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

Just like in real life, your online social life will expand to fit any amount of time you give it.  Twitter is the most notorious for this “productivity drain” – that’s why talented programmers have taken it upon themselves to create new ways to make managing your online social life even easier.  Here are seven of the most popular software applications you can use to effortlessly keep up with Twitter (and other popular networks) even when you can’t be constantly connected.

1. Twitterberry – If you have a Blackberry, you can use the free Twitterberry application to post directly to Twitter.  You don’t even need to use SMS as Twitterberry accesses and posts tweets directly over the network.  One potential downside is that posting and gathering tweets can be slower than what you’re used to.  Twitter itself limits tweet requests to about 70 per hour and Twitterberry accesses them even less frequently than that, according to their FAQ.

2. Tweetie – A superb application for managing your tweets from your iPhone, Tweetie integrates alerts (like Tweetbeep.com), a search function and multiple accounts so you can stay connected at all times. If you’re looking for alternative iPhone Twitter clients, you might also like to try Hahlo, Tweetsville or Twittelator Pro

3. SocialToo – Keep your updates and followers synched across several social networks.  In addition to Twitter, SocialToo also works with Facebook, Identi.ca, and RSS.  You can also use it to create and submit surveys across your social network. SocialToo will auto-follow anyone who follows you but there is a filtering option available to prevent spammers from clogging up your Twitter timeline.

4. Twitterfox – Use Firefox to manage your tweets and see when your friends have updated theirs through a small, unobtrusive notification button. If you’d rather not download a Twitter software program and use your browser to stay up-to-date on Twitter, Twitterfox is the program for you.

5. Tweet All About It – Right up there with tweeting directly from Firefox is Tweet All about It, which lets you highlight and tweet any snippet of text using Internet Explorer or Firefox.  The Firefox version will also show you how many characters you’ve highlighted.  Tweet your snippet by right clicking and choosing Tweet All About It.

6. PowerTwitter – A free Firefox extension that lets you do broad and user-based searches, as well as post inline links to YouTube, Flickr, TwitPic, Google Maps and more. Also shrinks and unwinds links – helpful for when you’re not sure where that TinyURL really goes.  Works with #hashtags too.

7. EventBox – One for the Mac users!  Not free, but at $15, EventBox is a great way to keep all your social services in one place.  Works with Twitter, Facebook, Google Reader, RSS and Flickr to name a few.  View photos, see friend updates and post your Tweets from one sleek application

Just for Fun

So you’ve been using Twitter for awhile – but just how much has it benefitted you?  Here are a couple of interesting ways to see just how broad your reach is, or how much time you’ve wasted, with Twitter.

Twitalyzer – See just how much influence you really have on Twitter.  Measures your influence, signal-to-noise ratio, generosity, clout and more.  See just how popular you are in the Twitterverse

Tweetwasters – How much time do you spend on Twitter?  According to Tweetwasters which calculates approximately how much time you spend on Twitter by the number of your tweets, @problogger has spent nearly 4 days of his life connected to Twitter!

If you have a great social networking software recommendation that helps you stay up to date on Twitter, why not post it in the comments below?

© 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips.



7 Free Twitter Software Programs for Managing Your Online Social Life

I’ll be honest – I’ve been on Twitter longer than Laura Roeder has (well, only three weeks longer, but still, I have to claim what I can). But there’s one big difference between how the last 12 months have played out for the both of us. While I have a healthy enough Twitter following – almost 1.5 followers per person I follow – Laura has a staggering 8 followers per person she follows.

Clearly, Laura knows something I don’t. Maybe a whole lot of somethings. So when she launched her “Backstage Pass to Twitter” webinar a few weeks ago, I had to take a look … and here’s my review.

Part One: Establishing Credibility

Usually when you want to look into someone’s credibility, you Google the heck out of their name and look into what other people are saying about them. But since this is Twitter, I went to TwitterCounter.com instead and graphed her Twitter growth as compared to mine:

TwitterCounter is a nice enough service, but it doesn’t show the whole story. To be fair here, at the beginning of the graph I’m way ahead of Laura, mainly because it was around this time that I started following lots and lots of people in my niches, so I naturally had a good portion of follow backs.

