That’s a lot of users and whole lot of fast growth. It could even be debated that Twitter is the center of the social media universe right now.

So what’s holding you back? I drank the Kool-Aid (@charley_s). And it was delicious. Now let’s talk about getting you started on Twitter.

After you set up your profile, you need to start following people. Find a friend, a mentor, a business leader or someone else you admire, and follow them. Now check out who they follow. It’s likely that if you like them, you’ll like who they follow. Twitter will also offer some suggestions on who they think you should follow. This can be hit or miss, but they’re trying to be helpful.

Below are some great lists to help kick start your following.

Business and industry leaders - Following professionals in your field is a great way to keep up to date on what’s happening. Good Twitter citizens will share links to interesting articles and start meaningful conversations about industry trends and topics.

Comedians - 140 characters is the perfect length for a punch line.

Politicians - Left, right, middle. They’re all on here.

News media - The news media loves the access it gets to viewers and listeners. Effective users of Twitter will share updates to breaking stories and timely events.

Musicians - Follow your favorite band or musician and stay up to date on tour info and album releases. And you’ll be surprised how much these folks will share about their personal lives. Be careful of getting a false sense of friendship. Just because you know where Lady Gaga likes to go on a Saturday night does not mean you’ll be hanging out with her there.

Family - You thought Facebook was the only place to keep up with what your kinfolk are doing? Ha. Enter shorter, more rapid-fire updates. You do not have to follow your family, but the same “follow me, because I follow you” rules apply to Twitter as they do on Facebook. And you don’t want to make Thanksgiving dinner uncomfortable with Aunt Bessie.

A great place to see a power player list is the top 100 Most Followed People on Twitter as tracked by Twitter Counter.

Lifescoop just released a list of the Top Influential People to Follow on Twitter. It’s a good mix of the types of people listed above.

Twellow is a great resource to help you find specific users, not by name or popularity, but by subject. They have a great categorical listing by topic as defined in people’s Twitter bios. If someone says in their bio they are a web programmer, then they will show up in the Computer and Technology listing. You can also search for keywords that will be in someone’s Twitter bio - your city, industry or interests.

Buckle Up: It’s a Fast Ride

It’s true jumping in and out of the Twitter stream throughout the day can be a tough routine to make habit. But Twitter is taking steps to make it easier for you to catch up on what you missed throughout the day. This week the folks at Twitter started rolling out a weekly digest of hot tweets you may have missed. You can also activate mobile notifications to receive immediate updates when specific accounts post tweets. This will help insure you never miss important info from people or organizations you know you want to keep up with. Good examples for this are local and national news sources, entertainment outlets and business leaders.

Monitoring the Twitter stream is a great way to stay in the know. By strategically selecting who you follow you’ll be constantly presented with topics and information that are relevant to you and your business.

Listening is good, but participating in the Twitter stream is when this social media platform really takes flight (pun intended). After you are comfortable with the conversation and communications style of Twitter, get active. Start retweeting and commenting about tweets and post relevant news and topics to what your Twitter community is talking about. You’ll soon find that people are interested in following you.

Just over a week ago the Knoxville Convention Center was the hottest spot for social media discussion in the continental United States. Mark Schaefer and the Social Media Club Knoxville assembled an amazingly strong and deeply talented cast of social media experts to expound on their experiences, opinions and practices at Social Slam 2012.

Click here for a full run-down of the roster and links to their Twitter profiles. To see Twitter activity about #SoSlam, click here.

These speakers were awesome. Social Slam 2012 was inspiring on so many levels, from brand management to marketing strategies to good old-fashioned company storytelling. It would have been difficult to not come away refreshed and refocused.

The great stories and presentations have been washing over me for the past few days. The event coordinators say the videos of the full presentations will be available on the website at a later date. I highly recommend keeping an eye out for those to be posted. (Check out @TheSalesLion if you want a masters class on energetic presenting.)

Below are my five favorite takeaways from Social Slam 2012. I have indicated which presenter shared these ideas, and I recommend you pay attention to these folks. They are some of the best thought leaders in the industry.

