1. Tweet to help people that you wouldn’t otherwise reach.

Be intentional about sharing wisdom and lessons you’ve learned in life. You might do this in concert with a blog or not, but either way, you’ll feel better knowing that there is someone out there benefiting from something you’ve learned. They might be on the other side of the planet, but they’ll appreciate knowing someone else has gone through what they’re experiencing.

2. Tweet your goals and allow people to provide accountability.

I like to Tweet about things with which I need help or encouragement. Twitter can give you the powerful benefit of positive peer pressure. For example, when you have planned to workout or skip the buffet today, tell people about it. There will usually be a number of people who will reply with encouragements and even tips to help you with your challenge. It also helps you to know that people are going to be expecting results from you.

3. Tweet to direct people to your business and generate sales.

This is an easy one so I won’t dwell on it. However, after you begin building a following, you’ll discover that a number of people will simply want to know what you do for a living. Just tell them. They may have been looking for you all along. They already know and trust you now, so building trust to lead to a sale won’t be as necessary.

4. Tweet to wind down.

Tweeting when you’re pissed off, frustrated or otherwise needing to rant is a great thing – just watch some of your language – and it can be a lot less destructive than putting your fist through a wall or yelling at your spouse. Tweets live forever, so keep it clean. It’s well known that it’s better to let it out rather than keep it in, so use all caps if you need to do so!

5. Make friends.

I believe that we are who we spend time with. I’ve been intentional to seek out and follow and interact with people who are going where I want to go in life. In your regular life, it might be difficult to find people who create barcode art. Twitter allows you to expand your reach. Surely there are other people around the globe with your interests – no matter how obscure.

I have done all of the above. I have found that using Twitter throughout my day and my week actually ENHANCES my week by increasing my focus on productivity. This is in contrast to other social networking sites that often require a lot more energy of me than I get back in benefits.

Get to Tweeting! Tweeting with purpose can benefit you a lot!

© 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips.



5 Ways to Use Twitter to Become a Happier Person

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

But it’s something comedians have been doing for years – writing short, pithy punch lines. Ask Comedian Michael Ian Black who recently decided to add advertisements to his tweets. Black wrote in his blog “As of today, I’ve written 2,655 tweets. That’s a lot of free material, all of it contributing to the entertainment of the 1.5 million people who follow me, as well as the multibillion dollar capitalization of Twitter itself.”

Yes, comedians have the art of writing short down. But so do poets. Talk about imbuing thought-provoking meaning with as few as characters as possible! I don’t know if anyone does it as well as E. E. Cummings.

Whether comedian or poet, writing short is a good skill to have, especially if you have a Twitter account (and who doesn’t?) which caps posts at 140 characters. I once had a mentor who told me the best writing uses the most effective language with the fewest words possible. A good goal whether character restricted or not.

The trick is getting your message across in 140 characters or less without sounding like a monkey with a computer. They say even a monkey with a keyboard can eventually spew out Shakespeare, but I think he might lose his audience first.

Michael Pollan provides a great example of writing meaningful but short content with this 7-word manifesto: eat food, mostly plants, not too much.

Those 7 words say a lot.

That’s what we’re looking to do with Twitter. Say what you need to say in as few as words as possible. The trick is to find ways to let people get to know who you are, what you have to offer, and have a little fun in the process. Writing with only 140 characters can be a limiting handicap.

Or not…getting rid of the necessary words and characters can also be freeing!

I gathered some of my favorite Writing Killer Twitter Content tips, added some of my own, and came up with this list. Here’s Tips on Writing Short in the Twitterverse:

