Solidly determine who you are.

The first thing that anyone gets to know about you on twitter is who you are and what you represent. Photo, bio, web link, etc. When someone visits your twitter page,  they need to see you and your brand – more about who you are, what you do and how they can contact you.

Figured out why someone would follow you.

People don’t follow you just because. They need to be given a reason! What are you talking about? What content are you creating? Are you just talking to yourself or are you sharing links, responding to conversations and participating in the twitter world. What do your last 10 tweets say about you? You need a solid mix of the 3: tweets of your own thoughts, retweets of others links and thoughts (quality!), and replies to conversations. Tweets tell people you have your own ideas. Retweets tell them that you share quality content from others and replies tell people that you have conversations and engage. Look at your last 10 tweets…would you want to follow you?

Find better people to follow

Because such a big part of twitter is the conversations – it is always better to have quality people you are following. But, it can be hard to find them. Try these four:

• Lists: Who do you already trust? Take a look at the lists that they have built. You will probably find new and interesting people to follow there. Also, look at the lists that follow you – usually it will help you find more people in or around your area and industry
• Suggestions: Asking your followers is never a bad idea – people like to help others!
• Twellow/Twellowhood: Search through (basically) everyone on twitter by keywords, locations, bio’s, etc. Create your own free account to make sure that your profile on the site is up to date and has the right keywords attached.
• #Hashtags: #smmoc, #leadershipchat, # for a big event, etc, look for ones in your area.

Monitor keywords, conversations and searches.

What are the words that are most important to your business? Tools like tweetdeck, hootsuite and even search.twitter.com allow you to monitor what is going on with the words and phrases you care about. Just like in a search engine, you can search for individual words or put phrases in quotes to search for more specific things. You should have a constant search running for your brand name, your main 3 key phrases and at least 2 general keywords. Yes, there will be a lot of garbage, but if you can catch at least one quality tweet or cut off one problem, it will be worth it.

Stop trying to sell.

While ROI is important, what many people forget is that the ROI of twitter is not usually sales, but conversations, community and learning. Yes, there is a great opportunity to convert social media relationships into clients and sales, if that is your main priority, you will scare off the audience. Start talking, start listening and forget the ‘sales’ and you will see the shift in how twitter works for you.

Stay tuned for tomorrow, when we discuss using Facebook more effectively!

I have been on Twitter for exactly 24 hours. For those of you who know me, this is asking a LOT. It’s true that I have been painstakingly slow to the social media uptake. I started (and stopped) with LinkedIn almost 2 years ago. About 6 months prior I began to Digg and just last month I posted my first blog. But joining Twitter has truly felt like braving a new world…

My experience first and foremost has been fascinating! Yesterday we commented on if social media is right for B2B companies. It really is the wave of the marketing future – but intimidating nonetheless. What should I tweet? Who should I follow? Who’s following me and WHY?!?! What if I let the twitter-sphere down with a terrible tweet? And how in the world do I upload a profile pic?! Perhaps some of you share my sentiments (or you’re tweeting this to your friends as a joke…) Nevertheless, social media CAN be daunting. But it IS necessary and once you get the hang of it, it can actually be fun, not to mention profitable!

If you’re a twitter-phobe (like me) follow these quick tips to your first tweet:

1. Sign up (It SOUNDS simple enough, but this is half the battle)
2. Import contacts from your other accounts (email, Facebook, LinkedIn)
3. Fill out your profile (add a bio and picture)
4. TWEET

And finally, follow me @aliciamfranks

Tweet ya later!

Multitaskers rejoice! You can email, facebook, tweet, text, and blog all while talking on the phone and driving… OK, so hopefully by now you don’t ACTUALLY drive while doing any of those things (let’s not forget the fate of Heidi Montag’s plastic surgeon…) but in this digital age, there’s nothing you CAN’T do – unless you choose not to. Which is the topic of a recent LA Times article about a book called “Super Sad True Love Story” by Gary Shteyngart. It poses this question:  Is the creative stream of consciousness being adversely affected by our affinity for technology?

The author purchased an iPhone in order to research this novel and quickly became addicted (or perhaps you’re more familiar with the ‘crackberry’….) He actually had to set “quiet time” aside so as not to be distracted from his thoughts. As any smart phone user will tell you, it becomes like an appendage – Who’s on Facebook? What’s the score of the Chargers game? Where is “The Social Network” playing? – And all at the touch of a button. But is this REALLY a good thing? Or have we taken technology too far?