1. Content is king. We’ve all known this for some time. And it hasn’t changed. You want followers and readers? You want inbound links? Write and post good content and people will read it and share it. (Marcus Sheridan, @TheSalesLion)
2. Social media scoring is on the rise. Mark Schaefer’s latest book, Return On Influence: The Revolutionary Power of Klout, Social Scoring, and Influence Marketing, is all about social scoring (check out Klout) and how it will influence social media interaction. Some folks online are decrying social scoring as evil, and will forever change the way our social media communities behave. Others are taking a more strategic approach to knowing someone’s Klout score (e.g., using someone’s score to determine how to leverage or react to a particular person’s online comments about your company’s widget). (Mark Schaefer, @markwschaefer)
3. The “three screens” (TVs, smart phones and computers) are quickly becoming one screen - tablets. With the rise of tablet sales and usage we must adjust our communication strategies to follow suit. Due to development of great apps, no longer do TV networks dictate when we watch our favorite programming. We don’t have to rely on monitoring websites for updates from our favorite companies; we get push notifications through their apps. Video chat apps like Skype and FaceTime are changing the way we talk to each other. Our communications strategies must be nimble enough to adapt to the ever-changing content digestion habits of our audiences. (Mitch Joel, @mitchjoel)
4. Do something with your analytic data. There are lots of great (and mostly free) tools to monitor the activity of our digital communities. You can easily see what your followers are doing and what they are saying. Act on it. You’re getting free business tips. Don’t squander the info. Make a plan and follow up with site visitors and blog commenters by offering them additional resources or blog posts you have written on similar topics. Engage with them. (Tom Webster, @webby2001)
5. You can measure anything. For quite a while social media measurement has been as elusive as documenting a UFO sighting. Completely viable, but no one can get a clear picture of the thing. One trick is to set a goal, something where you can place a checkmark in a box - we won the account, I sold a widget to that person, I got a meeting with that company’s CMO. Don’t pick non-convertible goals like number of Facebook fans or Twitter followers. Social media is not helping your bottom line if your followers are not coming in to your business to get the good stuff you’ve got. You may have to do a little bit of pencil and paper research to track your results. After you put yourself out there to a particular group (give a presentation, attend a networking event, give a webinar), watch your followers. Did they visit your website? Did they read your latest blog post? Did they start following you on Twitter or like your Facebook page? Great. Engage with them. Thank them for the follow or like. Send them follow-up info to what got them on the hook in the first place. Your goal is to put sunshine and water on that new business kernel and help it grow. (Gini Dietrich, @ginidietrich)

Another small takeaway I would like to add is the advice to not follow generic data. When you see a blog post or industry report that offers the best time to tweet or post to your blog, don’t fall in to that trap. Your business is unique to your company. Your customers may be operating on an entirely different timeline than the status quo. You’ll need to do your own legwork to determine the best times to interact with your customer base. Sprinkle some tweets and posts through the week and times of day. Determine which ones get the most traction through retweets or comments. And there you go. Now you know what activity timetable works specifically for you. (This was another gem from Tom Webster, @webby2001.)

Social Slam 2012 was, in a word, fantastic. I loved the energy and the sharing of ideas and it made me very excited to be in an industry where the trends and strategies are changing so quickly. I can’t wait for Social Slam 2013. But until then I have a lot of new ideas to implement and great industry leaders to listen to and follow.

And I would love to drop a word in Mark Schaefer’s ear: Social Slam FALL 2012.

Then Instagram announced it was being acquired by Facebook for $1 billion dollars - huge! So you’ve heard about Instagram, but maybe you are thinking, what is Instagram? Simply put, Instagram is a mobile photo sharing social network that allows users to share their lives via photos. Some people share photos of themselves, others only show photos of friends and some only share photos of where they are. It’s completely up to you as the user to determine how you want to make use of it.

Its key feature is that its apps allow you to easily modify the photo with different filters before posting, making it not just about sharing the photo but capturing something emotional and interesting. There are 17 filter options on the Android app that allow you tweak the shot until the photo you get it as you want. My favorite part is that with the right filter, a relatively mundane photo can turn into quite the artistic photo.

Instagram allows you to capture an event or activity in a manner that words sometimes just can’t describe. I tend to capture photos of places that I find interesting. For a few examples, I was walking downtown this week and shot this photo of an interesting window, and a few weeks ago I took this photo of a bulldog while visiting my family.

Gavin Baker - Instagram - "Downtown"

Gavin Baker - Instagram - "Bulldog on a bench"

Here are a few examples from our own Charley Sexton, and WBIR’s Erin Donovan.

Instagram - Charley Sexton - "Untitled"

Instagram - Charley Sexton - "Stripes"

Instagram - Erin Donovan - "Special Olympics medals"

If you regularly use your phone to take photos, then I’d suggest you download Instagram to your phone and get started. If you’re like me, you’ll start to look for things to share!

Facebook Timeline rolled out last week, and as suggested you’ve added a cover photo. But now what? The Facebook page update had so much more to it than just the photo. Facebook also included a number of new features for page content including:

• starred content
• pinned content
• milestones
  

Starred content

Instead of just having posts, we now have the ability to add other levels to the content we post to Facebook. We’ve got our “normal” updates that don’t receive any special treatment. But every week, I’m sure there are posts that are important to your organization, photos from an event, a special announcement or just an important update. You can star those, and the posts receive more emphasis and space on Facebook, taking up both columns of Timeline.

