The Problem

I participate in a number of weekly TwitChats. These TwitChats are often very educational and can be a lot of fun; that is, for the participants. For everyone else, they can be a real hassle.

The problem is that while you’re having a heated debate about the merits of origami (no offense to origami fans), you’re going to have followers who couldn’t care less. Moreover, if you fire off fifty or sixty tweets during an hour long TwiChat, you can really flood some of your follower’s streams. I’ve had plenty of people unfollow me because of this and if you participate in TwitChats, I’m sure you have too.

The Solution

Now, you might say that Hash Tags (#) are the solution, but they’re not. The Hash Tag evolved as a way for Twitter users to more easily find tweets on a specific topic. TwitChats are dependent upon them (just add a #Topic to any tweet and set up a search to find them).

Unfortunately (as mentioned above), when people whom you follow are participating in TwitChats, if you don’t filter out those tweets, you’re going to see every single tweet they send. Also, while Twitter does nothing to help you filter out unwanted Hash Tags, TweetDeck does have a filter feature, but I’ve never bothered to use it. Have you?

Finally, while I find setting up searches in Twitter and TweetDeck easy, many people simply do not. However, even if they do set up searches, it still does nothing about a user’s stream being flooded with unwanted tweets. Fortunately, there is a solution that Twitter could implement, and that solution is creating Channels.

How Channels Can Benefit the User

A Channel would simply be a Twitter stream that is parallel to the main Twitter stream, but isolated from that stream just as one TV channel is isolated from other TV channels. A user would only see that Channel if they intentionally visited that Channel’s page or followed it.

When in a Channel, the user could dispense with adding a Hash Tag to each tweet as everything being tweeted in that Channel should be on topic. Alternately, the user could use a Hash Tag if they’re discussing a related subtopic, or they could create a new channel (a SubChannel) under a main topic Channel, and it could extend from there.

For example, a Directory of Channels might look like this:

• Main Channel: Medicine, or Healthcare (whatever)
  • SubChannel: Diabetes
    • Sub(Sub)Channel: Type 1 Diabetes
    • Sub(Sub)Channel: Type 2 Diabetes
      • Sub(Sub, Sub)Channel: Type 2 Diabetes Research

We can figure out the nomenclature for SubChannels later, but I think the above structure is clear and simple enough.

A Few More Notes on Channels

• Channels would differ from Lists because while you can follow individual Lists, you still see every tweet of everyone on that list regardless of topic. Channels would create topic specific conversations.
• Users could set up Channels as being either Public or Private and invite participants.

How Channels can Benefit Twitter

While Channels could be setup by any Twitter user for any topic, they can also drive revenue for Twitter in two ways.

• Branded Channels: Companies and/or brands could setup their own channels and SubChannels and pay Twitter for the privilege. Perhaps Twitter could even charge different rates depending on Channel size. For example, $X for a Channel with 100 users following it and $XXX for a Channel with 100,000 users following it.
• Targeted Advertising: Since, by definition, Channels are topic specific, Twitter could charge much higher ad rates for Sponsored Tweets in those channels. Why? Because tweets in those Channels would be noticed by the target audience at much higher rates than on the main Twitter stream. Additionally, the Channel audience would be much more likely to respond to a Call to Action.

Btw, I know there are a lot of third-party services that enable groups in one fashion or another. In my experience, they don’t work all that well. Also, they tie you a specific third-party service and given Twitter’s recent history with their third-party developers, I would expect most of those services to disappear in the near future.

What do you think? Let me know in the comments.

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

© 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips.



Why Twitter Needs Channels

Twitter has been spending money left and right, and it seems that every time we turn around, they’re doing something to demolish what people have been used to. Their reasoning, they claim, is that they’re working to “avoid having the user stream disrupted”. Personally, I think it’s because they would rather make the money from advertising themselves, and not allow others to gain financially from the use of their API. They’ve got to pay back their investors somehow… right?

So rather than hire the brains behind the great ideas, they’re going to once again render them useless. They’re playing a much meaner game than Monopoly here, simply because they can. They’ve got the big bucks, as proven by their recent spend of $40M on TweetDeck.

I’m not a fan of web companies forgetting where they came from. I was actually okay with the purchase of TweetDeck, because it meant that the TD devs were recognized for their hard work in some way that actually satisfied them. I’m also aware that they can’t simply go around buying up existing companies, and that for all we know, they did try to buy up Twitpic and were refused. I’m sure we’ll find these things out sooner or later, but for the time being, I think it’s just pretty crappy to take over others’ ideas and make them your own because you’re afraid they’re making money you should be making.

Am I being unreasonable? I’m all for businesses growing, making more money, etc. but I’ve got issue with stepping on the hands of those that have fed you for years.

© 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips.



