One of the goals of companies seeking to build a presence on Twitter is to gain and keep followers.  The more followers you have the greater the likelihood your Tweet will be read and passes on in the form of a retweet.  However, getting and keeping followers on Twitter can be challenging.  Many small companies make take shortcuts in their Twitter presence which can alienate followers and cause them to get "Unfollowed." 

I recently read a very good blog post on which included seven tips on how to avoid getting unfollowed on twitter.  These tips were:

1. Stop Spamming and bragging about your blog posts

Most of us have blogs and use twitter as a marketing tool to let people know the latest on our blogs. We also link the blog posts in our tweets which is the most common practice. Tweeples appreciate when you tweet about something important that will benefit twitter users as a whole. But linking the same post many times in a day is seriously considered as spam and will make you lose followers instantly. Stop that!

2. Tweet Simple and Keep it Clean

Do not curse anyone or use obscene expressions in you tweets. People follow you because they are interested in what you have got to offer. Show respect and gain respect. Doing the dirty thing will definitely jeopardize your twitter account as well as your followers count.

3 . Never Tweet on your Followers Count

All of us enjoy reaching milestones in twitter. Do not ever tweet about the number of followers you have. Do not brag on the list and the celebrities that are following you. This does more worse than good in terms of the followers count. Keep it real and take it easy.

4. Tweets are not for link sharing!

I sincerely request people (at least my readers) not to tweet JUST links. You dont expect people to just click on your links without knowing where the links will take them. It might not be spam but that is how its looked at. Twitter supports 140 characters per message and I believe that the space is sufficient for adding a title to your link. No one is bothered to click on links without knowing what it is.

5. The power of MicroBlogging

Remember, you tweet for people and not for BOTS. Twitter is called a microblog and is so much powerful because you can reach out to your audience with a single tweet. Try to maintain a friendly relationship with your followers and even send some personal tweets to them. This makes them feel special and lets them know that you care.

6. Twitter is not an Online Game!

I know its fun to tweet about every single thing you do everyday. Never use twitter as if you are playing a game. Do not tweet hundred times a day. It is always disturbing to see a single person occupy the entire timeline. Personally, I always unfollow the person who floods my twitter with tons of tweets everyday. Remember, your number of tweets do not count; its the quality and the value of your tweets that matters.

7. RT: Retweeting is good to a certain extent

Retweeting is a good practice and is encouraged too. When you share an informative tweet, it helps your followers. But using twitter is much more than just retweeting. You need to share your opinions, ideas and thoughts in your twitter and not just always retweet some other random ideas or posts you find online. Make sure that you contribute to this social media because your followers are hungry for information; the ratio of your tweets to retweets should be always more.

These tips from the "Master Mind Blogger" are some common sense ways to avoid getting unfollowed on Twitter.

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References:

Salman Ahsan, 7 Tips to Avoid getting Unfollowed on Twitter, http://mastermindblogger.com/2009/7-tips-to-avoid-getting-unfollowed-on-twitter/

Labels: twitter, value

Twitter is an excellent tool for reaching out and connecting with people, whether it be friends, employees, customers or potential customers.  When entrepreneurs consider using Twitter in their company they first need to develop a Twitter strategy. That is, they need to know what purpose Twitter is going to serve within their organization.  Understanding the strategy will help you know how many resources you will need to dedicate to maintaining relationships on Twitter.

There are a number of ways a firm can use Twitter:

1) Using Twitter to help boost website traffic

This is one of the key marketing uses for Twitter.  Entrepreneurs can use Twitter to introduce new products, press releases or special promotions on Twitter.  If you send tweets that demonstrate real value to your followers they can re-tweet your posts, which can create significant traffic surges that can be tracked in real time. If you use a URL shortener to post your URLs on Twitter, it becomes easy to follow exactly how many Twitterers followed your Twitter link to your site.


Although brands take many different approaches to driving traffic with Twitter, one entrepreneurial venture "The Organic Dish" uses Twitter to post organic recipes, promote farmers markets and to announce new meal offerings for their ready to cook organic meal company.

2) Using Twitter to improve search rankings

One of the side effects of boosting site traffic is that it can increase the inbound links from blogs and other high quality sites which can significantly improve a site's performance on the engines. According to "Chief Marketer," marketers should think of Twitter as "an accelerated link machine; as more and more inbound links accumulate, the credibility of the marketers' site rises in step in the eyes of the search engines."

3) Using Twitter to sell seasonal merchandise and excess inventory?