• Choose Your Words Wisely. You want to pick the right words that evoke the right amount of meaning with as few as characters as possible. A thesaurus can help with this. For example, if you have a choice between two words, “lighthearted” and “fun,” go with the latter!
• Get Verbal. Select verbs that are more emotive to get your message across. An example would be to use a word like “leap” instead of “jump.” They’re both energetic verbs with equal characters, but “leap” implies more emotion.
• Lolly, lolly, lolly leave your adverbs here. Dustin Wax suggested on Lifehack that one way to shorten characters is to leave adverbs to a minimum. Adverbs use up important real estate and your content will be perfectly fine without it. Well, there’s an example of an adverb right there. I didn’t need to say “perfectly and fine” to get my point across. Don’t use two words when you can use one.
• KISS. Have you heard the saying, Keep it Simple, Stupid? That notion works here too. One way of doing that is to do what Dom Sagolla recommends in his book 140 Characters, keep your tweets focused on one thought. Hey puts it this way, we need to learn to “say more with less.”
• Writing is in the rewriting. The folks at ReadWriteWeb ask an interesting question. Maybe we should all learn to read and write in Mandarin where each character is actually a word. That’s a great idea, but in the meantime try this tip. Write exactly what you want to say, then begin the process of rewriting; paring it down while keeping an eye on that character count.
• Know the lingo. Twitterville has it’s own grammar. Use it. I promise there will be no school marms tapping your hands with rulers. And if there are, you can ignore them. Some examples of Twitterville Grammar is leaving out unnecessary words such as “that” and “which.” People understand what you’re trying to say without them.
• It’s not about you. Leave out personal pronouns. You can just say, “Going to BlogHer Food!”
• It’s all about you. Lisa Barone reminds us in her post How to Write Better Tweets to be sure to keep Twitter posts personal so people will want to read them.
• Don’t beat around the bush. Tweeting is not the time to be cryptic. Say what you want to say, but leave out the “I think” explanatory phrases. Of course you think it, otherwise you wouldn’t be tweeting it.
• The Link-anizer. If you’ve got more to say than 140 characters allows, write a provocative intro and then link to the rest of it. There are oodles of link shorteners out there – Tinyurl, Hootsuite, Bit.ly, etc. Pick your favorite and use it!
• Alternate Universe. Mark Fulton explained in a recent post on TwiTips that “Twitter accepts more than just normal characters.” Most keyboards allow you to create symbols with special “alt” characters. Fulton recommends the tool TwitterKeys to have all these symbols at your fingertips. Thanks, Mark! We ♥ you!
• Size Matters. Copyblogger suggests using small words. They say “…simple words work better than big ones. Write ‘get’ instead of ‘procure.’ Write ‘use’ rather than ‘utilize.’ Use the longer words only if your meaning is so precise there is no simpler word to use.”
• Be Creative. Mark Twain once said, “I don’t give a damn for a man that can only spell a word one way.” Twains words ring true today. English is a living language and Twitter is just the place to have some fun with your word choices.

I hope these tips help you be expansive in your Twitter thoughts while at the same time minimal in Twitter characters!

© 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips.



Writing Killer Content in 140 Characters or Less

• There’s no specific, agreed etiquette;
• One user’s potion is another user’s poison;
• Your tweeting technique WON’T be liked by everyone, no matter what you do.

This causes difficulty, since there’s no standard to work from. Do you send out hundreds of updates every day? Should you schedule your tweets and pump out content even as you sleep? Will it upset someone if you state an opinion? Will it bore someone if you don’t?

For all the difficult questions millions of users pose every day they use Twitter, the twitterverse is a relatively friendly place. If someone doesn’t like the way you tweet, you won’t find much more than an unfollow coming your way. People get followed and unfollowed all the time, so you won’t have time to take it personally. That’s if you notice at all.

There are many opinions on how to tweet effectively. Most sound sensible and work fine if you follow them. That doesn’t stop the opinions from being controversial. Here are 10 tweeting issues that are subject to the biggest arguments:

1. Update frequency

How often should you tweet? Do you wake from the dead only when you have big news or do you try to maintain a regular heart-tweet? Many people suggest regular (but not too regular) tweeting. However, I don’t tweet at specific times and I sometimes skip an entire day. Nobody has complained yet.

2. Linking to your own blog

Personal promotion is frowned upon in one corner and expected in another. Should you broadcast your own links? If so, how often? Is this self-promotion like spam or is it simply a way of letting followers know when you’ve posted something new that should be of interest to them? Not everybody will subscribe to your site via RSS feeds, so I happily link out to my new blog posts. I tend to promote no more than once or twice and have no specific method.

