Twitter – Page 2

Twylah

Ok, so you tweet a lot. You have thousands of peeps following you. You share valuable information on a regular basis. Your tweets get retweeted to millions. You think you are really a BIG deal on the twittersphere. That is until you meet Tom.

TOM: I haven’t seen you online lately – are you out of the business?

YOU: No way! I’m mainly on Twitter these days. I tweet every 36.8 seconds on average. Mostly really good stuff too! I’m sending pictures, links, and even videos out to all my followers. Now that I think about it, I also tweet what I’m having for breakfast. Oh, and then occasionally a cool quote I just saw from someone else. Ok, I do that a lot. And yes I do ReTweet almost everything so and so says. But in between all that are some really good stuff.

TOM: Yeah thanks. I tried Twitter once, I didn’t get it. What do I care what people are having for breakfast? Sorry, I don’t have time for Twitter. It’s going to be Facebook or websites only for me. It’s been nice knowing you…

Have you ever run into someone who just doesn’t ‘get’ Twitter? Try hard as you might, they’re never going to either?

What if you could put all the meaningful tweets in a single webpage? That would be something Tom might read, right? What if you could organize them by topics? That would make it easy for people not on twitter to still get the valuable info your tweets contained. Now, what if you could do all this all automatically?

That’s Twylah! Twylah takes all my tweets and sorts them. It sorts the content into categories that it creates. If I start tweeting about a certain topic, Twylah will know and create a category for it. Example: Tweets with a #REBCORL hashtag? Tom doesn’t need to know anything about a hashtag – he can just go to that category on the menu bar. Here’s my Page: http://www.twylah.com/MikeMueller

This will make Tom really happy. It doesn’t include the mind numbing crap about what I had for breakfast. It takes the mess of my Twitter stream, filters it and arranges it beautifully into a single page.

Better yet, I have control. I can hide certain topics and push others. That means my love for tweeting Bieberism’s doesn’t have to stop!

Twylah also has a Power Tweet feature. Essentially, it sends a message out to twitter as you with a link back to Twylah. There the message can contain much more than 140 characters. I’m just starting to experiment with the Power Tweet button. Matter of fact – I’ll use it to promote this post!

Want to get your own? Start here: http://www.twylah.com/ to request an invite.
HINT: It also might help to follow Kelly Kim on Twitter, she’s @Twylah (naturally).

Photo credit: WordRidden

Using Automatic Sync Programs to Post Across Multiple Social Networks

Facebook For Business, How to Use Twitter, Online Consulting, Social Media Advisors

As many of you probably know, in addition to presenting at conferences as a social media speaker, that I also do a good amount of social media consulting with individuals and small businesses. As we begin discussing how to use Facebook for business, the ins and outs of Twitter, how YouTube can grow their business, and several other platforms, I almost always get asked the question of how can they automate this content so that they can write it once and have it syndicated to all platforms.

I understand the thought that by using a syndicator, it will spread your message across all the platforms quickly and make life easier for you. But, what you are missing is that this is probably one of the most ineffective ways to try and build your business online.

One Size Doesn’t Fit All

Each social network operates slightly different than all the others out there. For example, Twitter gives you 140 characters and you must include the @ symbol if you want to have it mention someone specifically. When this publishes over to Facebook for example, your friends see messages like this: “That was very funny @jb140 @210consulting.” which makes no sense to them if they are not using Twitter. Also, the frequency you tweet is more than likely going to be more often than you would update your Facebook status. In my case, I might tweet 25-30 times a day. I don’t want all 25-30 of those showing up in my Facebook stream.

Also, Twitter limits the length of your update to 140 characters, so you may be abbreviating words or using online jargon to make your update. Do I really want that going over to a platform like LinkedIn in which it’s main purpose is a social network for business professionals? Needless to say, updates on LinkedIn that say “Way to go, @JB140, that is a definite #fail. I prefer cheddar cheese #FTW” does not always portray the image we would want on certain networks.