You may not have thought of Twitter as a direct sales channel, but Twitter is one way to get promotions on out of season products in front of more people.  This can help companies move old models and other inventory that needs to go.  Some of the brands, retailers and e-tailers currently using Twitter to sell older inventory include:

• Kohlsdotcom: promotes Kohls.com Deals of the Day, contests and sweepstakes, and more
• OldNavyOfficial: promotes sales, offers free shipping and other special promotions, etc.
• BROfficial: promotes sales and other deals for Banana Republic
• MoviesUnlimited: promotes 12-hour specials and DVD preorders for the e-tailer

4) Using Twitter to improve customer relationship management efforts


One of the big benefits of Twitters is that it can allow you to engage with your customers or potential customers.  You can ask customers questions on new products, proposed improvements or upgrades or to get beta testers for your products.  It is an ideal tool for getting real time feedback from you customers and its value in this arena cannot be understated!

Twitter can be an amazing tool to improve your company's visibility online and to improve your interaction with customers and potential customers. However, to achieve the full benefits of Twitter companies need to use it for more than distributing static news or chatter. To gain the full benefits of Twitter you need to participate in the community, provide value and engage your followers. 

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References


http://chiefmarketer.com/disciplines/online/0504-five-twitter-questions/

Labels: online marketing, twitter

Increasingly businesses are utilizing  multiple social media outlets to connect with and engage customers or potential business partners.  For a small business keeping up with all of the social media sites can be a daunting task. But it is possible to utilize multiple social network tools to provide a uniform face to the world.


Personally, my first problem is keeping fresh content on all of the sites my company is currently active on (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and my company blog). Here are a few ways you can manage your social media presence to minimize time spent and maximize your company's visibility and credibility online.

First: I maintain a company blog to establish myself and my company as experts in the special education data tracking domain (yes, I do two blogs).  The way I manage this is to use scheduling features for my blog which allows me to write posts one or two months in advance and have them appear at regular intervals.  I mix this up with writing "current" blog posts in response to events in the news to keep my content fresh and interesting.  I try to never go more than a week without posting something new to my blog.

Second: I use TwitterFeed to automatically send my blog post titles and shortened URLs to Twitter.  This helps me to keep my twitter feed current.

Third: I use Hoot Suite to schedule other types of posts to my twitter account including, retweets of interesting tweets I see from people I am following, re-posting the links to my past blog entries and commentary on current events that I think will be of interest to my followers.  I try to post to twitter every day.  Again my goal is to keep my content current - not to become one of the twitterers that posts multiple times an hour.

Fourth: I use a custom background on my twitter page to allow me to brand my twitter account and keep it consistent with the image portrayed on my company website. You can put a variety of company relevant information in the Twitter background, including logos and contact informaiton. See my Twitter profile (ddtracinfo) for an example.

Fifth: I keep my company Facebook page current using RSS Grafiti which grabs all of my blog posts and all of my Twitter tweets and puts them on the Wall for my company page.  Again this helps to keep my Facebook profile current - so all I have to do is check in on the discussion board to see if people are asking questions I need to answer.

Sixth: I use Twitter to help with my business networking.  I used Twitters search feature to find people interested in or involved in the disability community and followed them.  Many of these people then followed me back. It is possible to invite those that follow you back to connect with you on LinkedIn to enhance the relationship. You obviously need to put the information in your Twitter account about the fact you are on LinkedIn and that you would be happy to connect.

Seventh: On LinkedIn it technically against the rules to have any personal contact info in your profile and depending on where you put it you could get your account suspended. But you can put your Twitter name in your LinkedIn account with out risk and on your Twitter account you can give people the information to connect on LinkedIn.  In addition, you can invite you rLinkedIn connections to follow you on Twitter. Twitters more lenient policies on chatting with others allow you to communicate more easily.

These are very simple ideas but they do add tremendous power to your social media networking if you use them to your advantage.

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http://onlinebusinessnetworker.net/blog/2009/07/using-twitter-to-help-your-linkedin-networking-and-vice-versa/

Labels: blogging, facebook, linkedin, social media, twitter

The nice thing about social media is that small businesses can effectively uses it for a small investment of time and and a very small investment of money. One of the easiest social media tools to adopt as a small business is Twitter.  Many other social media tools (like blogs and facebook) can require months of consistently contributing quality content to build a following, but on twitter, you can build a following and have an impact relatively quickly.

There are numerous uses for Twitter that a small company might be interested in.  These include:

• Getting market research. Twitter provides the fastest way to get feedback for your ideas, word of mouth topics, or new products.
• Find leads. Using Twitter search allows you to find people talking about your industry’s key terms in real time — making Twitter an efficient way to find leads.
• Build a following:  If you follow key players in your industry (or in potential client industries) there is a good chance they will follow you back. 
  

