Category: Twitter

Social Media Optimization and Test Marketing

Byron Coke | December 12, 2009

: Image by alessio_chisari via Flickr

Have you heard of social media optimization? Test Marketing?

Social media optimization or in other words social media that markets through using information gathered from social communities.

A few examples of social media optimization tools and websites include blogging/RSS feeds for blogs, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Flickr and MySpace, BEBO and incorporating third-party applications to communities like Facebook and Myspace.

Social media optimization is similar to search engine optimization, but differs in many ways, Mostly, the focal point is on driving traffic from sources within Social bookmarking sites and communities other than directing traffic from search engines.

The number of social media websites has exploded in the last year and each of these new social networking websites is different, they all attract different audiences with individual and diverse interests. More and more businesses want to experiment with social media optimization and you can see this in the explosion in popularity of Twitter.

Twitter, one of the newest social networking websites, it uses micro-blogging and many people are getting actively involved in generating publicity through this form of social media. When you “twitter” or micro-blog, post pictures, and/or links you are inviting others into your life to comment and ultimately approve or reject what you are offering. This type of immediate response is an incredible way to gather “up to the minute” targeted information.

Why is this important might you ask?

Getting feedback about your product and services is very important and can help immensely when branding your company. Business reputation is very important in branding and marketing and up to date immediate feedback is considered an integral part of an online reputation management system.

That is why many executives are now seeing the worth of using social bookmarking and social media optimization to test Search Engine Reputation Management strategies. this is incredible for organizations or individuals who need to enhance their online presence but cannot afford to pay for surveys and focus groups.

Using social communities can optimize your “linkability” or give you feed back and tips on ways to make your brand more comfortable,

Along with immediate feedback about your brand popularity it can also help your overall business.

Companies and individuals can now successfully use services like Tweetscan or Tweepbeep to monitor each and every time their company name or one of their products names are mentioned on Twitter and then choose to respond accordingly through the social media website or through their marketing, or engineering departments.

This has the potential for real time insight for a company CEO, whom often lose touch, with the people who are using the products or services their corporation provides.

Imagine, if back in the late eighties, the board of K-mart could have been following social media sites instead of listening to yes men in the company. Then perhaps they could have understood how a line in a movie like Rain Man where Dustin Hoffman says “K-mart sucks” could become the punch line to a joke they had already become.

Smart companies that want to avoid that kind of meltdown are learning to keep their finger on the pulse of consumers wants and needs and if you want to succeed you’ll want to do the same thing.

Snazzy Background For Twitter?

Byron Coke | December 8, 2009

: Image by Fanie! via Flickr

The Twitter background: To snaz or not to snaz that is the question. I really have no definitive answer to that question.

But it seems that if you are trying to make a name for yourself anything will help and it can’t hurt to pimp out your Twitter background to see if you can’t stand out from the rest maybe even create a little controversy.

If you already are famous as heck, like Demi Moore, I guess you don’t have to do squat to your account to attract huge followings of Twitter faithful who will hang on your every word.

That said I thought I would spot light a few Twitter backgrounds and give you some background on the backgrounds if that makes any sense at all.

Since we mentioned Demi Moore already I will just start with her background. Of course if you are a Gen Xer you remember Demi as the hot starlet with the husky voice from St. Elmos Fire or perhaps her early marriage to Bruce Willis or the too numerous to mention movies she has starred in and now are just starting to believe she is some sort of vampire, because frankly gravity is not doing things to her body that it is to the rest of us.

If you are younger than a Gen Xer you just may think she is some pretty young woman you’d like to hangout with. Whatever you think of Demi… her Twitter following has erupted to over half of million while probably her Twitter background is one of the most plain and unpretentious on the site. Her back ground or the lack of it can be seen at http://twitter.com/mrskutcher

Now to cover the other end of the spectrum I think absolute craziest Twitter background title belongs to Mr. Michael Ian Black in which has a depiction of him hiding behind Dr. Pepper cans evidently naked and apparently strangling a unicorn while Demi Moore is looking on.

