Howell Marketing, By Amy Howell — I have written often about all the reasons I use Twitter—and the list continues to grow. The most important way I use Twitter is in the strategy of who I follow and what I keep up with. For example, I follow the national and local media on Twitter, other professionals in my industry and most importantly my clients and thought leaders in my clients’ industries. Not a day goes by that I don’t get the “ROI” (return on investment) question.

My perspective on this as it relates to Twitter is based on the understanding that for me, Twitter is all about getting real time, great information as well as communicating with those that can add value to your life and business. So often I come back with this question: How can you measure the ROI of conversation? Isn’t that what’s at the “heart” of social media? Don’t we all use conversation to generate revenue in most businesses?

As I work with clients in the traditional space of PR and marketing we are increasingly applying social media strategies mainly to their communications and PR efforts. Through this dynamic and rapidly changing process, I often find myself doubting, questioning my own opinions and challenging my brain to think differently—as a skeptic of social media. That is a difficult thing for someone who loves “conversation.”

More important, as a communicator and advocate of using social media for business, I am committed to think seriously about the other side of the coin and—by doing so—I am becoming better at my pitch and persuasion tactics. One thing I will tell you for sure is that the internet is not going away and as social media will continue to evolve, but today I read that 42 million women use social media and they are the consumers most corporations need to reach!

So here are the ‘Top’ skeptical comments brought straight to you by real life experience:

Skeptic 1: “Twitter is a Time Waster”

My Common Response: It certainly can be, but it can also be a time saver as it will help you organize information and easily sort out what you want to see, find what you need and monitor what your customers are doing. (Ah-ha! That will start the questions)

Skeptic 2: “I mean, who cares what you are drinking, eating, going to…I mean I don’t even care what other people do! Who wants to know that stuff?”

My Common Response: Absolutely true! You should only follow those that give you information you want. (Huh? This usually results in raising of eyebrows, scratching of head, more spamming of questions) People who say this obviously are not on Twitter and have no idea how much information (information + communication = profit) that can be derived from being on Twitter.

Skeptic 3: “I don’t even have time to answer all my e-mail much less Twitter!”

My Common Response: You can answer 10,000 people at one time. Can’t pay for that kind of word of mouth advertising, huh?

Skeptic 4: “That chatter out there is too noisy and I have no idea what I’d say”

My Common Response: How about finding 500 of your best clients, friends and prospects and saying what you know is great about your business? (hmmm…they are thinking about all the money they spent on print advertising maybe)

Skeptic 5: “Nobody can measure the ROI of social media”

My Common Response: Do you value communication and efficiency in mass spreading of information for your business?

Skeptic 6: “Most companies aren’t using social media and many are opting out of it”

My Common Response: Thanks to Twitter, I can show you many examples of those that are using social media successfully and I can get you real time stats on what corporations are doing right now in the social media space (Did I mention Twitter is my CIO—Chief Information Officer)

Skeptic 7: “It’s a fad like all other technology”

My Common Response: The internet is not a fad. Then I whip out the latest article in the NYTimes about growing trends in social media (amazing how quoting the NYTimes can help with persuasion: Oh and I just saw on Twitter that they now have over 2 million followers!)

Skeptic 8: “I don’t have time”

My Common Response: Neither do I

Skeptic 9: “I don’t like people knowing so much about me”

My Common Response: Control your message (As I say all the time, be careful what you post on the internet. Comments are 3 things: Global, Permanent, and Discoverable—as in a court of law).

Skeptic 10: “I don’t get it and I don’t want to”

My Common Response: OK, let’s find you somebody who does (often times if we can find a social media champion, we can at least get businesses to monitor what’s going on).

If Twitter is anything to me and my clients, it’s easily a monitoring tool and, for me, it’s information that I use daily: news, trends, best practices, great blogs by smart people, statistics, great resources, etc. It’s like having your own Chief Information Officer!

For more helpful insights, tips and ‘Breaking New’ you can reach Amy here:

Amy Howell, President and CEO, Howell Marketing Strategies, LLC

408 S. Front Street, Suite 104 Memphis, TN 38103

(901) 521-1453 office – (901) 351-7186 cell

Web: http://www.Howell-Marketing.com – Twitter: hhttp://twitter.com/HowellMarketing

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Ten Ways To Increase Your Twitter Followers:

1. Explain to your followers what retweeting is and encourage them to retweet your links. Retweeting pushes your @username into foreign social graphs, resulting in clicks back to your profile. Track your retweets using retweetist.