But Laura’s growth was strictly organic (she only follows 1 person for every 8 that follow her). So where I started out with twice as many followers as her because I was following people like crazy, she leapfrogged me because people were following her like crazy. So, establishing credibility is done here.

Part Two: Who This Webinar is For

Surprisingly, this webinar covers a lot of ground, weighing in at a mighty 5 hours of content. That’s gives Laura the time to cover a wide range of content, for a wide range of Twitter users. Overall I’d say the content balances out at about 30% entry-level content (what Twitter is, Twitter etiquette, etc.) and 70% mid-level and advanced tactics.

If you’re totally new to Twitter, this webinar will take care of you with no worries. You’ll go through the entire 5 hours of content and get up to speed pretty quickly. With almost 2000 followers right now, I’m a more seasoned user, but there were still some good nuggets I got out of the beginner sections, especially when it comes to choosing what user name to use (something I flubbed on in the beginning – once I changed my name, my followers increased faster) and how to handle your profile link/custom background.

But I really look at this webinar as an advanced course that throws the beginner stuff in there for free. What caught my attention was Section Two (Maximizing Twitter Time). Looking back, I spent a lot of time building up my follower list, and I would have loved to have kept that time with a minimum – and on top of that, I’ve felt like keeping on top of Twitter was getting a bit unmanageable. So even as an advanced user, this webinar held a lot of value for me.

Bottom line: I can’t really think of anyone this webinar wouldn’t have value for.

Part Three: What’s In the Webinar

Here’s a breakdown of the four sections of the webinar (each clocking in a little over an hour)

Section One: Beyond The Basics of the Tweet

• Getting started: usernames, photos, backgrounds, link
• Settings/notifications in Twitter
• Advice on following: Should follow everyone who follows you?
• When it’s appropriate to use @ message as opposed to direct messages
• Avoiding Twitter profile mistakes

As I said, this is the section that advanced users can skip at first, but it would be a good idea to come back to it later. there are a few “Oh snap” moments in here where you may discover you’re making a simple error in how you handle your profile that can negatively affect your follow rate.

Section Two: Maximizing Twitter Time

• Free tools to streamline your time on twitter
• How much time you really need to spend on twitter every week to see results
• How to update all of your social media sites at once
• How to make your twitter account and website to “talk” to each other so that they’re promoting and sending traffic to each other
• Laura’s “ten minute twitter drill”

This section is worth the price of the entire webinar, in my opinion. Time is money, and I got a lot out of learning how to leverage Twitter more efficiently so it wasn’t such a time drain. After going through this section I’m spending a lot less time on Twitter and seeing better results for the time I’m putting in.

Section Three: Twit-etiquette and Twitter Culture

• The commonly sent message that makes newbies look bad
• What topics are OK on twitter and which ones are taboo
• How to introduce yourself to new people on twitter
• How to increase your follower list without using spammy methods
• Laura’s big strategy for getting hundreds more followers than Dave, even though he’s been on Twitter longer than you, Laura (ok, let’s just say this is a sore spot for me, I’m working through it!)
• How to form authentic connections with twitter VIPs
• The real reasons people unfollow

As an advanced user (and coming from a heavy marketing/customer relations background), I came into this section knowing a lot of it, but for those who haven’t been doing self-promotion for the last 10 years, there’s a lot to learn here – especially when it comes to forming real connections with people farther up the “food chain.”

This is huge, because if you’re looking to build your business by networking and getting exposure on Twitter, this is the section you need to listen to at least twice. Personally, I’d say that 50% of my revenue growth over the last year can be attributed to Twitter, so don’t underestimate what it can bring to your business.

Section Four: Selling & Promotion on Twitter

• The twitter monetization method that is guaranteed to backfire in the end
• How to avoid certain promotion tactics that will make you lose followers
• How to woo potential clients without ever being sales-y or pushy
• How to get others to retweet your sales messages and have them spread virally
• Laura’s personal strategy for under-the-radar selling on twitter
• The common mistake that ensures that your followers will never become buyers (and what to do instead)

Whoo, this is an important section for all twitter users. Selling is always a touchy issue unless it’s done in an exceptionally elegant way, and it’s the little things that make the difference between a pushy message and a message others want to spread for you. Again, with a marketing background, I had figured out a lot of this on my own, but I still learned a lot from this section in terms of subtle tactics that let you promote without being pushy.