3. Thanking for retweets

Do people expect to be thanked? Would they rather you didn’t bother thanking them? At what point does your following get too much to send out personal thanks each time someone retweets you? I thank those who retweet my own posts and links. I try to thank in other ways too.

4. Expecting to be followed back

If they don’t follow you, what’s the point in following them? If you value their content, does it matter if they don’t follow you? Are you looking for great content, personal communication, or both? New followers boost the ego, but you have to realize that not everyone will want to follow back. Reasons for not following don’t have to be personal or concerning, but it easily plays on the mind.

5. Using retweets

Where you should put the ‘RT’ in a tweet? Should you edit the retweet? Is it awful to you the official Twitter ReTweet button? Should you use ‘RT’, ‘rt’, ‘r/t’, ‘via’, ‘HT’ or something else? As Twitter has evolved, users have developed their own ways of communicating content. Even the simple retweet doesn’t have a clear right and wrong.

6. Too much of a single thing in your feed

Perhaps you only provide links, only copy quotations, only promote your own content, talk to yourself and not to others, say the same thing over and over again, and so on. Some users enjoy the reliable flow of the single element you bring to the table. Other users would prefer some variation. Do what feels comfortable to you. By all means surprise or change your game occasionally; just don’t surprise too often!

7. Gaps in tweeting

Should you spread out your tweets, or send them all at once when you’re on? Are automated tweets impersonal? Do people get upset if you don’t tweet at the weekend, or you miss out particular days? As with update frequency, nobody is going to complain of inconsistency.

8. Injecting personality

Should you talk about your personal life or should you provide value (unless you’re a celeb and can do both at the same time)? Should your personal life stay personal? For some, Twitter is a mere communication tool, not a lifestyle decision. For others, anything lacking a ‘human’ feel is too distant.

9. Going off topic

Will people unfollow you in droves if you suddenly write about something outside your field? If you mention a cause that you feel strongly about, is it asking for trouble? For some professional users, some care is necessary. For most, a bit of off topic banter is unlikely to shake someone’s confidence in following you.

10. Tweeting at particular times in the day

Is it best to tweet at peak times, all day long, during working hours, or whenever you like? Are you missing out on the best times for your followers? I tweet mainly to students and academics in higher education. I try not to tweet a study tips link at 3am, because most students will either be sleeping or partying. The link is more likely to be missed at that time. For greatest exposure, understand what hours best suit you. 3am may be wasted for me, but it’s perfect for someone tweeting sleep tips to insomniacs.
What next?

The use of Twitter brings up more questions than answers. There is no single way of using the service effectively.

The one piece of advice I’d give is this: Don’t panic about each unfollow you get. For every user who doesn’t appreciate your content, there are loads of users who will be happy with your output. Focus on developing a unique presence, not a concoction of what one or two users demanded. Your job is to listen and respond, not to roll over and obey.

You’ll never know exactly what everyone wants. Enjoy creating tweets that work for you. Eventually, you should enthuse, engage and inform others in the process. Genuine output is not only accepted, but also the most likely way to get you loyal, engaging followers.

© 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips.



10 Controversial Twitter ‘How To’ Issues

• Keep your tweets short and leave at least 25 characters with free space. ¿Why? In order to get RTs your tweet will need that free space to contain the RT and @username. Besides, short tweets get more RTs because they look nicer and cleaner than long ones and, above all, because lazy people don’t like to read too much, and the Internet and Twitter is plenty of lazy people .

• The content of your tweet must be interesting and eye-catching.

• Just ask on your tweet for a RT. I don’t use it but I know many people who apply this technique and works quite well for them. For example: “Looking Into the Mirror of Life – http://su.pr/193M7S – Please RT!”

• Place strategically some call-to-action buttons on your blog to make easier for your followers to share your content. If you use wordpress I recommend you to download and use the smart sharing plugin just as Mashable.com does.

• Make some RTs to your followers. Some of them will want to return you the favour. If they don’t do you can’t get upset with them. Well you can but you shouldn’t because they don’t force you to RT their tweets; it was your choice.