Twitter Kicks More 3rd Party Sites To The Curb

Twitter introduced the concept of lists about 16 months ago to enable the manual grouping of people into categories.

If you visit Formulists or Listorious you can type a keyword and see the different lists that people maintain. Searching for the keyword apples, for instance, you can read Twitter biographies of the 491 people who someone added to a list about honeycrisp apples. You can either follow the list or follow its members individually.

Any Twitter user can create his or her own list, or follow an existing list — such as the above one about apples.

I used to love creating lists. I embraced lists with passion and for the better part of two years I followed few people by way of the “follow” button and followed everyone else by lists instead. Because I kept changing the names of my lists and the people in each list, I also kept following and unfollowing different people.

But the passion is gone. I still like the concept and continue to follow some lists around government and public relations, but I’m tired of having my own lists. And, in fact, short of a local community list and a humor list, I deleted the other dozen lists I’d managed.

Because I use twitter.com as my primary view (and not third-party tools like Tweetdeck or Seesmic), it was time-consuming and unproductive to click a different list’s link every time I wanted to view its members’ recent tweets.

Which leads me to announce a new tactic in my ongoing quest for internet enrichment and resource productivity: I am once again following people outside of lists. It’s a tactic I once employed. I count 700+ people today (up from a mere 12 only two weeks ago). I don’t care about Klout scores and I don’t care if anyone I follow chooses to follow me back.

Do I look at twitter all day long? No.

Am I more productive since following people outside of lists? Yes.

Am I seeing more people’s names flow by quickly? Yes.

Will I see everyone’s tweet? No.

My purpose to tweet today has not changed since creating an account on day one. I tweet to enrich myself, to learn, and to share. Twitter lists, as helpful as they are to showcase people around categories, are less effective (to me) as a means of following and conversing with people.

But these are my thoughts about lists. How do you use lists?

© 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips.



Why Twitter Lists are Less Effective

Richard Barley

If you use TweetDeck then you may have heard of or met Richard Barley (@richardbarley), TweetDeck’s Community Manager. I first “met” Richard last year when he provided some thoughtful comments to a pair of posts I wrote about TweetDeck, 10 Features I Want to See in TweetDeck and 9 More Features I Want to See in TweetDeck.

I had planned to ask Richard for an interview, but it got put on hold on my end. Finally, after long delay, that interview is here (you can also listen to an extended version of this interview on my podcast, Addicted to Social Media).

Tell us about yourself. What did you do prior to working with TweetDeck?

Prior to joining TweetDeck I had been involved in IT support for my local council, then Help Desk manager for a local telecoms company, before eventually becoming a consultant for Cap Gemini working on CRM projects. From there I moved on to a similar position with BT, before ending up at RightNow Technologies.

Being on the road gave me lots of time in the evenings to get addicted to Twitter and start using TweetDeck. I eventually started supporting TweetDeck users in my spare time and wrote several blog articles about it, including a hugely popular series of FAQs, something that, at that time, Iain (Dodsworth, TweetDeck founder) was unable to produce as he was working entirely on his own. It wasn’t long before Iain noticed my work and offered me a job as Community Manager. This coincided very nicely with me leaving my previous position, so I joined the “team.” The rest, as they say, is history…

In your own works, why is TweetDeck so special?

I could go on for hours about the great features that make TweetDeck “special”, but that’s not really important. What IS important is *how* TweetDeck has become special. We are a small team working in a shared office in East London, working our socks off for this project that we are all hugely passionate about. We don’t have an office in Silicon Valley. We don’t hold big press conferences or feel the need to show our faces at every hipster event that goes on. We just quietly get on with building a great suite of products that people love to use. This attitude was the case when I first joined in July 2009 and remains the case now. This is what makes TweetDeck so special – fantastic products from a dedicated team who enjoy building amazing things with no fuss.

How many users are now using TweetDeck in its various versions?

We have several million active users and our desktop app has been downloaded over 15 Million times. Around 6 million tweets are sent from our apps each day, which we think is really rather cool.

What’s it like working with Iain Dodsworth?

TweetDeck Founder Iain Dodsworth

Working with Iain has often not been like working at all. Certainly, in the early days it was more like just getting together with a friend to hang out and chat to people online. Basically, he’s just a down-to-earth guy who has priorities very firmly set on his family, employees and his company rather than trying to be a celebrity in the tech “scene”. This is why he has so much respect from those that know him.

What was the genesis of the idea for Deck.ly?

Deck.ly came about for several reasons, the main one being that ever since I can remember, TweetDeck users have been clamoring for TwitLonger support in the app. It was our biggest, longest-running feature request and I was fielding tweets literally every day asking for it. Now, we were not keen at first, mainly, I guess, due to the fact that none of the team used TwitLonger and thus didn’t really think it a priority. Ultimately, I brought to the team the undeniable evidence of the huge support for the feature, so we looked into it.

