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

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

The other night just as I was done finishing up on Twitter @DannySullivan dropped a link to a Newsweek story and said:

gosh, change “twitter” to “blogs” in dan lyons rip on twitter & it could be 2004

Sullivan is usually spot on so with cold beer in hand and Xbox calling to me from the other room I reluctantly clicked through and started reading Don’t Tweet on Me by Daniel Lyons.

In it Mr. Lyons has many insightful thoughts on Twitter that got me going –

Twitter has become a playground for imbeciles

most of what streams across Twitter is junk

The genius of Twitter is that it manages to be even stupider than TV

forget all the stuff you’ve heard from bloviating Web gurus about Twitter being useful

While those quotes are juicy and begging me to bloviate all over them there’s only so much time in a guru’s day so I thought I’d focus on the one that hit closest to home — branding via Twitter.

Dane Cook tweets a lot of crap.

One of the major points Lyons makes is that @DaneCook is hurting his brand by Tweeting.

Dane Cook apparently believes he is building his brand by pumping out a steady stream of comments on Twitter

Cook’s comments are so lame and unfunny that what he’s actually doing is revealing, multiple times a day, how little talent he has

I’ll give credit where credit is do and admit Lyons is correct, Dane Cook is not funny (sorry, but you knew that was coming!)

But hurting his brand? Wow.

Lyons is really missing it on this one so I thought I should clarify.

Based on his statements I can only assume he is thinking of Dane’s brand in old school terms and thinks the act is Dane’s brand. Its not, he is the brand his act is only a piece of that.

Or to put that another way — his act is a tool (see what I did there?). It’s his main tool but it is still just a tool he uses to build the brand of Dane.

There are comedians that try to protect ‘the act’.

And where are they?
We still have other comedians out there somewhere, right?

If Dane was focused on protecting his act on Twitter he wouldn’t be nearly as successful. All he would share would be jokes we’ve all heard or stuff that had been tested and polished. Or nothing at all. Boring.

The people that follow Dane on Twitter do so because they like him enough that they want to get to know him better. That is what Dane is doing with his drivel – building his brand by getting closer to his audience. As Lyons put it “lame jokes”, “pointless babble” and all.

In fact, all that lame stuff is exactly what his fans want. They want him to tweet the bad jokes, what he ate, what he thinks of Newsweek, etc, etc — that is the real Dane.

The more he tweets the stronger his brand becomes.

Dane is a smart twit because he knows that communicating with his audience, getting to know them, and most importantly letting them know him is where the magic happens.

He is what people want on Twitter, not his “material”.
He is the brand, not his act.

What Dane has built by giving himself to the audience in this way is much more powerful than a comedy act. He’s built a serious brand and his tweets played a large role.

How about them cookies?

Quotes from Lyons’ own story prove how powerful this type of Twittering can be:

Kutcher has 3.5 million Twitter followers, and Simpson has 1.5 million (Dane has 1.3m)

they’ve built bigger audiences than a lot of TV shows.

Exactly.

Mr. Lyons might not like what they are tweeting but their fans clearly do.

What’s more important is that they’ve built their own audiences that they own (not some network) much of which is due to them tweeting a lot of “pointless” stuff on Twitter.

As long as they stay true to their audience in their tweets they don’t need TV, Movies, or comedy shows anymore — they could all bake cookies and still be successful.

That is powerful stuff.

That is branding today.

That is Dane, Ashton, and Ashlee owning it.

© 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips.



Who’s Smarter: Dane Cook or Newsweek?

If you’re new to online business and are trying to surf through the sometimes murky waves of the Internet, then the first thing you need to do is take a deep breath and relax. Nothing can get you more worked up than your own nerves doing a hoodoo number on your mind.  I’m going to offer you a few tricks of the trade I’ve learned along the way and hope that you’ll benefit in some small way.

1. Market Research and Analysis: This is where successful marketing plans spring to action. Justifiably, clients (or buyers) must want to achieve specific goals, so usability and receptiveness are crucial components that ultimately become the deciding factor for potential purchases. Analyze your products and/or services. Obviously, you must have a great product or service to offer your potential buyer.

