Twitter’s spree of partnerships isn’t stopping any time soon. Late last month, Microsoft and Twitter struck a search deal to integrate Twitter within Bing. Mere hours later, Google struck back with its own search deal with Twitter.
The latest partnership sees Twitter and LinkedIn join forces, now you can tweet to LinkedIn or make your LinkedIn status updates tweet, either way the two social media sites will cross-post if desired.
To activate simple login to your LinkeIn account and either click the Twitter icon or access your ‘Account & Settings’ and provide your accounts with permission to cross-post!
Jack Johnson, the author of many mellow melodies that’ll make you want to stay in bed all day, has figured out a really cool way to promote his new live album on Twitter.
It’s really simple: just head on to twitter.jackjohnsonmusic.com. There’s a premade Twitter message there (you can add 24 more characters if you like) that promotes the new album, titled En Concert, and all you need to do is login into your Twitter account and send it. The download of the promised tune (it’s a 192 kbps MP3) will start automatically.
This is probably one of the simplest and best examples of how a musician can promote his work via Twitter, because everyone wins: you get a free song off the new album, and Jack Johnson will probably get a free Twitter trend and lots of good vibes.
We received ‘Flake (Live from San Francisco)’ – let us know what tune you get?
Twitter has seen an explosion of popularity recently and so old school ‘follow back’ rules where you always follow anyone who follows you no longer apply, in fact one user who had an auto follow rule in place recenlty decided to take action as he was missing out no many useful tweets and his DM (Direct Message) inbox was full of spam.
When Robert Scoble realised that he was following over 100,000 people, most of whom he didn’t know he decided to clense his list, it isn’t possible to bulk unfollow on Twitter but rather than manually accomplish the task Scoble had a script written for him.
He writes of the experience:
On Monday I unfollowed 106,000 people on Twitter. The reaction so far has been quite interesting. More than 7,000 accounts have unfollowed me back. They did that so fast that I assume they are just bots that are looking to increase their follower numbers. I knew I’d lose them, but that’s sort of why I did it. People who are following me just to get another count on their follower numbers are just plain, well, lame.
But it’s worse than that. When I unfollowed everyone all my spam just stopped. Dead. No more spam. Not since Monday. Twitter is actually quite enjoyable. Not a single DM spam. Not a single piece of spam has come through the home page.
It seems much like in real life, twitter users are beginning to realise that it’s quality, not quantity that counts.
As a commercial tool for businesses to promote their services and to maintain continued contact with the clients who are interested, Twitter is ideal.
Twitter Icons
In a matter of 140 characters it is possible to remind customers of your company and direct them to your website or listen to your customer’s feedback and suggestions, helping you to provide a better service. But possibly the best reason for using Twitter is the Word of Mouth element, if you have something useful to offer or say then your followers will hopefully pass on your message (re-tweet) and who knows how many twitter users it will ultimately reach.
An additional bonus of Twitter is the way in which it now connects to varying applications, we believe it has become a useful tool and an excellent way of generating inbound links, though your website may not benefit from the authority of the link it is another way to attract visitors to your website and generate a following. Through blogging a business can create in bound links using Twitter (without even logging into Twitter) which will help to further promote their website and generate more traffic, alternatively your Twitter account can be used to maintain your Facebook fan page keeping your fans up to date with all your latest tweets.
So aside from the above, how can Twitter help your business?
It is a resource to connect to people within your industry ensuring that you are kept up to date with all the latest news, stories, trends and issues. Think of it as your industries news headline feed. Using such directories as Twellow and Wefollow you can find people within your industry to follow as well as people in other industries who may be of interest to you.
It can be used as a research tool, if you have a question you can ask the Twitter community and often will receive an answer within minutes.
Think of it as a networking opportunity, if you meet people who are using Twitter you can follow each other and maintain regular contact without having to directly interact, instead of waiting for the next business breakfast in a months time to speak to that person you have been aware of what they are doing and can instantly DM(Direct Message) them on Twitter. Better still, you may meet someone on Twitter whose services you would benefit from or who would benefit from your services.
It is a free PR/Marketing channel, though Twitter is about two way communication with the Twitter community it is also an opportunity to instantly make your followers aware of any promotions you are currently running or any success the business has had, i.e. we’ve just landed a huge contract and are excited to be working with… or as a large coffee shop chain recently tweeted – ‘free pastry with every coffee to all who quote code xxx until 10am this morning’ only those using Twitter were aware of this promotion.
If you do decide to use twitter feel free to follow us http://twitter.com/itpie or if you would like any help with your Social Media marketing plan, please do not hesitate to contact us.
