you to create a living resume, perform targeted job searches, collect recommendations and connect with others. It wasn’t until recently however that I realized the potential of utilizing Linked In Groups to drive blog traffic. Ever since doing so, roughly 20% of my blog traffic comes from Linked In. In comparison, Twitter comes in at 14% and Facebook at 9%. Direct traffic and Google account for the majority of the rest. For those of you not using Linked In Groups, here are the steps to take that will immediately give your blog or website a traffic boost.

Find Linked In Groups that relate to the topic(s) you write about or provide on your site. Don’t get too crazy here. You have to manually post to each group, so find a good core of 5-10 groups that are relevant to you or your site and request to join. It’s much more likely that your CTR (click-thru rate) will be higher, the more relevant the connection.
Get involved in the conversations. Nobody likes someone who just stops by and posts their links without ever being involved in the conversation. Respond to those who comment on your submissions, and stop by on other posts to add your take.
Post your blog articles and/or relevant content. Rightfully so, you can’t submit a link to multiple groups at once, so once you have an article to share, visit each relevant group to submit your link.
Make sure your profile has your updated site link(s), status updates and install the blog widget. Make sure your information is always up to date so visitors to your profile have quick access to your site. Also install the blog widget so that your articles are automatically posted on your profile through your RSS feed. The added bonus here is that your profile is more likely to show up in search results the “fresher” your profile appears.
Answer Linked In Questions. Piggy backing #2, by having a proactive voice in the Linked In Questions arena, you’ll further your credibility. When you post your answer, include a description and link to your content in both the website section and the text section.

Take these easy steps, and I assure you will see a significant increase in your blog or website traffic. Just be sure not to over do it. Submitting your articles to too many groups will make you look like a spammer rather then someone genuinely sharing useful content.

Good Luck!

My LinkedIn Profile

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August 17, 2009

Controlling The Conversation: Strategies To Get People Talking About What You Want

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No matter the time, place, platform, or technology, having people talking about your company, products or services is a good thing period. Of course you want those conversations to be of positive nature, but if you’re doing your job in delivering a great product or service, in most cases, they are. The real question is how can you get people talking about the things you want them to talk about?
Now just to be clear, I’m not talking about telling people what to talk about. Arrogance has no place in this space. It’s about the strategies and methods to incorporate in your communities and social
spaces to facilitate mutually beneficial conversations.

Be Everywhere
The first step that any business needs to take is establishing themselves as a company that embraces community. What I mean by that is companies that have active, real people engaging with their customers on multiple channels on a regular basis. It’s not enough to just have a Facebook page or Twitter account. You have to be using those channels as true two way communication options for your customers. By answering questions, solving customer issues, and engaging in numerous conversations related to your business, you will establish trust and admiration of your customers and customers to be.

Create Community
Next you need to consider having a “controlled” community environment in your world. In other words, a community platform that lives on your site. A place that you can offer your customers/audience a place to communicate in addition to external channels. While it’s great and necessary to use the external channels, it’s important to establish yourself as a true community champion by having your own community presence. It also allows you to control the platform, and metrics making it easier to turn those conversations and data into actionable resources. For information on how to build your own community platform inexpensively, check out my previous post on the subject.

Drive Mutually Beneficial Conversation
Once you have built that trust, it’s time to take advantage of those connections and not only participate in conversation, but create them. Let me start with a personal example.
As part of the Vanns Community Manager job application, I needed to create a 60 second video to promote myself creatively. The 2nd part of the mission was to demonstrate my ability to drive traffic, build awareness, and utilize my networks to drive views and votes of my video. So of course I tackled the usual major players, Facebook, Twitter, etc. etc. But I also didn’t want to ignore the traditional media outlets (more on that in a future post).

Rather then fire off an email to the newspapers about “my story”, I came from a special interest angle about how companies are coming up with creative ways to apply for jobs and it’s requiring applicants to do more then just sending in their cover letters and resumes. Of course I included my situation and how it applied, because while I did genuinely want the article to be more broad, I certainly wanted to benefit from being a part of the article to increase awareness of my video.

Two papers responded and one will be running the story in the next week. Both reporters explicitly said they wanted to run with the story because I pitched it from a perspective that was reader focused then just a self serving one. They also said that 90% of their story requests are all self serving most from companies. So if you use this tactic, you’ll have a much better chance at getting a response.

The point of the story is that when you engage with your customers/audience in ways that benefit them as much as you (and often times more them then you), you are going to be in a much better position to “control” the conversations or at the very least guide them to where you want them to go.

So to recap:

Build your digital street cred by being where your customers are and engaging with them a lot!
Create an environment in your world where you customers can go, converse, and more easily allow you to use that information in ways that help you grow your business.
Approach conversation creation from your customers/audiences perspective. What angles will promote meaningful conversations that can benefit them as well as the business.

Good luck!

