For years, people have been offering their opinions on how Twitter should make money. Despite the fact that the company allegedly made $45 million in 2010 and its targeting $150 million this year, those numbers fall far short of the kind of revenues Twitter will need to justify it’s soon to be $8 Billion valuation.

While most industry watchers and armchair quarterbacks point to advertising as the answer, what’s been leaked, rumored, experimented with, experimented with again and announced thus far falls far short of the bold and innovative thinking that spawned Twitter in the first place. If history is any guide, most of those solutions will be viewed as intrusive (remember the Dickbar?), will fail because no one’s considering how users may react and/or will simply not generate enough revenue to satisfy Twitter’s investors anyway.

Yes, Twitter needs to do something bold again. Despite the fact that the service is in desperate need of additional features (such as Channels), when uber-fanboys like Robert Scoble call Twitter “Boring” and “a mess,” you know there’s a problem. So, Twitter needs a redesign, if not to add those additional features then at least to maximize its advertising earnings potential. After all, those ads have got to go somewhere.

Is this Bold Enough for You?

If Twitter is going to incorporate advertising into the interface, placing them in the user’s tweet stream (as linked to above) is not the answer; they will simply get lost in the flood of tweets, assuming that people won’t tune them out anyway. No, Twitter needs another solution; one that will maximize advertising’s earning potential. But to do that, any ad system, like all ad systems, will need to accomplish three things:

1. Increase the likelihood that an ad unit will be seen.
2. Increase the likelihood that users will click on the ads by making them more relevant.
3. Increase the total volume of ads to maximize advertising’s earnings potential.

For all three, there is only one solution…

Introducing the Ad Column ^TM

The Twitter Ad Column

(Click for Larger Image)

The Ad Column is a new column in the Twitter interface strategically positioned close to the center of the page between the Tweet Stream and the right panel (see above image). The central placement of the Ad Column dramatically increases the likelihood that the ads will be seen, addressing Bullet 1.

Ad units in the Ad Column would be paired with a user’s tweets based on the subject of those tweets or some other factor as determined by the advertiser. This clearly would increase each ad’s relevance and also increase the likelihood that users will read them, addressing Bullet 2 (this assumes that Twitter will utilize some sort of keyword matching technology).

Finally, the Ad Column massively increases the size of Twitter’s potential ad inventory by pairing one ad unit with each tweet. With Twitter claiming 200 million tweets/day, that’s both a lot of ads and also addressing Bullet 3.

Granted, the Ad Column layout is going to be controversial for some users. However, as Larry Magid pointed out, Google has already proven that placing ads in its products (such as search results and Gmail) can be successful without interrupting the user’s experience. Granted, the Ad Column only affects Twitter.com. How the interface would be implemented on various third-party apps and on mobile devices would surely be different, but that’s beyond the scope of this post (although, I could think of something).

Types of Ad Units

Large Ad Unit

An additional benefit of the Ad Column is that it not only allows ads to be placed on multiple pages, such as my Profile page above, but that it also allows for several different types of ad units.

Large Unit

The Large Ad Unit would appear at the top of the column. This unit could be in a fixed position so that when a user scrolls, the ad remains visible, or it could scroll with the rest of the page.

Additionally, it could expand into the right column in much the same way that Twitter’s iPad app does today. This would offer advertisers considerably more space, perhaps enough for a micro site, with which to engage users.

Finally, the ad unit itself could include features such as a video player or launch a popup that could offer similar features as the micro-site (see below).

Small Unit

Small Ad Unit

This would be the most common ad unit and could include an image and link to launch a popup (see below). Small units would be available in two basic formats:

• Text Only
• Text with Images

Popups

As mentioned above, an additional option for all ad units would be to offer supplementary information and functionality via a popup. These popups would activate when a user clicks on or rolls over the “Learn More” link at the bottom of relevant ads.

The following is an example for how a popup ad unit for a film could be executed. The popup could include basic information about the film and even a video player offering previews or other content. Links included on the popup could include tools to find a nearby theater, offers to buy tickets or even to retweet the ad itself.

Another style of popup could focus on local businesses. In the following example, a local business could setup and run their own campaigns (Disclosure: UltrasonicMachines.com is a client and their equipment is amazing).

Show Me the Money!

