Fast-forward a few years and social media, tablets, e-readers and e-books are changing everything. Indeed, there’s never been a better time to be an aspiring author. You can build an audience on your own, sell directly to your readers and pocket the cash without splitting a penny with a publisher or an agent. As a result, I’ve not only taken the dive back into writing, I’ve become fascinated with how writers are using social media to build their careers (and to sell more books).

In this post, the first in a series about how authors are using social media, I interviewed Jonathan Maberry, author of such zombie brain-feasts as Patient Zero, Rot & Ruin, Dust & Decay, Dead of Night and Wanted Undead or Alive (for more about How Jonathan uses social media and zombies, read the full, extended interview at Addicted to Social Media.com).

Please tell our readers about yourself. Who is Jonathan Maberry?

Zombie Author Jonathan Maberry

I’m a professional writer and part-time writing teacher. I write thrillers, horror novels, post-apocalyptic adventures for teens, movie tie-ins, and short stories. And I freelance for Marvel Comics. I teach a weekly writing class for teens and run a few classes on novel writing for adults.

Before I went full time as an author I had a grab-bag of different jobs. I was a bouncer in a strip club (in my wild youth), a bodyguard in the entertainment industry, a college teacher, the executive director of a writers center, an Expert Witness for the Philadelphia D.A.’s office (for murder trials involving martial arts), and a graphic artist.

I live on Bucks County, Pennsylvania with my wife, Sara Jo.

When, and more importantly, why did you decide to start using social media?

I got involved with message boards early on, but mostly to communicate with like-minded people on subjects that interested me; martial arts, books, film, the paranormal, folklore…things like that.

Then, while teaching a program at the Writers Room in Doylestown, PA, one of my students made a presentation on the subject of a new thing called ‘social media’.  At the time the hot topic was MySpace. I wound up exploring MySpace and then becoming heavily invested in the online community.

That student was Don Lafferty, who is now a publisher, writer and a social media consultant of some note. He frequently advises a number of other successful authors on social media.

What platforms are you on?

I’m all over the place, but I’m most heavily invested in Twitter, Facebook (regular page and group page), LinkedIn, and GoodReads. I rely heavily on Yahoo Groups for my classes and special projects –such as an anthology I’d editing, and we use the message board for posting info, submissions, and so on. I also have a website (www.jonathanmaberry.com), and I belong to Shelfari, LibraryThing, and a bunch of message boards –many of which are connected to writers organizations to which I belong (The Mystery Writers of America, Horror Writers Association, International Thriller Writers, Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators, and the International Association of Media Tie-In Writers.

For authors, what platforms would you recommend?

The big three are Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. That’s where the crowd hangs out, that’s where they talk, and that’s where the most useful connections are made. I also recommend that all writers join GoodReads and LibraryThing, and also build a website that draws a lot of traffic to one central point.

What’s your social media strategy?

I spend most of my time having fun. I read a lot of the posts other people make, and comment as often as I have something interesting (or funny) to say. I also post a lot of humor. These are dark times, so lightening the mood seems to work. I post links to events and publications by other writers and to items that I feel are of general interest. I’m a science and pop culture geek, so there’s a lot of that in what I post.

So, my strategy is to post positive stuff and generally have fun on the Net.

One thing that has greatly increased the traffic to my platforms and dialed up the volume of interactive posts is to include my readers in my projects. I’ll have contests online for people to name characters (including letting them win the chance to have a character named after them); or to pick the title of my next book; or win something nice like a Kindle or Nook. And, yes, giving out prizes is fun for me, too.

Has social media helped sales? If so, how are you measuring that?

Social media definitely bumps up sales. I see it in the analytics that track click-throughs from newsletters or social media posts to purchase sites like online booksellers.

And with social media I’ve been able to build an international fanbase that I might not otherwise have built. Publishing houses can’t afford to send as many writers on tour these days, and even when they do it’s usually a limited tour.

What kinds of interactions do you see people/fans responding to?