Here are a few questions you should ask yourself:

• Consumer Demand: What is it about my product (or service) that makes it essential to consumers? What sets my product (or service) aside from other competitors or like products?
• Communication/Presentation: Do I inform my potential consumers with detailed accuracy? Is my product (or service) being presented in its best light? Can I improve its viewer-ability?
• Amenities: Do I offer any special tools or tips (e.g., videos, workshops, eBooks, etc.) that enhance my products and/or services?
• Accessibility: Is my product (or service) easily accessible and within reach?
• Branding: Do I have a memorable slogan/brand? (e.g., Wendy’s “Where’s the Beef?”)
• Quality/Affordability: Is my product (or service) affordable, and does it offer quality? Are financing or other loan options available?

2. Strategic Planning and Implementation: Examine your current marketing and advertising campaign to determine the best way to meet and exceed consumer expectations and demand. Try to discern which tactics are working and which ones aren’t. That doesn’t mean you have to entirely abandon the processes that you are utilizing, but it does mean that you might need to take a second approach as to how you go about your day-to-day web operations. After you’ve explored trends, applications, and web 2.0 marketing strategies, it’s time to jot down a plan of action to create real sustainable wealth in your professional business. Remember too, that two heads are always better than one; so get a professional (or personal) opinion from a friend or colleague to get her reaction on your commercial appeal.

3. Website Development and Promotion: The most critical aspects of marketing your product or service online are to know the foundation of Internet marketing and how to successfully harness the power of the World Wide Web at the stroke of your fingertips. How? Since the conception and birth of the Internet, advertising has taken on dramatically new angles, and is steadily climbing to popular ranks among the masses.

While large audiences still prescribe to network and cable television programs, the Web audience is growing by leaps and bounds. Aside from being a vital instrument for student and professional research projects, the Internet has become an ever-expanding media outlet for entertainment, information, work and direct-advertising. By integrating all points of a strategic marketing campaign, virtual web advertising agencies are able to assist clients with interactive ad campaigns that help promote exposure to clients (services and/or products).

In addition to frugal facilitation of free online marketing tools like PR-Inside.com, Free-Press-Release.com, and various online article distribution sites, Web 2.0 technologies are reinventing the way online businesses and professionals perform and succeed in today’s tough economic environment.

* Emerging web 2.0 technologies (e.g.: Twitter, FaceBook MySpace, LinkedIn, VOX, Me2everyone; Google Reader, FriendFeed, Mixx, Reddit, StumbleUpon, Blip.fm, YouTube, HolisticTwitter, InSocialMedia, Wordpress, eBlogger, etc.) are excellent networking tools to help brand you and your services (or products).  *Psst…Twitter is my personal favorite social networking site, but I’m not telling anyone!

Don’t forget to utilize Meta tags and basic hotmail coding including anchor text links and linked graphics to enhance your web presence and visibility. This means using keyword/keyword phrase-rich, original content as copy and as distributable articles to assorted article-hosts.

To your success!

© 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips.



Key Marketing Tips for the Aspiring Online Entrepreneur

Twitter and Tweets are the most fascinating creation on the planet. At present there is no other place on earth to engage and reach tons of millions to draw brand credibility more powerful than Twitter. Luxury is a perception and for luxury brands Twitter presents an opportunity to target niche audiences.

Within the Twitter universe it is easier to target and find those who like $1,000 Prada Tessuto Baby Bags or searching for Christian Louboutin luxury French shoes. This is why top luxury retailers such as Net-A-Porter, Louis Vuitton, and many others are all actively using Twitter!

Every luxury brand should be Tweeting about their luxury niche. Apart from building Twitter equity, popularity, followers etc. This also helps to build EXPOSURE, endorsements and referrals that can open the door to more revenue. One key factor is that Twitter can help luxury brands establish brand awareness and credibility. Every brand will need to build these elements to sustain and overcome the recession.

One Tweet can be picked up by a leading luxury blog or top luxury magazine. Yes! media outlets are on Twitter hunting for the next big luxurious thing. For all those luxury brands who posted a Twitter follow me button on their website because everybody else was doing it, you might want to get serious now.

How can Twitter help expand the exposure of a luxury brand?

The most valuable solution that Twitter holds for luxury brands is the capacity of its audience reach. The number of Twitter followers a luxury brand has including the followers of the luxury brand followers expands the reach exposure.

Example: I have over a 15 million reach with 2000 plus followers because of the followers following the people following me. To review your reach and see how your Twitter influence ranks go to Twinfluence.

Want to know who is tweeting about luxury the best? That’s easy just go over to TwitterGrader (a system that calculate variables for grading Twitter profiles). Conduct a key search for “luxury” and receive a list of top Twitter profiles related to luxury.

http://twitter.grader.com/search?Term=luxury+

Again, it is not the number of Twitter followers that you manage to attract to your luxury brand. While followers are extremely important, it is the reach that Twitter offers that makes the exposure for your brand so powerful.