Part Four: What I Liked / Didn’t Like

I liked the content, plain and simple. It was useful and relevant, and I really liked how the two “beginner” sections (One and Three) actually had things in it I hadn’t thought of before. I’m not sure if Laura did this on purpose, but she included one bullet point in each of those sections that made me say “Crap, I thought I could skip this section, but now I’ve got to know this.” And by doing that, it forced me to listen and learn new things from topics that I thought I was already well-versed in.

I also liked Laura. She doesn’t come across as a know it all, and she backs up all her recommendations

with good, real-world examples that you can immediately use (I’ve even had her guest post about Twitter on my own blog because I like her style).

I also liked her 6-month guarantee. Not many people have the guts to push a guarantee this long.

What I didn’t like – and this is a very personal thing – was that there weren’t any transcripts with the webinar. I’m big on transcripts, because I speed read and I can go the transcript and take notes in a fraction of the time that watching video takes. In fact, I didn’t watch the videos – I downloaded the MP3s of the sessions and played them at double speed so I could move through them quickly (what can I say, I’m impatient).

I’d recommend to Laura that she throw in some transcripts because they’re coming to be a more “expected” feature of information products these days.

Part Five: Is This Worth It For You?

Price is a big area where people get easily hung up, so I just want to tell you that you need to frame your expectations to this or any other info product according to the wise words of Warren “I’m the second richest person on Earth” Buffet: “Price is what you pay, value is what you get.”

Now, Laura’s selling this webinar for $197, which may seem high to a lot of people (and I know this in spades, given all the crazy comments I received from my own $97 ebook featured here on Problogger). But as I said in the comments there, price is irrelevant when you’re thinking about value.

If you’re just going to dabble on Twitter, and you like having lots of people to chat with, then this probably isn’t the product you need to be buying.

But if you’re using Twitter as a business building tool, then the only question for you is how much business you want to bring in via Twitter. For most people who are building a business online, this price is a non-issue because it’s easily recouped with a few product sales or a new client or two. And if you’re a blogger (which, if you’re reading this, you probably are), it’s a question of how much traffic you want to bring to your site via Twitter. Thinking about the $197 is small-time thinking. Focusing on what you can get is the criteria you should use with every buying decision.

Part Six: The Bottom Line

What Laura doesn’t realize is that she’s just given me the ammunition I need to turn the Twitter tide and overtake her in followers (I’m coming for you, Laura, the game is ON). If you want to bring in more business this year using Twitter, then you’ll want to take a closer look at Laura Roeder’s Backstage Pass To Twitter Webinar.

© 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips.



Review of Laura Roeder’s Backstage Pass To Twitter Webinar

While Twitter offers a few themes for your background and color them, if you’re an active twitter user you’re more likely to notice and appreciate a unique theme that helps you see the personality of another twitterer. Making your twitter presence a bit more colorful isn’t very hard and here are few suggestions you might want to consider for choosing a great color theme for your twitter profile:

Things to Consider When Choosing a Color Theme

1.) Personality. Let the colors speak for your personality… professional, fun, wacky, natural, etc.

Obviously, the Internet and social networks are all about transparency and truthfulness, and everyone treats them in that way… well, okay, maybe it’s more about forming the person you truly see yourself as; who you truly are without outside pressures or expectations. So, choose colors that align with your own style and taste. However, while you may be really proud of the university you attended, the colors you so proudly spilled beer all over don’t really speak to who you actually are, only one aspect about you.

2.) No Seizures. Super bright and colorful makes a theme very hard to look at.

As the main purpose of Twitter is to communicate information, you’ll want stay away from choosing any ‘Pokémon Shock‘ color themes as it will only distract from the few carefully chosen characters you put in each tweet.

3.) Contrast. Make sure there is a noticeable difference between your background, main text and link colors.

Unless you are @hidenseek and you want people to have to decipher each of your updates, make sure the colors you choose are not too monochromatic or analogous with your text and links. For the most readability choose complimentary colors or stick with the classic black on white.