• You can create a group of 5 to 10 twitter buddies and share your own tweets. I don’t apply this tip because it has two potential negative effects: (1) I don’t think that your followers will be happy to see the same people’s tweets time and again; and (2), it’s quite probable that your buddies don’t have the same or similar amount of followers as you have.

• Use hashtags in an effective way. I suggest you to add just one hashtag or even two but not more. ¿Why? Because they make your tweet look dirty and, at the same time, you would seem a spammer.

• Find some twitter users in your niche. Create a new column using TweetDeck with their @username. Check the RTs they receive and follow those people who made the retweet. If you’re lucky they will follow you back. If they don’t you can try replying some of their tweets or Retweeting them. You can identify who don’t follow you back and unfollow them manually with who.unfollowed.me.

• Make sure your blog posts have great and eye-catching titles.

• Send your tweet several times over the day. You can schedule your tweets with su.pr.

• Be grateful to people for retweeting your tweets. Don’t thank all at the same time. Each follower who RT your content deserve your complete attention and your sincere gratitude.

• And finally, my best piece of advice: be a good twitter user, be social, actively engage your followers, build meaningful relationships and your retweets will skyrocket for sure.

Follow these tips and your tweets will receive more retweets than ever before.

¿Did you like this post? Please, share it with your followers. Thanks, my friends.

© 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips.



How to Get More Retweet Action on Twitter

Messages exchanged during conversation are not stored or published on the web or anywhere else.

Bidirectional relationships (people followed and following you) are set as chat friends so if you are a massive twitter user with tons of followers don’t expect to see them if you are not following them. Unfortunately, this service is probably unusable with classic client software if you have thousand of bidirectional relations.

© 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips.



Twitter XMPP Instant Messaging with Treegger

The difference between marketing methods of old and social media marketing is that customers have a say. The success of a social media campaign is dependent not upon how much money is spent, but upon the people being marketed to. If the message works and they like the product, the masses will Tweet it to the rest of the masses. If it doesn’t, the campaign might not even get past the initial push, and will likely spiral into oblivion.

It’s All about the People

There’s one factor that you can’t control, and that’s people. Knowing that, you have to make the most of what you can control, which are the tools at your disposal. In this case, we’ll be talking Twitter, but it also works for Twitter, Facebook, Email Marketing, and video.

So how can you use Twitter for a product launch? Well, there are the obvious methods, such as using the TweetMeme plugin on your blog and product pages. People love to click these because it’s so simple, and I’m really amazed when I find a blog that doesn’t use it.

Forcing Your Hand

Another option is to create your own banner, with a built in link pointing to your launch page. Again, this works well because people can simply click and go…there’s no work involved. My friend Mike and I implemented this recently for our launch and within just a few days have noticed a huge difference in the buzz around our product.

But just creating the banner might not be enough. If you want to create a contest or track the amount of ReTweets, you’ll need a hashtag or custom URL. We created both, so that we could track each message that we create. This is an example of setting a control, so that you can not only track the results, but split-test what works best. If one hash tag isn’t working well, you can try another. If one of your URL’s isn’t seeing the amount of on-page action that you’d like, you can adjust your copy to fix it.

Real Time Tracking

Once you have your campaign in place, and you’ve set the parameters, you need to find a way to track the activity. This is where Twitter Search comes in quite handy.

However, since I’m not a huge fan of Twitter’s interface, I prefer to use clients like Tweet Deck or Seesmic to create custom searches. Of course, I’ll create a panel for my hashtag and possibly my URL, but I don’t stop there.

The next step is to set up a Google Alert, using those same queries, so that you can catch any instances that Twitter Search might miss. This also allows you to capture the activity of sites like Topsy, which republish popular Tweets. Although Twitter Search will capture most of your action, Google Alerts will pick up the stragglers for you.

Real Time Display

Lastly, if you really want to take advantage of Twitter to capture the buzz and hype around your product launch, then it’s time to show the world what everyone is saying. You can do this easily by creating a custom search (they call them groups) in Tweetizen and then embedding the results on sales and contest pages.

This does a number of things for you:

• It provides social proof
• It creates scarcity, which is a great way to capture a buyer’s attention
• It creates a sense of belonging when people see their name in the results

I’ve seen a number of products use this recently, and even as someone that’s used to seeing this sort of thing, I was impressed by the sense of belief I had when viewing the results.