Of course, all ad systems are useless if they don’t make money. While Twitter is working hard to develop other revenue streams, such as the Promoted Trend which they’re charging advertisers $120,000 per day, its cousin, the Promoted Tweet, rumored Twitter Brand Pages and various marketing tools for marketers, the revenues from all of them combined would pale in comparison to the Ad Column system.

To illustrate potential Ad Column revenues, I did some very basic calculations which you can see in the chart below. This matrix is merely for entertainment value. I did not breakdown every factor such as revenue limitations based on ad budgets, calculating impressions/tweet (although Large Ad Unit impressions are included) or other potential revenue streams such as from a Twitter Shopping Cart where Twitter would receive a percentage of every transaction. If you want to see an example of a very detailed revenue model, I highly recommend reading this post by Nova Spivack, and don’t miss his own spreadsheet. Additionally, please note that the values are based on the following assumptions:

• All tweets would have ads.
• The entire ad inventory would be sold out.
• Ad inventory is based on Twitter’s claims of 200 million tweets/day (the split between ad types is fairly arbitrary; I just picked numbers that seemed reasonable).
• A minimum of one Large Ad would be served for every user visit (an additional Large Ad unit would be served for each page refresh which are not calculated here). Large Ad unit inventory is based on data from compete.com for June, 2011 where Compete reported 169,992,743 Visits which I rounded up to 170 Million to derive 5,666,666 visits/day in the chart below.
• Visits include traffic from all sources (Twitter.com and all apps that access Twitter).

Finally, because I know that these revenue numbers will be controversial, especially due to the simplicity of the calculations, you can download a copy of the original spreadsheet to calculate your own revenue projections for Twitter (Note that the file is an Excel 2007 .xlsx). Enjoy!

What do you think? Please leave your comments or questions below.

Neal Wiser is the owner of Neal Wiser Consulting, a Digital Marketing consulting firm. You can follow Neal on Twitter (his handle is @NealWiser). Neal is also the Cofounder and Co-host of the Addicted to Social Media Podcast. You can also read more of Neal’s Twitip posts here or on his blog at NealWiser.com.

© 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips.



Twitter’s New Ad System REVEALED

Sure, you can spend most of your day on Twitter and on other social media sites, but a lot of that time would be better spent worrying about other aspects of your business. Some big companies have employees focused on handling their social media, but if you’re a small or medium business owner, this is probably too much of a strain on your budget.

This doesn’t mean your Twitter account has to suffer though. One option you have is to hire a virtual assistant to help you manage your social media presence. Here are a few things your virtual assistant can help you with:

Keep an eye out for Tweeps mentioning your company.
Search tools and hashtags help make this job easier, but having more than one set of eyes looking for comments or conversations about your company gives you more data to mine. The extra eyes are also helpful when trying to sort through all the noise and find out what tweeps are saying about you.

While doing this, you’ll probably end up following several users and creating lists for fans and critics alike. This might take a bit of time, especially during the list-building phase. Fortunately, your virtual assistant can help you set this up.

Learn about your loudest critics (and your biggest fans too)
You want market research? Twitter is an invaluable research tool. Those Tweeps you followed and the lists you and your virtual assistant compiled are a great place to start.

Listen to what your critics and fans are saying, not just about you, but about everything else. This could mean sifting through a ton of tweets, and this is something your virtual assistant can help you with. Of course, you need to know what you’re looking for.

What annoys them? What do they enjoy? Where do they go during the weekend? Who gets their attention? These are just some of the questions you should try to answer. If you can get into the minds of your naysayers as well as your customers, you’ll be able to serve them better.

Provide customer support
You don’t have to limit your virtual assistant to mining data. You can have your VA respond to customer complaints and inquiries. You can start by having your VA sort through incoming messages and prioritize them based on criteria you choose.

When you get comfortable enough with your virtual assistant, you can allow your VA to handle customer support independently and submit regular reports. Your VA can handle some of the simpler queries initially, leaving you with the more complicated issues. Eventually, you can probably hand off most of of your customer support to your virtual assistant.

Build your network
Customer service isn’t the only task your virtual assistant can handle. Your VA can also help you build your network by retweeting, responding to, and otherwise highlighting other tweeps. If you’re not comfortable with your VA handling this initially, your VA can start by identifying interesting feeds and tweets for you. As your confidence in your VA grows, their task list can expand too.

—

These are just a few of the things you can have your virtual assistant do to help you make the most out of Twitter. Can you think of other tips you’d like to share?

© 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips.