We could, of course, have just implemented TwitLonger, but really, that’s not what we’re about now. We haven’t integrated new third party services for a long time because we’re now in a position to be able to build our own. By offering a “long update” service, we realized that we could grow and expand into other areas, lifting us away from some of the shackles of individual networks and offering more of a TweetDeck layer on top, thus adding value and bringing integrated services that would have previously been impossible.

Deck.ly is pretty controversial. Why the controversy?

There was some controversy when we launched “Deck.ly” long updates. It certainly divided the user base with some offering their hand in marriage in thanks for finally bringing long updates and others cursing us to eternal damnation for destroying everything that is good about Twitter. We admitted that our very first release had some flaws. With no way to disable the long update feature, accidental long posts were far too easy to send. But we moved quickly and issued several updates to the app based on feedback from the users and we now think that we have a good flow in place with the option to disable long updates if you wish.

So, as for the controversy… well I’m not going to fan the flames, but it is interesting to note that both UberTwitter and Twitter for iPhone had TwitLonger support over a year ago. Lots of other very popular apps have the same or similar functionality. We are, in some ways, flattered that so much has been said about our implementation of what is, on the face of it, pretty much the same thing.

Is Deck.ly going to compete with Twitter?

No, Deck.ly is not a competitor to Twitter any more than TwitLonger is, or Tumblr, or Posterous or any of the multitudes of other apps out there that post tweets with a link to see more detail.

Any plans to buy out Loic Le Meur and Seesmic?

We won’t comment on acquisition rumors. Sorry.

I recently set up a search to follow tweets about the Space Shuttle Discovery’s launch on STS-133 and noticed that there was a promoted tweet at the top of the column that remained in a fixed position even when I scrolled through the column. Is this a deal directly with TweetDeck or did it get pulled in via Twitter? Is it part of TweetDeck’s monetization strategy?

We introduced support for Twitter’s promoted tweets several months ago and this is a good example. They only appear in search columns where the search terms match a keyword that has been purchased. Twitter has a page about promoted tweets here

What do you think of Klout scores being introduced to Twitter (via chrome plug-in)?

To be honest, having tried many “influence ranking” systems, I have yet to find any one that is more than vaguely helpful to me. I’m sure such services are great and a lot of people put a lot of importance on such “scores”, but for me I find the whole idea rather “meh”…

What’s next for TD?

First priority for us now is to launch our brand new iPhone app. We’ve been building a totally new iOS app from scratch for the last few months and we’re just about ready to unleash that on the world. It’s such a great app, taking the best bits from our hugely successful Android app, blending in some of the great features from our Chrome app, along with some seriously cool new magic specifically for iOS. So that’s coming up in the next few weeks. We’re also looking to take our Chrome app and build versions that will run on the other major browsers out there. So soon, you’ll be running TweetDeck in the likes of Firefox & Safari. We also have a bunch of new services to launch, including cross-platform column sync amongst other things. There’s so much going on!

If I ask nicely, can I get a feature built into TD?

Ha-ha! Well that depends how nicely you ask and if you send donuts  Seriously, though, it’s my job to listen to the users and make sure that their requirements are being met by TweetDeck as much as possible. We can’t always promise to do everything people ask for, but if it’s important enough for our users to be demanding it, I will always fight in their corner to have it considered.

~

I like to add a personal thanks to Richard for both his time and for being such a great interview subject. Remember, you can listen to an extended version of this interview on my podcast, Addicted to Social Media.

Do you have a question for Richard? Add your question to the comments and we’ll see if we can him to answer a few.

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

© 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips.



An Interview with TweetDeck’s Richard Barley

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

Surprise, Surprise?

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

Yes! And, No.

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

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

So, why is Twitter doing this?

For some insight, consider the following:

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

Buyer Beware

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

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

My Prediction

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

One can only hope.

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

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

© 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips.



Twitter’s Black Friday Signals an Exit Strategy

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

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

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

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

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

© 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips.



4 Twitter Tips for College Students Seeking A Career

One benefit to using Twitter.com is the ability to send and receive Tweets more quickly. Apps can only retrieve messages in intervals so there is usually at least a short delay in receiving messages. Users of Twitter.com can send and receive instantly without having to wait.

Another perk to using the website is that there is no limit to the number of times you can Tweet. Apps have API limits which restrict how many times data can be retrieved per hour. That limit has been decreased recently which makes it more likely a user will see an “API limit reached” message when using a Twitter app.

A third perk to using the Twitter website is the ability to use the new Retweet functionality. This functionality allows users to directly send a Tweet with the click of one button. Many apps don’t contain this functionality and won’t allow users to see Tweets that have been sent with this method.

