Use Twitter for Marketing and PR Efforts

Posted on July 6, 2010 by litekepr

(I just saw this on my Twitter home page and had to share 🙂

Twitter is a tool for “micro-blogging” or posting very short updates, comments or thoughts.  In fact, since Twitter was designed to be very compatible with mobile phones through text messages, each update is limited to 140 characters.  Truly, a micro-blog.  Another way to think of Twitter is like a cross between instant messaging (IM) and a chat room, because it is an open forum, but you restrict it to the people with which you connect.

I have to admit I have not always been sold on Twitter.  At first I did not get it at all.  Then I thought I understood it, but thought it was stupid and useless.  Then I used it a bit more and got some more followers and followed a few more people.  Now I think it has some value, especially as a marketing and PR tool.

Ideas for How to Use Twitter for Marketing & PR

  1. Engage your CEO in social media. Social media is a great way to have a conversation with your market and make and mange connections with prospects, customers, bloggers and other influencers.  But for a CEO, the typical routes to social media can be hard.  Especially if you are a larger or global company.  A CEO typically has little time to write a blog or answer lots of messages and friend requests on Facebook.  I cannot tell you how many CEO blogs I have seen with only 1 or 2 posts because the CEO never had time to update the blog after the first couple entries.  But, Twitter is limited to 140 characters per update, so it is all about short thoughts and comments.  If your CEO can send a text message, they can use Twitter from anywhere in the world as a marketing and PR tool.  Twitter is actually perfect for CEO or founder who is always on the road meeting with people and who has some interesting opinions on your market.
  2. Keep in touch with bloggers / media. It is really easy to follow someone on Twitter (see below). And you’ll be surprised how often they decide to follow you as well.  In fact, I have lots of people I consider “famous” in the marketing and PR worlds following me.  In my opinion, this is a way easier way to connect with influential people in the media than calling and emailing them.
  3. Monitor your company / brand on Twitter. A while back we noticed that Guy Kawasaki mentioned Website Grader on Twitter.  Well, of course we had to let him know a bit more about Website Grader and maybe ask if he would also blog about it?  The result was this blog article on Website Grader which drove a good amount of traffic and leads.  (See below for a cool tip on how to easily monitor people talking about your company on Twitter.)
  4. Announce specials, deals or sales. If you are a retailer or anyone who often has special offers, you can use Twitter to announce these deals instantly to a large audience.  You know those commercials from Southwest Airlines about that “Ding” application you could download and would then alert you about specials on flights?  Well, Twitter can be used as a kind of free version of that.  Dell and Woot have done just this type of marketing, with a lot of success.
  5. Live updates on events or conferences. If you participate in a large trade show or run your own corporate event, you can use Twitter to announce last minute changes, cool events that are happening (”Just announced, David Meerman Scott book signing in the exhibit hall until 11am”) and more.  It is a great last minute marketing tool.
  6. Promote blog articles, webinars, interesting news and more. Its really easy to post a link to something in Twitter, and I often post links to blog articles on this blog, or other news articles relevant to HubSpot.  A good idea is to post articles on other websites that are relevant to your business, like a customer success story or other PR coverage.  If you have other content that is appealing to your audience like a free webinar, post links to those too.