Here are some tips I have picked-up that can help a small business get started with Twitter:

1. Create your Twitter name today: I created a personal Twitter account to learn how to use it and then a few weeks later was ready to set-up my company Twitter account.  In between those two dates someone else had signed up for my product name as their Twitter name. Twitter names are free, so sign up for yours today before someone else grabs it.
2. Search for key industry terms:  Search for people talking about issues in your industry and if they appear credible follow them.
3. Observe what people are saying: It is always a good idea to observe the social norms of any social media site before jumping in and actively contributing.
   
4. Search for your name. If someone is talking about you, you need to know it!
5. Search for your product & company name. People will frequently post positive and negative comments about companies on Twitter.  If Someone complements you you need to thank them.  If they are complaining about something you need to address that complaint before it becomes a tidal wave of complaints!
   
7. Search for your competitor’s name, company or products. This can give you an idea of what people are saying about him and give you a leg up on the competition.
8. Search for like-minded people. This can be for local people or anywhere. Networking with others gives you a whole new circle of business contacts. You can search for terms like your city, state, niche, or anything else that might help you find people to follow that could work with you. Again this is a good source of followers as well.
   
9. Search for people who can complement what you offer. If you are great at building websites, but cannot write worth a hoot, then search for writers that might want to partner with you.

Using Twitter can take as little as a few minutes a day and it could potentially allow huge benefits for your organization.
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References

http://www.socialnetdaily.com/twitter/the-best-use-of-twitter-for-online-marketers/

http://smartblogs.com/socialmedia/2009/06/02/andys-answers-3-ways-a-small-business-can-use-twitter/

Labels: social media, twitter

As I sit in my office watching the flood of tweets surrounding the disappearance of "Balloon Boy" I am struck by how the way news is transmitted is changing. Today in Ft. Collins, Colorado a six year old boy was reported to have floated away in a homemade balloon.  While millions of people watched live news feed of the story, I stayed up to date with the story by following the feed on Twitter.

Like it or not, Twitter has become a way for users to experience the news.  During the time the balloon was in the air and authorities were trying to figure out how to get it down balloon boy dominated the twitter stream.  The 7 of the top "trending" topics on twitter were all about balloon boy and every minute each one of these topics added thousands of new tweets:

• Colorado
• #balloonboy
• #SaveBalloonBoy
• Falcon
• CNN
• Denver
• Wife Swap
• Balloon Boy

How good is twitter as an information source?:

• I found out within moments of the balloon landing that it had indeed landed.
• I know the balloon was a father son project and could follow links to the father's web page.
• I got to see a photo of the family posing in front of the now infamous balloon.
  
• I now know that the boy's family was on Wife Swap and could follow any number of links

The amount of background information available on the story and on the family is truly amazing.  However, as the story unfolded there was a great deal of misinformation also reported on twitter.

• For a while some twitterers were reporting that the boy was indeed found alive inside the balloon.  Those hopeful reports later were proven false.
• Many were still tweeting that there was a 6 year old trapped in a balloon long after the balloon had landed and the boy was not found inside.

One thing following a story on twitter allows that traditional media does not is the ability to  interact and comment on events unfold.  While many twitterers reported on what they heard about the story others used twitter to express their reaction to the story. These include prayers for the child as well as skepticism about the entire event:

• Praying #balloonboy is found safe and sound.
• RT @redhk: beginning to think this spotlight-loving family miiiight have something to do with this. #justsayin #balloonboy || Roger that.
•  #balloonboy is so grounded. For life.
• hoping the #balloonboy thing was a hoax, so sad for the little boy if it wasn't.
• Basket fell off of balloon #saveballoonboy
• Does this picture sum it up? Seriously hoping for the best as a parent myself. http://twitpic.com/ln9p6 #saveballoonboy #balloonboy
• I hope he's found soon! Someone please keep me updated! #SaveBalloonBoy
• #saveballoonboy omg :( this is awful
  

I personally have seen posts on this topic in many different languages as people from different parts of the world engage with and comment on this story. Meanwhile, I sit in my office and wait with the rest of the world hoping for news that the boy has been found safely.

Follow-up:

The boy was found safely - but he was a top twitter trend for nearly 24 hours!

Labels: balloonboy, news, twitter

Here is my tweet cloud for my twitter posts:




It appears the tweet cloud does not work all of the time... It sometimes gives the error "No tweetcloud for search term" which makes it less useful as an index to your tweet stream.