It’s pretty clear to anyone who visits my Twitter or Facebook page that I’m having an enormous amount of fun driving my jet-ski at high speed through the social media seas. Fun is infectious; people want to play with the happy kid in the playground. Try it out. Make a negative post and count the ‘likes’ and reposts then post something fun like a link to a cartoon (I post a ton of cartoons), a fascinating bit of science trivia (zombie ants, for example), praise for someone else’s accomplishments and then see how many MORE hits there are. Positive trumps negative every time.

At the same time I believe that people respond to my integrity. I never bash, never descend to base humor, and I don’t use the Net to proselytize any political agendas. I think that also engenders within them a greater sense of trust in the quality of the products I have on the market. Integrity and good will are hard to fake in anything but the short term, so people who hang out with me online know they’re safe and that something weird or silly is going to happen. We all dig that vibe.

Do you see social media becoming part of the story telling process?

It already is. We use social media to engage interest and to share information. The Net encourages us to get to the heart of our message, and as a result we’ve learned (and continue to learn) how to do that. The 140 character limit on Twitter is brilliant, and the fact that you can post a quick message and a hot link allows people to jump right in.

From a different perspective, some folks are using social media as an actual delivery system for storytelling. The Japanese Twitter novels are an example of that, but that’s been going on for years and I don’t see it catching fire here in the States. That said, I think the door is open for some new kind of multi-platform and interactive storytelling that we haven’t seen yet. I’ll bet money that it will happen. And, yeah, once it’s there I’ll probably experiment with it.

I hear you’re in talks to develop one of your books into a TV series. Do you see social media/Twitter playing a role?

That’s one of those Hollywood horror stories. Sony Pictures had optioned Patient Zero for TV.  They hired Emmy Award winning writer Javier Grillo-Marxuach to do the pilot script, and he nailed it. They brought it to ABC, and we got all the way down to the wire so that it was pretty much a decision between my show and a remake of Charlie’s Angels. And they went with the Angels.

As of now, the option is open again and my agent has been fielding reach-outs from various producers, so we’ll see. We’re all pretty optimistic, however.

Once something does catch fire, social media will be crucial. I’ve seen how that worked for The Walking Dead, a show based on the comics by my friend Robert Kirkman. The production company was all over the Net with that. It was everywhere, and it paid off, because the show was an instant hit as it deserved to be. But without social media buzz, it might have struggled to gain an audience and might not have done so soon enough to get the nod for a second season. Social media greatly helped that show.

Do you think zombies make good tweeters?

They’re relentless and they never tire, so yeah…they’ll be tweeting 24/7 with only a short break for some fresh brains.

Can you recommend any zombie related Twitter accounts, our readers are dying to know (pun intended)?

• @Zombiesquad
• @Zombcon
• @ZombieResearch
• @ZombieToys
• @TweetsOfTheDead
• @ZombieZoneNews
• @ZombieNews
• @TheZombieClub

For more about How Jonathan uses social media and zombies, read the full, extended interview at Addicted to Social Media.com. And if you’d like to read any of Jonathan’s books, click on the links below.

• Ghost Road Blues
• Dead Man’s Song
• Bad Moon Rising
• Patient Zero
• The Dragon Factory
• The King of Plagues
• Rot & Ruin
• Dust & Decay
• Dead of Night
• “The Wind Through the Fence” (short story)
• Wanted Undead or Alive
• The Wolfman

Neal Wiser is the owner of Neal Wiser Consulting, a Digital Marketing consulting firm. 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 more of Neal’s Twitip posts here or on his blog at NealWiser.com.

© 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips.



Tweeting with Zombies

For years, people have been offering their opinions on how Twitter should make money. Despite the fact that the company allegedly made $45 million in 2010 and its targeting $150 million this year, those numbers fall far short of the kind of revenues Twitter will need to justify it’s soon to be $8 Billion valuation.

While most industry watchers and armchair quarterbacks point to advertising as the answer, what’s been leaked, rumored, experimented with, experimented with again and announced thus far falls far short of the bold and innovative thinking that spawned Twitter in the first place. If history is any guide, most of those solutions will be viewed as intrusive (remember the Dickbar?), will fail because no one’s considering how users may react and/or will simply not generate enough revenue to satisfy Twitter’s investors anyway.