Using Twitter for Marketing & PR – A Step-by-Step Guide

  1. Sign-up and post a profile. Visit Twitter and click on the “Get Started – Join” button in the middle.  The rest is simple enough that I think you can figure it out without my help.
  2. Write some updates. The beauty of Twitter is that the 140 character limit is the great equalizer – I am about as good of a writer as Shakespeare on Twitter.  Post a link to a news article you liked with a one line comment, mention an interesting thought you had, or tell everyone what you are cooking for dinner.  Just write something.
  3. Make friends. Making friends on Twitter is pretty easy.  Just surf around the web on your favorite blogs, people’s Facebook profiles etc, and when you see a Twitter box that tells you what they are doing click on it.  That will bring you to their profile and then you just click on the “Follow” button on the top left and you are now following them.  Most of the time they will then follow you back, and the audience for your 140 character insights will have grown by one person.  You can get started by following me: Jim Grygar on Twitter. You can also click on the people that other people are following to find more people to follow.
  4. How to post URLs. Twitter is based on 140 character updates.  If you have a really long URL, that doesn’t leave much room for  Most people on Twitter use www.TinyURL.com to take a long URL and make it short.  Give it a shot if you have a long URL that you want to market on Twitter.
  5. Monitor conversations about your company. Even if you don’t join Twitter yourself you can monitor what people are saying about any person, company or brand.  This is quite useful from a marketing and PR standpoint.  Twitter has a search engine that lets you do just this.  For instance, here is a list of everyone who is talking about HubSpot on Twitter.  You can subscribe to these searches by RSS to keep yourself updated.  Another tip is that you can “follow” all the people you find talking about your company (just click on their username to go to their profile).  If they are talking about your company, they would probably be pretty happy that someone from the company wants to follow them.
  6. How to “chat”. Using the @ symbol before someone’s Twitter username is how people have “conversations” in Twitter.  This makes their username a link to their profile so other people can follow the conversation (sort of).  For example if you wrote “@jimgrygar thanks for the cool blog article about Twitter today” that would be a way of telling me you liked this article. Try it out.  It’s not IM (instant messaging), but it is sort of like a publicly broadcast IM service.

Originally posted at – http://jimgrygar.byethost12.com/how-to-use-twitter-for-marketing/

Filed under: business promotion, online promotion, social media marketing, social networking, twitter | Leave a comment »

60 Twitter Tracking Tools

Posted on July 3, 2010 by litekepr

Saw this awesome article and had to share — http://jimgrygar.byethost12.com/60-twitter-tools-to-track-tweets/

I’ve been finding so many Twitter tools, I want to pass them along that it’s hard to keep track of them all. The Twitter tools I want to keep track of are those that monitor, measure, and analyze Twitterer’s and their traffic. I figured I’d compile them here for your benefit.