The Total Package

If you implement these techniques in your launch, you’ll have a set of controls that you can test and manipulate, which will help you know very quickly if your launch is going to be a hit. If you don’t see the activity you were hoping for, then you can either adjust your campaign or scrap it for another.

If you pull it off, and the launch builds momentum, then you might get lucky enough to make the Twitter Trends list or get featured on a social media blog, like Mashable.

The great thing about strategies like this, is that you don’t need any cash to get started, yet you can compete with anyone on the Web. Now that’s power.

© 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips.



How to Use Twitter for a Product Launch

“Damn, they’re burying him with that watch we got him for his birthday.”

Or…

“They’re lowering him into the ground now, I hope the winches don’t jam.”

Or, maybe…

“Cousin Jan looks HOT in black.”

How about…

“You’re a %#@&$ idiot for asking if I’m going to tweet during Lou’s funeral.”

Certainly there are times when it’s not only proper to tweet, but also encouraged. For example; tweeting during your child’s school play is not cool (well, maybe just one tweet for friends if you attach a picture of your kid on stage). On the other hand, tweeting during a TweetUp at NASA Headquarters is cool.

Regardless of the circumstance, one would hope that common sense would prevail. However, for those of you who are uncertain, I offer the following guide of common circumstances when it would not be appropriate to tweet.

When is it NOT OK to Tweet?

When visiting the bathroom
Do I have to explain this one? And for god’s sake, NEVER twitpic!

While driving
Just Never!  Never!  Never!  Never!  Never!  Never!

Spending time with family
Full Disclosure; I’ve been guilty of this. However, after realizing that tweeting while you’re supposed to be spending quality time with family is like wearing a huge neon sign that says “I’d rather be doing almost anything else then be here with you,” I am working hard to break the habit (no one’s perfect).

When teaching children, or doing just about anything with children, unless you are tweeting with them.
Children deserve your full attention. For more info, see “Spending time with family.”

Before sex
Nothing turns off a partner more. See, “I’d rather be doing almost anything else than be here with you.”

During sex
Really? You tweeted during sex? I think you’ve got other issues to worry about.

After sex
Congratulations, you had sex. I’m so impressed (not!).

During a meal
Only if you’re dining alone.

While preparing a meal
Only if you’re not working near an open flame or with sharp utensils. Otherwise, it’s okay, but only if your followers are “foodies.”

During religious ceremonies
Really? Do you want to take that chance?
Actually, it might be okay if it’s for educational purposes or you’re sharing the event with members of the congregation.

During Funerals
You did read the opening paragraphs, right? However, if you’re commemorating the event for those who could not make it to the funeral, then it might be okay, but only if you are not part of the actual funeral procession. I’d also advise not to let anyone see you.

During a Presidential Address to Congress

• If you’re a Congressmen: Your Head of State is speaking to you. Show some respect and pay attention or you may find yourself looking for another job.
• If you’re the General Public: In this case, you are almost certainly not in the Capitol Building, so tweeting would be perfectly acceptable and would be a great educational use for Twitter.

During Surgery

• If you’re the surgeon or an active participant: No.
• If you’re a student or observer: Only if you have received written permission from the patient, doctors, hospital, etc. If so, then it’s OK, especially for educational purposes.

While Working
Please consult your company’s Human Resources Department or Employee Handbook, and use your head. You’re there to work, so work. Also, if tweeting could compromise your own or someone else’s safety, then DON’T Tweet! Finally, if you’re involved in sales, marketing, recruiting or similar tasks, then Twitter can be a helpful tool, but get your boss’s permission anyway.

During a Business Meeting
Unless specifically asked to do so, or unless tweeting is required, your job requires you to pay close attention during any meeting. Otherwise, you may miss the part of the conversation where you are being replaced.

When meeting with people (or clients) whom you don’t like or respect
Just remember what your Mom said, “If you don’t have anything nice to say, then don’t say anything.”

How much you dislike your job, boss, friends, family, etc.
Don’t do it. Once it’s out there, it’s public and you may find that you can’t apologize.