Yes, Twitter needs to do something bold again. Despite the fact that the service is in desperate need of additional features (such as Channels), when uber-fanboys like Robert Scoble call Twitter “Boring” and “a mess,” you know there’s a problem. So, Twitter needs a redesign, if not to add those additional features then at least to maximize its advertising earnings potential. After all, those ads have got to go somewhere.

Is this Bold Enough for You?

If Twitter is going to incorporate advertising into the interface, placing them in the user’s tweet stream (as linked to above) is not the answer; they will simply get lost in the flood of tweets, assuming that people won’t tune them out anyway. No, Twitter needs another solution; one that will maximize advertising’s earning potential. But to do that, any ad system, like all ad systems, will need to accomplish three things:

1. Increase the likelihood that an ad unit will be seen.
2. Increase the likelihood that users will click on the ads by making them more relevant.
3. Increase the total volume of ads to maximize advertising’s earnings potential.

For all three, there is only one solution…

Introducing the Ad Column ^TM

The Twitter Ad Column

(Click for Larger Image)

The Ad Column is a new column in the Twitter interface strategically positioned close to the center of the page between the Tweet Stream and the right panel (see above image). The central placement of the Ad Column dramatically increases the likelihood that the ads will be seen, addressing Bullet 1.

Ad units in the Ad Column would be paired with a user’s tweets based on the subject of those tweets or some other factor as determined by the advertiser. This clearly would increase each ad’s relevance and also increase the likelihood that users will read them, addressing Bullet 2 (this assumes that Twitter will utilize some sort of keyword matching technology).

Finally, the Ad Column massively increases the size of Twitter’s potential ad inventory by pairing one ad unit with each tweet. With Twitter claiming 200 million tweets/day, that’s both a lot of ads and also addressing Bullet 3.

Granted, the Ad Column layout is going to be controversial for some users. However, as Larry Magid pointed out, Google has already proven that placing ads in its products (such as search results and Gmail) can be successful without interrupting the user’s experience. Granted, the Ad Column only affects Twitter.com. How the interface would be implemented on various third-party apps and on mobile devices would surely be different, but that’s beyond the scope of this post (although, I could think of something).

Types of Ad Units

Large Ad Unit

An additional benefit of the Ad Column is that it not only allows ads to be placed on multiple pages, such as my Profile page above, but that it also allows for several different types of ad units.

Large Unit

The Large Ad Unit would appear at the top of the column. This unit could be in a fixed position so that when a user scrolls, the ad remains visible, or it could scroll with the rest of the page.

Additionally, it could expand into the right column in much the same way that Twitter’s iPad app does today. This would offer advertisers considerably more space, perhaps enough for a micro site, with which to engage users.

Finally, the ad unit itself could include features such as a video player or launch a popup that could offer similar features as the micro-site (see below).

Small Unit

Small Ad Unit

This would be the most common ad unit and could include an image and link to launch a popup (see below). Small units would be available in two basic formats:

• Text Only
• Text with Images

Popups

As mentioned above, an additional option for all ad units would be to offer supplementary information and functionality via a popup. These popups would activate when a user clicks on or rolls over the “Learn More” link at the bottom of relevant ads.

The following is an example for how a popup ad unit for a film could be executed. The popup could include basic information about the film and even a video player offering previews or other content. Links included on the popup could include tools to find a nearby theater, offers to buy tickets or even to retweet the ad itself.

Another style of popup could focus on local businesses. In the following example, a local business could setup and run their own campaigns (Disclosure: UltrasonicMachines.com is a client and their equipment is amazing).

Show Me the Money!

Of course, all ad systems are useless if they don’t make money. While Twitter is working hard to develop other revenue streams, such as the Promoted Trend which they’re charging advertisers $120,000 per day, its cousin, the Promoted Tweet, rumored Twitter Brand Pages and various marketing tools for marketers, the revenues from all of them combined would pale in comparison to the Ad Column system.