  1. Twitter Search – This, obviously, is Twitter’s own search function. You can subscribe to a search via RSS.
  2. TweetBeep – TweetBeep is a “Google Alerts” for Twitter
  3. Tweetscan – Schedule Twitter searches to be sent to your email.
  4. Twist – Like Google Trends for Twitter
  5. TwitScoop – TwitScoop is a real-time tag cloud of Twitter buzz that also allows you to create graphs based on keyword tracking.
  6. MicroBlogBuzz – MicroBlogBuzz tracks the most popular links shared on microblogging services, including Twitter, Jaiku and Identica
  7. Twit(url)y – Tracks popular links and displays them in Digg-like fashion.
  8. Hashtags.org – Hashtags tracks the most popular Twitter posts that include a #hashtag. You can subscribe to an individual hashtag using RSS.
  9. Twemes – Tracks Twitter memes.
  10. TweetGrid – TweetGrid creates a Twitter search dashboard that updates in real time.
  11. monitter – monittor is a real-time keyword-based monitoring service that lets you watch three columns of keyword streams side-by-side. You can subscribe to them using RSS.
  12. ReTweetist – Tracks the most popular retweets.
  13. minn.citytweets.net – Real-time tweets from and/or about Minneapolis.
  14. Qwitter – Qwitter notifies you when someone unfollows you.
  15. Spy – Spy tracks real-time keyword mentions in Twitter, FriendFeed, Flickr, Blog Comments, Yahoo News, Blogs and Google Reader and allows you to subscribe via RSS.
  16. TweetWheel – Finds out which of your Twitter friends know each other.
  17. Twitter Charts – Twitter Charts gives you a visualization of when a particular Twitter user is most active. This is an excellent tool to determine the most opportune time to engage a given person.
  18. twInfluence – Ranks Twitter users’ influence.
  19. TwitterGrader – Grades a given Twitter user according to influence. Includes power users by geographic location; suggests who to follow and allows you to check if someone is following you.
  20. TwitterSheep – Creates a tag cloud of all the words in the bios of a given Twitter user’s followers.
  21. TwitterCounter – Provides stats on a given Twitter user and lets you compare that user to two others.
  22. Twellow – Twellow is a Twitter directory.
  23. TweetBoards – Compare Twitter users side-by-side.
  24. TweetStats – Gives you Twitter statistics about a given user.
  25. TwitterMeter – Twitter Meter allows you to enter a word to graph its use on Twitter’s public feed.
  26. TwitterLocal – Twitter Local is a desktop app that finds Twitter users within a fixed radius of a city or zip code.
  27. Twitter Analyzer – The best Twitter analytics tool I have found to date. Offers a ton of statistics.
  28. Mr. Tweet – A recommendation engine that also provides statistics on your Twitter usage.
  29. Localtweeps – Find Tweeps near you.
  30. Retail Twitter Aggregator – Aggregates the Twitter feeds of a handful of bricks & mortar retailers.
  31. retweetradar – Tag clouds and trends of retweets.
  32. Twubs – Find hashtags.
  33. What The Trend? – Find hashtags that are rising in popularity.
  34. Tagalus – A hashtag dictionary.
  35. Twitclicks – Shortens URLs and tracks clicks.
  36. Bit.ly – Shortens URLs, counts clicks, shows who else shortened a URL and provides metadata about that URL from across the Web.
  37. Tweetburner – Shortens URLs and tracks clicks on Twitter & FriendFeed.
  38. Twittervision – Real-time geographic posts to Twitter.
  39. TweetChannel – Create Twitter channels.
  40. Twitterfall – Real-time monitoring.
  41. Twendz – Real-time Twitter search engine coupled with related keywords & word clouds.
  42. Tweetzi – Advanced Twitter search engine.
  43. Twistory – Pumps your Twitter feed into a calendar application so you can visualize your Tweeting history.
  44. Twitlinks – Tracks most popular tech links from most popular tech Twitterers.
  45. Twitturls – Tracks popular links.
  46. OneRiot – Twitter search engine.
  47. twopopular – Tracks hashtags and keywors in real time or by time intervals.
  48. Tweet Volume – See how often words and phrases are mentioned on Twitter.
  49. TweetEffect – Find out which tweets gained and which tweets lost you followers.
  50. Tweetmeme – Tweetmeme tracks the most popular links on twitter every 5 minutes, categorized by types of content: Blogs, images, video or audio.
  51. Tinker – Aggregates Twitter conversations around topics.
  52. Splitweet – Multi account manager & brand monitor.
  53. Tweetizen – Lets you categorize your followers and then follow only that feed.
  54. Who Should I Follow? – Find new Twitter friends.
  55. FriendOrFollow.com – Find Twitterers you follow that don’t follow you back.
  56. Twitter Friends – Compare your tweeting behavior with other.
  57. Who Follows Who? – Find out the common Twitterers up to five Twitter users have in common.
  58. Socialoomph – Let’s you schedule Tweets and vet followers.
  59. CoTweet – Let’s multiple people manage a single Twitter account in a rational fashion.
  60. TweetDeck – An Adobe Air desktop application for Twitter. I actually use this. It should’ve been on the original list.
twopopular – Tracks hashtags and keywors in real time or by time intervals.

Filed under: online book promotion, online promotion, social media, social media marketing, social networking, twitter, web 2.0 promotion | 3 Comments »

My Absolute Favorite and Most Useful Twitter Tool

Posted on June 24, 2010 by litekepr

I searched long and hard for a very specific Twitter tool. There are an unlimited number of Twitter gadgets – but I wanted one that I could go to ANY web page – click one button – and create a tweet about it. I wanted this “magic” button to pull the page title, shorten the link and provide a short description. There were many tools and gadgets that did similar things, but none did that for absolutely any page.