I am very interested in hearing about Twitter and luxury branding success stories. What would you like to achieve for your luxury brand using Twitter?

© 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips.



Tweet Cloud for Luxury Brands – Using Twitter for Exposure

In this post Jade Craven (@jadecraven) reviews Twitter Success Blueprint.

Before I interacted with Sarah on twitter, I was so jealous of her networking skills. She seemed to instinctively know what would connect with her twitter followers. She was doing awesome promotions, like selling follow Friday space on her forehead.

I was so excited when I heard she was writing Twitter Success Blueprint. She understands this space and has the knowledge to help individuals, and small business, avoid costly mistakes and attract clients.

The Twitter Success Blueprint consists of eight chapters and a bonus section.

The content:

The first two chapters cover the information you typically see in information products.

• THE TRUTH ABOUT TWITTER - The KEY to using social media for business
• BRANDING FOR SUCCESS - How to set up your Twitter page for business

She provided an awesome outline for understanding how twitter works for your business

• Tweets build curiosity
• You Build Relationships
• Traffic flows to your website.

I can testify to this statement – but it has further benefit. Traffic will follow from your followers relationships as well. A key example is this review. Sarah, Darren Rowse and I all belong to a Melbourne twitter group called Tweetupmellers. Prior to the tweetup, I recommended that Darren publish a review of Sarahs ebook, and offered to do it. Obviously, this was accepted.

This shows how far you can reach on twitter. One of the key ways to draw traffic to your website is through other peoples relationships. I have a core group of followers who I ask questions when I want specific information, such as sales page advice and new product releases. Targeting these people, the influencers, can get your content in front of a LOT more people. Twitter Success Blueprint will teach you how to do that.

The next two chapters contained some advanced tactics and really demonstrated how the Twitter Success Blueprint could be really useful for small business owners.

• FOLLOW FRENZY- How to build a massive list of targeted followers
• TWITTER FOR CORPORATE USE – How to leverage social media

In these chapters, she talks about the strategies she used to gain a lot of targeted followers.

However it is the chapter on corporate use that I can see having the most benefit. She gives tips on how corporations can engage their audience by being authentic and contributing back to the community. Many people on twitter are very wary of being sold too, so these chapters are a must read for success.

I have a couple of friends on twitter who are so overwhelmed. There is a fine line between promoting yourself and breaking the unspoken rules of twitter. That’s why the following two chapters were so useful:

• TWEET SUCCESS – How to create tweets that attract attention
• TWITTER ETIQUETTE – The social media rules of engagement

These two chapters will be really useful for the new users. I learned a lot from both chapters and I’ve been using twitter for a year!

Twitter etiquette is so important, because many users are quite ruthless with their unfollows. The success chapter focuses on writing tweets that your followers respond to. This includes adding personality, integrating twitter with other media and providing calls to action. I LOVED this chapter as it really focused on being tips on how to be useful and really connect with your community.

These tips were expanded on in the final two chapters:

• CONNECTION STRATEGIES – Unique ways to engage your followers
• MONETIZING YOUR TWEETS – Making money with Twitter

The section I found the most useful was how to make money with twitter. She discusses affiliate marketing, using twitter during a product launch and converting followers into leads.

These chapters are vital for anyone trying to make money from this service.

10 pages of bonus content

The bonus content wont be for every reader. It consists of:2 case studies as well as a Q&A with some members of her twitter community. I found it really fascinating, even if when couldn’t apply tips to my own situation.

Would I recommend it?

Definitely. I see so many businesses and individuals that are new to twitter and are accidentally alienating their followers by making very common faux pas. They are leaving money on the table when they could invest in their education and develop a strong twitter brand.

At $22, Twitter Success Blueprint is a bargain. There are many products out there that cost more but contain way less information.

Here’s to your twitter success.

© 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips.



Review of Twitter Success Blueprint

As Twitter continues to define its niche, many companies are hiring individuals for the sole purpose of being the brand’s face on Twitter. For companies with a bigger grasp of the online scene, these individuals often do much more than just Tweet, but being the brand’s bird is still a crucial part of the job. Since being a professional micro-blogger is a new experience for most people starting the position, I thought it would be helpful to offer some advice based off of my experiences.