4 Ways a Virtual Assistant Can Help You Make the Most Out of Twitter

At the time, there was some confusion about the wisdom of the UberMedia deal. Twitter’s response to the announcement was to block UberMedia’s other recently acquired Twitter apps from accessing Twitter’s API. The move was widely viewed as both an overreaction and heavy-handed. Twitter’s justification was that the UberMedia apps had allegedly violated Twitter’s Terms of Service and many TweetDeck users were afraid that TweetDeck was going to be shut down next.

While TweetDeck was not affected by the blockage, a Twitter acquisition could have huge implications for both Twitter’s and TweetDeck’s users. Twitter, which used to be hailed as an example of innovation, has recently been criticized by many “power-users” for its lack of innovation. In comparison to TweetDeck, or other services such as Hootsuite, twitter.com is embarrassingly low-frills and rarely introduces new features.

Is a Feature also a Product?

In the years immediately following its launch, Twitter was heavily dependent upon its eco-system of third-party developers. In fact, it was these very developers who created some of Twitter’s most popular and innovative features and were largely responsible for Twitter’s explosive growth from 2007-2010.

Yet, starting last year and seemingly culminating in January, Twitter told those same third-party developers to, in effect, go away. The move was seen by many, including myself, as suicidal as Twitter’s future growth will be dramatically impacted by continued innovation, or lack thereof.

Indeed, many industry watchers suspect that Twitter will ultimately kill TweetDeck after an acquisition. Such a drastic move seems highly unlikely (bordering on laughable) as Twitter doesn’t need to spend $50 Million to kill TweetDeck. All it has to do is turn off TweetDeck’s access to the Twitter’s API as was done to UberMedia.

Twitter Needs TweetDeck

No, Twitter needs TweetDeck, if for no other reason than TweetDeck is one of the most innovative Twitter-based services available. Perhaps the biggest question is how Twitter will integrate TweetDeck into the Twitter family of products. Twitter is trying to drive more users to twitter.com, presumably to increase ad revenue, and doesn’t want users using third-party apps anymore. The problem is, according to a study by Sysomos, those apps account for 42% of Twitter’s traffic.

Fortunately for Twitter, TweetDeck introduced support for Twitter’s “Promoted Tweets” in its columns several months ago. According to Richard Barley, TweetDeck’s Community Manager whom I interviewed for both the Addicted to Social Media podcast and for Twitip.com, Promoted Tweets “only appear in search columns where the search terms match a keyword that has been purchased.”

Good to know, but the targeting seems to need work (what State Farm Nation has to do with space shuttle launches, I’ll never know).

So, where is the value in an acquisition? Although there are many reasons for Twitter to buy TweetDeck, I see four primary reasons that an acquisition not only makes tremendous sense for Twitter, but would also be very exciting to users.

1. 1. Access to Power Users: Although TweetDeck doesn’t publicize user numbers, it’s estimated that about 5% of Twitter’s users use the service. That may not seem like a lot, but these users tend to be influential marketers, journalists, celebrities and other “power-users” who send a disproportionate number of Tweets and have vast followings. These are people whom Twitter should want to make happy as they would be the most likely customers for potential “Pro” (i.e., paid) services that Twitter could offer in the near future.
2. 2. Advanced Features: Twitter’s single column view is severely limited and becomes cluttered when users follow more than a few dozen people (depending on the user). TweetDeck’s multi-column interface is infinitely more efficient and customizable.
3. 3. Access to Other Services: As more people use more social networks, management of their various accounts on dispersed services is becoming a real problem. It’s also a huge opportunity. TweetDeck already offers users the ability to publish simultaneous updates to Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, Foursquare, and Google Buzz. Thus, TweetDeck would give Twitter something that no other social network truly has; access into their sites.
4. 4. Ability to Evolve: One of the items restricting Twitter’s evolution is the self-imposed limitation on the 140-character tweet. As I wrote in The End of the 140 Character Tweet and its Repercussions, “many users have felt constrained by that limit… Yet this may be Twitter’s big opportunity to break free of that albatross.” If Twitter is to survive, it will need to evolve and removing that restriction would be liberating to many users.

Whatever happens, it will certainly be interesting to see how this plays out. What do you think? Please leave a comment and let me know.

Neal Wiser is Vice President of Digital Strategy and Operations at The ODM Group where he leads teams in the creation and execution of digital marketing campaigns. You can follow Neal on Twitter (his handle is @NealWiser). Neal is also the Cofounder and Co-host of the Addicted to Social Media podcast.