August 13, 2009

Making Dough(nuts): A Real World Example of Using Social Media Effectively

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There aren’t many folks who will argue that social networking isn’t a valuable tool for business. However there are very few who are actually taking full advantage of those opportunities. For the past few months I’ve had the luxury of watching a new local business not only use social networking and community building to build buzz for their business, but integrate it so much so, that it is an integral part of their day to day routine.

FROST is a new gourmet donut shop that has opened up in the Mill Creek Town Center in Mill Creek, WA. For those of you not local, it’s a hip/trendy outdoor shopping center that is quite popular with the locals. They have already made quite a name for themselves with their savvy marketing/community approach, and more importantly, their amazing doughnuts. These aren’t your average, run of the mill, doughnuts. These are high quality, always fresh, gourmet doughnuts that fly off the shelves. Unique flavors such as Southern Red Velvet, Banana Split Fritter, or their highly sought after Maple Bacon Bars, have people flocking to see what the latest and greatest creation is. I’ve tasted them; they’re the real deal.

But it’s not just the product that has FROST on everyone’s mind. It’s the unique approach they’ve taken to building their business that has caught this blogger’s eye. Daniel Sterling is the Creative/Brand Technology expert and Managing Partner and the brains behind the social networking behind FROST and in just a few short months, Daniel has been able to build an incredibly strong community of customers by using social networking incredibly well. And it’s not just the numbers that are staggering, but the community of highly passionate customers and two-way communication that has FROST driving crazy business. One visit to their Facebook page and you’ll see comment after comment of already loyal customers gushing about this flavor and that flavor and sharing their feedback about how to do better. So how do they do it?

Pre-Buzz – Rather then wait for the store to open, Daniel jumped on the opportunity to build buzz and awareness using Facebook, Twitter and their website to collect emails. As the store was being built, they placed paper over the windows with their URL, but no information of what they would sell. Daniel used Facebook and Twitter to slowly leak out hints as to who they were and the community ate it up and offered prizes for those hot on the trail. Fan after fan joined and contributed to the “mystery” of what FROST could possibly be. And when the doors opened, they drove so much business; they had to close on Monday to regroup.

Active Engagement – FROST does not rest on its laurels. They proactively engage with their customers on Facebook and Twitter regularly offering discounts, responding to feedback, and even taking flavor requests. Their Facebook and Twitter pages are a flurry of activity.

Two-Way Communication – It’s not must about posting today’s flavors or buy one get one free. FROST is about customer enablement through two-way communication. Not only are they enabling their customers to feel like part of the business through flavor, pricing and logistical recommendations, they are able to move swiftly to customer demand and make changes on the fly. Never in the history of business has their been the ability to respond in this way, and FROST is all over it. They’ve built trust with their customers right out of the gate to ensure business will boom even beyond the honeymoon phase.

What’s even more amazing about FROST’s success is not only their impressive use of social networking to promote themselves, but how they’ve truly created a community of customers. They are not only sharing feedback directly to FROST, but also conversing with each other about their experiences. That’s true community, and incredibly powerful stuff. They’ve got the masses talking about their business to each other and that’s the dream of any business.

I was so impressed with FROST’s success, that I thought it would be useful to hear from Daniel what his top 3 recommendations for business owners would be regarding using social media effectively.

“Number one is getting over the fear of doing it and just go for it. It’s not going to consume you, nor is the tech overwhelming. You don’t have to be an expert. Second is making sure you are ready and willing to communicate with your customers and respond quickly. And the third is knowing how to communicate with your customers and be prepared for negative feedback. Know how to respond accordingly.”

For most savvy social networkers, much of this is not news, but it’s still amazing how so few businesses (especially small to mid) have not embraced and taken advantage of the social media and community building opportunities. FROST has been able to drive significant buzz, awareness and business using tools that cost nothing but time thus far. They have saved thousands of dollars just by incorporating the use of Facebook and Twitter as part of their normal routines, and combined with their commitment to being a part of the conversation, they’ve found a recipe for success in more ways then one.

If you are a business owner that has yet to capitalize, FROST is a great model to learn from.

Oh, and Daniel’s favorite flavor?

“Our Classic Raised Glaze. Nothing beats an original.”

FROST website: http://www.frostology.com
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Mill-Creek-WA/frost/57383368725?ref=ts
Twitter: http://twitter.com/frostology

August 9, 2009

Social Network Quality vs. Quantity: What’s More Important?

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When I peruse the different Twitter followers and followees I often get Twitter envy when I stumble across some users with a large follower base. Now of course I’m not referring to the Ashton Kutchers of the world, but the common users with marketing or community backgrounds, specifically mid range users with 10k plus followers. Not the ones with 100’s of thousands of followers. Sorry, if you have that many, there is no chance you have strong connections with most of those people. Celebrities and sports stars don’t apply here. That’s a whole different conversation.

