What is Twitter?

Known as a “micro blog,” Twitter originally was designed to be a social network to help people keep in touch with friends by transmitting instant brief updates.

However, marketers cleverly made Twitter into a new distribution channel for sharing information about a company, a company’s product lines, a company’s newsstream, and customer support interaction.

Updates can be seen on the Twitter website, by instant message, Gmail Messenger, mobile text (SMS) or a desktop client.

Each update can be no longer than a 140 characters.  Twitter allows one to follow quick updates from various other members who have signed up to see an account.  In addition, updates can be sent straight to a phone via SMS.

Cost of Twitter:

Twitter is a free service.  (Standard text message fees apply when using Twitter through SMS on a phone).

Situation Analysis:

In a world where people like to receive information where (location and digital platform) and when (all the time) they want it, it is important that your company deliver their content in all areas of media, which include Twitter.

Terminology:

“Tweet“

• Noun: An individual post on Twitter
• Verb: To post a message to Twitter

“Followers” are people following you.  This means that anyone who is a “Follower” will receive what you tweets.

“Following” are people you are following.  Your company should follow people for two reasons.  First to become part of the community and it shows people that care about what they are saying.  The second reason is when we follow people, they receive a notice that you are following them and will (hopefully) follow us back.

“Lists” are an easy way to cultivate tweets on a specific subject. It helps to create a list on a topic where you follow specific tweeters. To create a new list, click “New List” in the sidebar on the account. Then add other accounts to a list by using the “Lists” drop down on a profile page. Your account can also follow other account’s lists.

“HashTag” (#) These are ways to keep everything being said on Twitter together and easy to search.  www.hashtags.org keeps track of #s.  It says, “Hashtags was designed to accommodate the real-time news community. We provide analytic reports and indexing features to allow users to track what’s happening now. Hashtags are a community-driven convention for adding additional context and metadata to your tweets.”

You create a hashtag simply by prefixing a word with a hash symbol: #hashtag.

To understand more about how to use hashtags effectively in your marketing, watch “Web 2.0 Expo NY 09: Baratunde Thurston, ‘There’s a #Hashtag for That’”

Growth
The best way to grow an account on Twitter is “organically.”  This means becoming part of the conversation.  People can write to you and you should respond appropriately, even with a quick “thanks for writing.” Every time someone on Twitter writes to us, their message (and then ours) gets broadcasted to all of their friends, which helps the network grow.

Permission Marketing
People will sign up to get your company’s tweets.  Thus we are indirectly marketing to people who actually want to hear what we are saying.  Our “advertising” is not another unwanted spam e-mail, but permission marketing (always better) to people who want to listen.  (Source: Seth Godin)

Customizable Design
Twitter allows users to customize the design of their page.  You have control over the background color/image, text color, name color, link color, sidebar fill color, and sidebar border color. The user’s profile picture can also be changed. The profile picture is a small 48 by 48 pixel icon that’s used to identify the Twitter user – make sure it stands out!

Advertising
There are NO advertisements on the Twitter page.

Cross-Platform Synchronization
Once a Twitter feed is set up, updates can be easily synced with Facebook, a blog and other web sites / social networks.

Access Twitter on mobile devices
(Note: Google these names to find the latest version)

• TwitterMail – allows you to e-mail your tweet (only one way)
• TwitterFon – allows access to Twitter on your iPhone
• Tiny Twitter – allows access to Twitter on your Blackberry (better than Twitterberry)
• TwitterBerry – another tool that allows access to Twitter on your BlackBerry
• TweetDeck – allows access to Twitter on your Desktop

What makes the more popular companies on Twitter successful?

They provide frequent updates and fresh content to share with their followers.  The company allows followers (consumers) a snapshot into what is current and newsworthy with the brands (and in the our case teams and players) they love.

High-Level Twitter Strategy:

• Don’t push the company’s message all the time.
• Focus on conversations by inviting, engaging, cheering and helping users/customers.
• Listen for the relevant conversations and then try to be helpful.
• Speak in your own voice and personality.
• Multiple twitter accounts, usually a corporate account but also individual accounts.
• Be known for being responsive (e.g. Tony from Zappos).