Personally, I’m all for it. Tweet, text, blog – whatever grinds your gears but there’s a time and a place, not to mention a limit to the amount of bytes and bits our brains can and should process. In our all-tech, all-the-time society, we need to remember the creative process requires our undivided attention. Having distractions is a good way to break up the monotony but when you become so distracted you can’t focus on the task at hand – it might be time to set up the sleep-timer on your computer. So grab a friend and enjoy a meal (phone-free.) Yes you, you can do it!! Put down the Droid and step away from the Mac – but bbm me later!

Digital distractions… Friend or foe?

If you haven’t gotten the new twitter yet, be patient. From the twitter site, they are adding people daily so it shouldn’t be long. But, if you just can’t wait, here are a few screen shots (and a few thoughts on the changes) of the new twitter:

1. When you login, you see your main screen. This is where all the conversations are going on. Across the black bar is now where all your settings, messages and changes are for your profile. In the main area, from the left side, you can get to your mentions, retweets, searches and lists. On the right, you see your following, followers and the trending topics.

Click picture to enlarge

2. If you were to click on someones twitter name in your twitter stream, instead of taking you to their profile on a separate page, the right side is replaced:

Click picture to enlarge

3. If you click on profile in the black bar, it takes you to your own profile with your tweets. You can also see your favorites, following/followers, lists and edit your profile. This is very similar to the original twitter but it is just laid out differently.

Click picture to enlarge

4. Direct Messages are now extremely organized. Rather than just a list of messages, they are organized by to whom they were sent. Then, if you click on someones name, the entire thread of messages shows on the right (sorry, I blocked the text, it is a DM after all!)

Click picture to enlarge

Finally, one thing you may notice is that my profile background is significantly smaller on the left, and because the right is a little see through, I have been able to add some branding there as well. It is important to remember that even if you don’t have the new twitter yet, others do, and your twitter profile needs to work. Need help? Send me a message!

At the end of July, Twitter announced that they would be rolling out a new tool – a suggestion engine that suggests people you’d like, based on your followers and who they dollow. It has been slowly added into most of the twitter users accounts and is available on the sidebar of your twitter page.

When you login, you will see two names and pictures now under your name and picture. These are just two of the people twitter suggests – you can click view all to see more, or just refresh the page (it cycles through).

This is much like the “recommended friends” on Facebook – but I think it is going to be much more successful. Facebook (at least for most of us) is more personal than twitter. We tend to only add people that we really know, not just friends of friends. Whereas on twitter, we follow those people regularly, which is why this tool will do so well!

So far, I have added about 15 people that it suggested and noticed an increase in the number of people following me per day, which I can only equate to more users starting to use this tool – and think that this trend will continue as more users figure it out.

Have you tried out the new “who to follow” tool on twitter? What do you think?

I love twitter with a passion – it is a great tool that a business can use to listen, share, converse and build a stronger brand. It is also a lot of fun and it allows you to meet tons of interesting people. But, twitter has its share of jerks, and if you don’t want to be considered one of them, I’d recommend following these 10 simple rules:

1. Don’t argue on twitter. It’s okay to share your opinions, but if the tweets start getting out of hand – stop. Move to email, phone or dm. The world doesn’t need to see the battle.
2. Don’t send auto dm’s. They are obnoxious and pointless. Send a personal dm if you want to say hello privately.
3. Don’t just spit out link after link. It’s boring, and obnoxious.
4. Don’t use every other tweet to sell me stuff. No one cares about your business as much as you do. Have conversations!
5. Stop sharing other peoples quotes. One or two a month are fine, but when every other tweet is something someone else said it looks like you have no original ideas.
6. Don’t send the same tweet to 50 different people. We can see your stream, it isn’t conversation if you’re just sending the same tweet.
7. Don’t forget to personalize your bio, page and picture. We want to know who you are, not what the stock twitter bird looks like.
8. Don’t complain about twitter on twitter. Sometimes it goes down, get over it. It’s a free service. Stop complaining.
9. Don’t tweet your every waking thought. There is such thing as too much tweeting, and too personal to share.
10. Don’t think you know everything. There is always time to learn something new about twitter!

What other tips can you share to help people avoid being a twitter jerk?