Pinned content

Occasionally, you’ll have an update that you want to stay at the top of your Facebook page for a while, such as news release or the announcement of a special sale. This is the type of content that you will pin and it stays on the top of your page for five days.

Milestones

Every organization has a history of notable events — new locations, 1,000th customer, or times you won awards. These milestones for your organization should be added to your page to help tell your organization’s story. I’d add just a few milestones at the beginning and then continue to add new ones on a rolling basis.

As you plan out your conversation calendar, add next to the updates whether the content should be pinned, starred, or if a new milestone or cover photo should be added. These new content features bring depth to Facebook pages that we can make the most of!

I’ve read no less then five headlines recently, touting ways to leverage Pinterest on behalf of your brand with titles such as:

“5 Best Practices to Get Your Brand on Pinterest”
“How to Master Pinterest for B2B Marketing Success”
“Pinterest Marketing Tips for SEO and Affiliate Sales”
“101 Ways to Market Your Business on Pinterest”

Here is the problem with every article and headline I read: they don’t mention why people actually use Pinterest. They mention 101 ways to leverage Pinterest for your content or list the technical ways to increase the likelihood of getting your pins the most benefit. But sadly, a lot of those recommendations to pimp your brand will probably work in the short term. Therein lies the problem, if Pinterest gets polluted with junk content, it will lose its mojo. Pinterest is very visual and part of its allure is that it is visually easy to use. “Pinners” find and share (via pinning) photos of subjects that appeal to them. These photos are pinned on a customized pin board and arranged by category. Mix in poorly shot, categorized (and produced) photos with all the current great photography and it is a very different place and not as enjoyable to spend time on.

Pinterest is a site people (especially women) love because it helps them find cool, interesting and helpful things and organize them in a visual way. It is enjoyable to browse to learn new things and check out the latest trends in fashion, design, decor and food. Pinterest is addictive, because it is both simple to use and useful at the same time. If you want to use Pinterest to have an impact, start by capturing that desire users have to find something cool and save it. It will take more work, but it will bring you greater, long-term success.

Do I believe brands should be on Pinterest? Absolutely. You should build strategies based on helping people find cool things. It can be vintage advertising, great products or innovative methods to create something. HGTV posts design and home-related ideas and photos, TIME posts magazine covers, and Whole Foods posts recipes and gardening tips. Pinterest won’t work just to post your content and hope that it will be repinned. You need to think about what your customers would find interesting and would want to save and share. You can inspire, but you mainly need to be relevant and interesting.

Because the game ended in such a fashion, the Superbowl broke the record of Tweets Per Second (TPS) at a sporting event with an average of 10,000 tweets per second in the last three minutes. This is double last year’s TPS high, at 4,064 during the Superbowl. That’s a lot of Tweets!

The fact that there were over double the amount of tweets from last year indicates a growth in the adoption of Twitter users in the USA. This is good for you, because it means that there are more users that you and your brand can connect with online. This growth in active Twitter users will show up as positive for you, as users engage around topics they are passionate about and you can connect with them around your shared passion points.

This also matters because people need to realize ways that Twitter is valuable to them. Personally, I use Twitter because of the people it has allowed me to connect with and meet. However, not everyone uses Twitter the way I do. Some use it just to browse and read information, others may only use it to chat with a few friends, and many brands use it as a customer service channel. There are multiple types of users on Twitter, and for sports fans, collaborative consumption may be the driving force of why they will join the network and engage with each other.

Overall, this growth in TPS is a leading indicator that Twitter matters. So if you’re on Twitter, this is great news and expect increased engagement from your followers. If you’re not on Twitter yet, it might be time to get signed-up - whether you’re a football fan or not.

Three things for you to know.

#1 - You can’t avoid it
Timeline is the new format for your profile on Facebook. You don’t get a choice on if you use it or not. You’ll receive an email telling you that it’s been activated on your profile, and you have seven days to spruce up or clean up any information that you don’t want spotlighted.

#2 - It’s about you
Timeline is about your life. You can add events to your timeline. There is a new category called “Life Event,” and it essentially allows you to add things that have happened in your life to the timeline on Facebook. They have pre-categorized menus, so I just added “Bought a house” to my timeline for January 2011. Facebook allowed me to pick a photo (or upload one) of the house and provide additional details if I wanted.

#3 - You’ve got your own billboard
With the new profile, you can add a cover image to the top of your profile. It’s a very dominant image, and feel free to upload almost anything you want. Here are some great examples of how others have used the space.

Timeline does create a very interesting way to review what you’ve posted to Facebook. For example, I joined Facebook while in college, so there are photos, comments and events that I haven’t thought about since then - but I can view them and travel back to 2005.

More importantly, it’s essentially creating a scrapbook of your life moment by moment that is added to Facebook. My suggestion is to embrace it. Add some of your life events, both from the past and as they happen. In few years, you’ll appreciate your Facebook memory.