Best examples!  Find, follow & read:

@NBA (or @WNBA)
@MCHammer
@Google
@NewMediaJim
@The_Real_Shaq
@Starbucks
@twittermoms
@ColonelTribune
@JimmyFallon
@JetBlue
@TodayShow
@Baratunde
@Discovery (or @TLC_PR)
@Maddow
@WholeFoods
@JoeTrippi
@Zappos
@RickSanchezCNN
@SavvyAuntie
@KarlRove
@RachelSklar
@CNN

The top 100 people and companies on Twitter: www.twittercounter.com/pages/100

The top rated brands, media, television, celebrities and electronic artists: trackingtwitter.com/brands

First steps to a new account

After setting up your account, making a background, finding a profile picture and following the above examples, add yourself to the appropriate categories in http://wefollow.com.

Then send out a tweet saying you are excited to join twitter and what you will provide someone if they follow you.

Example from @CaseDaily: I’ve gone to the dark side and started tweeting. I’ll be ranting about all the stuff that annoys/amuses me. Hope u’ll follow along

Now make sure to update anywhere from 2 – 10 times a day!

Social Monitoring Apps:

Feed/Email Services

• Collecta
• GigaAlert (limited free service)
• Google Alerts
• PubSub
• Regator
• Swamii (email only, no RSS)
• Topikality
• Trackle (email only, no RSS)
• Woofeed (email or mobile, no RSS; it also provides a publishing service for bloggers)
• Yahoo Pipes
• Yotify (email only)

Destination Services:

• Cascaad
• Ensembli (offers email digests)
• Guzzle.it
• LazyFeed
• My6Sense
• Technorati
• YourVersion

Social Filter:

• Delicious feeds
• Google Trends
• MashLogic
• Searchtastic (“smart Twitter search”)
• Trendistic (“see trends in Twitter”)
• Twazzup (Twitter search)
• Twitscoop (Twitter search)
• Twitter search (e.g. for hashtags)

Market Intelligence (Expensive):

• Filtrbox
• PeopleBrowsr
• Trendrr

Top Tools for Tracking Topics: www.readwriteweb.com/archives/top_topic_trackers_updated.php

More Resources

TwitPic allows you to upload pictures to your tweet, twitpic.com

Bit.Ly shortens URLs, but also share and track who clicks on them from your Twitter feed bit.ly/

Tweet Stats tells you when, where and how you are Tweeting, tweetstats.com

ReTweetist tells you who, and what, is being re-tweeted, retweetist.com

Twitter Karma allows you to easily see who is following you and who you are following, dossy.org/twitter/karma/

TwitterFall is best used when Tweeting a live event where you need to monitor what is happening on certain accounts, twitterfall.com/

Tweet Meme tracks and displays re-tweets in a threaded style, www.tweetmeme.com

TwittUrly displays hottest memes in a Digg-like style (where Tweets = Votes), twitturly.com

Twit Scoop shows “what’s hot right now” in the form of a tag cloud and the “Hot trends” list. The tool also shows the list of discussions when hovered over, www.twitscoop.com

SiteVolume compares up to 5 terms buzz over at Twitter (and also Digg, Myspace, Youtube and Flickr) – the results are pulled from Google [site:] search, www.sitevolume.com

ParaTweet allows you to display all tweets about an event on a live screen during a conference or event, ParaTweet.com

Hootsuite allows you to manage multiple accounts so you can easily jump back and forth from your personal account to the brand support account.  Also schedule tweets in advance, hootsuite.com

TwitterFeed allows an RSS feed to be directed to a Twitter account, twitterfeed.com

Splitweet is another multiple twitter account manager that also allows you to monitor your brand mentions and has a mac desktop client, splitweet.com

Tweet2Tweet allows you to put two twitter names in and see the full discussion between the two much like Facebooks’ “wall to wall.” This can help understand a thread of messages, tweet2tweet.appspot.com

CoTweet is built for the company or brand that wants to both serve and engage new prospects. Used by organizations that need to have multiple people responding on the same account, but for now in private beta so you’ll have to request invite, cotweet.com

Yammer and GroupTweet allows you send a tweet to a group of people you designate.

https://www.yammer.com and http://grouptweet.com

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