Using Twitter makes for good Business

In a previous post “How to Create Credibility and Trust on Twitter“, I highlighted the importance of combining the use of Twitter with blogging to create a social media content marketing “Synergy” with substance.
These Twitter tips and tactics for business should be read in that context. It also important to keep in mind that creating a “Strategy for Twitter” is also valuable and essential.

Networking

This is never urgent but it is important as people like doing business with people. Networking with the right people will bring you medium to long term strategic business.

1. Find bloggers and authorities in your industry and follow them on Twitter and see what they tweet about and what content they link to
2. From this content look at what content you can create to tweet and blog about for your own blog
3. Retweet their content regularly not just once whether it is a tweet or from their blog
4. If they are local, ask to catch up for a coffee
5. Request an interview via Twitter and record the interview on video or if that is not possible use a list of questions that you can turn into a written blog post Q & A interview format.
6. Publish that interview on your blog and then promote it on Twitter. I can almost guarantee you that they will then promote it to their networks
7. Promote them on Twitter with referrals recommending them
8. Use Twitter’s private “Direct Message” channel (DM) to connect with influential bloggers and influencers as you may find they respond to that better than an email.

Remember it is not about asking them for a favour, it is about how you can help them with no expectation of anything in return

Research

Research keeps you ahead of the curve and is never urgent but often ignored or forgotten.

1. Put search items into Twitter using key words that are imporatant in your industry or niche. You will find out what is happening globally!
2. Search on Twitter to see what is being said about and by your competitors
3. Put your brand name into Twitter to find out what is being said about you in real time
4. Use # Tags to search on Twitter that will keep you updated on key terms that are vital in your industry. A great tool to do this quickly is hashtags.org
5. Use “Advanced Twitter Search” (this provides the capability of doing local searches with a certain mile radius) to keep an eye on news and events locally in your city or region.
6. Discover trends using Twitter with tools such as Monitter.com which even allows you the capability to narrow the search to a particular geographic location.
7. Tweet links to your surveys on Facebook, blogs or website

Twitter will deliver real time updates and research on your industry that will surprise you

Marketing

Twitter is capable of delivering information, content and marketing messages globally and locally to your particular niche. Twitter should be integrated and embedded on as many of your online properties as possible.

1. Increasing your Twitter followers is the foundation to your Twitter marketing efforts. This should be done in a focused manner by following people in your category using the Twitter “Yellow Pages” tool Twellow.com. Another app that I have found useful to follow the followers of top bloggers in your industry is Tweepi.com
2. Run special deals and promotions on Twitter that you can use to drive traffic or move slow moving stock (exanple Dell)
3. Announce an event on Twitter
4. Include retweet buttons on your content areas of your website and blog that makes it easy for people to share your content
5. Integrate Twitter into Facebook
6. Load the Twitter app on LinkedIn
7. Seek sponsors for an event or contest
8. Promote your blog posts on Twitter
9. Use # tags at your events to crowd source online mobile marketing
10. Include Twitter ID on all your offline and online marketing material
11. Automate relevant tweets that span 24 hours so your global customers can receive it in their time zone. SocialOomph.com professional edition can do this both as a once off and as recurring tweets.
12. Tweet special Twitter only coupons so you can track the success of your Twitter marketing efforts

Share on twitter constantly and make it easy and frictionless for people to retweet your brand. Marketing is about being everywhere. Allow and enable the social network power of “World of Mouth” !!

Personal Branding

Position yourself as an expert within your company and industry. Personal branding synergizes your corporate brand. A personal Twitter account and blog can enhance both you and your company.

1. Help solve other people’s problems by answering questions on Twitter
2. Tweet links to your blog posts that answer problems and provides tip, tactics and ideas
3. Tweet links to your Powerpoint presentations on Slideshare
4. Tweet links to presentations recorded on Video and posted to YouTube
5. If you are speaking at an event, tweet about it prior to the conference
6. Include a link to your personal blog on your personal Twitter account
7. Share photos on Twitter that validate your speaking at events and conferences, this will aid and enhance your credibility visually. Twitpic makes this easy and convenient to do on Twitter

Customer Service

Customer service is the the “ultimate” marketing tool as great customer service delivers those all important referrals that take you from compete to collaborate.