Social Media Series: How To Win Friends and Influence Customers with LinkedIn
January 17, 11:30-1:30pm | Knoxville Chamber

I’ll share how to maximize the social media site LinkedIn to network and engage your contacts and grow your business. This is part of the Knoxville Chamber’s Bright Ideas series on social media #SMS12. If LinkedIn interests you and you want to learn more about it, I’d love to see you there.

Social Media: A Practical Getting Started Business Strategy
February 8, 9am-12pm | University of Tennessee, Professional and Personal Development (Non-credit)

In this class I’ll cover why social media matters to your business and how and what you should be doing to integrate social media into your marketing plan.

Facebook/Twitter: Getting Started
February 16, 9am-12pm | University of Tennessee, Professional and Personal Development (Non-credit)

This is a class for people who want to dive headfirst into using Facebook and Twitter for your business. In the class we cover how to get started as well as discuss case-studies of companies who have successfully navigated into social media.

Blogging
March 8 9am-12pm | University of Tennessee, Professional and Personal Development (Non-credit)

In this class you’ll learn why you should have a blog; how to create the best blogging strategy for your business; and tips to get you started within 48 hours of the class.

These classes cover social media broadly, but what specifically do you want to learn about? I’d love to hear your suggestions for workshop topics in the comments.

Curation
The explosion of users and traffic on sites like Pinterest and Instagram indicates that there is a strong desire to curate and discover.  Instagram makes each person a photojournalist, giving “Average Joes” the ability to create interesting photostreams. Pinterest lets users collect both photos and ideas on boards organized by their interest as well as subscribe to the boards of others.

Social Channel Surfing
Watching TV is turning into a social activity as we connect with those around the world who love to watch such shows as “Glee“, “Grey’s Anatomy” or “White Collar“.  In 2011, networks introduced hashtags and mobile apps for shows, and these opportunities will only grow as networks find innovative ways to connect with watchers.

MoSoCom
Mobile + Social + Commerce = MoSoCom.  We are connected consumers and regardless of where we shop or what we are shopping for, we rely on the recommendations of friends, reviews and ratings.  With smartphones in hand, consumers are not only researching products while still in store, they are finding deals and coupons that may not be in the store.  The convergence of mobile and social will bring about large change in retail as educated consumers have price transparency and availability at their fingertips.

Influence (Who Matters Metrics)
There has been a surge of influence measures and this will continue into 2012, not because Klout or Peer Index is right, but because in a world of 800 million Facebook users and 300 million Twitter users, marketers want to connect with those who have influence in their target audience.  Metrics will grow, but for a true index of influence, the services will need to spread past the practiced social media set and include everday users of social media services.

Simplicity
We’ll see the proliferation of sites and services that make it incredibly easy to do one thing really well.  Sites like Kickstarter, Gumroad, PicPlum and Postcard on the Run are at the forefront of using social media and technology to make real world tasks simple. Here’s what they do:

Kickstarter, fundraising for your project
Gumroad, making it easy to sell anything digital
PicPlum, a service that automatically prints and mails photos every month
Post Card on the Run, a mobile app (Android and iOS) that makes it easy to send real-life postcards.

These are just a sampling of services, and I’m sure 2012 will bring us a number of sites that will do other tasks really well.

Overall, the megatrend we’re seeing is convergence between online and offline activities.  New Year 2012 is going to be exciting!

Be sure to watch the video (below) of my discussion about social media trends 2012 with Hillary Lake on WBIR.

Shopycat is a Facebook application that launched earlier this month which analyzes the data from your friends profiles on Facebook and then makes gift recommendations based on the information it collects.  The app was created and built by Walmart, so gifts come from their inventory, but it will also give you gift ideas from other sites like RedEnvelope, which features unique gifts; ThinkGeek, a site featuring gifts for geeks, and Barnes & Noble.

For example, when I put Charley Sexton (our Creative Director) into Shopycat it returns gifts based on the fact that he has the following interests:

- Star Wars
- Angry Birds
- Poker
- The Beatles

So one of the gift ideas for him based on his love for Angry Birds, is the Angry Birds Santa hat.  If I don’t like the Santa Hat, but think that Angry Birds is the perfect idea, I can then explore other gift ideas for that interest.

How can you use Shopycat?

- Find gifts for friends and family

- Shop for gift items in curated lists by category

The real power of Shopycat isn’t in finding that perfect gift, but in providing a starting point for you to do your own brainstorming and gift discovery.  Ultimately, we all know our friends and family better than Facebook can, but sometimes we need help to get the ideas flowing.

Building applications like Shopycat allows for retail businesses to leverage the information already part of social networks to their customers advantage.  For many businesses, answering the question, “what is the ROI of social media?” is of crucial importance and being able to tie social media to commerce is a great step in that direction.  Where can you leverage social media in your business?