© 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips.



4 Reasons Why Twitter Should Buy TweetDeck

I’ve previously written about Twitter’s behavior towards its third-party developers and the risks they’re taking if they focus only on developing Twitter-based tools (See Twitter Commits Suicide and Twipocalypse Now). The bottom line is that building a business that is entirely dependent on a single partner isn’t a safe model to follow.

Surprise, Surprise?

So, should Twitter’s actions come as any surprise?

Yes! And, No.

Yes, because Twitter was built on the backs of tens of thousands of third-party developers who added much need functionality and played a key role making Twitter what it is today. These third-party developers, along with the broader Twitter community, were the ones who implemented hash tags, RTs, @ replies and many of the features that Twitter now takes for granted. Even Evan Williams, one of Twitter’s co-Founders, admitted as much at the 2009 TED Conference. See the embedded video below (thanks to Tac Anderson reminding me about this in his post Twitter Grows Up Figures Out Its Business Model And Doesn’t Need You Anymore).

And, No, because there has been ample warning about the risk of developing for Twitter – just read my posts mentioned above, and I certainly was not alone. Also, in their announcement, Twitter stated that enterprise tools such as Seesmic and HootSuite and special-purpose apps are welcome.

So, why is Twitter doing this?

For some insight, consider the following:

• Usage: While Twitter claims that 90% of users are using official Twitter apps, the blog Mashable disagrees claiming that only 58% of Twitter users access the service through official Twitter apps. That leaves a whopping 42% who never see the Twitter home page or those Twitter apps. This means that 42% of Twitter’s users may never see any of the various advertising features that Twitter has been counting on to actually justify its valuation.
• Money: Investors have poured $360 Million into the company over the past 5 years and it’s easy to understand why they might want an out. While these investors certainly could find eager buyers for their shares, they want to maximize their returns. That means pumping up the valuation of the company and finding an appropriate buyer who can afford it.

Buyer Beware

Unfortunately, there aren’t too many adequate suitors for the company, especially when it has a rumored price tag of $8-10 Billion. In order to justify that valuation Twitter needs to do the following:

• Work the kinks out of its advertising model so it can maximize ad revenue. To do this, Twitter needs to…
• Increase the number of people who use Twitter properties, thus maximizing exposure to those ads. To do this, Twitter needs to…
• Get those users to stop using third-party apps and “come home.” To do this it needs to…
• Kick those third-party apps out of the loop. This ultimately means putting an end to the Twitter ecosystem. To do this, Twitter needs to…
• Prevent third-party app developers from getting into the game and making conditions for those who are already there too difficult for them to operate, thus they’ll be forced to close down. To do this, Twitter needs to…
• Add more features to its properties. Something it’s already been doing.

My Prediction

I could go on, but to me the path is clear; within the next 12-24 months, as Twitter slowly improves its mobile apps and website, it will eventually cut off ALL third-party apps including TweetDeck and Seesmic. Then, once its numbers (traffic and review) demonstrate clear upward momentum, it will be sold to the highest bidder. Perhaps after that, Twitter’s new owners will remember the goldmine of innovation that Twitter’s third-party developers provided the company and invite them to return

One can only hope.

Please leave a comment and let me know what you think.

Neal Wiser is Vice President of Digital Strategy and Operations at The ODM Group where he leads teams in the creation and execution of digital marketing campaigns. You can follow Neal on Twitter (his handle is @NealWiser). Neal is also the Cofounder and Co-host of the Addicted to Social Media podcast.

© 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips.



Twitter’s Black Friday Signals an Exit Strategy

These days are gone – or they should be. No more “spray and pray”. No more throwing information, media like photos and video out on the Web and *hoping* someone looks at it, like your target audience.

Testing and measuring are all part of evaluating the effectiveness of a program. This goes for marketing, communications or public relations, advertising, etc. So why would we not do it with social media? If we aren’t tracking engagement or online interactions, sharing, retweeting, etc. how can we really know what’s going on with our brands online, our consumers online, etc.? We can’t.

If you aren’t tracking or monitoring your online engagement yet, start now.

Having trouble convincing your boss this is a valid path to take in communicating on behalf of the company? Track your efforts for 30 days and present it to them. Numbers, data and trends don’t lie. You can do this.

There are a myriad of tools available to help track what’s happening on your/your business’ social network. Some of them can be quite pricey and are generally set up for larger organizations. Don’t be discouraged though! You can do this on your own, without the cost.