To illustrate potential Ad Column revenues, I did some very basic calculations which you can see in the chart below. This matrix is merely for entertainment value. I did not breakdown every factor such as revenue limitations based on ad budgets, calculating impressions/tweet (although Large Ad Unit impressions are included) or other potential revenue streams such as from a Twitter Shopping Cart where Twitter would receive a percentage of every transaction. If you want to see an example of a very detailed revenue model, I highly recommend reading this post by Nova Spivack, and don’t miss his own spreadsheet. Additionally, please note that the values are based on the following assumptions:

• All tweets would have ads.
• The entire ad inventory would be sold out.
• Ad inventory is based on Twitter’s claims of 200 million tweets/day (the split between ad types is fairly arbitrary; I just picked numbers that seemed reasonable).
• A minimum of one Large Ad would be served for every user visit (an additional Large Ad unit would be served for each page refresh which are not calculated here). Large Ad unit inventory is based on data from compete.com for June, 2011 where Compete reported 169,992,743 Visits which I rounded up to 170 Million to derive 5,666,666 visits/day in the chart below.
• Visits include traffic from all sources (Twitter.com and all apps that access Twitter).

Finally, because I know that these revenue numbers will be controversial, especially due to the simplicity of the calculations, you can download a copy of the original spreadsheet to calculate your own revenue projections for Twitter (Note that the file is an Excel 2007 .xlsx). Enjoy!

What do you think? Please leave your comments or questions below.

Neal Wiser is the owner of Neal Wiser Consulting, a Digital Marketing consulting firm. 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 more of Neal’s Twitip posts here or on his blog at NealWiser.com.

© 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips.



Twitter’s New Ad System REVEALED

Posting Statuses To Twitter At The Perfect Time – Timely.is

You might never have stopped to think about this, but… are you tweeting at the right time? I mean, to the vast majority of people, using Twitter amounts to nothing but tweeting something when they feel like doing it, and trusting their followers will get the message, read it and process it.

The truth is that sending a tweet when nobody is around is almost the same as not sending it. The tweet will become buried by all the messages that come after it. That is a simple, unavoidable fact.

And that is what Timely is here to address. It is a web application that can take care of scheduling all your tweets, and sending them when they would reach out to more people. Once you give Timely access to your Twitter account, the application will take care of analyzing the last 200 tweets you have sent, and figure out the best time slots for anything you want to send in the future.

If this sounds good to you, then you will be happy to know that Timely is a free service. Timely will analyze all your tweets and figure out what times of day you get the best engagement and then auto schedule your tweets for those best periods of the day. As your followers grow, Timely will adapt and learn what new times might be best. The app also provides tweet analytics and performance insights that shows you how you’re doing (including click-throughs and audience reached).

In a nutshell: If you send out multiple Tweets at once, it could annoy some of your followers. There’s also the risk that your Tweets could be pushed to the bottom of their feeds if they aren’t constantly reading their feeds. Timely helps fix that by scheduling your Tweets, and has the added benefit of some light analytics afterwards.

It is also a fantastic app for those managing multiple Twitter accounts who wants to optimize when their tweets are scheduled. The Timely bookmarklet makes for a nice work flow where you can fill up your queue of tweets quickly and then let Timely find the best time to tweet them out (and you can change between accounts with a single click). Great for community managers and others who want to share helpful links on Twitter without spending all day on it.

Posting Photos To Twitter With No Ads – Posterous

Posterous you say? I thought that was a blogging platform? Fear not, I mentioned that these would be creative tools, so read on to find out more about how to implement Posterous. There are a lot of ways to share photos with your followers on Twitter. Posterous, however, has a position in the photo sharing market that makes it truly the best option for sharing photos are Twitter, one that offers numerous advantages to you as a user and blogger.

If you have made your decision to start blogging through a tumblelog and you chose to use Posterous, you already have a distinct advantage to sharing your photos on Twitter through Posterous: your followers will be linked to your blog to view the photos and not to some 3rd party application like TwitPic.

This is advantageous in many ways: the foremost way being you allow users to check out a separate blog in addition to photos. Your blog can contain much more than just the photos that you’ve sent to Twitter! Services like TwitPic offer the bare minimum; pretty much only photos you upload to them which can be shared one at a time, and nothing else.