2. Fill out your bio. Your latest tweets and @replies don’t mean much to someone that doesn’t know you. Your bio is the only place you have to tell people who you are. Also, your bio is displayed on Twitter’s Suggested Users page. Leaving it blank or non-descriptive doesn’t encourage people to add you.

3. As @garyvee says, “link it up.” Put links to your Twitter profile everywhere. Link it on your Digg, LinkedIn, Facebook, blog, email signature, and everywhere else you live online. Also, check out the great feedburner-like badges from TwitterCounter for your blog.

4. Tweet about your passions in life and #hash tag them. Quality content coupled with an easy way to find it never fails. If others enjoy your content, they’ll add you. Learn more about #hash tagging here.

5. Bring your twitter account into the physical world. Every time I give a talk, speak on a panel, shoot a podcast, present slides, or hand out business cards, I figure out a way to broadcast or display my twitter account.

6. Take pictures. Pictures are heavily retweeted/spread around. This one from US Airways Flight 1549 has been viewed 350,000+ times. For mobile pics use iPhone apps such as Tweetie or Twitterific, both which support on the go uploading.

7. Start a contest. @jasoncalacanis offered a free macbook air if he reached the #1 most followed spot. That never happened, but Jason added thousands of followers…brilliant.

8. Follow the top twitter users and watch what they tweet. Pay attention to the type of content they sent out and how they address their audiences.

9. Reply to/get involved in #hash tag memes. search.twitter.com lists the hot ‘trending topics. Look for the #hash topics and jump in on the conversation (see #4 for links to #hash instructions).

10. Track your results. TwitterCounter will show you how many new users you’re adding per day and Qwitter will email you when someone unfollows you after a tweet.

If you enjoy this content, add me at twitter.com/kevinrose, thank you.

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Stone, who said Twitter was “pretty good right now” with regards to funding, stressed the company’s immediate focus was on building out features ranging from an improved search functions to paid-for commercial accounts.

“Any kind of approach toward advertising is going to be awhile … We’re not thinking about that just yet,” Stone said at the 140: Twitter Conference in Los Angeles.

Privately held Twitter — known for its 140-character, stream-of-consciousness blogs — has received plenty of venture funding, but Stone declined to disclose the amounts or valuation.

TechCrunch recently reported that a new round of funding would value Twitter at $1 billion.

Still in its infancy, the fledgling company has rapidly become a cultural phenomenon, but Twitter and other social networking Web sites have yet to show investors how they will start earning a profit.

To that end, Stone said Twitter aims to offer premium features for commercial account users this year.

“We wanted to show people that we’re here to stay and here we are making money,” Stone said.

Those features, which could debut in test form, are envisioned as for-pay features and potentially could include “light analytics” tools that allow commercial users to gather data on their followers, he said.

(Reporting by Lisa Baertlein, editing by Maureen Bavdek)

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There’s a very strong distinction in those two statements.

So when you embark on any social media endeavor, keep the following principles in mind:

· Be specific: Don’t waste your time on sites that won’t cater to your customers.

· Be aware that everything is public: Your Facebook page, for example, has just become part of your “brand,” part of what identifies you to the public. Post your status one day as “so hungover,” and you may see your business drop severely (or, depending on the market, increase!).

· Be creative: Marketing and online business are a dime a dozen these days. The only way to stand out is to find a niche, an angle, or a method that no one’s tried yet. For example, inject your personality with humor, or be so falsely serious it becomes funny. Just about any creative approach can garner huge success these days, whether it’s a video game reviewer who hates everyone and everything, or a clothing sales site that’s almost a social
networking extravaganza in and of itself, you’ll find that creativity is the key to both success and longevity.

· Treat crisis as opportunity: Some users quickly delete comments that reflect poorly on them or their products. You can see why, but it’s a big mistake – the person who made those comments will just turn around and badmouth you everywhere else, and the fact that you deleted his original comments will seem to confirm his complaints. Instead, take a lesson from many large companies who monitor social media sites for mentions of their name. When they find a complaint, they immediately post offering to help with the problem. Now the internet wide complaint has become an internet wide example of this company’s caring and consideration!

The important thing, once again, is to create a strong personality and then respond through that personality’s eyes – but with a constant eye to the professionalism and credibility you want to establish, whatever form that may take.

Hope you enjoyed these 4 simple but ‘Powerful’ principles, If so please leave a comment.

Enjoy your day

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And keeping track of what people are saying to each other about your company, your competitors and your industry on Twitter isn’t easy, either. Now, a growing number of free Web products are helping companies minimize the hassles.

