Blog of Mr. Tweet

Often it’s a struggle for businesses new to social media to determine how to tweet as a company. Do you send out a username and password to everyone and let them have a go? Should one employee handle everything?Do you setup multiple accounts or will one be enough? Decisions, decisions, decisions! Never fear, we have Tylenol tips for the headache that’s has taken over your brain after reading this paragraph.

Tips For Tweeting As A Company

1. A Single Account Or Multiple Accounts?
   There are pros and cons to doing either  and this is entirely dependent upon how you’d like to use Twitter as a company. We recommend using a single account if you’re only on Twitter for customer support and to enhance or strengthen current customer relationships. If you have multiple areas of expertise, we recommend using multiple accounts and reading tips 2, 5, & 6.
2. Use A CRM Tool
   Using a CRM tool such a CoTweet is a great way to keep track of who’s tweeting what and when. In doing so, you can organize your tweets as a company, and better prepare for tips 3 and 4 (see below
3. Keep In Touch (Internally) You have to keep in touch with your team. Consistent internal communication is important to make sure things are flowing smoothly. It also helps insure everything that needs to be done, gets done in a timely and orderly fashion. No duplicate tweets from YOUR company!
4. Don’t Spam Your Followers
   Don’t spam your followers from multiple accounts nor from a single account with the same tweets. It’s annoying when people are following multiple company accounts for different news and you see the same tweets simultaneously.  Spread them out and keep track of what’s being tweeted by your company. (see tips 1 and 4 for more info) 
5. Different Accounts for Different Campaigns
   If you’re using multiple accounts as a company take advantage of this opportunity to tweet about different deals, news, and topics of expertise across the various accounts. Designate each one for a specific area of expertise that your company offers.  This helps users follow what they find most interesting from your company and keeps you from losing followers when other tweets would just be considered noise.
6. Unify Your Company Accounts Via The Username
   The name game is a tough one to answer and we encourage you to find a solution that best fits what your company would like to accomplish with Twitter.  For multiple accounts, we’d advise using your company’s name or brand somewhere within the username of the account. This let’s followers know whether there will be personal tweets in between or if the account is strictly for company use. It also helps to confirm whether someone is following an official account of the company, or if you’re company doesn’t get social media yet.

Does your head feel better now? Awesome! Now it’s time to share some your company tweeting tips with us!

• What do you find most effective, tweeting from multiple accounts or a single account?
• What tools are you using to tweet as a company?
• Which tools did you find to be a waste of time for your company on Twitter?
• What companies on Twitter have shown great work or improvement for tweeting as a company?

Recommended and Related Reads:

• What’s Your Company’s Tweeting Style
• 4 Ways Companies Use Twitter For Business
• Tweeting for Companies 101
• 50 Ideas On Using Twitter For Business
• How NOT to Use Twitter For Business

In the most exciting encounter between an owl and a raccoon since the beginning of time,  the co-founder of Mr. Tweet (@mingyeow) met Mr. Seemic (@loic) last week. The meeting ended with Loic pulling out his ever handy Flip Mimo and doing an interview which scared the camera shy mingyeow, probably for life. Check out the video below:

Seriously, Loic has the most energy amongst anyone I have had the pleasure of meeting with. Not to mention Seesmic has tons of great stuff in the works. Be sure to tell Seesmic how you want them to improve their services!

Followers, followers, followers. That’s all you ever hear about on Twitter these days. Everyone wants followers and there are a million ways to attract them. People are constantly tweeting ways to attract followers on Twitter. There are also more than enough articles on the topic. From auto-follow services, to recommendation engines like our very own Mr. Tweet, you’re bound to find at least one solution that will work for you.

Discover If You’re Followable

These easiest and most humbling way to get more followers is to attract them with the content that you tweet. From links to the discussions you choose to participate in, potential followers will be able to decide within the first 15 seconds of viewing your profile, whether or not you’re followable. The best way for you to take advantage of this and improve your following is to go to the source: your profile (duh!).

Go to your twitter profile (you can find ours here: @corvida or @mrtweet) and look over your Twitter profile for 2 minutes. Done? Now, answer the following questions:

• Would you follow yourself or would you pass up the opportunity?
• What did you like about your Twitter profile?
• How might others feel about your profile after taking one look at it?

Glance over your profile again for 10 seconds. Done? Now answer the following:

• Do you think you’re followable?
• If so, how do you make your profile stand out?
• If not, what could you do to improve?

Share your suggestions, tips, and stories with us in the comments!