Many of these services are ridden with ads and look very cluttered and tacky. Meanwhile, using the “Clean Sheet” or one of Posterous’s other sleek themes will allow you to share your photo content on a nicely laid out on a blog style page with no ads and no distractions. You will notice Rainn Wilson from “The Office” does this on his Twitter. The benefits do not end here however.

Posterous offers the option to upload multiple photos at once and have them automatically appear in a very sleek slide show display. No more spamming your followers with shortlinks, simply upload a few photos that you took at the moment or recently and send one link out via Posterous to Twitter and give you followers a few things to check out. This makes your photo Tweets much more entertaining and worthwhile.

Additionally, you photos will display in a clean timeline. Posterous offers the aforementioned blog style layout, so your other photos display in date order for your users to check out. So after a person is linked to a photo of yours via Posterous, they now have access to the rest of your photos in a timeline style.

Lastly, you can add commentary to the photos in Posterous to give your readers a little more insight. This is another ability that adds value per Tweet. Gone are the days of “Here is me _______ – [shortlink]”, now you can upload photos and stay in the 140 character limit on Twitter while adding additional content on Posterous, giving your readers more context and description. It is also something that adds optional depth to readers they are interested.

Getting More Followers On Twitter By Sharing Content – CloudFlood

As you know, being a power user and having an impact on Twitter means that you need followers. Having a large follower base on Twitter means your tweets will reach as wide an audience as possible: not only your followers, but those who they retweet it to.

Having a large base on Twitter also allows you to inform people of other ventures that you are apart of, site as a new site or new release of something. One great method for gaining peoples interest is a “freebie”, giving something away in order to get something small back from the user, possible an email address, or maybe… even a tweet spreading word about whatever your new endeavor is.

Enter Cloud:Flood. To maximize the number of people who tweet about whatever page you’d like to direct them to, follow three easy steps to implement the Cloud:Flood app in perfect form: first, create a free product you want to give away to your website visitors. It could be an eBook on your chosen topic, an MP3 or even a Zip file full of PSD’s.

Then, make a button on the Cloud:Flood site, linking to the file you want to give away, and a page to promote (this can be any page you want, whether it is a new site, a new product, a new post…anything!). You then place the button that you just made on Cloud:Flood next to the freebie offering on your site.

Site visitors see the freebie, and are asked to Tweet or FB Share your link in order to get it. People love getting something for free, so from my experience, this has a high conversion rate: why would your followers pass up something free from you if all they have to do is send out a tweet or Facebook share? Once they share your link, they are automatically given the freebie.

You both win here: your followers get something for free, and you get free, guaranteed promotion on Twitter through their tweets, which you can set (you enter a predefined message to be shared before you make the button). Start up your next big project with a huge boost from Twitter with this technique, and you’ll be glad you did! Not only will you get eyeballs from Twitter visitors on a page you desire, but if you have the predetermined message mention your name, you’ll gain followers as well. So get to work on your next freebie, and let Cloud:Flood do the rest.

© 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips.



3 Creative Tools For Power Twitter Users

The study also revealed that 75 percent of Twitter username and password samples collected online were identical to those used for email accounts.

The sensitive user data was gathered from blogs, torrents, online collaboration services and other sources. It was found that 43 percent of the data was leaked from online collaboration tools while 21 percent of data was leaked from blog postings. Meanwhile, torrents and users of other social hubs were responsible for leaking 10 percent and 18 percent of user data respectively.

BitDefender warned social media users to be careful when setting up passwords for Twitter platforms and email. The researchers managed to verify the leaked email accounts and found that 75 percent of users had one common password for Twitter and accessing their email. Additionally, the study revealed that 87 percent of email IDs, user names, and passwords gathered from various sources were still active.

Cybercriminals could easily use this sensitive user data to hijack email accounts and Twitter profiles and can further be used to spread spam and malware across those platforms.

BitDefender has advised users to be extra careful while creating passwords for Twitter and email accounts and avoid using the same password just for the sake of convenience. Considering the fact that online collaboration tools are not that adept in protecting sensitive user information, users have been told to be more careful the next time they decided to share their emails, user names and passwords with a third party website.