CoTweet Inc., a San Francisco-based start-up, offers several tools to help companies respond to tweets. Marcus Schmidt uses one called Tweet Assignments for his job as a senior marketing manager at Microsoft Corp. He oversees two company Twitter pages where consumers post about 300 questions and comments a day. He says Tweet Assignments helps him generate swift responses from the appropriate Microsoft employees by allowing him to send consumers’ tweets to colleagues instantly, without having to copy them into email messages. The recipients can then respond directly to consumers with tweets of their own or send responses back to Mr. Schmidt.

Winnie Hsia, a social-media specialist for Whole Foods Market Inc., uses another CoTweet tool to manage the 300 to 500 tweets posted daily to the natural-food chain’s Twitter page. Called Conversation Threading, it tells users which tweets have been responded to and when, and allows them to review all the messages exchanged with any correspondent. Ms. Hsia uses it to get “a better sense of what our past interaction has been” before she responds to a tweet or sends messages to customers. It also helps her avoid accidentally responding to the same tweet twice.

CoTweet launched its Twitter tools publicly in July and so far doesn’t charge for them. But it plans to start charging a monthly fee that will vary by usage by the end of year, says Jesse Engle, chief executive.

Getting the Message Out…

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This is known as a hashtag.

More important, Hashtags are commonly used as a symbol to send out messages pertaining to a certain event. These symbols were actually made popular during the San Diego fires in 2007 as a way to group news messages.

Today, just about any subject you can think of uses hashtags in order to follow a particular stream of tweeted data. They are used for promotions and contests, as well as groups of people communicating together. One common hashtag seen on Twitter is #gno, which is Girls Night Out.

This group is growing every week and you can join in the fun simply by searching Twitter for #gno.

Your business can also utilize this nifty symbol in order to announce new products or projects, keep customers informed of current events going on throughout your company. You can even build your business by providing clients with a useful way to keep track of you and your brand.

By grouping messages together and providing a common thread to search upon, you and your customers will be able to track any announcements put out by your business on Twitter with ease. Hashtags also force you to keep certain key words (such as #SEO or other searchable keywords) your business might be working to develop as optimized search terms in your text. Since all Twitter messages can be indexed by Google, the use of these key words will also help your business in developing their search engine rankings.

Here are a few things to remember when creating hashtags for Twitter.

Availability – Check places like www.hashtags.org to see if the hashtag you want is already in use. If your tem is available, make sure you are following @hashtags and just input the hashtag you wish to use preceded by the # mark, of course.

Relevancy – Make sure your hashtag is relevant to what you are trying to track. For instance, do not use #newyork if you are trying to sell watches in the New York area. Use something a little more specific to your business such as #FossilNY.

Memorable – Keep your hashtags memorable so customers can find them easily. Large acronyms and heavy abbreviations detract from keyword usage and they are difficult to remember. Remember, the longer your hashtag, the fewer characters you will have to use in your actual text. Keep it short, simple and to the point.

Branding – Use your hashtags to help develop a business brand. By using your tags to enhance your search engine optimization terms, your brand will be more visible to customers searching for what you offer. Remember to keep your hashtag in line with your business and business goals.

As you can see, hashtags are a great way to help build your business. Give them a shot and let your customers know you are using them too. The easiest hashtag to use is your business name. If you tell your customers to search for your hashtag they are guaranteed to have the most up-to-date information about what is going on with your business.

Happy hashtagging!

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Facebook is releasing as open source a Web server technology because it wants to make it easier for developers to create applications that let users post status updates in real time, a functionality popularized by Twitter.

The Web server framework that Facebook will offer as open source is called Tornado, was written in the Python language and is designed for quickly processing thousands of simultaneous connections, the company said Thursday.

“Tornado is a core piece of infrastructure that powers FriendFeed’s real-time functionality, which we plan to actively maintain.

While Tornado is similar to existing Web-frameworks in Python … it focuses on speed and handling large amounts of simultaneous traffic,” wrote David Recordon, Facebook’s open programs manager, in the Facebook Developer blog.

“We believe in releasing generically useful infrastructure components as open source … as a way to increase innovation across the Web,” he added.

Twitter is the best-known application for people to post real-time updates on their thoughts, status and whereabouts, and Facebook has been tweaking its site to tap into this trend.

For example, Facebook revamped its profiles to make the stream of friend notifications and status updates more prominent. It also added an option to let members display this stream and other parts of their profiles more broadly to everyone on Facebook, not just to hand-picked friends and members on mutual Facebook networks.