Then I found it —

I discovered Twit It. Sounds innocent enough – but its wonderful. I will say up front that I’ve had to “re-install” it several times, but that takes about 2 minutes.

This is the link for this awesome tool –  http://myopiclunacy.com/2007/11/06/microblogging-with-urltea-my-twitter-bookmarklet

This is the explanation that I included in Book Promo 201: Harness the Power of the Internet with Web 2.0 and Social Media Marketing. Twit It is one of over 1200 resource links that I share in this book — you should check it out 🙂

Here are the instructions to install Twit It –

Twitter has become the place to check out what our friends, competitors and other are doing and what they are interested in. It’s very easy to add content to your Twitter micro blog by using a bookmarklet. I admit it took me ages to find this tool, but it was worth the effort. There are links to all kinds of tools, but I wanted one that would let me submit a link in a click. There is an article about bookmarklets at http://myopiclunacy.com/2007/11/06/microblogging-with-urltea-my-twitter-bookmarklet. Scroll about half way down the page and you will see “Twit It”. Place your cursor on this hyperlink, then drag and drop onto your navigational bar. Next time you want to mark a page, open the page, click on “Twit It” and “submit” and you’re done.

To get more details about Book Promo 201 –

Book Promo 201 – https://bookpromotionservices.com/books/book-promo-201/

Book Promo 201 Reviews – https://bookpromotionservices.com/books/book-promo-201-reviews/

Filed under: book promo 201, book promotion, online book promotion, online promotion, social media, social media marketing, social networking, twitter | Leave a comment »

Review for Book Promo 201 by Nikki Leigh

Posted on May 31, 2010 by litekepr

I just got a new review for my book Book Promo 201 and wanted to share it 🙂

Nikki Leigh pushes you off the dock into the ocean of the deep web and takes you to a new shore of Internet book marketing. So, get yourself out of your little local pond and let Nikki Leigh show you how to market on the seas of every continent.

Take this book to its highest power and you will be working weeks and weeks to do all the things Nikki Leigh tells you to do, go to all the places she tells you to go, and get a presence on all the sites she says are important to promote yourself to as many people as possible.

Follow Nikki Leigh page after action-packed page and get busy soon after you go to http://www.ebooksonthe.net and buy your download of Book Promo 201: Harness the Power of the Internet with Web 2.0 and Social Media Marketing.

Barbara Garro, MA, NY’s Painter of Flowers
Abstract Synchronism Artist and Author
“From Jesus to Heaven with Love: a Parable Pilgrimage”
“Grow Yourself a Life You’ll Love”

Call on us to Improve Your Motivation to Paint, Write or
Reach the Weight You Feel Comfortable Weighing

Book Promo 201 Digital Copy – http://www.writewordsinc.com/bookpromo201.html — $6.50

(Kindle Compatible PDF)

Book Promo 201 Print Copy – http://www.writewordsinc.com/bopr20poofin.html — $22.95

Filed under: author promotion, blog promotion, book promo 101, book promo 201, book promotion, business promotion, online book promotion, online promotion, social media, social media marketing, social networking, twitter, virtual blog tour, virtual book tour, web 2.0 promotion | Tagged: , | Leave a comment »

Unfollowing People on Twitter – A Plethora of Tools

Posted on March 18, 2010 by litekepr

I used a very cool tool to unfollow people on Twitter who aren’t following me — FriendAdder — I think. But have been looking for another option lately and preferrably one that is free. There are several that I saw mentioned online – but they seem to “freeze” and don’t appear to work for me.

If anyone has tips to use http://tweetelity.com/ or http://dossy.org/twitter/karma/ feel free to share. I can’t seem to get either to work — kind of embarrassing to admit 🙂

Today – I found one that seems to work — http://tweepi.com.