The study conducted by BitDefender follows the release of a torrent containing a list of 171 million Facebook users, complete with their names and Facebook URLs. The security researcher who released the list for download explained that he was able to extract the names and URLs of Facebook users from a directory offered by the website itself. Facebook has maintained that the directory only contains the information users have themselves chosen to make public and can also be found via search engines.

© 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips.



75% Use Same Password for Twitter and Email, Study Finds

“Everything has beauty, but not everyone sees it.”
- Confucius

I admit that when I first signed up for Twitter in the spring of 2008, I didn’t really “get it”. It took months for me to “see the beauty”, even though the awesomeness of Twitter had been there all along.

Twitter really came alive for me when I began to see it as a mirror for life. I realized that Twitter teaches us everything we’ll ever need to know in 5 simple tips:

1. We Are Interconnected

Twitter is an interconnected web of life. What I tweet has an effect on you, and what you tweet has an effect on me. Twitter thrives on interconnectivity.

Just like Twitter, our lives depend on interconnection. We’re connected to each other, and we’re connected to the planet. When we’re aware that our existence depends on this interconnectivity, we live more compassionately.

2. What We Give Out, We Get Back

Most people have realized by now that selfishness doesn’t get you very far on Twitter. If all your tweets are promotional in nature or if you don’t bother responding to mentions, be prepared to lose followers fast.

Similarly in life, if all you care about is yourself and have no regard for others, you’re destined to an empty, lonely existence. The way to become successful in life (and on Twitter) is to lose yourself in giving. What can I do for you? How can I serve? Using your unique gifts and talents in service to others brings immeasurable meaning to life and returns to you multiplied.

3. We Choose Our Thoughts

On Twitter, we choose our tweets (a.k.a. thoughts). These choices affect our relationships, reputation, and influence on Twitter. Our tweets affect our future experience online.

In life, we also choose each thought we think. These thoughts affect our relationships, reputation, and influence. Every thought we think affects our future experience of life.

When we become aware that we have the power to choose our thoughts, we choose more carefully. We choose thoughts that sustain rather than destroy us.

4. Our Power is in the Present Moment

Tweets have a very short shelf life. What you tweeted yesterday and what you’re going to tweet tomorrow is of no value. It’s what you’re tweeting NOW that is going to have an impact.

Likewise in life, all we really have is now. Yesterday and tomorrow are irrelevant – they only exist in our minds. This “now” moment is all you’ll ever have, so what are you doing with it? What are you thinking and feeling now? Now is where your power is. Now is all that matters.

5. Life is Simple

On twitter, we only have 140 characters to express ourselves. Simple. Straightforward. Easy.

Life can also be simple and easy. We can lose the drama. We can get to the point. We can decide what we want and go for it. Life is only complicated when you think it is.

I have a very simple formula for a happy life, which I tweet in only 32 characters:

What do you love to do? Do that.

© 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips.



Everything I Needed to Know I Learned from Twitter

I’ve had a Twitter account for a while now, but didn’t actively start using it until this summer. I was coming out with a new website for photographers and thought Twitter would be a good way to spread the word, get feedback and generally interact with the photography community.

WHO I WANTED

Before I started, I had a very clear idea of who my ideal follower was. Generally it was one of two people:

Photography types – fans of photography, professional or amateur photographers, people who make photography gear or software – that crowd
Anyone interesting – the type person you would be happy to sit next to during a 2 hour flight. Maybe someone really funny or an expert in an interesting field.

At that point, I went through the same paces most new folks do – trying to build up a nice group of followers.

MY PLAN

After reading tons of blog posts and articles on the subject, I set out to try the “I’ll follow you, you follow me” strategy. Sure enough, after a few days I had gone from 20 followers to 100. The problem was, I really only knew about 4 of the followers. I could ask a question and nobody would ever reply. I started noticing that most of my new followers were just sending out ads or links to their websites or services. I don’t mind that in small doses, but I’m not interested in sitting down and reading the online classifieds.