We don’t just want to measure how many fans or followers we have, but what we are doing with them. It doesn’t matter if your company Facebook page has 2,000 “likes” or “fans”, if none of them are commenting, liking, posting or sharing with you. They could have hidden the page from their stream or just tuned out. By measuring you’ll know!

All you need is Excel and some of the backend data readily available as admins on your various social media accounts. Set up the spreadsheet with the far left column as the account platforms. Starting from top to bottom you’ll list them all – Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Digg, Vimeo, LinkedIn, etc. You can even include the company blog if you have access to that.

Then, across the top row you’ll plug in your measurement categories. These should include some or all of these, or at least a close variation:
- Audience (This is fans, followers, subscribers, readers, etc. depending on the platform)
- Activity (This is what YOU’VE done – posts, comments, uploads, etc. during the given measurement timeframe)
- Engagement (Here’s where we start getting some real information – user comments, likes, linkbacks, shares, conversations or DMs on Twitter, mentions, RTs, etc.)
- Web Traffic (Available from your site tracking system – think Google Analytics – How many visitors to your Website came from each platform?)
- Lead Generation (What the bosses care about. Connect with your sales team or incoming call coordinator to start tracking where customers come from. DON’T accept “internet” – ask them to be more specific as to which page, if possible.)

Armed with information, you can now make decisions as to which platforms works best for your company, what areas might need improvement or where they may be an opportunity.

Start tracking, testing and measuring today. Your effectiveness is guaranteed to improve.

© 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips.



Measuring Social Media Effectiveness & Engagement – On Your Own

1.) Start searching for and following twitter accounts that post internships and jobs. Both in your desired field, and general ones as well. Internship Queen has a ton of internships she posts, along with tips for finding ones.

2.) Search for and follow twitter accounts by respected members of that field, as well as companies, and business groups. For example, if you’re interested in PR work follow local PRSSA groups, follow PRSAJobCenter, follow people you know that are PR Gurus.

3.) Clean up your twitter, no more “Going to ____ bar tonight, PARTY!”. Make it professional. Start posting interesting articles that you find online, and ADD YOUR OWN INSIGHT TO THEM. Retweet interesting posts the professionals you follow, post or add your own insight to them. The main issue of importance here is to INTERACT on a PROFESSIONAL LEVEL with these people you now follow. Remember, these people are full of connections, and that is what Twitter is about! Try to make actual connections with these people.

4.) Keep your eye out for job and internship posts. And, don’t be afraid to ask a professional (through direct messages) for suggestions on how to get in touch with an industry/company you’re interested in. Most people want to help others, if you genuinely ask for help, someone will answer the call.

Hope this helps, there really isn’t much too it and it is that simple. It’s going to take time and effort, but it may be worth it in the long run. Remember, Twitter is an extension of yourself, and it can be used for professional benefit and to meet people while making connections that would otherwise be impossible.

© 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips.



4 Twitter Tips for College Students Seeking A Career

The most important concept to grasp about luxury is that it is a perception. What attracts ultra-rich consumers to buy is not associated with colossal prices as a deciding factor. In the world of luxury quality and experience are the highest characteristics for purchasing decisions.

Twitter has features that allows users to enhance their experiences. Now you can implement vibrant, visual Twitter campaigns that reflect a luxury lifestyle. Using Twitpic, you can upload photos that are shown inside your Tweets. However it’s vital that you do also write the 140 characters that will be actually engaging to your followers. This will improve the response to your campaign and re-tweet exposure to spread the message.

Example:

Click to enlarge image

1. Launch

When launching a luxury Twitter profile design, appearance plays a major role. Use graphics in high resolution that represent your expertise to help set the ambiance for the profile. You must attempt to stage an image that reflects what you do and that identifies you as an expert in relations to the subject matter.

2. Brand

Here you want to develop a strategic plan and approach to increase brand awareness. Concentrate on becoming influential regarding your expertise and it will help enhance credibility for your brand strategy. Learning how to brand inside Twitter is critical because the more influential you become the greater opportunities you have to influence purchasing power, referral decisions, and branding sustainability.

3. Engage

The single most important factor for a luxury Twitter profile is engagement. If you focus on engaging over building followers you will be on your way to achieving an influential profile in no time at all. Focus on a variety of topics related to your expertise to engage with other Twitter profiles. Additionally, expand by building relationships and networks inside Twitter.