Because I See It On 4 Places Doesn’t Mean I’ll Read

One of the reasons I am writing this post is because of a post I recently saw on Google+: The person wrote: Sync Google+ to Twitter, Itenti.ca, & Facebook. I started reading the comments below and asked why would you want to do this though? And needless to say I then saw them along with many of their other friends that I follow had already set this up. So, when I went to their Twitter account, Facebook Profile, or Google+ account I saw the exact same status update. For those of us who have connected with someone on multiple platforms, I see this becoming a problem. You can actually annoy people by putting the same stuff all over the place all the time.

Take the Time, Post Individually

If you want to say the same sort of message on all the various networks, that is perfectly fine, simply copy/paste the message across and customize it to fit the platform. For example, as I mentioned the other day for my Facebook Page, I try to ask questions more than making statements. I found this to be more beneficial. So, I take that same statement I might have just made on Twitter, paste it to my Facebook Page and alter the text to turn it into more of a question. If I want to post it to LinkedIn, I would do the same type of thing customizing it to the audience on that network.

To do this literally takes you an additional 18 seconds or so and will increase your interactions immensely. I tested syndicating my content across all networks for a three month period of time and had almost no business come from it. When I changed things to manually update I almost instantly saw an increase in all aspects of traffic, interactions, and engagement from my online community. For me, I’ll spend an additional 3-4 minutes doing this to see improved results. Also, not everything I share on one network is necessarily worth of being posted to 4 other platforms.

So, before you set up your account to share your content across multiple platforms consider whether it is a help or a hindrance to your business. If you don’t agree with me, I’d love to hear why in the comments below!

Google Says Goodbye to Content Farms

Custom WordPress Sites, Online Consulting, SEO, Social Media Advisors, Twitter

Over the past two weeks Google has really been making big news and cleaning up their search results. First we heard all about the debacle of J.C. Penney from the NY Times for not playing well online and using too many black hat SEO techniques to even list. Some of the topics that they used to rank #1 on now are not even found in the first ten pages of search content. Clearly, Google will not tolerate people trying to cheat the system and has no problem acting with authority they possess when needed.

Custom WordPress Site Results in Google — New Social Search Results

Then last week they announced major changes in social search results in Google. No longer will the results just show up at the bottom of the page, but they will now be ranked into regular results along with organic traffic. This means that social media platforms like Twitter are even more valuable to your business. I just did a test to see how this affected my results while logged into my Google account. As many of you know, we built custom WordPress Sites, so when I did a recent search, there was the link to our site sitting at #3 in the results. Granted, my results there might be slightly skewed as I am the owner of the social media accounts, logged in, and in the same geolocation, but when I checked with a friend on the other side of the country, I was #6 there. So, if you aren’t yet using social networks, START NOW!

Following these two big headlines from Google over the past 2 weeks came another HUGE announcement today. Google has declared war on the content farmers. Content farms are websites that simply pull content off of other websites and publish it out as their own. They are also sites that have thousands of pages of random content about absolutely nothing of value at all. People have built these sites because in the past the massive amounts of pages of content would rank well and help them to generate some good income through ads running on the sidebar and people clicking on links within to affiliate programs.

Google Results for Custom WordPress Sites — New Content Farm Free Search Results

But, Google has recognized that these sites are not worthy of such well placement in the SERP’s and have started to take action accordingly. This means that sites that have a blog attached where users are generating their own unique content to their own site are going to start to see better ranking results. I noticed that already I have seen big jumps by some of my keywords. For example, that same term, Custom WordPress Sites, when I search it in a cache cleared browser not logged into Google, it used to rank on page two of Google. Now I have moved onto the first page of Google and am sitting at number 6.

This once again places a greater importance on blogging and writing new fresh content for your site regularly. If you are not creating new unique content for your site on a regular basis you will probably find yourself dropping down into the abyss of results with the content farmers, black hat SEO users, and plain old spammers. Develop a writing strategy, get a plan in place and start. If you don’t think you can find ideas to write about regularly, there are services to help with blog topics from really great bloggers. Saying you don’t know what to write about is an excuse that can no longer be tolerated.