Everyone does twitter differently

• some use it for personal, some for business, some for a combination of both.
• some tweet with a logo from their company, others with random crazy pictures and some with a good photo of themselves.
• some follow anyone interesting, others follow almost no one and others still auto follow everyone.
• some direct message people, others choose to only tweet or reply, and some do neither and simply share links.
• some use twitter as a large rss feed, others use it for conversation and some are just lost.
• some have protected tweets, some tweet about everything and others should have protected tweets.

No matter which person you are, you are using twitter your way, which is perfectly fine. Unless you want to use it as an add on to your marketing strategy, in that case, you need a method to your madness, and a method that your potential clients and audience will like.

So what do we suggest?

• Be a combination of business and personal. No one wants an onslaught of sales tactics…talk and share real life content in combination with business tweets.
• Be human – tweet as a real person, representing the brand. Unless you are a mega brand, people aren’t going to want to follow a logo and a company. They want a person with whom they can talk and connect. If you must use a company logo, make sure to use your real name and a bit about yourself in the bio.
• Follow people who fit your brand and marketing. Don’t follow everyone back, but don’t not follow people either. Finding a balance of the right audience will make tweeting easier.
• Use twitter to the full extent. Direct message, reply and retweet. Share and be shared. The more you participate and get involved, the more success you will see with twitter.
• Converse and share links. Twitter is about the discussion, not the end result. Just sharing links will annoy your audience and endless chatter isn’t worth a hill of beans. Make sure to blend your messages.
• Don’t protect your tweets. You want people to be able to easily access you and your conversation – adding protection on your tweets will drive the audience away.

How do you use twitter? What have you found to be successful for you?

If you were a parent and your young child came to you and said “I don’t have many friends”, what would you do? You would probably suggest that they become friends with their friends friends, join a sport, find friends who have similar interests, go to their favorite places and find others who are there too, or to say hello to a random person that’s in their class or another class.

Twitter is much the same as being in school – when you start, you know almost no one. You have a few people that you know because they are in your immediate circle or you email address book and you can add them right away as followers. But then where do you go? How do you find other people who would be interesting to follow? Here are just a few great suggestions from my twitter friends and followers:

Sn0wSurF3r:  I looked for triathlon groups and followed people who followed them. Then it snowballed. I found more runners somehow.

brksndunngirl: usually with follow friday #FF the ppl u follow now recommend others

roogie:  I used location based twitter clients like Twinkle on iPhone, then read tweets to see if they were worth following

nickbrennan:  << searched 4 biz’s & products Im a fan of & use

elysiabrooker: My fave way is to go to people I love on Twitter, & follow people they are. Makes for relevant, like-minded twitterers

The key to finding friends anywhere in life, whether it is in school or on the web is connecting with others who are similar to you and then expanding your reach. Use the things that you like to do, read, see, and experience to find you new and interesting people to connect to. While twitter can be (and I think should be) used for business, you can’t build business from scratch…you need a foundation of trust and communication from building friendships first. Oh, and of course, you can start by following me @kirstenwright

What other ways do you have to find new friends on twitter?

There are a lot of items that I see pass through my twitter stream and I wish that there was more information. I love the start of the idea, but am disappointed when there is nothing more than 140 characters. on the other hand, I also see quite a few blog posts that would have been better as a simple question on twitter, and left off of the blog entirely. So how do you know if a tweet is blogworthy? Or if a blog posts idea should just be a tweet?

First, a tweet has a limit of characters (140, 120 if you want it easily re-tweetable) whereas a blog post can be as long as it needs to be (however, I suggest no more than 750 words per). This means that topics which require a lot of explanation before opening them up for discussion should be done as a blog post. Topics that can start conversation off of one simple (short) question work well as tweets. Second, a blog allows for people to follow the whole conversation easily whereas tweets and replies can get lost. The last thing you want to see happening is the train of a conversation to miss a track and then lose it’s purpose. Third, If you have a topic that will possibly get heated or need a lot of space for responses, this should be done as a blog post. Tweets are short burst, which can be dangerous for tough topics. Blogs give both the writer and the responder the space they need for a strong argument and clear thoughts.

Overall, the biggest difference and determining factor is whether or not you need room to run. Blogs give you as much as you need, while tweets restrict your text.

What other ways do you decide whether to tweet it or blog it?