Step 1 – Sign Up – choosing a username which represents you or your company. If your lucky enough to have a well known name that people will look for and will be followed you may choose to use your own name (i.e. twitter.com/yourname) but if your using Twitter for your company then I imagine your company name would be a better choice and you can always use your own name as the contact details within your account, that is, out Twitter account is itpie (twitter.com/itpie) but when viewing our profile the account is attributed to me Geraint Rhys Jones.
Twitter Icons
Step 2 – familiarise yourself with the twitter website and complete your details. The home screen will list the latest tweets from the people you follow, profile shows all your tweets and shows what others will see when they view your profile. Find people is where you can search for people and invite people depending on your e-mail client. Settings is where you complete all your personal details. You also want to familiarise yourself with the language used on Twitter, though this will come with time and experience, but a quick guide of the key elements are below.
RT = ReTweet – when you decide to re-tweet someones message
@username = indicates a message directly to a person which is open to be viewed by other Twitter users, this is different to a direct message (DM)
#Keyword = a hashtag (#) is often placed before a keyword that is a hot topic, the Twitter home page shows the top hashtags being tweeted about in the right hand column.
There are many more elements to Twitter and Twitter themselves have released a guide so it may be worth reading it when you get the time.
Step 3 – personalisation – a lot of users have a unique background advertising their business details and services or having a bio about the twitter account owner. The one major decision to make is the profile picture, some people use a personal image and some use a company logo, twitter and many social media users recommend using a personal image as social media is about personal communication, either way, please do add an image as the worst sight is the standard brown twitter image, once you’ve decided what is best for your business, jump into the Settings>Picture section and upload your image.
Next you want to add your personal background, this is easily done if you have the right tools, essentially you need to use a graphics programme and then create your background which should measure approximately 1600 pixels wide and 1200 pixels high, if you decide to have a column on the left then it is advised that this is 200 pixels wide to ensure nothing is lost when viewing it on a low resolution monitor. Then its into Settings>Design to upload your masterpiece.
Step 4 – following people, though when you setup Twitter you may have decided to follow some people and you may have found a number of people you want to follow already now is the time to join some twitter directories such as Twellow and WeFollow. These directories help to get you found and also are directories you can use to find people with similar interests or within an industry your interested in, there are more directories but these are two of the main directories.
Step 5 – Start using Twitter and then prepare to take it to the next level with a Twitter application. Once you start using twitter you can easily tweet from the twitter home page, but you will find that the feed doesn’t refresh automatically and once your following a lot of people you will begin to miss tweets. In order to monitor what is going on with our Twitter account we use TweetDeck and would highly recommend it. TweetDeck allows you to group the people your following and shows any direct messages sent or received, it also allows you to monitor whenever someone tweets at you. But the best thing about TweetDeck in our opinion is the notification, TweetDeck automatically refreshes and notifies you of the groups who have tweeted allowing you to decide if you want to browse the latest tweets or carry on working. The final part which goes hand in hand with TweetDeck is bit.ly, bit.ly is a url shortning website which is used by TweetDeck and allows you to shorten urls, saving on important characters when tweeting urls but more importantly, provides you with analytics so you can see how often your urls have been clicked. Register with bit.ly and if your using Firefox you can install the additional plug-in.
Once you have completed the above 5 steps you should already be tweeting and really enjoying being part of the Twitter community, we only hope you follow us for more helpful advice, tips and tricks. (http://twitter.com/itpie)
If you’re an experienced Twitter user then you’ve probably heard of #FollowFriday where you recommend people to follow, well I’m introducing #LushFriday which is a chance to indulge and share your indulgence with other Twitter users.
On the last working Friday of the month we will be indulging in our favourite lunch – which is just an excuse to go to Lush the butchers in Penarth for one of their amazing baguettes and tweeting about it with the hashtag #LushFriday or better still posting a TwitPic.
#LushFriday gourmet food if your lucky
So take this opportunity to treat yourself to whatever your stomach desires, Chinese buffet, burger, cookies or a fresh hot chicken baguette, it’s #LushFriday which means the calories don’t count (if you count calories) and after a month of hard work, you deserve a treat!
Join us in making Twitter the best fed place on earth every #LushFriday and come dine at the largest Twitter table there ever was!
The government tweeting isn’t a new thing, we follow 10 downing street and there are other government departments on Twitter, but now the government has embraced twitter and released a twitter strategy discussing how and why they intend to establish and manage a corporate presence on the microblogging social network Twitter.com
We just found this on-line thanks to Perry Belcher (http://twitter.com/PerryBelcher) hosted on www.slideshare.net.