Recognizing that the large network of developers who build applications for Facebook is also interested in creating applications for real-time updates, Facebook in April released its Open Stream API. This API (application programming interface) lets developers build applications that access these Facebook notifications and help users manage them

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Then here are some tips on how you can improve your social media marketing today.

Maybe you are not using social media the right way for your business. While there are no hard and fast rules for using social media, there are certain things that companies must remember when using social media.

One of the first things a company must remember is that because there is no single right way to use social media, a company can use them differently from how other companies are using them.

The best way for a company to gain benefits from social media is to have a “plan of attack”, a game plan on how social media can be integrated into the whole marketing and PR plan of the company. Improving your social media marketing requires an understanding of what you want to achieve by using social media and a clear plan that can be implemented effectively.

Social media marketing is not that different from traditional marketing- the whole process requires careful planning and creativity.

Next, social media marketing takes a lot of time. It requires active participation from the company. In a study that was conducted several months ago, it was revealed that the companies that benefited the most from social media are the companies that really used social media regularly. These companies usually have individuals or teams to manage their social media accounts.

Of course small companies may not have the resources to hire full teams for social media marketing but small companies still have the option of hiring a virtual assistant to serve as their social media representative. By having a dedicated worker focusing on the social media tasks, the company can be sure that it has an active role in various social media.

The more time you spend on social media, the stronger image you are able to build online. A strong online presence can mean a lot for a small business. If you want to improve your social media marketing, you must increase the time you spend on your social media activities. The more time you spend listening and talking to clients, the more useful social media become for your business.

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From mom and pop shops to the largest international corporations, using a social media platform to “join the conversation” and market products and services, is fast becoming the marketing venue of choice.

Whether or not you have chosen to participate for your business, chances are that the “conversation” has started to happen about you.

The question is, how long are you going to wait to join in?

Many businesses have found themselves pulled into the fray by fans and detractors alike, then discovered they were not prepared for this avenue of marketing when they attempted to enter. Others jumped in without a plan or understanding of the medium, and soon paid a price for that lack of understanding.

Lack of understanding is a bad way to start

As increasingly businesses and corporations advertise for employees to take on their social marketing operations, they mistakenly search for candidates with long backgrounds in the medium. Job postings seek “five or more years experience in social media” along with a lengthy background (5 or more years) in the marketing field.

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Most companies are embracing social media—but too many are wasting their efforts through sloppy management.

More than 70% of companies are already using social media; many are planning to increase their spending on social media across the coming years. Whether for learning from customers, building their brands or a range of other hoped-for outcomes, companies are clearly diving in.

Unfortunately, few have thought very hard about managing these initiatives. In a classic case or “ready, fire, aim,” companies are committing resources to social media efforts with very little process behind them. The result? A hodgepodge of unrelated initiatives, wheels re-invented and resources wasted.

The Corporate Executive Board has found that the best companies recognize that social media are just another set of promising tools and as such are to be understood, mastered, and used efficiently. Importantly, they also recognize that how they manage their social media efforts depends on where they are in the journey from initial discovery to mainstream use. That journey has three stages:

• Discovery: At this stage, the organization is just finding out about the potential uses (and risks) of social media for its purposes and making initial forays. The goal: understanding (”could this work for us?”). Since few resources are necessary at this point, companies don’t need heavy managerial oversight. But they do need downside protection. Clear, well-communicated policies on everything from information sharing to appropriate language is in order.

• Experimentation: As an organization does more with social media, the importance of learning efficiently becomes urgent. At this point, companies need tighter oversight and coordination of efforts. There are a number of ways to create that kind of transparency and sharing, ranging from steering committees to tiger teams” to social media czars. These bodies should develop and steward a learning agenda for the firm’s efforts, using each initiative to deliberately increase the institutional knowledge of social media use.

Measurement standards also become more important at this stage. The best companies settle on a consistent set of measures for similar initiatives, using that data to test and learn over time. Metrics like track-backs, for example, can clarify better or worse social media vehicles for a given objective.

• Adoption: While few companies currently find themselves in this stage, those that do loosen their managerial posture, moving away from oversight toward support. Here, the role of any central or dedicated management body should be one of education, coaching and provision of expertise. Some firms are building centers of excellence, repositories of people and knowledge about using social media. Metrics should shift here too, tailored for assessing efficiency and effectiveness of specific initiatives.

The short story: Social media isn’t a fad about to fade away; it’s a good idea for your organization to learn how to use it to your advantage. The best companies will learn faster and get more out of social media by aggressively managing their efforts.

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