While stuck on an airplane that has not taken off for several hours
I personally support some form of a Passenger’s Bill of Rights, so if you find yourself in such a situation, it may actually help airline personnel learn of your predicament and motivate them to take action, or not.

When it IS OK to tweet.

When planning a crime
Go ahead. The police don’t even know what Twitter is, anyway.

When committing a crime (even if it’s just bananas)
Stealing is Stealing. Didn’t your Mom teach you that either?

Witnessing a crime
Actually, you should report crimes to the appropriate authorities first. Surely you can wait to tweet about it until after you report it. Just don’t mention that you reported it. The perpetrator may be savvy enough to use Twitter’s new geo-location features to find you and thank you.

Contemplating or committing suicide
Please, please, please reach out and speak to someone, anyone. I want you to be around to thank me later.

Traffic updates
We know that no one ever tweets while driving; it’s their passengers. Either way, you can get reports of traffic conditions faster than any other service. Just be sure to check before you start the car (see, item two in “When is it NOT OK to Tweet” above)

Job opportunities
Twitter is filled with people announcing job opportunities. Check out TwitterJobSearch. It’s probably the best tool to search for tweets mentioning jobs based on your search criteria.

Local/National Emergencies
See “Witnessing a crime” above.

During a Commute
Only if you are NOT the person operating the vehicle.

While trapped in an elevator for 41 hours
Be sure to try the emergency phone first. However, if both that phone and your cell phone can’t get a signal; you may be close enough to the Starbucks in the lobby to get their WiFi.

Surely there are many other times when it’s OK, or not OK to tweet, so please leave your ideas in the Comments. I’d love to tweet about them.

© 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips.



When NOT to Tweet

For all the hoopla that surrounds Twitter and the myriad of apps (applications) that have sprung up to help people manage and make sense of it, I haven’t seen a single article singing the praises of Twitter’s basic search tool. And sing they should! The basic search tool that resides in the sidebar of everyone’s Twitter page is one of the quickest and easiest ways to find people, answers, trends and, if used wisely, customers and clients the world over. Here is a brief explanation of how it works and some suggestions for how it can work for you! To begin, it is a search box, just like any other. You type in a term and it searches the Twitterverse, returning, in moments with a list of posts including that word. Now, at first glance, this may not seem impressive – Google has spoiled us so badly that short of bring us a cup of coffee with the list of results, we just aren’t going to be impressed. But the power here is that through this box, we are able to essentially listen in on a zillion mini conversations throughout the world and target those that are about things that are of importance to us. Then we can introduce ourselves and join those conversations! Used wisely, this tool really can, pretty much, introduce you to a world of potential customers and clients.

Suppose you have a high end snowboard and ski shop. You sell equipment both in a brick and mortar location (a store) and over the internet. Type the word “skiing” in the search box and voila, you have literally pages and pages of people talking about skiing. Ditto on the term ‘snowboard’. I tried this as an experiment today and, since it is September, there were a lot of people still tweeting about water skiing but, being that the Twitterverse is truly worldwide, there were also posts by a lucky few that were enjoying some beautiful Spring skiing. And there were plenty of people already talking about snow skiing, about their ski plans and even about ski and snowboard equipment. As you can imagine, you could also plug in a key destination like ‘Vail’, a company who’s equipment you carry or a term like ‘Alpine’ and each search would give you literally dozens of people that are skiers and snowboarders, many, if not all of them, potential customers!

Now, you just need to decide which of these people you would like to introduce yourself to. Read through the posts and see which seem like a good match. Are there people you can help, people that could use your advice? If some guy is talking about buying a board that is known to be unstable in some way – you can reach out and mention that. Or your shop offers it at a great price – share that too! Someone may be tweeting about having a hard time finding equipment because she is really tall – you can send her an article you wrote about that or hook her up with a product line that specializes in big and tall items. You can do this by hitting ‘reply’ to the post, or, if you are both following each other, via direct message. Keep in mind that these posts can only be 140 characters long or less so if you want to share more info, you will need to follow each other and share your email address via direct message.