1. Improve customer service (A good case study on this is “ Zappos” an online shoe retailer) by picking up conversations about your company that you might not be aware
2. Respond quickly to any problem tweets on your Twitter account to shut down any impending service or potentially damaging PR disasters.
3. Check your Twitter account regularly and respond to questions and comments in a timely fashion

What is worth also keeping in mind is that Twitter is now embedded in the Apple’s iPhone native menu along with text messages with the announcement of the new Apple iPhone 4s with its new mobile iOS5 operating system.
So Twitter is about to be a native app in all of Apples new mobile products and will lead to Twitter becoming more viral and embedded in an increasingly social web.
How do you use Twitter for your business? Look forward to hearing your stories!
More Reading

• How to Get Targeted Twitter Followers
• The Marketing Secret About Twitter that Most People Don’t Know
• How To Write A Mind Blowing Headline For Twitter So People Will Read Your Blog
• 30 Terrific Twitter Facts and Figures
• Do Shared Links Last Longer on Twitter or Facebook
• How to Increase Your Blog Traffic by 55% with One Button
• 5 Motivations for Sharing Content
• 20 Ideas for Social Media Content that Engages
• Is it Better to Share on Google, Facebook or Twitter?
• 9 Questions to Ask your Customers When Creating Content

Artists who Twitter and blog

Find more photos like this on #Artwalk

Twitter and Facebook attacked by the DoS Bots: Who was affected?

The recent outages to Twitter and Facebook were allegedly directed at a Georgian 'dissident', in an attempt to censor what he was broadcasting.

The wider questions concern Twitter and the silent majority who are using the service, the ones who were hardest hit by the outage.

I hesitate to say users or people because the short answer is; that the most frequent users of Twitter are the News Streams and Info Bots. Followed rapidly by the Marketeers!

Sysmos Twitter Analysis

A couple of months ago, social media analytics firm Sysomos closely conducted an analysis of the people on Twitter and how the service was being used. What it found, among other things, was that five percent (5%) of Twitter’s 11.5 million accounts post about 75% of all the tweets. That's an outstanding result and it led the firm to dig deeper into that magical five percent (5%).

The Pareto Principle

The Pareto principle (also known as the 80-20 rule, the law of the vital few, and the principle of factor sparsity) states that, for many events, roughly 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes. This is clearly not the case with Twitter.

Analysis Results Released
This week, the company released the results of the deeper study and highlighted a few important findings about that elite five percent:

• 32 percent of all tweets made by that active group were generated by machine bots that posted more than 150 tweets per day.
• The number of machine-generated tweets is probably greater because many of the bots post fewer than 150 times a day.
• Based on the two reports, it appears that nearly one-quarter (24 percent) of all tweets overall are generated by those active bots.

Twitter Spammer Bots

However, these bots are essential Twitter spammers. These are the automated tweets that comes from valid sources, e.g. news services. Most Technical websites and Blogs will encourgae you to foolow their sites via an automated Twitter feed.

Sysmos CEO

In a blog post, Sysomos co-founder and CEO Nick Koudas said:

"It’s a fascinating exercise to really focus on the most enthusiastic Twitter users, and what they are doing. Our findings, particularly the percentage of tweets contributed by bots, is definitely eye-opening and we hope they shed light on how Twitter is used today and by whom.

We think this is one of the first reports to focus on the most active members of the Twitter community to provide interesting insight and perspective. We will continue our updates with additional analysis of the micro-blogging service."

Note Bene

Also worth noting is that;

• 88 percent of this active group, posts at least once a day. Of that group,
  
• about one-third joined this year, compared to the
  
• 72 percent of all Twitter users are new this year.
  

Keywords
Lastly, the most popular keywords within the bios for those active users included: Internet marketing, music lover, Web designer, video games, and husband/father.

US Marines Ban Facebook and Twitter: Use of Social Network Sites

The U.S. Marine Corps made it official this week: Social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter are banned from military networks.

This new administrative directive doesn't change very much but clarifies the use of social networks from a security perspective.