4.) Fresh. Updating your theme is easy… so why not let it reflect your evolving life.

If you’ve got enough spare moments to let us know about that meany 6-egg omlette your stomach is now doing battle with, then you have enough time to change up your color theme or background from time to time…. And we’ll make it super easy for you by sharing with you some color love:

Color Palettes and Patterns for Your Twitter Profiles

Find a Great Color Palette

First find a palette that speaks to you. You can search through the over 700,000 palettes on COLOURlovers by most popular or by specific colors you want in the palette. If you know you love blue, then simply enter the Hex of your favorite shade or choose blue from the drop down hue menu.

Once you find a palette you love, click on it to bring up the palette page where the individual colors can be identified. Located below each palette is the Hex of each color that makes up the palette. You will need to use these numbers to change the colors on your twitter profile. So, copy these to a text document or keep the palette page open while you open up your twitter page.

Once you have your Twitter page open select ‘Settings’ from the menu, then ‘Design’, then ‘Change Design Colors’.

There you’ll see the breakdown of page the section colors and the corresponding Hex boxes. From here simply copy over the colors from the palette page. You may need to play around to find the best options for the background, sidebar, text and links. Once you get the theme you want click on ’save changes’ to share it with the world.

Using or Creating a Pattern

If you are looking for a pattern to use, follow the same instructions on how to locate a palette only use the ‘Pattern search’, or you can create a custom pattern from any palette by simply clicking ‘Create a Pattern’ on any palette page. One note should be mentioned, while palette and patterns already in the library are free to be downloaded by everyone, in order to create a custom pattern you will first need to sign up for COLOURlovers. It is quick, simple and painless to join the community of over 180,000.

From there you can browse through the selection of patterns with the drop down menu and pattern thumbnails to find the one you want. To make adjustments to the concentration and position of each color, change the order of the colors in the right hand column next to the preview of the pattern by clicking and dragging them. The best way is just to play around with it until you get it just right.

Once your pattern is created, click on ‘1600×1200′ under ‘Get This Pattern Image’ and save the image to your computer.

Open up your twitter page select ‘Settings’ from the menu, then ‘Desi

gn’, then ‘ Change Background Image’. Select the image from your computer and click ‘Save Changes’ to share it with the world.

A Small Gallery of Colorful Profiles from the Twittersphere

What Colorful Profiles Did We Miss?

Twitter is growing like mad these days and we only took a small sample of pretty themes to share in this post… undoubtedly there are tons more colourful, fun and charismatic twitter themes that we didn’t link up, one of those is probably yours. Leave a link in the comments below.

© 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips.



Twitter Profile Design Help from COLOURlovers

• Twitter desktop clients (I’m a fan of Twhirl and TweetDeck)
• Twitter Applications for iPhone (I’m a user of Twittelator Pro)
• Twitter user ranking services (like Twitterholic)
• Visualization tools (like TweetWheel)
• Tools to import RSS feeds to your Twitter account (I use Twitterfeed)
• Tools for setting tweets to go off later (Tweetlater)
• Metrics tool (TweetStats – Twinfluence)
• Tools for sharing pictures on Twitter (Twitpic)
• Services to tweet to groups (GroupTweet)
• Twitter Directories (Twellow)
• Tools for finding new people to follow (Twubble)
• Tools for helping you to track Twitter Conversations (Tweet2Tweet)
• Trend Tracking tools for what’s hot on Twitter (Twitscoop)
• Tools to help Twitter integrate with other applications (TwitterCal – which lets you add items to your Google calandar by Twitter)
• Services for groups to tag and organize tweets (HashTags)
• Twitter updaters (Ping.fm – which allows you to update status on multiple sites like Twitter)
• Twitter backup services (TweetTake)
• Services to let you track which links people are clicking on in your Tweets (TweetBurner)

These are just some of the tools services I’ve used in the last few weeks and they only scratch the surface at the hundreds of Twitter tools that are released.

What Twitter Tools and Services do you use? Leave the ones you love in comments below.

I’m looking forward to finding out which ones get mentioned most and finding some new ones that I’d not previously discovered.

© 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips.



What Twitter Tools and Services Do You Use?