Be Colorful

There are a variety of ways a company can approach Twitter, but the one that will excite customers the most and produce industry conversations is approaching Twitter in a personable, lively, and chatty manner. Your natural instinct may be to place professionalism as the rule of thumb for all of your tweets; I know it was for me. But when it comes down to it, behind all of the corporate Twitter accounts, and all of the non-corporate, are real live people. They’re just not interested in talking to a company that feels stiff and rigid. People are eager for a new kind of company that still offers them the services and products they want, but will talk to them like people. This remains true even if your company’s product is b2b and not aimed directly at consumers. Ultimately, what matters is that all businesses are run by real people who are not interested in communicating with text on a screen – they are interested in communicating with other people. So, be colorful, liven up, be liberal with your use of @replies and spread some big smiles. It goes a long way.

Guidelines and Scenarios

This part might seem a bit somber and less happy-go-lucky-social media-lovey, but it’s important. There’s no doubting that being a colorful character is important to success on Twitter. If you want to create conversations, you have to be friendly and interesting. Because of this, you might start to feel like you’re getting paid to be a social butterfly. You are not. You’re getting paid to represent the company. It’s a very fine line between being a socially active company run by real people, and being an individual who isn’t afraid to speak his mind. When you’re the company bird, you should be afraid to speak your mind. You shouldn’t be panic stricken or quaking in your boots, but you should maintain a healthy fear of your own personality. The best way to make sure you are being true to the company is to have a good review of the company’s previous branding efforts and the image they have tried to create. Remember that you are a part of the marketing department and your actions encompass a wide range of activities from public relations to customer service. Keep the company’s goals in mind for their brand and image and use this as a guideline for checking those questionable tweets. Also, have a sit-down with your supervisors to go over possible scenarios. Make sure you are ready for common situations like: client interaction, new customer acquisitions, complaints, debates, questions on company policy (know your company’s policies like the back of your hand), and interaction with competitors (hint: be friendly). Knowing how to handle these scenarios will streamline your company’s interaction with the public, which is one of the biggest benefits of using social media for business. If you have to double check every response with someone else, then you are completely losing this benefit and arguably completely wasting the company’s investment in social media. By being properly prepared with a set of guidelines and potential scenarios, balancing your colorful character with the restrictions of being a brand representative will come much easier, and I promise you won’t end up looking like a sad ugly duckling.

Do More

Twitter is great. It provides a myriad of opportunities for individuals and brands to interact with each other. However, Twitter isn’t enough by itself. If your only responsibility at a company is Tweeting, you may consider what else you can do for the company. If you’re already in a position to take advantage of other mediums and forms of content, do so. There is a lot that goes into being a good company Twitterer, I know I’ve had my fair share of slip ups. But if you look at the top Twitter accounts, you’ll find that almost all of them create other forms of content. A brand that chooses a single medium, puts all of their eggs in that basket, and uses it as the sole means to create conversations is completely missing the mark. Marketing is a holistic engagement, and conversations occur much less frequently when they are detached from exciting and relevant content.

I hope this has been helpful to you if you’re starting a new job as a company tweeter or looking into the possibility of hiring for this position.

[Image credits: paraflyer and Ross Mayfield]

© 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips.



Being the Brand’s Bird: Guidelines for the Professional Twitter User

Nowadays people prefer to connect with other people rather than with a corporate brand. Whether you are a company or individual, branding is a way to make yourself memorable.

Yes, personal branding is about making yourself memorable.

Examples of Personal Brand

Donald Trump is known as a dealmaker. That is his brand. As someone who knows Mr. Trump only from television — in The Apprentice TV series — I also tend to think of “Trump” as quality and luxury.

That’s what I see from my perspective. I believe that is also the message that he put out consistently. Although both his personal brand and product brand are two separate entities, at the first glance they are one.

Although I read that his corporations have filed for bankruptcy recently, it didn’t change my perception about his brand too much. After all, everyone is going through hard times right now. If he is able to make it, perhaps his brand will grow even stronger.

Well, Donald Trump is Donald Trump. How could personal brand be important to an individual offering bookkeeping service?

Personal branding is still important for everyone because it is about perception, i.e. what people are going to associate you with. There are certainly more facets to it, but that explains it quite well, I think.

Chris Brogan is known as a helpful bloggers. His participation in Twitter, for instance, helps shape our thoughts about social media and how to use it for our business. With that association, I automatically spend more time reading his tweets than other people’s, if I only have a short break at lunch.

His brand gives him a competitive advantage over others who offer similar services. It also helps people to talk about him. Overall, his brand makes him worth talking about.