From my perspective, I am really happy with these recent changes from Google and am excited to see how this will affect online businesses as things move forward. If your business isn’t as successful as you want it to be online, it might be time for a change.

Social Search Becomes Even More Important To Search Engine Rankings

Online Consulting, Social Media Advisors, Twitter

Today Google is starting to roll out some new features in it’s Social Search rankings. The use of social search isn’t a new feature, it has been around for a while and has been a part of your searches. If you had not noticed them in the past, they were usually showing up in your searches towards the bottom of the first page. You would notice that the results were of those you had connected to on social media networks like YouTube, Twitter, etc.

According to Search Engine Land, Google’s new roll out will take your connections via social networks and make them even more important starting today. From what I read in their post, you will now see your social connections showing up in the results just like an organic result would. This means that using services like Twitter are even more important now to your business as they too can start to be ranked in the search engines.

The one thing I found interesting in their post was that Facebook Likes were not going to be indexed yet into the search results. In Fact, they referred to Twitter as “The new Facebook Like.” By this I believe what they mean is that you will see more and more using Twitter to help share content. As we all know, Facebook has special connections with Bing, so I think this might be a way for Google to snub Facebook some.

The other point I wanted to bring a little bit of emphasis to is that the size of your sphere is going to play a little great role in how people find you. Each consumers social search results are going to be based on who they are connected to. So if I have only 70 connections that I interact with and you have 700 that you interact with on a regular basis, then you are going to have a much larger net to connect to.

The other part I see with social search is that the more interactions and things you share with your sphere, the more likely you are to show up in their search engine results when one of your connections search for something. The beauty of this type of ranking is that you do not need to have a vast knowledge of SEO, or pay someone a bunch of money to get ranked. You simply need to share links and talk about topics that are of interest to you. Also, talking about topics related to your brand/business will help you to show up within your connections search results when they are needing assistance with things that your business handles. The one caution I would add though, is make sure you still continue to connect and engage consumers regularly and not just turn into a serial spammer. You know you don’t want to become hated on Twitter.

So if you aren’t using social networks like Twitter, you may want to start today!

Cyber Monday Email Marketing Blunder by AT&T

How to Use Twitter, Online Consulting, Social Media Advisors

This morning as I began my work week, my inbox like many others was littered with advertisements from dozens of companies making me aware of their Cyber Monday sales. One that really caught my eye was from AT&T. They are running various smart phones this Monday at various times for only one cent. I thought to myself that this was pretty cool and wanted to share this with my social media buddies. Also, as we have recently been sharing over in our photo blog, various social media marketing efforts of corporations both large and small. So, I have been scanning every piece of advertising that I come across lately,looking to see if they are integrating social media marketing into their email marketing, print & TV advertising.

As I scrolled down to the bottom of the ad for AT&T I saw buttons to share on Facebook, LinkedIn & Yahoo Buzz. Glad they have the ability for me to share on Facebook. That’s a good place to have your stuff shared as there are now over 500 million users and most people have at least 100 connections there. LinkedIn? Ok, I guess that would also be a good place to have your stuff shared since there is a good sized network there although I am not sure that the content would be relevant to what people use LinkedIn for. The third icon for Yahoo Buzz? I mean, I have heard of it, but I don’t have an account and have only ever heard one person mention it before. What blew my mind and where I think AT&T really missed the ball is that they left off a button for Twitter!

According to TechCrunch, Twitter has over 190 million users. Not adding the ability for someone to share easily on Twitter is a major marketing blunder by someone. For me, Twitter is by far my largest group of connections with 6,710 followers of my personal Twitter account @jb140. It is also by far my fastest growing group. In comparison, our Facebook Page, has only 1,390 fans. Missing twitter in an online advertisement where you are including social media platforms is a major failure in my opinion. Whoever designed this advertisement at AT&T either doesn’t understand social media fully, had a major brain fart, or just didn’t want to take the time to incorporate it into the advertisement for cyber Monday thinking it wasn’t worth the time or money to implement. The same holds true for the entire editorial staff that missed this oversight. Maybe AT&T thinks that twitter isn’t that important, but my guess is more likely one of the first three options.