Lots of awesome (and funny) tips by our users (some samples below)

Super Useful Software:

Self Control.app Google it. It’s wonderful. You can select the domains you want blocked
- Paul Carroll

Give Up:

I don’t. For me, the question is, how do you avoid working when using tools like Twitter and Facebook?
- Laura Anderson-Gavin

Best State Of Denial

I have no problem working w- ooooohh!!! Something shiny on Twitter!!
- dbabbitt

Making It Hard To Use Twitter:

Simple! use Gravity and the Facebook widget on my N97 and try to ignore the beeps and trinkles of them both alerting me to reply to tweets LIKE THIS ONE!
- awallafaShagba

Turn It Off

Turn them OFF. Unfortunately, if they are on, I just can’t resist the temptation!
- Astrid and Rene

It Is Good To Be Distracted!

I believe that personal distractions are good for the soul and that since I work alone at home, the connectness actually improves my productivity. Otherwise, working at home would be a social drag. Actually joined a number of new networking sites today and working to streamline yet increase my twittering and updating to further increase the portions of soul food! I think it’s working for me.
- Lordeeme

Healthiest Tradeoff

I have forgone smoke breaks in lieu of Twitter and Facebooking.
- Chrissa

Best One Of All…

I try to follow fairly boring people.
- Brett Patterson

It’s that time of the week again, folks! This week we’re giving away one cool The GodTwitter T-shirt. Made by the awesomesauce Tony Gigov (@tonygigov), creator of the Twitter Nonsense Comic strip. And who wouldn’t want to rock this shirt at their next tweet-up?

Now, are you ready to win it? Here’s, what you need to do:

• Leave a comment below answering the following question: How do you avoid personal distractions when using tools like Twitter & Facebook while working?
• You only need to answer this question once.
• Winner will be chosen randomly. The winner will receive one (1) GodTwitter T-Shirt in white or black (your choice).
• Entries can be submitted until Friday, July 3rd, 12:01 a.m. PST / 3:01 a.m. EST.

Good luck!

This is a guest posting by Shea Bennett. Shea is the founder of Twittercism, a blog that explores the various aspects of Twitter, from the great to the dark. We love Shea’s wits and guts, so we will be bringing his thoughts to you on a regular basis!

Consider this, if you will: I decide to write a book through Twitter, 140 characters at a time. Moroever, I do this stream-of-consciousness style, and just let it all flow out. I keep no backup. I write my book, tweet after tweet after tweet. Soon, thousands and thousands of my words are in the system.

For their own reasons, Twitter decides I’ve done something wrong, and suspends my account. All my work is lost.

What are my legal rights? Who owns those tweets? Can I get them back?

In Twitter’s terms of service, under a section called, “Copyright (What’s Yours is Yours)”, they state:

We claim no intellectual property rights over the material you provide to the Twitter service. Your profile and materials uploaded remain yours. You can remove your profile at any time by deleting your account. This will also remove any text and images you have stored in the system.

We encourage users to contribute their creations to the public domain or consider progressive licensing terms.

That’s fine, but under “General Conditions”, they also say:

We reserve the right, in accordance with any applicable laws, to refuse service to anyone for any reason at any time.

We’ve seen this happen before with accounts such as the fake Christopher Walken. The reasons for the suspension of that user were fairly clear, but what about all those tweets that he wrote? They’ve also been removed without a trace. The account had a loyal and amused following, and those tweets were funny and had value.

Twitter doesn’t provide any kind of backup service within the site; external ways to ‘save’ your tweets exist, but they’re more than little crude. The majority of tweets are, of course, hardly worth keeping forever, but some are. And I can see many instances in the future where Twitter will be used for different purposes and more and more of these tweets will have value.

One obvious example is where Twitter breaks a news story before anywhere else because the submitter was on the scene when it took place. That tweet becomes a source – who does it belong to?

Moreover, say Twitter decides to produce The Book Of Tweets, and selects 10,000 of the greatest-ever updates for publication. Can they do that without the permission of the authors? Can anybody do that without permission of the authors? Where is the line?

This is a very hazy area and my gut feeling tells me that until a legal precedent is set it’s going to remain that way. Until then, you might want to think about it a little – who owns your tweets? And would you be happy for somebody else to make money off them without your permission?

This is a guest posting by Nathan Egan. He is the Founder and Managing Partner of the Freesource Agency, LLC. Prior to starting Freesource Agency, Nathan worked at LinkedIn and has wonderful insight into the world of social media networking. Follow Nathan on Twitter: @nathanegan.