Someone that posted “I hate skiing” or “I dread the snow” may appear in your search results but is probably not someone that you need to reach out to. But if they are talking about how they can’t wait to start skiing or if they are out shopping for a new snowboard, you may want to contact them. The great thing about this tool is that you decide which conversations to join!

You can start to ‘follow’ some of these potential customers to get to know them better and to start a relationship. To ‘follow’ someone, you click on their @name (this is their username, it may not be their real name) which take you to their Twitter ‘page’ where you can click on the button below their icon that says ‘follow’.

Then you need to make sure that you keep up your end of the conversation as well. Post links to interesting snow sport related articles, new product, Mass Unfollow People You Follow, info and tips on finding the right equipment. Post snow reports and anything else that might be of interest. The idea is to build a relationship but even more importantly, to share your expertise and to let them get to know you. And to make sure that someone out there using the search box to look for snow sport equipment, can find you!

Depending on how much time and energy you want to devote to this effort, you could potentially gather hundreds of people to ‘follow’ at which time you would probably want to utilize an application like TweetDeck or one of the other ‘follower management’ tools to keep track of who you are following and which are potential customers.

The next step is to convert these followers to customers. To facilitate this transition, I would suggest creating a page on your website with a special “Twitter follower” coupon geared to encourage people to walk into your store and another for discounts on online purchases. You can then offer these to your potential customers by simply ‘replying’ to one of their posts or, if they are following you back, via direct message. To do this you can just write a note and post the url of the page that has the offer. If these people have grown to know and trust you, they will follow the link, driving traffic to your site and hopefully to your stores – both online and off!

And all of this because of the humble little search box. Let us all take a moment to give thanks!

© 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips.



An Ode to Twitter’s Search Tool

As useful and fun as Twitter can be, it can also be both addictive and a major distraction. Many times in the past I’ve tried to write a blog post or work on some other big project and I’d lose my focus because I had Twitter open and kept getting drawn to it, wanting to tweet something, see what others were tweeting or just reply to somebody. Of course, this is a common and well documented problem with most social media sites, but I’ve found Twitter to be particularly bad, if for no other reason that it’s so simple and quick to use.

It’s now increasingly documented that multi-tasking, and just generally allowing distractions into your life is a poor way of getting things done. If you’re tweeting while trying to do your work, that work will take much longer and require more effort to do. If you don’t want to waste your time like that, try implementing these four tips when using Twitter:

Set limits

The first, and perhaps most effective measure is to set limits. That could involve having particular days on when to tweet, setting time limits or even tweet limits (how many tweets you will make per day). Rather than dipping in and out of Twitter when it calls to you, putting aside perhaps an hour a day or choosing Saturday to use it when you know you’re going to be least busy, means you can really give your tweeting the attention it deserves, and thus shut it out of your mind the rest of the time.

Identify what you want to achieve

You like Twitter. You use it regularly. Why? Why are you craving all those followers and tweeting fifty times a day? So many people use Twitter without understanding what they’re getting out of it. Are you trying to promote a product? Make new friends? Interact with interesting people? Identify what you want to get out of your Twitter experience so that you can tweet with purpose and focus. Tweeting for the sake of it is a very easy-but-bad habit to slip into.

What value are you offering?

Sorry to say it, but the vast bulk of tweets are irrelevant. Tweeting every little thought and activity you have and do is pointless (and it has indeed caused Twitter a lot of ridicule in the past). If you think a little before each tweet as to whether it has value, meaning and worth, both to yourself, your followers and the wider audience, you will make your overall Twitter experience and the time you put into it much more satisfying and meaningful.

Cut out distractions

When I originally downloaded Tweetdeck, as useful as I found it to be, it was initially also a big attention whore. Beeping every time it updated, refreshing every couple of seconds… it was so distracting, it was difficult to not be drawn away from whatever else I was doing. I’ve now tamed it to the point where I can look at it when I want to. The same goes for whatever app you use, including any email notifications you might get from Twitter. And of course if that doesn’t work, just use the golden rule – close Twitter until you’re ready to use it!

© 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips.



Tame The Beast: How To Use Twitter So It Doesn’t Suck Up Your Time And Attention