PLAN B
My plan was clearly not working, so it was back to the blogs for more research. Somewhere along the way, I discovered this phenomenon of fiverr.com where you can basically pay someone $5 to do anything from design a logo to calling your girlfriend and breaking up for you. One of the very popular services was the people who would tweet your message to their 100k followers for a month for $5. Curious to try something new, I figured I’d throw five bucks at the problem and see what happened. It might also send some traffic to my new website.

After a few days, I was seeing the tweets, but didn’t notice any increase in my followers or website traffic – strange. These tweets were going out from dozens of accounts – each with 5-10K followers- so why wasn’t I getting flooded with traffic? Out of curiosity, I decided to change the outgoing tweet to “Is anyone actually reading this? If so, DM me and let me know” – kind of a digital message in a bottle. After a week, not a single response. Clearly, these followers were not actual humans looking to interact-just other broadcasters looking for one-way conversations.
SO WHAT NOW?

Although the last idea was clearly a failure, it was a pretty good learning experience for 5 bucks! What became clear is that numbers are not everything. I was under the impression that having 10,000 followers was better than having 100 followers. What I eventually discovered was that 100 engaged, active followers was actually better than 100,000 inactive followers. Unfortunately, the only tried and true way of finding those people is by letting it happen naturally – make friends, then make friends with their friends, and so on. Save your five bucks for when you need someone to break up with your girlfriend. By the way, if you happen to be a photographer, interesting or just willing to interact – we are still accepting new follower applications: @larryphoto

Best of luck!

© 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips.



Now Accepting Applications for Human Followers

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

Sure, you can spend most of your day on Twitter and on other social media sites, but a lot of that time would be better spent worrying about other aspects of your business. Some big companies have employees focused on handling their social media, but if you’re a small or medium business owner, this is probably too much of a strain on your budget.

This doesn’t mean your Twitter account has to suffer though. One option you have is to hire a virtual assistant to help you manage your social media presence. Here are a few things your virtual assistant can help you with:

Keep an eye out for Tweeps mentioning your company.
Search tools and hashtags help make this job easier, but having more than one set of eyes looking for comments or conversations about your company gives you more data to mine. The extra eyes are also helpful when trying to sort through all the noise and find out what tweeps are saying about you.

While doing this, you’ll probably end up following several users and creating lists for fans and critics alike. This might take a bit of time, especially during the list-building phase. Fortunately, your virtual assistant can help you set this up.

Learn about your loudest critics (and your biggest fans too)
You want market research? Twitter is an invaluable research tool. Those Tweeps you followed and the lists you and your virtual assistant compiled are a great place to start.

Listen to what your critics and fans are saying, not just about you, but about everything else. This could mean sifting through a ton of tweets, and this is something your virtual assistant can help you with. Of course, you need to know what you’re looking for.

What annoys them? What do they enjoy? Where do they go during the weekend? Who gets their attention? These are just some of the questions you should try to answer. If you can get into the minds of your naysayers as well as your customers, you’ll be able to serve them better.

Provide customer support
You don’t have to limit your virtual assistant to mining data. You can have your VA respond to customer complaints and inquiries. You can start by having your VA sort through incoming messages and prioritize them based on criteria you choose.

When you get comfortable enough with your virtual assistant, you can allow your VA to handle customer support independently and submit regular reports. Your VA can handle some of the simpler queries initially, leaving you with the more complicated issues. Eventually, you can probably hand off most of of your customer support to your virtual assistant.

Build your network
Customer service isn’t the only task your virtual assistant can handle. Your VA can also help you build your network by retweeting, responding to, and otherwise highlighting other tweeps. If you’re not comfortable with your VA handling this initially, your VA can start by identifying interesting feeds and tweets for you. As your confidence in your VA grows, their task list can expand too.

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These are just a few of the things you can have your virtual assistant do to help you make the most out of Twitter. Can you think of other tips you’d like to share?

© 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips.