And that leads me to my question; Quantity or Quality? What’s more important? And once you get into the 10k follower range, does it make it more difficult to manage? I didn’t really spend too much time with my personal account on Twitter while at Microsoft but over the past few months, I’ve made it a priority to work on building my following, but doing so in a qualified, strategic way. I’m not just trying to add as many followers that I can, but add ones that have some sort of connection to me, professionally or personally. Community, marketing, video production, are some examples of professional connections. Maybe, they live near me, love gadgets or the Cubbies. Whatever the case may be, I try to find those with a connection so that our future interactions are meaningful and not just wasted on those that could care less about what I have to say (or worse yet, spam or automated accounts).

On average, I’m adding 30-40 per day when I work at it. If I kept this pace up, I’d hit roughly 10k followers in the next year. Certainly my goal is sustained, manageable growth so that I can ensure my network is a strong one. It would be interesting to hear from some of you if you’ve taken this approach and/or you feel your current network does demonstrate strength. I believe it to be working. I’ve grown my blog traffic 10x since being laid off, and Twitter has been a significant source of traffic. Bottom line is if you work hard to build a relevant network, those followers are going to care about what you have to say.

It’s not an easiest thing to do. Sure there is software out there that can automate some of the process, but many times, software can’t take the place of a real human being identifying whether certain followers are in fact relevant. You have to get in there and look around yourself. Don’t get me wrong, I have irrelevant or spam account followers just like everyone else. I thought it was great that Twitter did a purge of spam accounts a few weeks back. Saves users quite a bit of time having to go through it. I would imagine most would not as your Twitter following is a badge of honor for most people.

But I say quality reigns supreme. The fact is effective social networking and community building is more about building meaningful, useful conversations and relationships with those that are interested in what you have to offer or say. It’s not a get rich quick scheme. It takes time, persistence, knowledge and dedication to building these communities up, and the rewards can be tremendous.

So what do you think?

July 20, 2009

9 Ways Twitter Can Actually Be Useful

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Twitter is certainly an interesting phenomenon. On one hand, it’s all the rage these days and what practically everyone is talking about. On the other hand, most people try it once and never return. In fact roughly 60% of users fail to return (Nielson Wire), so it’s clearly a tool that only web savvy users are sticking with. It’s not so much because Twitter is a difficult tool to use, it’s just that for most normal, every day people, it’s a useless distraction. Unless you’re a celebrity or a professional athlete, most people do not care what you had for breakfast, or what the person next to you in line smells like.

However that does not mean that Twitter cannot be a useful tool. In fact, it can be a tremendous asset to those in business, or looking to promote anything whether it be themselves, a project, a good cause. Twitter’s main asset is it’s ability to track and direct. For businesses that means another channel to connect current and new customers to your product or brand. For websites it means another traffic building resource.

I originally was one of the 60% when I signed up for Twitter, but after attending some interesting lectures on the service, I gave it another shot and since then have found some use for it. I’ve been able to increase my blog traffic roughly 25% simply by employing some basic Twitter usage in to my blogging routine.

Here’s how you can take advantage of Twitter depending on your situation:

Traffic Generation. An immediate benefit of Twitter usage is the ability to drive traffic to your website(s). By simply using Twitter to spread information about your website, you’ll instantly see a spike in your site’s traffic. Obviously the larger and more relevant your following is, the stronger results you will see.
Find Customers. Twitter can be a great tool for finding new customers. By simply using Twitter Search you can find relevant users that will find value in your offerings.
Branding. Whether personally or for a business, Twitter can be a powerful tool to extend your brand. By developing a casual persona in the Twitterverse, you can establish yourself as a connected social personality.
Hire People. Traditional methods are a dying breed. Like Craigslist, Twitter can be a valuable source for hiring. And it costs you nothing to post.
Increase Your Network. Sometimes you just want to extend your social or professional network. Use Twitter Search to find relevant individuals to connect with. Use tools such as Social Too to auto follow those that follow you.
Feedback. Whether it be an online survey, or you simply want some feedback on your product line, use Twitter to get the word out and increase your results.
Event Coverage. If you’re hosting any type of event, Twitter can be a great tool to give real time updates to those either in attendance or those unable to attend. It also makes your company or organization look with the times.
Cross Promotion. Most users of Twitter use Facebook and vice versa. If you have a blog or company website, your best bet is to integrate all 3 with each other by visibly having your Twitter and Facebook identities on your site, and utilizing Twitter and Facebook’s cross posting features. That way no matter where you post information, it aggregates everywhere saving you time, and ensuring your message gets maximum exposure.
Learn. Despite popular belief that the only thing people post are meaningless daily activities, there are plenty of users that share interesting articles. In fact, in many cases late breaking news hits Twitter before any of the major sites or networks.

I’ll be writing more about my Twitter experiences and sharing best tips and practices in the coming weeks. Feel free to get started by following me.

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