Hey, it works. At least I’m writing about him.

I bet you’ll agree that with those benefits, everyone can find at least a reason to build his/her personal brand.

Personal Branding Tips for Twitter

Now that I got your full attention, let’s get down to the business. Personal brand is certainly a broad topic. It spans multiple media from blog to microblogging, social networks, virtually all across the board.

But let’s just focus on Twitter in this post. If you’ve ever wondered how to get your message noticed and build your name online and especially on Twitter, you may find these tips helpful.

1. Content Shapes Your Brand

Whatever you tweet can help shape your brand on Twitter. If you mostly help others with business ideas, you will soon be known as the business idea guy or lady.

Tweeple who balance between their family in their tweets convey their brand as family people. Humorous individuals will be known as fun and some people will appreciate the sense of humor. Those without a better agenda and tweet promotional messages all of the time are spammers.

Twitter may bring an impact to your brand on the short term, but also remember that once you tweet, the content will be out there for others to search forever.

2. Expand Visibility

As a Twitterer, you are going to be visible if you consciously make yourself visible to the right group of people and influencers.

As much as I like Twitter, it is only one facet of the social media. If you want to build your brand, it will be far more effective if you expand your visibility across multiple platforms.

Creating a web presence is a good start. Build a blog and update it frequently. Use social networking sites to get in touch with others.

3. Listen

Newsgroup, mailing list and forum users should be familiar with the term lurkers. They are people who wander around reading and paying attention to what’s going on without actually participating in conversations.

In search and social media, ego search is common. It is nothing but searching your own name, company name and brand for your product. Recently, social media users start to add Twitter as part of the site to monitor for brand names.

Both ego search and lurking don’t sound bad at all, if your intention is to tune in and listen to what people have to say about you, your company or your product. In fact, people now expect that you hear their rant and whine if they put it out online.

Just to be fair, they also want you to know if they say positive things about your business.

4. Participate

The listening tools like Twitter Search allow you to distinguish between the signal and the noise. Once you got the signals, they are your opportunities to engage in the conversations.

You can also participate proactively by getting involved with Twitter. Send out interesting content discoveries for the day. Ask questions and answer them. Respond to tweets directed to you. There are limitless ways to get involved.

You will see companies use Twitter to hold contests. That is just another way to participate and encourage participation in this new communication medium.

5. Build Community

Whatever your niche is, chances are your market is already out there on Twitter. They are not part of your community though. Through different ways of participation, you can build your personal brand faster. One way to do this is by going out and become a leader.

Creating community that people want to be part of is a quick way to deliver your message. If your have successfully engaged influencers as part of your community, very likely your message will go viral, assuming that they are worth talking about.

6. Foster Relationships

Twitter as a broadcast tool is awesome for reaching thousands of people in one swoop. But still, the real value of Twitter for business, is to reach people and network with them.

You may know a few individuals who are otherwise shielded from the outside world but suddenly you know they are on the plane to someplace because of their tweets. You also know what projects they are currently on.

Twitter also makes people more reachable.

Sure, people who choose to remain inaccessible will stay so, but if you’ve been on Twitter for some time, you should agree that they are more likely to read what you have to say because there are more opportunities to @reply and respond to their tweets.

The fact that people decide to become more responsive in Twitter will help them build relationships with their prospects and customers too.

7. Go Beyond Twitter

Twitter is now too significant to overlook, but that doesn’t mean you should underestimate the power of face-to-face communication.

It is easier to establish trust if you directly meet with an individual rather than online. If your brand visibility is important to you, you may want to go offline and visit industry events. Talk to real people.

This kind of interaction will often lead to many great things in the future.

Conclusions

Your existing influence in Twitter certainly matters. However, if you have to start from scratch, the tips above will give you a head start.

A business owner with a good number of followers may be more successful to get people retweet their message, but if you go out and network with people, join in the conversation and post interesting content, I’m not surprised your tweets will spread further.

I witness it everyday. It’s that powerful.

Personal branding is an interesting topic. Chances are different people have different opinions about it. What do you think about personal branding using Twitter? What have you learned so far? Please share your experience so others can learn from it too.

Hendry Lee helps bloggers overcome strategic and technological challenges in starting and growing their blogs.

He also writes about social media on his blog Blog Tips for a Better Blog – Blog Building University. While you are there, download your free eBook and subscribe to the blogging e-course where he reveals his blogging and writing secrets!