Labels: cloud, tools, twitter

In the past week I have had issues with two businesses that operate exclusively online and needed to get in touch with customer service. In both cases, when traditional customer service channels failed I turned to twitter to contact the company (& found better success).  This has implications for entrepreneurs that want to convey a positive company image online.

As Twitter becomes more popular people can increasingly vent their frustrations with companies or products in a very public way. In my situation, I attempted to contact Amazon Payments and DimDim through their more traditional customer service channels.  First I tried email:

• Amazon Payments did not reply to my email for 36 hours and when they did reply it was clear they had not read my email nor looked at my account history.
• DimDim never replied to my email.

Next I tried phone:

• Amazon Payments has no published phone number and when I called their corporate customer service representatives they indicated they had no phone numbers for anyone in the department.
• DimDim's only listed phone number would ring once then give a busy signal for the two hours I called.
  

Finally, in desperation, I tweeted them.  In both cases my tweet was responsible for my only meaningful support contact with the company.

• @DimDim responded to my tweet almost immediately. Asked clarifying questions about my situation and made a YouTube video showing me how to solve my problem within an hour.
• @AmazonPayments was slower to repsond to my initial tweet (allowing me time to post 5 additional complaints about the company's responsiveness) but eventually initiated an investigation which resulted in fixing a bug in their system and two apologies from the customer service department about how they handled my initial complaint.
  

From a consumers perspective my experience this week was both frustrating and empowering. It is frustrating when companies limit your ability to get meaningful assistance from them so much that you are unable to get serious issues heard. However, it as empowering because  I was able to use social media to get the attention of companies that would not listen to me when I tried to talk to them more privately. 

As an entrepreneur myself, I know finding adequate time to respond to promote your business, build your product and respond to emails and phone calls is challenging. But, you need to recognize that any failures in your offline customer service are likely to come back to haunt you in the Twittersphere!

Labels: amazon payments, customer service, dimdim, twitter

I had not planned to write my first post (for a long time) on Amazon Payments but sheer frustration with this new service has driven me to write on this topic. Amazon Payments is a new service introduced by Amazon to compete with PayPal and the new Google payments service. These types of personal payment services are great for entrepreneurs because they allow small businesses to take payments over the internet without having to manage the payment process themselves.

My company switched to Amazon Payments a month ago (from PayPal) because they were offering a few months of service without fees and because they allowed us a few programming options that PayPal did not. Specifically they allowed us to redirect subscribers to our site where they could complete an application form to set-up their account with us all in one step (PayPal required us to send a confirmation email to take the subscribers to the correct account set-up page).

The Amazon Payments service worked very well for us when it came to setting up and taking our first few payments. However, when it came time for us to withdraw the money Amazon and put it in our bank account we ran into problems. A bug in their system would not allow us to withdraw funds even though we had received the funds 3 weeks ago and had waited their 14 day wait period for withdrawals. Given that we were beta testing the software, I am not complaining about finding a bug in the system. My complaint with Amazon Payments is that they were not equipped to respond to complaints that were about bugs.

Flaws with the Amazon Payments Customer Service Process:

1. They only allow email complaints using their form. They do not provide users with either a direct email address OR a phone number.
2. Their customer service reps DO NOT read either the email you send or your transaction history when responding to your complaint.
• In my case they kept responding to my email by telling me that I could not withdraw my entire balance. I could just withdraw the amount tha thad been in the account for over 14 days and never noticed that I was complaing that I could not withdraw the balance that had been in my account for 14 days AND I had multiple transactions in my transaction log that showed I could not withdraw the amount of money they said I should be able to withdraw!
3. When they have an error in their response you cannot reply to their email and tell them that they have made an mistake. You must go through another online form (which they do not read when you send it to them).
   
4. There is no phone number anywhere for Amazon Payments! I finally called the Amazon Corporate office and could not get the number or name of anyone in the Amazon Payments department. All the customer service reps in the corporate office could do was send an email to the amazon payments office to get them to address the bug in their system.

When someone has your money and there is a bug in their system that keeps you from getting it a company needs to have some recourse to allow customers to report problems and talk to someone that can actually help them. In my case not only did one customer service rep ignore my transaction history and tell me I just needed to log in and withdraw my disbursable balance. When I replied that that rep had not solved my problem A second rep ignored my history AGAIN and gave me the same response.

The only way I was able to get any response from them was to Tweet them on Twitter - and then I finally got someone to look at my account.

That is not the way for any company to do business!

Labels: amazon payments, customer service, payments, twitter