Happy Tweeting!

© 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips.



How To Launch, Brand, and Engage A Luxury Twitter Profile

I started out in the real estate profession and always loved the concept of building equity from property value. This is likely why I became interested in Twitter and influence of Tweet value. Not to mention the financial industry booms and busts totally shattered my real estate business model.

With a passion for building equity I set out to target the Twitter industry and create online empires. Quickly I discovered that how many followers you have on Twitter did not matter as much as how much influence you had over those following you on Twitter. Leading me to build niche Twitter empires focused on content engagement for specific subject matters. A business model that involves creating numerous niche Twitter profiles.

To simplify things how much influence you can create through Tweets is what determines the value of how much credibility you build. Then it became crystal clear to me that niche Twitter profiles would be the next big Internet rush. The need to be able to engage followers and influence buying decisions is likely why everyone is on Twitter or at least considering joining the social media network.

Say you market and promote products, goods, or services it would be smart to have a niche Twitter profile that Tweets about those products, goods, and services. I have a Twitter profile that talks about building website traffic on Twitter my handle is @TrafficOpps. I love video games so I created a niche Twitter profile where my handle is @PCVideoGamer. The point here is to target and attract Twitter followers interested in unique subject matters.

Are search engines taking interest in niche Twitter profiles? With the help of my team we even created a niche Twitter profile that is focused on urban luxury and the Twitter handle is @UrbanLuxury.

If you do a key word search on Google, Bing, Yahoo, or Ask for “Urban Luxury” you will find @UrbanLuxury in the top 5% indexed over millions of websites.

Twitter is the universe and the greatest place on earth to deliver a message to the most amounts of people in the fastest amount of time. Building niche Twitter empires are the next generation for Web 3.0!

© 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips.



Building Niche Twitter Empires – The Next Internet Rush

I have been using Twitter since it launched a few years ago, but have participated more actively within the past 12 months. For much of that time I have tweeted at the username @printedproof. This user name was a mirror to my printing resources website at the time. Originally, the only reason I joined Twitter was to promote my articles and make some money from affiliate programs. This all changed as soon as I begun to witness the true power of this popular social networking tool.

As many of you know, Twitter is much more than simply a place to plug your posts, market for money, or blog for business. Twitter is a networking, connecting, and interacting online powerhouse. Don’t get me wrong, it’s OK to promote your projects on Twitter, I would say it’s even required for online success. However, if you truly plan on sharing everything about your personal life as well as run your blog or business on Twitter, I recommend having multiple Twitter accounts.

Let’s go back to my personal example: @printedproof has transformed from a targeted business execution to a place for me to just, well… be me. Since taking twitter flight years ago I have built hundreds if not thousands of mini-relationships. Some of these new connections I am proud to call dear friends and have chatted with on a very personal level. Many of these relationships share interests with me but do not necessarily share interest in my business.

My printing resources website has since taken a back seat to new projects. These new projects have taken new lives of their own with individual twitter profiles. In order to dedicate and target all updates and messages to the loyal followers of those new projects, I keep these profiles separate. Sure, I share some tweets on my personal account, as do I share great things from many of my friends on twitter. But bottom line, when a new user follows my profile on twitter, they bring with them a predetermined expectation of what they will read from my tweets. These expectations are built from important facts found in my bio, link, background, and updates. It’s important to use these things I have created to give my followers the correct impression of this particular twitter account and then deliver it.

One thing to remember on twitter is that people follow profiles because they share interest with that particular person, business, brand, or website. Followers want updates that are of interest to them. As a business owner, my goal is to provide the content that my viewers and customers require.

So relax, it’s OK to run multiple twitter profiles to meet those expectations. Do not lack the “personable” with your professional accounts; just be sure to deliver the updates that you promised.

© 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips.



It’s OK to Have Multiple Twitter Accounts

Most companies have joined Twitter by now but there are a few that have lagged behind. If you’re a part of this group (as my company was), it can be really intimidating to jump into the social media scene when your competitors already have established accounts with hundreds (or thousands) of followers. I used these techniques to jump my new account from 0 to 350 followers in one month, bypassing the awkward infancy period of a new Twitter account almost entirely.

Why should you care? Getting an established account is the best way to attract new followers, and even more importantly, more interaction with your followers and a quick intro into your local Twitter community, driving communication and clicks through to your company’s website.