So when you are setting up your next online marketing campaign to send out to thousands of people, make sure if you are including social media, to include all the major connections. For me, I would have loved to share this special on Twitter. Unfortunately this option wasn’t available easy, so I didn’t.

Do You REALLY Think You’re THAT Important?

How to Use Twitter

I am going to give everyone a fair warning that today’s post is a rant. With that out of the way, let me get into the subject I wanted to cover. One of the things that I am always trying to do is connect with new people on various social networks. As I’ve stated before, I am somewhat of a Twitter addict.

Once in a while I will focus on growing my sphere. To do this, I will visit friends I am already connected to and like and see who they are talking to regularly. I figure if I like this person already, and they seem to like these other people, I will get along too, so I will then follow them. What bothers me more than the automatic DM’s that some people send spamming an automatic link to some MLM product for following them are the people who are set up a program called TrueTwit.

Whenever you follow someone using TrueTwit, you get an automatic DM like the one to the right. How annoying!! I see this service being an Anti-Social Media tool. Why? Well first off, it makes people have to do more work to connect with you. Normally I can hit “follow”, add to a list and move on. With TrueTwit, it makes me go back, click on the link to validate myself.

Validate Myself? Yes, I have to validate to the person I’m attempting to follow that I am a real person. I find this to be a major turn off when I receive these messages. It makes me feel as if the person is too good to connect with me. Why? Because I spent the time researching and trying to connect with a person, but their time is obviously too important to do the same in return. Instead, I have to invest more time jumping through hoops.

I understand the reason someone would think this is a good idea is because of all the spam on Twitter. I get that, there is a ton of it and I hate being spammed too. However if someone takes just 30 seconds to do a little research on me they will find out quickly that I am an actual human being. All you need to do is look at my Twitter stream and you’ll see that I am not someone babbling on about getting rich quick, or posting the same link 3,385 times a day. The other thing you could do is look at my Tweet Stats.

As you can see there, 70.44% of the tweets I send out are directly replying to others. Also, 6.45% of my tweets are Re-Tweets. That means that almost 77% of the almost 20,000 tweets I have sent are conversational in nature. That leaves only 23% for posting links and stuff about my business. If it weren’t for me connecting my FourSquare account to Twitter, this number would be even lower. Obviously, it is easy to tell that I am an actual human and not a cyborg.

What’s the big deal?

As I already said, services like this are the anti-social media. The first part of the term “social media” is social. We don’t make people who come to our neighborhood barbecue pull out a utility bill to prove they are part of the neighborhood. We simply welcome them in and enjoy the delicious potato salad they brought with them. Why then do we feel we need to put up barriers like TrueTwit on social media platforms? Doing this turns people off and makes them not want to connect with you. The fewer people connect with you, the slower your sphere will grow and the less effective the platform can be for your business.

So if you are using a service like TrueTwit, please shut it off, disconnect it, and delete your account immediately. There are other ways. Personally, here is how I handle my Twitter stream: I openly follow anyone & everyone who follows me. If you don’t believe me, follow me on Twitter, and you will get notification almost instantly that we are now connected. Instead of setting up barriers that might offend a new connection, I simply set up lists and filters to engage specific groups of friends and followers. My main funnel of friends stays off to the side and only gets viewed when I have the available time. It doesn’t bother me if a spammer is in that column as I rarely use it. I WANT to connect to as many people as possible. It can help to expand my brand and business even further than it is today. I try to set aside time each week to spend connecting with my new followers. It may only be 30 minutes sometimes, but at least I am reaching out to them and letting them know I appreciate being connected to them.

So do you have barriers affecting your social media marketing? If so, you may want to take a few walls down.