You can find all kinds of neat details about people you are following, people who are following you and more.

In little time, it gives you all the up to date information about them and you can easily make the decision whether to follow them or to delete them. One downside is that you have to check every account individually, but still much faster than opening every account and clicking unfollow.

So – what tools have you used to “unfollow” people on Twitter??

UPDATE – March 19 2010

I finally got Twitter Karma to work for me — had to submit the info over and over again, but I did get it to work. Its a nice system and you can pull up just the people you want to unfollow, or several other configurations. I would suggest staying close to the computer and keep resending your request — if you have a lot of followers, it does take time to pull them all up. The accounts I’m working on have over 5000 followers and people being followed, so it is slow. But once the details are gathered, it is very useful 🙂

Filed under: social media, social media marketing, social networking, twitter | Tagged: | Leave a comment »

Tweet For an Fictional Character

Posted on June 17, 2009 by litekepr

I’ve thought about doing this and love the idea. Hear what someone else has to say.

http://www.mediabistro.com/galleycat/adaptation/how_to_write_a_fictional_twitter_feed_118976.asp

Filed under: online promotion, twitter | Tagged: | Leave a comment »

Strategy to Classify Followers on Twitter

Posted on May 14, 2009 by litekepr

One of the common use cases of marketing on Twitter is its usefulness as a channel for lead generation. Getting to that critical mass, which can be an asset to a company, is any marketers dream, be it traditional channel of marketing or social media.

In this article, let us evaluate a strategy to classify followers on Twitter and identify critical mass, along with appropriate actions. It goes without saying, the starting step for this strategy on twitter is to Listen, Understand,Categorize. And Repeat.

The picture below illustrates how followers can be classified on two dimensions: Involvement and Interest*

Classify Followers on two dimensions: Involvement and Interest

Classify Followers on two dimensions: Involvement and Interest

  1. Low Interest and Active – These are the followers who talk in varied topics, not all of which are related to your topic of interest. At the same time these followers are very active on twitter. The strategy that will work here is to Nurture them; educate them in the area of your expertise. The goal will be to move this set to “high interest” zone.
  2. High Interest and Passive – These are the followers who talk about topics that match your areas of interest. But, they are not very active. The strategy with this group will be to Engage them. Ask questions and give replies on a continuous basis. The goal will be to move them to “Active” zone.
  3. High Interest and Active – This is the absolutely desirable group to have. Not only do they speak your language, but they do so often. It is this segment where you will find your influencers and promoters. And most active users are not necessarily neutral.If you do not quickly Convert them, remember your competitors might get them and they can soon become detractors for you.
  4. Low Interest and Passive – These are those followers you probably got using the “Increase Follower” tool. They are not interested in what you have to say, nor do they care, as they are passive. The best strategy is to not spend much time on this group. Try engaging and nurturing – if the users do not move to either “active” or “high interest” zone – Ignore them.

* SentimentNow(TM) technology of ObjectiveMarketer can actually show mapping of your and your audience’ similarity of interests.

This is a simple strategy, but will be very effective when marketers are planning their campaigns and evaluating the strength of their target audience on Twitter. Identifying the influencers is key strategy to a successful Viral Campaign on Twitter.

It would be interesting to get more views on this topic.

This article was originally posted at:
http://objectivemarketer.wordpress.com/2009/05/12/follower-strategy-on-twitter/

Filed under: social media, social media marketing, twitter | Leave a comment »

Social Networking With Twitter by G T Bulmer

Posted on May 11, 2009 by litekepr

I’ve been a member of the Twitter social networking site for several weeks now and the experience keeps getting better and better!

© GT Bulmer
Web Biz Opportunities – StarrBizz.com

Social networking has become such a vital part of every home based web biz marketer’s game plan and Twitter has developed into a leading force in social networking.

