The Twitter Marketing Blog

I have an imaginary character I use for a Twitter account that is mostly updates from news feeds. But people absolutely love the guy. I do sometimes post commentary in his name as well. But I don't do a whole lot of social type stuff like retweeting or making reference to other users' names. Not because I'm an asshole, but because I just don't have much time to spend on this account.

One Friday just for kicks I did a follow friday post (#FF) with a few names of people who regularly retweet my news links in this account. And it caused an explosion of retweets and reFF's. It definitely reinforced what I discussed in an earlier blog post about how people love to see their names in others' tweets.

I really think making reference to other users is a critical part of using Twitter as a marketing strategy. Personally, I always thought the Follow Friday thing was a little goofy. But if you're gonna do this stuff, you've got to do what is effective. And one of the best ways to get your name spread around is to spread around the names of others.

I do, however, think this technique is more effective is you use it with users who are genuinely good people to follow or with whom you have had some kind of interaction. I know of at least one program that automatically does Follow Fridays for random names in your account. I'm not sure that is a good idea. You don't really want to be passing around names of people who are nothing but spammers or who contribute nothing to the Twitter universe. Use the power of the #FF to reward those whose names deserve to be spread around.

For the record, I am embarrassed by the lack of updates the last couple of months. Business at Work Media is quite good. Unfortunately, the better business does, the less time I have for the fun stuff...like writing about Twitter. I will try to do better.

Twitter has unveiled its new "list" feature. This will come in very handy for those who have made it their goal to follow many other users as part of a Twitter follower building strategy. It lets you segment those you follow into lists. So if there is a core group of people you really like to read, but their updates are mixed in with updates from hundreds or thousands of other users you really don't care that much about, you can set them up in a list so that you have a way of just reading those updates.

To create a list, click on the Create a New List button. On the next screen, you give your list a name and add users to it. You can search for users using the search text box, but you are probably going to want to add existing users you follow to the list. To do that, you just have to visit those users' Twitter pages, then click the Lists button at the top. Your newly created list will appear as an option. Click on the list name to add that particular user to the list.

One interesting feature of lists is that you can follow someone else's list. So if there is another Twitter user you really like, and you think he is tied into a good group of users for what you are trying to accomplish, you can follow one or more of his lists to instantly follow many of the people he is following without having to go through the work of manually searching for those people.

If you have multiple Twitter accounts, it is also a good way to help explode those accounts' followers by putting all of your own accounts in a list. Anyone who follows your list will then be following all of your own accounts.

This is a great new feature by Twitter and one that you should definitely experiment with.

Jerry Work here. For people like me, properly using Twitter (i.e., actually logging into my account and posting updates) requires discipline. I am not a chatty person. Even in the online world. I'm just not naturally conversational, especially when I'm busy.

Business has been up and down this year, which means there have been times when I've had plenty of time for social media experiments. During those times, I would post to Twitter often. Then I would get busy, and I would pretty much let my account run itself with automation.

And that is fine to an extent. But you really do miss out on the human element...and ultimately that is the point. Putting messages on autopilot is fine if it is your intention to build up huge lists of followers to try and sell stuff to.

Lord knows there is a lot of that going on.

But if you're not just trying to sell stuff, but are looking instead to make connections, talk to interesting people, learn, and hopefully do some business...then you've got to check in. Work Media has been so dang busy the last few weeks that I have not checked in. And certainly I am costing myself many potentially interesting or prosperous interactions.

However...business is good, and it's nose to the grind to keep up. I can't complain. The problem for people like me is finding the balance. For people like me...

it just comes down to discipline.

So let's talk about the power of using someone's user name in a Twitter update. In the real-world, using a person's name creates the impression that you are interested in what he has to say and is a classic (and very effective) rapport building technique. Well, you know what? The same principle applies to the world of online social networks.

Making reference to other users is a big part of making successful use of Twitter. People love to see their names referenced in your tweets. I can speak for this personally because I love it myself. The funny thing is, doing what I do, I know full well that many references to my user name are software generated and do not really happen because I'm such an interesting person. But I still love to see it!

One of the best ways to use your Twitter accounts is to retweet interesting posts by other uses. The default Twitter syntax for this includes the user who originated the message preceded by an @ sign. Using this technique on a regular basis requires that you monitor your accounts and are aware when one of your friends says something interesting.