Follow Hendry at Twitter: @hendrylee.

© 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips.



Personal Brand – How to Build Yours In Twitter

I’ve been asked these questions so many times since starting TwiTip that I thought I’d write a post answering it. I hope that it’s helpful for those of you just starting out with Twitter (or considering getting involved).

Twitter has changed the way that I use the web and connect with others online in many ways. Those of you who’ve traveled with me on my Twitter journey since the beginning know that I started out very skeptical of the medium.

It always seemed like a waste of time – however once I started using it I immediately began to see its potential and some tangible benefits to me. Let me try to break some of them down:

1. Research Tool

One of the things that I value very highly about Twitter is the way that it allows me to tap into an amazing community of people from around the world to find out what they are thinking, feeling and experiencing in different ways.

I’ve often said that Twitter makes me smarter because among those in my network are 18,000 people who collectively know and have experienced a lot of stuff.

I’ve always known that together a group is smarter and more powerful than any single member from within that group – but I’ve never really been able to tap into that power…. that was until I started using Twitter.

I use this every day as I write posts for my blogs (and ask readers for their ideas and experiences to help deepen what I write), as I tackle issues and problems that I face (there’s always someone ‘out there’ who has been through something similar and will quite often have a solution), as I face questions and as I develop my business.

Being able to tap into the Twitter community is incredibly illuminating. In fact these days Twitter is starting to replace Google for me. If I want to know something I’ll quite often ask my followers before I ask Google.

Also what I consider to be research is the ability for me to use a tool like TwitScoop at any point in time to see what is trending up in the Twitterverse at any point in time. In a sense Twitter becomes a news service with this and you’ll quickly find if there is a breaking story somewhere in the world by watching it.

2. Branding

I once wrote a post on ProBlogger about how a personal online brand is made up of the many ’strands’ of ‘presence’ that you have. You might have a blog or website – but when you’re also present on other social networking sites, forums, social messaging sites (etc) you reinforce that brand.

I’ve definitely found this to be true for Twitter.

Here are some of the comments that I’ve gotten from people in the past:

• ‘I used to read you at ProBlogger but had lost track until I found you on Twitter’
• ‘I subscribe to your RSS feed on the blog but seeing your posts on Twitter reminds me to read them more’
• ‘I was scanning through someone else’s Twitters yesterday and saw your face. I recognized it from your Facebook account so thought I’d check out you.’
• ‘I saw your name mentioned the other day on Scott Karp’s Twitter feed. I hadn’t seen your blog for a while and it reminded me to resubscribe.’

Twitter is a place that people are searching for connection and information. For me as a blogger who is interested in giving people information and drawing people together into community it is a logical place for me to be present because it reinforces my brand.
For me it’s like having a billboard on a busy virtual intersection.

3. Collaboration and Networking

I’ve lost count of the many opportunities that I’ve had to interact with amazingly talented, smart and insightful people on Twitter.

Some of these interactions have led to new ideas, others have led to temporary collaborations while still others have led to ongoing partnerships over time. The collaborations that have come out of Twitter for me have been both big and small – but collectively they’ve been incredibly significant.

In fact the opportunities have been almost overwhelming. There are days when I Tweet that I’m looking for someone to work with on an idea when the response is simply too much to handle.

Not only does Twitter open up new relationships – it’s a great place to cement and deepen existing ones. For example after a trip to Los Vegas for Blog World Expo earlier in the year I was amazed to find how many of those that I met were on Twitter when I returned home. In the months that have followed quite a few of those that I met in person at BWE have become regular Twitter buddies to this day.

4. It’s my Water Cooler

I’m a solo entrepreneur, working out of the front room in my house in suburban Melbourne Australia. Most of my contemporaries, readers and business partners live in other parts of the world (many in North America) – so at times it is easy to feel quite disconnected, isolated and even lonely.

Having previously worked in workplaces with teams of people – since starting to work from home I have always missed the banter, collaborative opportunities and companionship of having people around me.

Twitter in many ways has fulfilled some of these needs. There’s always someone around to bounce ideas around with, have a joke with or just to talk with about what you did over the weekend. While it doesn’t’ quite match up to real life workmates – it certainly has helped (and at times is even better….. because you can’t switch off work mates when you need to get work done!).

5. Direct Traffic

As a blogger I’m interested in building traffic to my web properties. Twitter has been an increasing source of this traffic over the past year or so. While it isn’t my primary reason for being on Twitter it certainly is nice to be able to post a link to a post that I’ve written or an online project that I’m launching and to see people coming directly from Twitter to that page.