This background seems to be helping him gain followers because he also has over a quarter of a million followers, even though he is not famous. He does claim to be a famous comedian but his claim to fame is from an obscure show on MTV which no one watched since MTV has stopped playing video and started ripping off Mexican TV game shows. His Twitter background can be seen at http://api.twitter.com/michaelianblack

To contrast the art work of the Mr. Blacks Twitter background I would like to leave you with the classic black background. The sort of Ralf Lorene style background which no one can comment on or condemn, because it is so simple and classically black. This is the little black dress of Twitter websites and like the dress it is perfect for every occasion. In the Twitter world a classic black background goes with whatever you have to say.

The classic black background goes well with political statements, just day to day banter, celebrity gossip even if you don’t have anything to say. Like in the case of The Mime who has not only gained over 8,000 followers without being famous he has also gained all of those followers without ever tweeting a single word.

That’s right since becoming a member The Mime has amassed a loyal following thru his classic black background and his uncanny ability to keep us spellbound by his “…” tweets. You can see The Mime on Twitter at http://api.twitter.com/TheMime

So, you can see for yourself how a background can work or not work for you.

Use Twitter in combination with other networking sites – Part2

Byron Coke | November 24, 2009

If you use Twitter on the web by itself there’s already a lot of things that you can do to promote your business. However there are several other ways that you can enhance your Twitter experience. After reading this article, you’ll learn of 3 ways that you can enhance your Twitter experience.

Use Twitter in combination with other networking sites

This is absolutely critical. That is why it is listed first. You should never put all your eggs in the same basket. What if something happens to Twitter? What if it’s down for maintenance? What if there are just too many tweeps on at once and you keep seeing the fail whale (that’s what happens when you can’t load twiter)?

There is a service called tweetake, which allows you to download your followers, favorites, tweets, dms, everything you need to talk to your Twitter family outside of Twitter. I suggest you download this file from tweetake daily. Another thing you should do is invite your friends to join you on Facebook or LinkedIn. I recommend putting your Facebook profile on your Twitter page as your website. That way when people follow you on Twitter, they’ll go right to your Facebook page and follow you there too.

Find an email address for your Twitter posse so you can send emails to them. Don’t send them commercial messages unless they sign up for your email list. That’s considered spam. You can send them messages that you’d send to your friends. It’s great to email your Twitter friends information that will help them with their business. They’ll be extremely grateful to you for sending them wondeful information and it will seem more personal because you sent it right to them instead of blasting it to the whole Twitterverse!

Use Twitter +twitwall to market your telecalls.

Twitwall is an excellent service to use to market your telecalls. Every Twitter user gets a twitwall. You’d use your twitwall when you have things that are more than 140 characters to post. You can use your twitwall to promote your telecalls very easily. You’d just post the relevant information to the twitwall and then retweet it. Important: Be sure to include the words please retweet in the headline when you post information about your telecall. Even though twitwall makes it easy for people to retweet your information, they won’t do it unless you tell them to most of the time.

Twitter + Hashtag + Tweetchat = PARTY!

Another great way to get people talking about you and your business is to hold a Twitter party! Twitter parties are very easy to set up. All you have to do is create a hashtag for your party. Basically a hashtag acts a tracker for your party. Once you decide on a hashtag, next pick a date and a time. Then start telling everyone that’s in your Twitter family about your party and ask them to retweet the information for you. On the day of the party you can use tweetchat to follow everything everyone is saying about the party.

Tweetchat is awesome because once you go to the website and log in, it automatically inserts the hashtag and tells you how many characters you have left to tweet with. It also allows you to momentarily stop the chat within the chat room so you can scroll back and see what was said before you enter the room. It’s important to both participate in and throw Twitter parties because it’s a great way to get the word out about your business and you can meet new people that are interested in the same things that you are interested in.