It’s an excellent presentation by an American/Canadian firm Espresso (http://brandinfiltration.com/) highlighting the power and importance of Social Media.
Take a look at the presentation and let us know your thoughts. The figures make you realise how important Social Media is, and why you need to be part of it! Need help, then drop us an e-mail or pick up the phone and give us a call (enquiries@itpie.co.uk or 02920711607)
Now I’m not going to claim to be ground-breaking following my newly created Twitter account, in fact until last week I was a bit of a sceptic, but as is partly the purpose of this blog I wanted and intend to test all forms of social media and plan on maximising my companies exposure through social media whilst minimising the amount of time invested in achieving this goal. In a future blog I will explain how I am using Twitter to fully tweet my messages but for this post I would like to focus on Twitter the social media tool.
So I’m confident you have all heard of twitter following the mass media coverage it has received over the past months with many celebrities and even politicians using it (it was part of Barack Obama’s campaign) But in case you haven’t the concept is that you can ‘Tweet’ your message which is made up of 140 characters and contact all your followers with one single message. The idea was inspired by MSN Messenger where it is possible to add an out of office/ away to lunch message according to co-founder Biz Stone, Biz and the other two co-founders decided to create a prototype and insisted that family and friends use it, at first they were reluctant, but following a minor earthquake many turned to twitter to get a message of their safety out to friends and family instead of using the phone to contact everyone individually – this was a real moment in Twitters history when they realised that there was a use for Twitter. The other was when the plane was landed on the Hudson River and Twitter seemed to be ahead of the media in delivering the news! According to Sue Robinson from the School of Journalism at the University of Wisconsin told the Daily Campus “It was a kind of mass network journalism, or crowd sourcing is another term for it. A lot of people are writing in, and that mass, that collection of data, creates the news story.”
So Twitter had arrived and had a respectable following for a social media site, but it was when celebrities began to use it that it really took off. It is claimed that when American celebrity Oprah Winfrey ‘Tweeted’ live on her show traffic to the Twitter site increased by 43%. The site has grown in the number of users dramatically, from half a million in February 2008 to seven Million a year later and in the past four months it is thought to have grown beyond 10 million, but there is a downside. According to a study by Harvard University, 10% of Twitter users generate 90% of the content where as on a typical social media website the top 10% of users generate 30% of content. It also claims that more than half of people using Twitter updated their page once every 74 days. This research has led to the longevity of the site being questioned, will Twitter survive the hype?
It is our belief following our brief experience that Twitter is here to stay, it is just the way in which it is marketed and used that needs re-defining.
On the Twitter home page it claims that:
Twitter is a service for friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?
But it is our belief that users do not want to share the same information with family, friends and colleagues and do not want to use Twitter to communicate personal information. In fact as a personal tool for communicating I am not convinced that Twitter has any future, but as a commercial tool for businesses to promote their services and to maintain continued contact with the clients who are interested it is ideal. In a matter of 140 characters it is possible to remind customers of your company and direct them to your website.
An additional bonus of Twitter is the way in which it now connects to varying applications, we believe it has become a useful SEO tool and an excellent way of generating inbound links. In a future post I will share with you how I am now using Twitter to create at least 3 in bound links to my post whilst writing my post – through blogging I am creating in bound links using Twitter (without even logging into Twitter) which will help to further promote my blog and website.
So now you know what the tweet it’s all about don’t you think you should get tweeting?
Well I’ve been thinking about tweeting for some time and to be honest I’m still not entirely sure of its value to our business (though I do recognise that it can be almost invaluable to certain industries) and I will blog on this later, but for now I want to anounce our arrival on Twitter and let you in on a little secret – I have a plugin which should update my Twitter account (This is a test) meaning that as I blog I Twitter, hitting two social media tools in one go and generating links back and forth between blog and Twitter.
I’ll post soon on my experience of setting up Twitter and the plugin used for my blog. But got to do some more testing first.
@o2 - why is contacting large organizations so hard these days (i.e. O2) a 5 min conversation would fix it #FrustratedAlready!!! #2010/07/28
@DineOutWales offering 20% off membership to tweeters today - retweet & contact @DineOutWales 4 discounted membership - eating out in style #2010/07/28
@philthD Best of luck my good man, I'm sure all will be fine - we await your good news! #2010/07/28
selling a Mini Cooper http://bit.ly/azpjcu know anyone who might be interested let me know #2010/07/28
Busy day, but very enjoyable - always makes the end of the day so much better. Looking to boost biz through referral networking? Message me #2010/07/27