Participating on the social web scene has become near-essential for companies. For a growing number of potential customers, the majority of research, referrals, and recommendations are being done virtually through social networks like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and MySpace. There is an incredible opportunity for businesses to attract both customers and/or clients through social media.  Here’s why your company needs a social presence too.

1. Customer Connectivity

Social media is arguably the most powerful form of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) technology that the business world has ever seen. Your company’s social presence will allow you to connect with your customers in new and dynamic ways, that among other things, will give you rich data and feedback to help you grow and sustain your business.

2. Communicate with Prospects

I always tell my clients: “Connect to your customers because your customers are connected to your prospects”. Social media is an extremely efficient marketing platform and a sales prospecting tool. When executed correctly, a good social media strategy will generate organic, inbound sales leads through your current customer base.

3. Competitive Intelligence and Market Research

Social media is an incredible tool for “listening” to your competition and monitoring trends in your target markets. The massive amounts of accurate and real-time information you can collect through these systems can be leveraged in many ways, perhaps most importantly, you can make real-time adjustments to your sales strategy based on what your competition is doing (or not doing).

4. Customer Service

Social media enables your company to build brand loyalty in powerful and dynamic ways that were never before possible. A well-executed program will increase customer satisfaction, give you easy access to real-time feedback on product or services issues, and drive down overall operating costs.

5. Talent Acquisition and Employee Retention

As a whole, social media has changed the game of recruiting and retaining top talent. Learn to leverage social media properly and your organization will gain significant competitive advantages in terms of available human capital.

6. Global Reach

No longer is your company restricted to regional or even national distribution and communication. Social media allows you to publicize press, advertisements and company news to the world in ways that have been traditionally cost prohibitive. For example, a public television segment airing in a small geographic region of the US can now be uploaded on to YouTube and distributed through Twitter, enabling the segment to be viewed by an international audience.

7. Social Media is a Freesource!

Generally speaking, social media is a completely free resource and all it takes is your commitment to learn how to use it! Social media is here to stay, the websites like LinkedIn, Facebook, etc may come and go but this style of communication will not. You owe it to your business to learn how integrate the appropriate platforms into your overall communication strategy - your ROI will be tremendous!

Share the companies you know with a great social presence on the web!

• What advice would YOU leave for others that are hesitating to create a social presence?

This is a guest posting by Jeff Hurt (@JeffHurt), Director of Education & Events for National Association of Dental Plans. He has worked in events/nonprofit arena for more than 20 years. You can find more of his thoughts at Midcourse Corrections: Views From The Trenches.

A recent MarketingProfs poll showed that more than eight in 10 Twitter users, most of whom represent small business, expect their company’s use of Twitter to increase in the next six months.

Obviously, these savvy business and organizational professionals realize that Twitter, when used appropriately, can help them better serve their customers, engage in relationships and even, in some cases, lead to new business. Here are 10 tips from the Twitter Pros Playbook that can help you better serve your customers, 140 characters at a time.

1. Use Your Real Name In The Name Field, Not Your Username

If you put your Twitter username in the “Real Name field,” people will not be able to find you when they use Twitter’s “Find People Link.” Example, my Twitter username is @JeffHurt. When I first started using Twitter, I assumed that people would search Twitter for @JeffHurt, (one word, no space). Friends and colleagues were searching Twitter using my real name. They didn’t know I had removed the space between first and last name.

I later changed my settings and entered my real name so I could be found as Jeff Hurt and @JeffHurt. This made a world of difference and is probably one of the simplest, yet most effective things you can do to help others find you on Twitter. Even if you’re tweeting for an organization, put your real name in the “name field” and the company name in the profile bio and username.

2. Embrace “What Has Your Attention” Not “What Are You Doing”

Ignore the heading “What are you doing?” above the update box on Twitter. Consider tweeting about what has your attention. People really don’t want to know about what you had for breakfast, lunch and dinner. It just creates more noise for many of your followers. Make your tweets relevant to what you’re thinking about, what has captured your attention and even what you’re reading.

3. Tweet With Others In Mind First

Take a look at your tweets. What do they say about you? Are the majority of your tweets about your company, products, and services? Are they all “me, me, me” related? Stop that! The blue bird of happiness will not land on your organization because you’re pushing your products and services on Twitter. You’re looking really self-absorbed and egomaniacal.

And by all means, do not just share case studies about your customers with your readers. You’re still pushing me, me, me, my, my, my products. You have to earn your readers’ trust and attention and to do that, you need to give in order to get. See next tip.