Set up the account

As soon as possible, grab your business’s name on Twitter if it’s still available. Mine wasn’t, but luckily the account was inactive and we were able to file a copyright request, releasing the account over to our name. If this isn’t possible, grab an available username as close to your business’s name as possible. Avoid underscores and dashes as much as possible.

Design your twitter account to look human, like the @zappos account does above. One of the best ways to do this is to add a custom background with someone’s real picture — preferably the person tweeting from the account but you can use the founders/CEOs of the company as well. Stock photos are worse than having nothing at all. Customize the colors and the rest of the background to reflect your company’s branding.

Before any promotion of the new account, write twenty tweets to fill out the first page, spacing them at least 15 minutes apart from each other. Thereafter, continue to tweet every day, 4-5 times at max for the first few weeks, and taper (if you wish) after. We want the account to look active and get that tweet count up as fast as possible without spamming. A great tool to use is CoTweet, so you can spend 10 minutes in the morning setting up your tweets for the day, spacing them 2-3 hours between each other.

Very important: Make sure your tweets are high quality and useful to your audience. At the end of the day, your account is to promote your business, but will be more follow-worthy if you interact with the community and post about other items of interest in your field. I usually try to have three or so posts per day promoting our website, one retweet (varying between native retweets as well as non-native which can add commentary), and one link out to something interesting elsewhere. You want to emphasize that you’re a real person, not a robot.

Acquire followers

Now that you have a follow-worthy account, it’s time to get followers. It would be easy to just let this happen naturally, but I’ve found that accounts with high follower counts are more desirable, and therefore attract more people. So while the goal is to get a high number of interactive followers, we’ll start out with finding twitter accounts (ideally in the same field) that auto-follow back.

The best way to do this is to use an online application called Tweepsect, built by my friend @shazow, that analyzes a twitter account’s “stalkers” (those that follow but the account doesn’t follow), “stalking” (those that the account follows without following back), and “mutual” (mutually following).

Find other businesses in your field on Twitter and inspect them using Tweepsect. What we’re looking for here is the “mutual” list, and then we can scroll through those mutually following accounts and find those that have nearly identical following/follower counts — sure sign of an auto-follower. Follow every one of these accounts you find for a very quick boost to your following count; if it’s over a hundred accounts, follow only about 50-100 per day to allow for your own following count to rise.

You can start promoting the account once you’ve reached about 100 followers: for example, write a post on your company’s blog, add links from your website and Facebook pages, tell your employees to promote it via their twitter accounts, etc. Why didn’t we do this first? People are more likely to follow an established account.

Bonus: Lists are another great metric, and still a fairly new feature. Use this to your advantage — inspect the lists that your competitors appear on and follow those that create those lists. Usually these creators will add your account to their lists as well. You can also go to Twibes.com and add your business’s account to lists in as many terms in your field as possible.

Find the community

Once you’ve completed these steps, it’s now time to find people in your field to follow and interact with. As large as Twitter is, I often have trouble finding where the good communities of people are. Tweepsect again comes in handy here — we used it before to find auto-follows but now we can use it more generally. Take a look at the “stalking” list in addition to the mutual list to find who other businesses in your field are following. Watch out for inactive accounts, designated on Tweepsect with a face next to account — these accounts haven’t been updated in 90 days.

Another great way to find those in your field is to use Twitter Search. Search for relevant hashtags of topics: #education, #gardening, #marketing, as well as related topics: #onlineeducation, #organicgardening, #ppcmarking, etc. Search for these topics once daily to get a snapshot of others in your field that are promoting that conversation on Twitter. While general topics are hashtagged fairly rarely, conferences almost always have a hashtag for the attendees. Specifically in the education space, #educon occurred about two weeks after we created our Twitter account and it provided a great resource of people to follow in our space.

If you find some really great accounts to follow, I would recommend creating a private list to stick these people on. As your account grows larger, it’ll become impossible to watch the feeds of 300+ people per day. Stick the highest quality accounts into one list and read that instead every morning.

Continue growing and interacting

Hopefully at this point, your account will have the valuable combination of a high amount of followers that also interact, placing yourself directly within the Twitter community and on the same level as your competitors. It’ll be a lot easier to coast your Twitter account since people finding your account will be more likely to subscribe – give months later, the account has more than 800 followers.

Any other tips? I’d love to hear them in the comments!

© 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips.



Jump-Starting Your Company’s Twitter Account