There are just too many social media tools for anyone. Ever. Yesterday, we discussed taking a step outside of the digital distractions, but at the root of those distractions are the huge number of social media tools breathing down your neck…we all want to participate in everything we can. We all want to make sure that our business isn’t missing out on something that could possibly help – or worse, we don’t want to feel left out.

“At some big or small level, it’s nagging all of the people who are mired enough in social networking to bother following the latest developments. This isn’t everyone — despite the fact that institutions from your local radio station to your dry cleaner beg you to follow them on Twitter, there are whole swaths of people who just don’t give a flying friend request. But consider this: At one point in their centuries-old history, the Amish were not the technological relics they are today. Everyone else was churning and buggying right along with them. At some point, electricity was invented and the Amish had to reject it. Cars were invented and they took a pass. We’re good with the buggy, they said. Motor on without us. Now, in an onslaught of sites designed to aid connection, communication and cross-promotion, individual stopping points must be declared. When will you go 21st-century Amish?” – Washington Post

Social media tools are great when they are used right, but just as too much work can be overwhelming and cause nothing to get done, so can too many social tools. I recommend that a business use no more than the 4-6 most important, which usually include: blogging, twitter, facebook, linkedin, and a geo-location service. Over that is overkill – and not every business will even need these. Some other tools to consider are ning, myspace (yes, it can still work), youtube, posterous, and tumblr.

What tools do you use? What have you found to be the most useful?

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.

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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:

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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.

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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!)

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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!

We’ve all seen the lovely fail whale a few too many times…or like yesterday, watched the Facebook server crash. So, what do you do if one of your beloved social sites goes down?

Here at Motor Creative, we have put together just a few ideas:

1. Complain about it going down on any site that is still up.
2. Start commenting on every post that is talking about the outage.
3. Continually hit refresh until you have carpal tunnel.
4. Start a conspiracy theory that Myspace is taking out all other social sites.
5. Stock up on water and food, because obviously, this is the first sign of the apocalypse.
6. Actually call your clients.
7. Decorate your office with sticky notes and paperclip art.
8. Do real work – any real work.
9. Play minesweep.
10. Write a list of the 10 things to do when your social media sites go down.

What other ways can you come up with to spend your time when twitter and facebook go down?

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?

Create 3 lists.

List #1: Your local list, the people who live within 30-40 miles of you, those whom you can meet in person. This is a great list for local business owners to have, but also for those who want to attend networking events and get to know people offline.

List #2: Your top tweeters. These are the people that you enjoy hearing from, reading about and never want to miss their tweets. I recommend keeping this list to under 150 so that you can easily manage it and follow the conversations.

List #3: A conversationalist list. This list is created through conversationlist.com. It is a dynamically created list each day of the people whom you talk to and whom talk about you. This is a great list to help you determine who is important in your day. This is a great place to find new people to add to your top tweeters list.

What other lists do you have on twitter?

Yesterday, I received this auto DM:

Really? You sent me an obnoxiously impersonal message  and apologized for sending it in the message?? That’s like saying “sorry for kicking you” while you kick the person you’re apologizing to.

The really scary thing? This person’s bio claims them as a personal branding expert…which means he probably gets paid a lot of money to tell people to send these awful messages.

Come on people, where is the common sense? Where is the logic? Where is the brains behind this?

Unless your auto dm is giving away free money with no strings attached (ha!), stop sending auto DM’s, now! No one wants them, no one likes them, and most of us want to (and will) unfollow you the minute we get it.

What do you think of auto dm’s – is there any valid reason for them?

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?

Twitter is a wonderful tool for both individuals and companies to use to grow their web presence and monitor their brand. It allows businesses to target keywords, locations and people to send their message. They can also connect on a deeper level by opening the communication channels without a huge overhead or the need for focus groups.

Unfortunately, it has also turned into a bit of a popularity contest, where companies want to collect as many followers and possible. The problem with this strategy is that many of those followers have zero benefit other than a number. If I asked you if you’d rather have 3 customers or 10 people who mayor may not  buy your product, which would you choose? Smart choice would be the 3 customers, right? With twitter, it seems that many businesses overlook this simple central ideal when working on their follower strategy.

So what can you do?You can clean up both your twitter account and your twitter strategy. To get started, focus on what you have already. Take a couple hours to look at your follower list, and unfollow anyone who is not beneficial to you. You can continue to follow some “fun” people, but remove any celebrities (unless they are your clients?) or people who you don’t ever read their tweets. Then, once your list is clean, focus on keeping it strong. Search for people that are within your niche or client base to follow instead of just following anyone and everyone. This will make the conversations more focused.

Once you have cleaned out and focused your list, you will be able to have a better response with less clutter.

Have you cleaned your twitter account?