Twitter | Mirna Bard - Part 4

Category : Twitter

Can Twitter Retain More Users and Businesses?
Posted Aug 14th, 2009 By Mirna Bard in Twitter With | No Comments

Twitter, the fast growing social network, has gained a lot of traffic recently – According to Nielsen, nearly 2,000% growth in the U.S. over last year. Approximately 21 million monthly unique visitors and 628 million page views.

Twitter is gaining so much traffic recently. Does this mean that there are more people who better understand how to use it effectively? Nope! Countless numbers sign up for a Twitter account and either never use it or try it for a week or two and decide that they aren’t interested.

A Nielson study showed 60 percent of Twitter users stop using the much-hyped service after a month. This study did not include people who use Twitter via third-party apps. The main reason people leave Twitter is because they just don’t get it. They might see it as only another gossip forum or a haven for soccer moms to brag about their kids.

Not only is the retention low, but common folk surveyed still have little idea of what Twitter is. According to a new LinkedIn Research Network/Harris Poll, out of 2,025 U.S. adults surveyed, 69% said they didn’t know enough about Twitter. Compare that to just 17% of advertisers who admitted to not knowing much about the website.

This only says two things: First, Twitter is not doing the greatest job at explaining its benefits to consumers and businesses. Second, it’s not doing a good job at promoting any changes they are making to help consumers and businesses understand Twitter better.

In the last few weeks, Twitter revamped their home page to help newcomers decipher the point of the website. The new home page enables visitors who don’t have accounts or aren’t logged in to try out the site before signing up.

Also, to help boost the “stickiness” of Twitter and keep new users, Twitter has just issued an online guide titled Twitter 101. The guide is designed to teach new users the absolute best way to use the social media site for the good of their business. While it might be a little late in coming, this could be the key to the site boosting the number of recruits that they retain.

Covering everything from explaining what Twitter is and how it can be used for the benefit of business, this guide is quite informative. It includes best practices, case studies and even suggested techniques to help business owners turn the social marketing tool into something beneficial for their business, thus encouraging them to use it.

After speaking at a few events and asking dozens of people about if they know about the new Twitter guide, I’ve discovered that still not too many people know about it. Twitter definitely needs a better strategy of informing its users.

Even if you use Twitter on a regular basis, the guide is a good read (I read every page) and worth checking out. You could pick up a few tips and learn how brands and small business owners are using Twitter successfully.

Also, if you have not seen the CommonCraft Video explaining Twitter in plain English, you can watch it here.
Can You Live Without Social Media?
Posted Aug 10th, 2009 By Mirna Bard in Social Media, Social Networking, Twitter With | No Comments

Last week’s event of the attack on Twitter struck fear into the hearts of those who use social media on a daily basis, including brands such as Starbucks, IBM, and Dell. While we might not admit it, social media has become an integral part of life for many people, not just those using it for business. According to a BusinessWeek article, Social Media Manager of IBM Adam Christensen said it didn’t get in the way of pressing business. “The thing that’s important to keep in mind is that Twitter is real work, but it’s not deadline-oriented work,” he says in the article.

Twitter and Facebook went down at the same time thanks to a vicious attack. While the sites are all back up and running, it certainly makes you stop and think about what would happen if social media went down for longer.

In today’s interactive online world, almost everything we do in business is based on social media. From promotion to market research, companies find themselves using Twitter, Facebook and other cutting edge networking systems. Chances are, when you hear about the latest news, it’s coming through Twitter, now best known for its near real time reporting of Michael Jackson’s death. For the hundreds of thousands who rely on social networking, for business, news and personal contact, living without it now seems impossible. I use it for business and personal, and I know I was a little antsy the whole day.

What can you do to reduce the impact of another outage like the one faced last week?

Diversify. Diversify. Diversify.

While most social networks seemed to be hit, it can’t hurt to have a presence on sites besides Twitter. However, social media isn’t the only way to get your name and your business out there. You blog and good SEO on your site to make you visible in the search engines will also help keep things up and running when the social media networks go down.

Essentially, don’t put all your eggs in one basket. By spreading your attention out a bit and not focusing only on Twitter or Facebook, you will find that even with social media running along nicely, your business will benefit. We tend to become set on one area of promotion and it can really help your business to expand your social media and promotional techniques. Also, remember there are great niche social media sites out there!

What did you do when Twitter went down?
Twitter Groups Boost Social Networking Potential
Posted Jul 16th, 2009 By Mirna Bard in Twitter With | 2 Comments

If you thought LinkedIn was a great invention, then you will love Twitter Groups. All the functionality of the social networking site with the ability to focus on specific topics or interests makes this relatively recent development perfect for networking. After all, connecting with others for business is far easier when everyone is divided into specific areas of interest.