Marines have never been allowed to access non-official sites like Facebook, MySpace or Twitter from military networks because it is classed as improper use of government property.

In this new or revised directive, the Marines have simply put an official stamp on the ban. At the same time, they are also laying out the process to be followed by any Marine who wants to officially access such a site, as part of his or her job.

A Haven and Conduit for Adversaries
"These Internet sites in general are a proven haven for malicious actors and content and are particularly high risk due to information exposure, user generated content and targeting by adversaries," the directive noted.

Increased Threat
"The very nature of social networking sites, creates a larger threat, attack and exploitation window, exposes unnecessary information to adversaries and provides an easy conduit for information leakage."

Improper use of US equipment
The ban, however, is only for people using Marines' equipment and networks while they are working. Marines may still Twitter or post to Facebook on their own time and on their own computers but they should do so with a raised level of awareness.

The military isn't against using sites like Facebook and Twitter, said 1st Lt. Craig Thomas, a Pentagon-based spokesman for the Marine Corps.

Facebook, YouTube and Twitter
The U.S. Central Command has a Facebook page, a channel on YouTube and a Twitter account to get out information regarding operations news. The Army is using MySpace to recruit new soldiers and the U.S. Forces Afghanistan page on Facebook has more than 24,000 fans.
A Balanced Approach
"The Marine Corps has got to find a balance between security and letting Marines capitalise on the technology," Thomas said in a recent interview. "We don't want information leaks. We want to keep Marines focused on their mission at work and we also wanted to save critical bandwidth. We're trying to find the fine line."
Measured Progress
Thomas noted that 30 years ago, soldiers were warned about revealing too much information in letters home. Then 10 years ago, they were warned about how they used e-mail. Today, the focus is on social networks.

Tight Lips
"You can't have someone posting, 'Hey, we're leaving on this date and at this time,'" he added. "Believe me, the enemy is checking out what you guys are reporting and what service men and women are saying online.

The Marine Corps instills tight operational security. They need to be cognizant of what they're saying, whether verbally or what they're saying on social networking sites."

Facebook and Twitter both Hit by Targetted Denial of Service (DoS) Attack

On an otherwise normal and happy Thursday morning, Facebook and Twitter both became the most recent high profile sites to be the target of a denial of service attack (DoS).

A Georgian blogger with accounts on Twitter, Facebook, LiveJournal and Google's Blogger and YouTube was targeted in a denial of service attack that led to the site-wide outage at Twitter and problems at the other sites on Thursday, according to a Facebook executive.

The blogger, who uses the account name "Cyxymu", the name of a town in the Republic of Georgia, had accounts on all of the different sites that were attacked at the same time, Max Kelly, chief security officer at Facebook said.

Attacks such as this are malicious efforts orchestrated to disrupt and make unavailable services such as online banks, credit card payment gateways, and the usual online services provided to customers.

Twitter. 'We are defending against this attack now and will continue to update our status blog as we continue to defend and later investigate.'

Facebook: "We have restored full access for most people," the company reported. "We’ll keep monitoring the situation to make sure you have the reliable experience you expect from us.

Twitter for Business users

Here are some tips on how to use Twitter effectively for business. Plus a few precautions.

1. Don't automate it
If you've got a blog that's connected to your business, you can use a service such as TwitterFeed to directly channel your new blog posts into Twitter posts. It sounds impressive but don't do it. Your business's primary Twitter feed ought to be hand-fed. If you publish a flood of impersonal links, your Twitter account will just seem like a faceless promotion machine and that's not a good way to engage people on Twitter.

Link to the very best stuff on your blog, as well as relevant information that you see elsewhere on the web, and also post items that don't contain links at all. (Don't forget to use a URL-shortening service such as tinyurl, is.gd, or xrl.us for your links.)

2. Be conversational
Your business's Twitter account should talk like a person, even if it's a collective "person" representing your company or brand. Think of your Twitter account as a character in an Internet play, it's a walking, talking personification of your company. If you feel like it: Use the first-person ("They're putting my stuff on sale again!"), invent a personality or just use the royal "we" and "our", "Our editors have the latest on so-and-so" but be chatty.