4 Ways a Virtual Assistant Can Help You Make the Most Out of Twitter

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

At the time, there was some confusion about the wisdom of the UberMedia deal. Twitter’s response to the announcement was to block UberMedia’s other recently acquired Twitter apps from accessing Twitter’s API. The move was widely viewed as both an overreaction and heavy-handed. Twitter’s justification was that the UberMedia apps had allegedly violated Twitter’s Terms of Service and many TweetDeck users were afraid that TweetDeck was going to be shut down next.

While TweetDeck was not affected by the blockage, a Twitter acquisition could have huge implications for both Twitter’s and TweetDeck’s users. Twitter, which used to be hailed as an example of innovation, has recently been criticized by many “power-users” for its lack of innovation. In comparison to TweetDeck, or other services such as Hootsuite, twitter.com is embarrassingly low-frills and rarely introduces new features.

Is a Feature also a Product?

In the years immediately following its launch, Twitter was heavily dependent upon its eco-system of third-party developers. In fact, it was these very developers who created some of Twitter’s most popular and innovative features and were largely responsible for Twitter’s explosive growth from 2007-2010.

Yet, starting last year and seemingly culminating in January, Twitter told those same third-party developers to, in effect, go away. The move was seen by many, including myself, as suicidal as Twitter’s future growth will be dramatically impacted by continued innovation, or lack thereof.

Indeed, many industry watchers suspect that Twitter will ultimately kill TweetDeck after an acquisition. Such a drastic move seems highly unlikely (bordering on laughable) as Twitter doesn’t need to spend $50 Million to kill TweetDeck. All it has to do is turn off TweetDeck’s access to the Twitter’s API as was done to UberMedia.

Twitter Needs TweetDeck

No, Twitter needs TweetDeck, if for no other reason than TweetDeck is one of the most innovative Twitter-based services available. Perhaps the biggest question is how Twitter will integrate TweetDeck into the Twitter family of products. Twitter is trying to drive more users to twitter.com, presumably to increase ad revenue, and doesn’t want users using third-party apps anymore. The problem is, according to a study by Sysomos, those apps account for 42% of Twitter’s traffic.

Fortunately for Twitter, TweetDeck introduced support for Twitter’s “Promoted Tweets” in its columns several months ago. According to Richard Barley, TweetDeck’s Community Manager whom I interviewed for both the Addicted to Social Media podcast and for Twitip.com, Promoted Tweets “only appear in search columns where the search terms match a keyword that has been purchased.”

Good to know, but the targeting seems to need work (what State Farm Nation has to do with space shuttle launches, I’ll never know).

So, where is the value in an acquisition? Although there are many reasons for Twitter to buy TweetDeck, I see four primary reasons that an acquisition not only makes tremendous sense for Twitter, but would also be very exciting to users.

1. 1. Access to Power Users: Although TweetDeck doesn’t publicize user numbers, it’s estimated that about 5% of Twitter’s users use the service. That may not seem like a lot, but these users tend to be influential marketers, journalists, celebrities and other “power-users” who send a disproportionate number of Tweets and have vast followings. These are people whom Twitter should want to make happy as they would be the most likely customers for potential “Pro” (i.e., paid) services that Twitter could offer in the near future.
2. 2. Advanced Features: Twitter’s single column view is severely limited and becomes cluttered when users follow more than a few dozen people (depending on the user). TweetDeck’s multi-column interface is infinitely more efficient and customizable.
3. 3. Access to Other Services: As more people use more social networks, management of their various accounts on dispersed services is becoming a real problem. It’s also a huge opportunity. TweetDeck already offers users the ability to publish simultaneous updates to Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, Foursquare, and Google Buzz. Thus, TweetDeck would give Twitter something that no other social network truly has; access into their sites.
4. 4. Ability to Evolve: One of the items restricting Twitter’s evolution is the self-imposed limitation on the 140-character tweet. As I wrote in The End of the 140 Character Tweet and its Repercussions, “many users have felt constrained by that limit… Yet this may be Twitter’s big opportunity to break free of that albatross.” If Twitter is to survive, it will need to evolve and removing that restriction would be liberating to many users.

Whatever happens, it will certainly be interesting to see how this plays out. What do you think? Please leave a comment and let me know.

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.



4 Reasons Why Twitter Should Buy TweetDeck