4. Use Angela Maiers’ 70-20-10 Twitter Engagement Formula

Be purposeful and intentional as you enter the Twittersphere. As you “Twiv to Twet” (give to get) and move away from self-promotional tweets, consider this tweeting engagement formula.

a. 70% of your tweets should share resources- sharing others’ voices, opinions, quotes, blog posts, articles, content and resources

b. 20% of your tweets should engage in conversations with others, responding, connecting, collaborating and connecting with others.

c. 10% of your tweets can be chirping, chitchat as Angela calls it, on trivial details or self-promotion.

5. Use A 3^rd Party Twitter Client On Your Desktop And Mobile Device

If there’s one thing I stress above all others, using a 3^rd party Twitter client is it. Tweetdeck, Seesmic, Twhirl for PC and Tweetie for Mac are four clients that many people use on their desktop to manage Twitter more effectively. These Twitter clients make your Twitter experience more robust than the Twitter web interface. One of the biggest pros is that you don’t have to hit the refresh button continually to see new tweets from others and you can see columns for all friends, replies and DMs on one page. For your iPhone, consider Tweetie, Twitterrific or TweetFon. For Blackberry, consider Twitterberry, Blackbird, or SocialScope.

6. Be Authentic, Real And Act Like A Human

Authenticity, sincerity, and humanness is the name of the game. Tweet like a real person, act like a real person, sound like a real person, be genuine and true to yourself. Tweeps in Twittersphere can see through your mockingbird calls and know if you are there to mimic a human, ready at any opportunity to pitch a product instead of engage in dialogue.

7. Identify Tweets With Links To Videos, Podcasts or Slide decks

People hate seeing a great tweet headline with a link and clicking it to discover that it’s a video that’s being downloaded or a PowerPoint slide deck. Use abbreviations like vid or PPT in your tweet. Also, if your tweet contains a link to questionable material, use the NSFW (Not Save For Work) abbreviation.

8. Twitter Is Not About Amassing A Large Number Of Followers

Contrary to the Ashton Kucher and CNN competition, it is really about the quality of connections versus quantity. Yes, everyone secretly wants to be voted the most popular Tweep in Twittersville but don’t fall into that bird trap. One of the easiest ways to find quality Tweeps and new people to follow is to participate in a Twitter chat. Twitter chats showcase the best of the best of Twittersville.

9. Stop Your Automated Direct Message Tweets To New Followers

They’re impersonal, pushy and often self-promotional which equates to a Twitter Fail Whale. Yes, it’s nice to send a welcoming tweet to new followers and if you do, keep it personal and human. Don’t send them a link to your latest method of how to gain thousands of new followers! We don’t want to know about that. Nor do we want a direct message with a link to your newest get rich quick scheme.

10. If Your Tweets Are Missing, Don’t Show Up In Twitter Search, Or Are Absent From a 3rd party Twitter Client, Contact Twitter Support

I’ve seen this happen many times. People decide to join a Twitter chat, they include a hashtag and when they hit their update button, their tweets never appear using that hashtag. As Twitter grows and evolves, they experience latency issues with Twitter API and Twitter Search used by many of the third party clients. Start with these Twitter resources to help your tweets be identified again.

BONUS TIP: Have fun!

What tips would you recommend to businesses that have begun to grasp Twitter and want to take their level of service up a notch? Tell us in the comments!

Hundreds of new Twitter apps are released everyday. We’re all aware of the more popular Twitter apps such Seesmic Desktop, Tweetie for the iPhone, Twitterfall for tracking searches, Cotweet for companies, and a host of others. They receive press and support on a weekly basis from the Twitter and tech community. And let’s be honest, who hasn’t used or heard of at least 5 of these Twitter apps?

Yet, every now and again you come across smaller gems such as DestroyTwitter, ReFollow, and TweetTabs. These are apps that can be extremely useful, but are not the talk of the town. They may not be for everyone or maybe no one knows much about these apps (yet).  Today, we’d like to find out what they are and where they’re hiding with your help.

Community Q&A

• What do you think is the most underhyped Twitter app on the web?
• Is there a competitor app that’s more popular?
• Why you think it should be valued more in the community?

Share your response in the comments or with our Blog Editor @Corvida on Twitter!

Pacman on Twitter

Link: Flickr

Story of Twitter (so far) - beautifully illustrated, concisely narrated. From Sean Percival of Manolith. Original posting here

The Story Of Twitter, Beautifully Illustrated

 

If you like it, make sure to drop Sean a note!