What is even more special is seeing others promote my links on Twitter on my behalf either by ‘Retweeting’ my tweets with the links or simply by finding something I’ve written on their own and promoting it to their followers.

It is difficult to know exactly how much traffic Twitter has driven to my blogs (particularly difficult as so many people don’t actually follow Twitter on Twitter.com but use desktop clients that don’t come up with a referral metric) but as the picture to the right shows – last month Twitter.com alone directed over 8500 visitors to my blog at ProBlogger – I’d estimate at least that much again came from other Twitter clients.

What Would You Add?

The above 5 reasons that I use Twitter will not appeal to everyone. What I love about Twitter is that the more people I talk to the more creative and wonderful (and sometimes wacky) ways that I discover people are using the medium.

How does Twitter benefit you? I’d love to hear your own list of ways that you benefit from Twitter in comments below (or feel free to write a blog post about it and leave a link to it in comments below).

© 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips.



5 Ways I Benefit from Twitter

I know what they say about making assumptions but I’m going to make one now and assume that most of you already understand the potential of Twitter, especially for those of us with something to promote. If you aren’t yet convinced that Twitter is going to do for the Internet what sliced bread did for the sandwich, I encourage you to spend more time reading Twitip. My job today is not to evangelize Twitter — which I love to do — but to talk about how to create cool Twitter backgrounds and show you how valuable the proper use of that space can be.

Generic is Only Good for Prescriptions

In addition to the generic Twitter background, Twitter currently offers 12 stock backgrounds along with pleasing preset colors for the elements on the page. You can also modify the colors of the overall background, text, links, sidebar background and the sidebar border. The first thing any Twit (easier to say that Twitterer) should do is change the generic background, unless you don’t like standing out from the crowd, in which case you can stop reading now.

Switching backgrounds and changing the color palette of your Twitter page is easy to do. Simply select "Settings" in the top row of links on your Twitter page, click on the "Design" tab and then either select a "theme" or click on "Change background image" or "Change design colors" and get creative. Don’t worry about goofing anything up. Any changes you make will not be visible to anyone but you until you click "save".

Themes are Good but Why Stop There?

Now I know that some of you will be perfectly happy with one of the themes Twitter has provided for you but there are still going to be thousands of Twits with the same background as you. It’s like going out in public wearing the same exact clothes as a bunch of other people — which is only cool if you’re going to a football game or a funeral.

With the holiday season fast approaching, this would be a good time to start looking for a nice Christmas-themed background, or Hannukah, Kwanzaa or whatever holiday you celebrate.

The best way to make sure that your Twitter page doesn’t look like anyone else’s is to upload your own background image. Those of you with the necessary skills might want to use Photoshop or a similar program to create your own from scratch. If that’s not a possibility, then there are other options. You can simply upload a photograph you’ve taken, for example. Another option is to find an image that will tile (repeat) in an appealing way. Search Google for "tile background" and you’ll find thousands of places to get them.

Colour Lovers is an excellent place to start if you want to make your own tiling background patterns. They also offer palettes that will help you pick colors that go well together so your Twitter page doesn’t look like you picked the colors with your eyes closed or let your 3-year old do it for you.

Twitter Patterns is another great place to find patterns for your tiled background.

Here are some pattern generators that are a lot of fun to play around with:

• Stripe Generator
• Stripe Mania
• Tartan Maker

If you want to make a pattern from your own image there are plenty of tutorials out there and a quick Google search will point you to them. Once you find the tile section you want to use upload it as your twitter background and be sure to click "tile background" before you save.

Here are a few pattern backgrounds from Colour Lovers:

Another way to create a unique background is to use a photograph. There are a few things you’ll want to keep in mind, though. For one thing, a limited amount of the photograph will actually be visible. Realistically you have a couple inches on either side of the main text area to work with. That means if you upload a cool picture of your kid playing with the family dog and they are in the center of your photograph, no one is going to see them.

If you want the photo to fill the entire background, the size of the image is also important. It should be at least 1280×1024 pixels in size and preferably larger. Depending on the background and whether or not it can be nicely blended into a solid background color or not, I typically use 1600×1200 and even 2048×1600 for some backgrounds. It’s not likely that folks with huge monitors stretch their browsers to fill the entire screen, but you never know.

It is possible to create a pleasing background using a photo that isn’t large enough to cover the entire area but I recommend blending the edges of the photo into the background to eliminate the harsh edges around the photo. Here’s an example of that technique.