If you're like me, and if you are a regular Twitter user, you just don't have that much time for monitoring your account. So this is where a software based solution comes in handy. However, you should definitely try not to retweet or make reference to other users who could potentially tarnish your reputation.

I am losing some of my love for Tweet Later. Yes, I am a Tweet Later affiliate, but I just can't lie to you people. Here is my beef:

First, it changed its name to "Social Oomph." Say what? Lousy name, in my opinion. And too bad for the company's affiliates that spent so much time promoting the name "Tweet Later." Speaking of affiliates...

...I can't really tell that this company gives a damn about the people trying to sell its product. For what it's worth.

But now the company announces that Tweet Later will no longer allow its users to schedule recurring posts. This is at the request of Twitter itself. I suppose it's a survival mechanism, but it really does make the service less valuable.

To tell you the truth, I have become too dependent on automation to keep my own Twitter account updated. It's time to start doing it for real...until I decide on my next strategy for Twitter DOMINATION...

...actually, I've been so busy lately that the Twitter stuff has fallen to the wayside. But I do have fun looking for ways to do more with less in the Twitter world.

So...the last few weeks my Twitter account has pretty much been on auto-pilot because things have just been too dang hectic at the office for me to do much with it lately. And not just Twitter...blogs, LinkedIn updates, it's all fallen by the wayside. The ironic thing is one of the reasons I've been too busy to update Twitter is that I've been hard at work on my own Twitter management application. But anyway...

A few weeks ago I started trying out something called Twivert. It's a great concept. Basically, it's a platform that allows advertisers to advertise through Twitter users' accounts, and the Twitter users can earn money for showing those ads. It's a great, low risk way to make some money from your Twitter account...so it seems. After trying this out, here is what I've discovered:

1. You do get a $5 "bonus" in your account for signing up. Then as advertisers use your account, your balance grows. Well, after letting this thing post to my account for a couple of months now, I've earned an addition TWO CENTS. So...my account balance is now $5.02. You can only request a payout when your account balance reaches $30...At this rate, I will be 82 years old before I can get my money.

2. The only ads I have ever seen run through my account are the ads from Twivert itself advertising the fact that if you join up you get a $5 signup bonus...and so the cycle continues.

3. Really all this thing does is get you labeled a spammer. Thus, a recent reference to me from another Twitter user:

ASoldiersMother: @jwork could you just send me the $5 and forget the spam?

So...in the end, I've probably damaged my online reputation and annoyed the hell out of a lot of people, all for a fictitious $5 that I will never see.

If you have lots of followers, are determined to make money from Twitter any way you can, and don't mind being labeled a "spammer," then go right ahead. But for most people, I would say this is something to avoid.

This article will describe a very cool strategy for keeping your Twitter account updated automatically with interesting and useful content. It involves the use of two components (in addition to your Twitter account): a tool to systematically update your Twitter account with posts from an RSS feed; and a news source that is available as an RSS feed.

First, let's talk about where to get the news source. There are millions of RSS feeds you can tap into. Just look for the little orange RSS symbol and click it. The page that loads is the URL to feed into an RSS reader, or in this case, a Twitter feeder. News and sports web sites, in particular, are rich sources of news. And one technique I like is using Google Alerts to bring back custom keyword-based Google news items.

To use Google as your source, go to www.google.com/alerts. You will need a Google account. Once logged in, create a new feed with a keyword relevant to your industry, set the source as news or blogs, and set the delivery mechanism as feed, rather than email. Once this is done, Google will provide you with a URL for a custom search results page of news results based on your keywords.

Now let's talk about the other part: feeding that RSS source into a tool that will use it to update your Twitter account. One tool that I like for this purpose (that works very well) is TwitterFeeder. Visit the site and create an account. A single account can manage many feeds for multiple Twitter accounts. You might want to set up numerous news feeds as sources for your Twitter account. Follow the directions on the screen to add your news feed. I suggest you also click the Advanced Settings link, set it so that only the title is used in the tweet message (due to the severe character limitation on tweets), and that it check for new updates every hour.

If you combine this strategy with a recurring post strategy, such as facilitated by a tool like TweetLater, your account will stay constantly updated, fresh, and interesting. That is a good first step in running a successful Twitter account.