The biggest benefit of social networking is that it is free; you can reach thousands of prospects easily and economically. The challenge of social networking is that you have to spend time developing your presence on a social media site and time developing relationships of trust.

Twitter definitely simplifies the process. Sign-up and set-up take a matter of minutes. Then all you do is begin posting your “tweets” in 140 characters or less. You can post as often as you like, but the secret to social networking success is to offer info, insight and value, not just blatant promos or ads for your products and services.

You will find that once you become active in posting tweets, Twitter members will automatically start following you. And that is the object of social networking; to build a list of followers.

There are a few techniques to build your followers faster. One way is to follow other members. It’s easy to do on Twitter – just a click of the button – and most members you follow will follow you back.

As your list of followers grows, it becomes even more important to create a balance between informative tweets and promotional tweets.

Also, it helps to keep your tweets relative to your basic theme. For example, I try to keep the majority of my gtbulmer tweets focused on the theme of business and online marketing. I try to keep the majority of my ThinkGreen4Life tweets focused on the theme of the environment and going green.

If your tweets depart too far afield of the theme that attracted your followers, some will un-follow you, and on Twitter, it’s just as easy to un-follow as it is to follow.

Another way to help build your followers is to “re-tweet” the posts of other members. Basically, you click the “reply” icon to paste their twitter ID into your comment field; you type in the letters “RT” (meaning re-tweet), then copy and paste the portion of their text that you want to re-tweet. After making sure it is 140 characters or less, you then click the “update” button to post the re-tweet.

When you re-tweet the comments of other members, they appreciate it and will likely pay more attention to your tweets. Also, they might return the favour and re-tweet some of your tweets. There is a HUGE advantage to this: when they re-tweet your tweets, their ENTIRE list of followers could potentially see your messages. There are two key benefits to this:

– First, you instantly multiply your exposure to members you might otherwise never reach.

– Second, when one member re-tweets another, many of their followers begin following the member who has just been re-tweeted.

With that in mind, I actively watch for tweets that I think my followers will be interested in, then re-tweet those tweets. It’s one more way I can provide service and value to members of my growing social network on Twitter.

After just a few weeks as a member of Twitter, I have developed a nice following and I am following many informative and inspirational members. Not only have I been learning a great deal on a variety of topics, but I’ve been finding some great links to share with friends on other social networking sites.

If you are looking to build your home based web biz or advance any form of business or Internet Marketing that you may be involved in, I recommend you consider the value of Social Networking with Twitter.


http://www.starrbizz.com/blog/2009/04/social-networking-with-twitter.html

Filed under: social media, social media marketing, social networking, twitter, web 2.0 promotion | Leave a comment »

Do You Have Questions About Twitter?

Posted on May 9, 2009 by litekepr

This is a link to a radio show I did to help people understand more about Twitter – how to use it, some things to avoid, learning your way around the page and settings and more —

Filed under: author promotion, book promo 201, book promotion, social media, social media marketing, social networking, twitter, web 2.0 promotion | Tagged: | Leave a comment »

My Twitter Toolbox – Over 100 Twitter Tools

Posted on May 5, 2009 by litekepr

Are you looking for ways to maximize your exposure and effectiveness on Twitter? Then I have something you have to check out.

With My Twitter Toolbox, you get more
than 100 tools to tame the tweeting beast!

Take a look at this page and you can see the table of contents. I’m still working my way through the list of all the tools I want to use. The price is $19.97 today, but I’ve heard it is going up in a few days. The research time I can save is easily worth much more than $19.97 🙂

—
Book Promo 201 – Book Promo 201: Harness the Power of the Internet with Web 2.0 and Social Media Marketing (May 2009)
Book Promo 101 – http://www.nikkileigh.com
Follow Me on Twitter – www.twitter.com/litekepr
Promotional Services – www.nikkileigh.com/promo.htm

Filed under: social media, social media marketing, social networking, twitter, web 2.0 promotion | Leave a comment »

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