File size is something else you’ll want to think about when you create large photographic backgrounds. Twitter limits the file size to 800k but I recommend staying much smaller than that or otherwise your beautiful background will take too long to load. In some cases I’ve gone a little over 300k but I prefer to keep them under 200k. When you’re saving the .jpg file, you’ll want to experiment with the compression percentage to get the smallest file size you can achieve without degrading the quality of the image too much.

Once you’ve selected your background, you may want to change the colors of the sidebar background and border so they complement the colors in the overall background image. Don’t pick a dark color or your text will be hard to read. You might be tempted to use white or light-colored type on a dark background but the problem is that if you use light colors for your text links they won’t show up in the upper row of navigation links.

I’ve added a section on my web site with royalty-free backgrounds which you are welcome to use or that might give you some ideas. All of the photographs I use to make these backgrounds are either royalty-free or published under the Creative Commons http://creativecommons.org/ license and used with permission because I’ve added a credit line for the photographer.

A Picture Might be Worth a Thousand Words but I Want to Say More

Your Twitter background can actually work for you like a business card or brochure does if you use the space on the left side — and to an extent the top — to promote something. A professional-looking Twitter background also makes an excellent first impression and will help you pick up followers that might have otherwise overlooked you. Someone recently told me that the background we had done for a client "induced me to follow her". The way I look at it, you only have one chance to make a good first impression; that’s why they call it a "first" impression. Even if someone only looks at your profile one time, the results could end up being well worth the time and effort you put into creating an attention-getting background.

A custom Twitter background gives you the opportunity to tell someone more about what you do than you can in the 160-character bio you get to put in your sidebar. An obvious choice would be to use your logo along with a bit of text, perhaps something like, "Mention you saw us on Twitter and get 10% off on your next purchase". If you don’t offer a product but just want to promote your blog, you might want to use design elements from your web site and then add a bit of text about your blog along with the url and your email address. If you have more than one web site, a custom background gives you a spot to list them all.

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A custom background is also a good way to let people know at a glance what company you represent, which is especially important if your company is well-known. For example, Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh has a Twitter page with over 17,000 followers, but word has it that nearly 400 employees of Zappos also have Twitter pages as part of the company’s marketing plan. Since only one Twitter page can use the domain twitter.com/zappos, the best way for the employees of Zappos to let people instantly know what company they are with would be to use a custom background with the Zappos logo on it somewhere.

When you’re creating a custom background using the left side for your "business card" you’ll have to make a decision. Monitors with a resolution of 1024×768, which is the standard resolution of a 15-inch monitor, will shift the main center section of your Twitter page to the left more than a monitor with a resolution of 1280×1024 (17-inch or larger) will.

Viewed at 1024×768

Viewed at 1280×1024

I made the decision to work with a live area of about 200 to 225 pixels in width, which unfortunately means that some of the images and text in that area will be covered up when viewed on smaller monitors. If you decide that you want the promotional area of your background to fit within the live area on monitors with a 1024×768 resolution, you’ll be working with a width of about 120 pixels.

Although it’s tempting, it’s not a good idea to frame the main text area in some way like creating a border or placing something important like your logo on the right side. The problem is that depending on the size and resolution of the viewer’s monitor, the center section is not stationary, so your carefully planned background probably won’t look good to everyone. The same applies to placing something near the bottom of the background. It might look great to you but your picture of a tree that appears to be growing out of the bottom of your browser might look completely different to someone else with the same size monitor if they have multiple toolbars open taking up 2 inches at the top of their browser and moving your background image down 2 inches.

Do a Little or Do a Lot; Just Do Something

Whether you only take a few seconds to change the generic Twitter background to one of the provided "themes" or you take the time to upload a photograph or make a custom background, it says something about you. If you don’t care enough to change the standard Twitter avatar and generic Twitter background, what it tells me is that you probably aren’t worth following, and if you’re using Twitter to promote your blog or company and don’t have a custom background, you’re missing out on an excellent opportunity.

Please be aware of copyright laws and only use images and photographs that you create yourself or that come from sources that specifically allow you to use them.

Share Your Favorite Twitter Backgrounds

Thanks to Hugh Bris from Twitter Image for writing this post.

Have you customized your Twitter background? What approach have you taken?

We’d love to see your suggestions on great Twitter backgrounds – share them in comments below.

© 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips.



Make a Good Impression with a Custom Twitter Background