Why Groups?

With Twitter, we’re used to responding to one or maybe two people at the most. Unless you DM individuals, all those tweets are public. Now, if you want to communicate with a couple hundred of your friends on Twitter, things get complicated. Unless you have a group set up.

With Twitter groups, you can message everyone in your group with just one tweet. You also have the option of making your group public or keeping it private, thus allowing secure communication between members of the group, something that simply isn’t available with direct messages. Hashtags allow a bit more functionality, but it still is very public.

Starting a Group

There are a number of Twitter apps that allow you to build your own social networking group. We went through and tried more than 20 groups. However, here are a few that we liked:

Tweetparty: Allows you to send a single tweet and reach everyone in your group. This is very simple to do once you have set up a group. Just DM the group name and everyone you have added will get the tweet direct messaged to them.

Tweetworks: This application lets you browse groups that already exist and join them. Or you can set up your very own Twitter group. The benefit of this particular site is that you will have all replies staggered below the original query or tweet, making it very easy to keep up with group discussions.

Crowdstatus: If you are in a hurry, this is the application to look at. Rather than cover every discussion by everyone in the group, this site gives you only the latest activity. You will get the basics faster and in a more stylish environment than most of the other applications.

TwitHive: This neat application lets you choose from people, searches or any number of specific tweets and corral them into columns so you can see at a glance what is happening in each area. You can use several accounts here, so if you have multiple Twitter accounts, this is a great option.

TweetDeck: This application allows you to group tweets according to specific people or terms into columns. While it isn’t designed to send tweets to those columns, it does allow you to find things very quickly, even if you have a massive number of Twitter pals.

Twitter is a useful site all on its own, but the various applications that are coming out to enhance it just make this one of the most useful social networking sites around. Which applications have you tried that work well for you?
7 Best Twitter Apps to Boost Productivity
Posted Jun 6th, 2009 By Mirna Bard in Social Media, Social Networking, Twitter With | 2 Comments

Twitter is one of the fastest growing social networking sites around and with all those new users have come new ways to use Twitter, in the form of customized applications that do everything from search for jobs to finding people with like interests.

For your convenience, here are my top 7 Twitter apps to maximize the usefulness of the micro-blogging site.

1. TweetDeck
TweetDeck allows you to create multiple columns with groups. For example, all your marketing contacts can appear in one column while another would show personal contacts or perhaps others interested in travel or another common hobby.

2. TwitterBar
This is a Firefox add on that lets you tweet right in your browser by adding a special toolbar. It is particularly handy for tweeting specific webpages that you want to share with friends.

3. Twhirl
For those who aren`t following huge numbers and just want a simple pop up application, twirl is perfect. It minimizes to your status bar and updates appear in brief pop ups and has all the basics for tweeting, retweeting and sending direct messages.

4. TwitterFeed
Named as one of the most useful Twitter applications by Darren Rowse, aka ProBlogger, this handy app lets you post links from your blog. To avoid the typical automated look, you can customize the message on your tweets.

5. Socialoomph
This tool lets you set up scheduled tweets, something that is particularly useful if you`ll be on the road or live in another time zone from the majority of your audience. If you schedule blog posts to go live at a specific time, you can now schedule a tweet about it, as well.

6. Twello
Lauded as the Yellow Pages of Twitter, this site lets you find people on Twitter in specific professions or areas of interests. If you`re interested in advertising and marketing, for example, Twellow will give you a useful list of people to follow.

7. TwitScoop
Looking for what`s hot on Twitter? TwitScoop lets you see at a glance what people are tweeting about. You can see all the most popular keywords in a tag cloud. This application is actually integrated right into TweetDeck, for added usability.

What are your favorite Twitter applications? With the hundreds now in existence, I`m sure there are some I haven`t used that could be very useful.
Twitter Explained
Posted Jun 6th, 2009 By Mirna Bard in Social Media, Social Networking, Twitter With | 1 Comment

Many people still ask us what Twitter is. They hear everyone saying: “We were tweeting or someone tweeted this and that on Twitter.” So, we thought what a perfect opportunity to share another Commoncraft video, which we absolutely love! But first, here is the Wikipedia definition of Twitter:

Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging platform that allows its users to send and read other users’ updates known as tweets. Tweets are posts of up to 140 characters, displayed on the user’s profile page and delivered to other users who have subscribed to them (known as followers). Senders can restrict delivery to those in their circle of friends or, by default, allow anybody to access them. Users can send and receive tweets via the Twitter website, Short Message Service (SMS) or external applications.

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