The ability to see special hashtag functionality is yet another benefit to using Twitter.com. On special occasions, Twitter will sometimes enable special functionality that will appear when a specific hashtag is used. For example, using the hashtag #WorldCup during the World Cup made a soccer ball icon appear in the Tweet. This was only visible to users of Twitter.com.

A fifth advantage for Twitter.com users is being able to view the customized backgrounds of other users. Many individuals and businesses customize the backgrounds for their Twitter account which can give you important contact information as well as other details about the user. Many users think carefully about their background image but app users are unable to see this image from within their app.

One last bonus for users of Twitter.com is being able to view information more easily. This has always been true but it is especially true now that Twitter.com has been updated. Users can now easily view trending topics, see which friends are recommended to them and have easy access to list functionality. Some app users will be able to see the same information but it may be located in a few different places within the app.

Although many Twitter apps contain functionality that Twitter.com doesn’t, there are many benefits to using the site that are often overlooked. These benefits should be considered when trying to decide which Twitter tools to use.

© 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips.



Six Benefits to Using Twitter.com Instead of an App

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

To add to that my twitter account eventually got banned and I had to start all over again. Before I get into the rest of the concepts in this post, I want to recommend that you read Malcom Gladwell’s book, The Tipping Point.

Quality trumps Quantity: The idea that 150 followers is all you need probably sounds crazy to people, especially if you are just starting out. In an interview I conducted with Scott Stratten (this year’s keynote speaker for Blogworld), he mentioned that he tweeted over 10,000 times before he shared any of his own content. 75% of those were not even retweets, but @replies. He was engaged in real conversations with real people. So I decided to experiment with the concept for a month. The byproduct was incredible. The traffic I got from twitter increased exponentially. To top it off I met a bunch of new, really interesting people. Before long I found them on my blog commenting and sharing my posts with their followers.

The Rule of 150: In The Tipping Point, Malcom Gladwell talks about a concept called Dunbar’s number, named for anthropologist Robin Dunbar. After studying numerous groups the number 150 kept coming up over and over again. The conclusion that Robin Dunbar came to was that the maximum number of social relationships a person can effectively manage is 150. Gladwell went on to say that 150 people is what you need to make an idea spread. What’s even more interesting to is that after you get past 150 something happens that makes it harder for an idea to spread. Hopefully you see where I’m going with this concept. I want to share one concrete example from my own twitter presence. On my @skooloflife account I have 2000 followers. I get an average of 10 tweets per post. On my @blogcastfm account (the one for the podcast I host), I have about 500 followers and most interviews I get close to 20 tweets. There’s no way you are realistically going to engage with effectively with thousands of followers unless you absolutely have no life. Think about the power of 150 people who love you and everything you do when compared to the thousands of people where you are just trying to stand out from the noise.

Creating Your 150
Creating your 150 is actually quite easy and if you follow the steps below you’ll have discovered your 150 in no time. I’ve written my process out below of how I do this using tweetdeck.

• Track Mentions: The major thing you should be tracking is mentions of your twitter name. Anytime somebody mentions your name, it’s an opportunity to start a conversation and acquire a new high quality follower.
• Track Retweets: You should also pay close attention to the people who are retweeting the posts you have written. It’s obvious that they like your content, otherwise they wouldn’t be sharing it.
• Create a List: I have a list called my inner circle. Anytime somebody mentions me or retweets me, I make a point to to add them to that list. If they are a spammer, they get blocked.
• Engage with the People on that List: Simply creating the list is not going to be enough. Once you have created your inner circle list, you need to start engaging with them.
  • Daily Conversations: I talk to the people on my inner circle list almost daily. I don’t talk to all 150 of them every single day. But I talk to at least a few of them and that’s all that you really need to do to start getting true value out of twitter.
  • Retweet their Stuff: I make a point to promote the stuff of the people in my inner circle, especially if they are newer than I am to the blogosphere. It’s much easier to form relationships with people who are at your same level or slightly below. People have a tendency to only try to form relationships with people who are more established. Don’t discredit the value of your peer group because they won’t be small forever.

Where to Start When You Are at Zero: If you are starting at zero, some of the above might seem more challenging, but it’s not. Just start with bloggers who you have been reading. This is why it’s important to read more than just the a-list blogs. Find people you think are interesting and just reach out to them. They’ll be happy to hear from you. That will be the start of creating your 150.

© 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips.



Why 150 Followers Is All You Really Need

Tweetdeck had a whopping 36,000 beta testers prior to this launch in an effort to make sure the app worked without fail.

What is interesting about the release, is that this particular version of Tweetdeck happens to be the most recent version of the app that has not even been tested for iPad’s or iPhone’s yet. Usually, it comes to the iPad and iPhone first.

Here is a great video on YouTube showing off the new Tweetdeck 1.0 for Android:

© 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips.



Tweetdeck Officially Launches for Android