Twitter is a great tool to use to drive traffic to your website. These things that I’ve mentioned will only improve the amount and quality of the traffic you get to your website.

Use Twitter to network with local tweeps

Byron Coke | November 17, 2009

Interacting with people online is a wonderful way to get started networking. Eventually you will want to meet some of your new found friends in person so they can become your In Real Life or (IRL) friends. People are more likely to do business with or joint ventures with you once they have met you in person and see that you are a real person and you act the same way offline as you do online. Here are some tools to help you find people in your local area to follow.

You can use hashtags.org to find people in your geographical area to follow. Just type in your city or state and you will see all of the tweeple that are located in or talking about things related to your city or state.
Another service you can use to find people located near you with is tweets.ws. Tweets.ws is very simple to use. Just click on choose your own news topic and type in your state. I tried using my city and state but I didn’t find anything that way. Once you type in your state you will see everyone who is in your state or talking about things of interest to your state.
Another great tool to use to find tweeps in your area is Twittermass. All you do with this site is to go to the website and login with the same username and password that you use to log in to Twitter. Once you’ve logged in you’ll have to click on the tab that says Create. Then click on manual follow for best results. Type in your City and State. The website will generate a list of tweeple in your city and state and then you can follow them.
Citytweets is another wonderful tool to help you find tweeps in your local area. Now if you live in a suburb you may need to use the next biggest city to find people near you. It looks like that site is still growing.

Twitter is a wonderful way to meet new people. Be sure to follow people local to your area so you can meet them in person. Be on the lookout for tweetups on your area. Basically, a tweetup is a combination of the word meet-up and Twitter or a bunch of tweeple in the same geographic area that meet-up and network.

Tweetups are great tools to add to your arsenal of Twitter tools. Be sure to take pictures and videos. This will prove that you were at the tweetup. When you meet people in person you deepen the relationships that you have on Twitter. That’s what it’s all about after all, right?

Use Twitter in combination with other networking sites – Part 1

Byron Coke | November 10, 2009

I know we all like to focus on Twitter because of its simplicity. However, it is important to use Twitter in combination with other social networking sites. You want to be able to connect with your Twitter friends should something bad happen and the site go down, right? Here are three sites that you can use in conjunction with Twitter to market your business.

1. Twitter + Utterli = Stay connected with your tweeps when you are away from a computer.

Utterli is an utterly awesome tool in my opinion. You don’t have to have fancy equipment to post to Twitter if you have utterli. Utterli has a feature that allows you to record audio posts right from your phone. This can come in really handy if you are attending a tweetup and you want to let your tweeps know that you are at the designated location.

Utterli also cross posts to a lot of different networks too. The neat thing about utterli’s cross posting feature is your friends don’t even have to join utterli for you to talk to them. It’s nice if they do join you on utterli. This way if Twitter is down for whatever reason, you can still get in touch with that person.

2. Another good tool to use in conjunction with Twitter is skype.

Skype is a service that allows you to make phone calls from your computer. You can also use skype to chat. Skype is great when you and a tweep are holding a conversation that requires more than 140 characters to do it justice. Skype is also good to use if you are discussing something private that you really don’t want the whole Twitterverse to know about.

3. You can also use Facebook in conjunction with Twitter.

It’s important to connect with your Twitter friends on Facebook because some people are more comfortable with Facebook than they are with Twitter. Facebook also allows you to build a deeper one on one connection with your Twitter friends because they have all of those applications and games.

A whole different article could be written about all of the different Facebook applications and how they can help your business. That’s beyond the scope of this article. Just be sure to invite your Twitter friends to friend you on Facebook (hey I didn’t make it up, they did) and you’ll have an additional way to contact them.

Twitter in and of itself is an excellent place to network and grow your business. However, it is important not to get too comfortable on any one social networking site. You don’t want your business to sit at a standstill because someone decided to close down your favorite social media site