hands on socialselling social

aug 31/sep 1, 2009

Microblogging Technologies

• Twitter (www.twitter.com)

• Jaiku (www.jaiku.com)

• Plurk (www.plurk.com)

• FriendFeed (www.friendfeed.com)

• Small snippets of conversation – 140 characters• Listener driven, not speaker driven

– Opposite of email where recipients are chosen

• Follow those who say something interesting– Drives quality content, easy to drop and add

• Scales enormously with limited impact to speaker• Overlapping followers spread info, connections

– Find follower’s followers, expand your circle

• Closely mimics real conversation– Original thoughts, references, links, replies, relays

• Twitter as a Coffee Shop– Buzz of conversation, constantly going

– Stop in when you can, leave when you need to

– How would you interact in a coffee shop?

What is Twitter?

• Listener driven, not speaker driven– Opposite of email, where recipients are chosen

• Scales enormously with limited impact to speaker

• Closely mimics real conversation– Original thoughts, references, links, replies,

relays

• Overlapping followers spread info, connections– Find follower’s followers, expand your circle

Twitter’s Power

Listener Driven

• Quality rules – no one has to listen to you• Reverses the email model• Facts are boring; points of view are interesting

• I am eating a sandwich.

vs.• Best corned beef sandwich ever at Spanky’s

Deli! (drool)

Scales Enormously

Ashton Kutcher and Ellen DeGeneres have more Twitter followers than the entire population of Ireland, Norway, and Panama

Mimics Conversation

• Conversations wander, flow, and evolve

• Not about each tweet; about the discussion

• How are you? How are the kids? Know where to get great pizza? I used to play hockey. I got a photo radar ticket last week. I’m from Minnesota. I have a new job. I love stinky cheeses. I was stung by a scorpion. Found the best video editing tool ever. Where do socks go to in the dryer? Anyone know a reliable car mechanic? Love this blog about efficient meetings. My Boston Terrier ate my cell phone. Zombies should be slow. Fast zombies are for wimps. Why don’t mirrors reflect up and down, just left to right? Who invented the burrito?

Share an idea…

…the idea spreads…

“retweet”

One tweet, far reach

Discovering new people

Followers grow

Twitter

Creating an account

• http://www.twitter.com• Enter your name and desired user name

– Make sure that this identifies you, either personally or for your business. When people see you in search results will they know it’s you?

• Click next• Use email to find friends, see recommended accounts• Now you’re ready! You can click account settings to

add your phone or set notifications by email

• Click settings– Add an external website– Add a 160 character bio

• Focus on who you are and give people an idea of what your tweets will be about

• Click the picture tab– Upload a photo of you or corp logo

• Should easily identify the account

• Background– Can upload an image and adjust the colors to make it a branded look

and feel.– Third party sites can help make branded backgrounds

• Twitbacks

• Twitterbackgrounds

Customize Your Account

• Updates are 140 characters or less• @replies. Format is @Username

– Use when sending a public message to someone

• @username where’s the game at?

– Use to reference someone

• I was talking to @username…

– Use to give credit for a message

• RT @username “original message”

• “original message” (via @username)

• Direct messages. Format is D username (or send from “Direct Message” link on sidebar)– Send a private message to someone

Mechanics

Hashtags

• Format is #subject• Provide context for a tweet without have to explain what

you’re talking about• Tag the content of the tweet as about a particular topic

without having to explicitly say that• Make the topic easy to search and easy for other people

to reference and discuss

Search

• Add searches to your sidebar navigation to see what people are saying about you and the topics you care about.

• Trending topics are words and hashtags that are being used most often right now

• Use Twitter Search for advanced search options. You can also get a RSS feed of a completed search to post on a blog, website or import into your own RSS reader.

• Add a link. You want to shorten it to fit in 140 characters– Tons of services, Bit.ly provides tracking and tools.

• Add a picture. Shows up as a link to a pic with a message.– Twitpic, you can add pictures and send directly to Twitter

• Add video. Again, shows up as a link with message– 12seconds, you can add a 12 second video and post directly to

Twitter and other services

Advanced Mechanics

• Followers: people who get your updates in their feed• Following: people whose updates appear in your feed• Not always an identical list

• When you look at the list of people who are following you, you can mouse over and see their bio. You can click through to learn more or click follow right there on the list.

• You can search for your name, your product type, business category or other related terms and see if that brings up some people you may want to follow

• You can search for a particular person’s name by clicking “search people” at the top of the page

• You can find external links on blogs, web sites or by searching Google.• Directories

– Tag yourself with your category– Search for people within your category to follow– Wefollow, TweeterTags, Twellow– Specialized: ExecTweets, MediaonTwitter, TwitterMoms, and Twibs

Followers / Following

• Using desktop and smartphone apps makes it easier to interact with Twitter than having to visit the site several times a day.

• Most apps include tools like URL shorteners, TwitPic, 12seconds, hashtags, saved searches for your keywords

• They also perform all the regular functionality of adding tweets to favorites, following people, @replies and direct messages

• They often have additional features like being able to organize your followers into groups so you can easily see updates from specific people (family, coworkers, clients, etc)

• They have alerts features so you can leave them running and see a little icon whenever there’s a new message

• Some of the most popular:– Tweetie– TweetDeck– Twhirl– Seesmic

Making It Easier

• Provide valuable content• Don’t always just talk about yourself, share other information as well

– If you don’t provide value, people will stop following you

• Don’t be afraid of a call to action– Ask them to click the link

– Ask them to respond to your question or check out your survey

– Ask them to come in for whatever offer you have going on

• Use services like Bit.ly to track link clinks– Use that information to see what content they like or not

– See what kind of language works or doesn’t

– Do time of day or day of week elements matter?

• Respond to people– Use @replies to start conversations

– Answer people who send messages to you

– If someone mentions you, follow them and respond

Promoting Basics

• People on Twitter like exclusivity so consider offers that only Twitter followers can get:– DM for a coupon code (DM stands for Direct Message – they have to

follow you to do this which is a coy trick to increase followers)– DM to get on VIP list– Say you follow us on Twitter to get in without cover, etc.

• Tweetups: Meetups or events organized on Twitter– Works well if you have a real location but can be done at third party

locations as well– Basically an event where you invite your Twitter followers to come and

there is something special for them• Maybe the event is entirely for followers

• Maybe followers have a specific special area of the event

• Use your imagination!

Advanced Promoting

• Cross between microblog and social network • One place that aggregates all your online activity• Once you have accounts set up, make sure to come

here and import them in.• Include this URL on your contact lists• Interaction:

– I don’ t think people really interact on FriendFeed, it’s more an alert system. So I follow you, know what you’re doing and updating and then I go there to comment on it.

• Follow people you’re interested in.

Q&A