Some companies prefer to disclose members of their team when they're tweeting from the company account. This is also a valid approach. Par example, the clever group-tweeting service CoTweet (currently in beta) can automatically append your initials to the tweets you make while representing your company. (Macworld is testing out this service to see if it makes it easier for a group of our editors to jointly operate our various Twitter accounts.)

3. Follow people who are relevant

• Follow everyone on your staff who uses Twitter from your Twitter account.
  
• Follow colleagues in related companies and in your industry.
  
• Follow relevant brands and journalists and pundits in your market, even those who compete with you.

It's professional and polite to follow people and by following people you are creating an ecosystem. People will see who you are following and consider those as suggestions for users they should follow as well.

4. Make sure your people are on Twitter, and refer to them Remember that individuals tweet different things than companies. It's acceptable for your company's employees to talk about making waffles or going out for drinks, as well as what they're working on. Not everyone will embrace Twitter, but many of them will. Even the most personal stuff that leaks on to Twitter can help make stronger personal connections with colleagues and audience members alike.

Having said this, you need to be aware who your employees are and make them aware that everything they write on Twitter (unless they're using a "protected account" that limits access) is public. If there's someone who works for your company whose Tweets are a bit risque, you should consider whether or not you want to refer to them from your company's account. An alternative is to ask employees to create two Twitter accounts, one for work matters and one for their sordid personal lives and keep them separate.

Once your people are on Twitter, they'll be able to mention what they're working on and reference the brand via Twitterspeak. Par example: "Just wrote a cool story for @macworld about the iPod shuffle." That will drive followers to your company's Twitter account.

Likewise, your brand's account can drive followers to your people. For example: "Our very own @vacuumdood thinks the new Dyson sucks awesome: tinyurl.com/example"

5. Answer your mentions
People will refer to your company's account as if it were a person. You should reply to tweets that mention you, when relevant. This will give your account more personality and will make those people feel engaged directly with the brand. For example, a person might ask you a question directly: "@macworld Hi. Do you know when Apple will enable SMS message forwarding on the iPhone? Thanks." "@janevans35 Apple's not saying, but we hope it's with the next major software release!"

6. Search for your name
Beyond mentions, which are specific references to your Twitter account, there are probably people using Twitter to talk about your business. Use Twitter's powerful search features to find those references, either from the Twitter Web site, a Mac-based Twitter client program such TweetDeck or Tweetie that supports saved searches, or even via your RSS reader by subscribing to the RSS feed linked to from every Twitter search results page. There are a lot of companies offering great customer service and support on Twitter by watching what people say about them. When I groused on Twitter about my bad luck finding a JetBlue flight from Oakland to Boston, within a half an hour I had received a reply from the JetBlue Twitter account with an explanation.

7. Consider creating sub-accounts for sections of your business or customer base
If you're part of a big enough company, consider creating smaller, more targeted accounts. Starting a new section of your site devoted only to fans of the double bass? It might be worth starting a new @joesmusicbass account, then Tweeting about it from your company's main account: "Bass lovers rejoice! Welcome our new friend, @joesmusicbass to the party!"

8. Use Twitter to ask your customers questions...and get good answers
Twitter is a great way to get answers to questions. Trying to figure out what your customers want to see or are interested in? Use Twitter to ask them. Sure, it's not a scientific survey, but it can give you an immediate snapshot of the zeitgeist. This can be both instructive and productive.

9. Be a good Twitter citizen Can you persuade your Twitter followers to promote you to their followers? Sure, but be mindful: He who has the most followers doesn't necessarily win. If you get people to promote you to their friends to win a prize, you may end up creating a harmful backlash.

Recently, a software-deals site offered a free program to anyone who would tweet about its bundle to his or her friends. The people who tweeted were rewarded, but many of their friends felt like they were receiving spam. Even though the people who tweeted were complicit in the act, it was the company that induced the tweeting that received the bulk of the criticism. The etiquette of Twitter is still evolving, be aware and be wary.

Conclusion
Even if you're not the type of person who uses Facebook or Twitter yourself, there's no denying that these new forms of connection and communication are powerful and becoming increasingly important. That's why your business should be on Twitter now.