Product and Affiliate Review » Twitter

Twitter Testing ReTweet Button (With RT Tracking)

Blake Waddill — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 06:01:57 +0000

Over the last couple of months, Twitter has been taking major steps to become more user friendly. The first major step was adding Twitter Lists. They are an extremely helpful way to organize people you want to follow. This is especially useful if you’re following thousands of people.

Twitter is now doing Beta testing for the built in ReTweet button. Even though I use Hoot Suite (which has a build in ReTweet function) for 90% of my Tweeting needs, occasionally, I do some tweeting from Twitter as well.

The Retweet button appears right next to the reply button on the bottom right of each tweet. When You click it, a message asks if you want to retweet to your followers. Nothing special there.

The coolest part is how the ReTweets are displayed. Instead of marking ReTweets with RT, there is a nifty little ReTweet icon that is easy to identify. The coolest part is below the tweet where Twitter lists who else has ReTweeted the Tweet (too much Tweeting).

You can only see the names of people you are friends with, so in this picture, I can’t see who the other 11 people were who ReTweeted the post. I think being able to see how many people ReTweet a particular post will help blog articles to become viral more easily.

Another cool feature is being able to follow someone, but turn off their ReTweets. Say, for example, someone almost always ReTweets the same things you ReTweet, you can just turn off their ReTweets, but still follow their feed.

I really love this concept. I think it’s going to help spread great articles faster and cut down on spammers a little bit. I’m interested to see how this will change how ReTweet plugins like Tweetmeme work. I’m also curious how it will handle the same tweet multiple times (since it is not uncommon for people to tweet their posts 2 or 3 times throughout a day).

What are your thoughts on the new RT feature? Do you think the icon is helpful or would you rather keep the RT tag?

7 Steps To Building A Following And Following The Right People On Twitter

Blake Waddill — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 20:15:06 +0000

Tweeter has been the center of a ton of attention the last year. It’s explosive growth and strength as a real time organic search engine, instant breaking news resource, and marketing tool provide people using it an amazing advantage over those who don’t.

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about 5 Twitter Newbie Mistakes To Avoid which was a great hit and some basic information about Twitter Lists. The success of those articles has made me do a lot of thinking about how to get the most out of Twitter.

Five Reasons To Use Twitter

If you’re like me, you use Twitter for 5 reasons: To find useful information, to share useful information, to market my product, to build a brand image of value, and to build relationships.

While it is possible to do all of these things without following a ton of people or having a ton of followers using searches and hashtags, following the right people and having the right followers make the process much easier.

Step 1. Follow And Be Followed

One of the easiest and most popular ways to build a following is to follow someone and hope they follow back. It’s not always easy to know who to follow and who not to follow. Randomly following people will end up getting you a bunch of followers who you don’t care about and don’t care about you.

Step 2. Follow People With The Same Interest

The next natural step is to follow people who follow people you are interested in. In other words, if you follow Shoemoney, you might follow other people who follow Shoemoney or people Shoemoney follows.

You can do this manually, but there are a lot of third party programs that automate this process.

Step 3. Follow Active Tweeps

A lot of Twitter accounts go inactive and there is no point in following them (even if they follow you back via automation). People who only tweet once a week aren’t going to offer you anything special. Many third party follow programs just follow everyone without rhyme or reason.

That’s why I use Tweepi. Tweepi is a free website lets you sort the “prospect follows” by almost every imaginable category including number of recent tweets, number of RTs, times RTed, and % of tweets with links.

After sorting the prospect, you can selectively pick which ones to follow. Because I’m most interested in sharing information, I follow users who tend to RT and be RTed the most.

People with bigger followings are not always better. At first I thought it was great to be followed by people with thousands of followers. After all, if they retweet my article, I’ll get tons of traffic, right?

Wrong! The majority of those people just joined the random follow back frenzy, and their followers are not targeted and probably don’t care. In fact, I’ve come to prefer people who are following less than 500 people (which usually means less than 1000 people are following them). They tend to be more interactive and are far more likely to see my tweet, read my article (or other articles I recommend), and actually care.

Step 4. Provide Valuable Tweets

There is a reason Guy Kawasaki has so many followers. He tweets useful information. Don’t over promote your own product, don’t tweet affiliate links, and don’t spam, and you’ll be way ahead of the crowd.

The more you interact and more value you provide when you tweet, the less likely people are to unfollow you (even if you don’t follow them back), the more you will be retweeted, and the faster your following will grow.

Step 5. Make Functional Twitter Lists

Even if you’re very selective about who you follow, there will be a point where you just have too many people to keep track of all at once. Making the most of your Twitter Lists is one of the best ways to make following thousands of people more manageable.

Group people who tweet about similar subjects together. Also group people who tweet with about the same frequency together. If you have a list that is getting over 100 tweets an hour, you probably have too many people (or people who are too active) in the list to follow them closely. You don’t want people who only tweet 20-30 times a week to get drowned in the noise of people tweeting 20-30 times an hour.

Lists for grouping people like classmates, coworkers, family, or other general categories can be bigger, but it will prevent you from following as closely.

Step 6. Unfollow The Spammers And People Who Don’t Follow You

Seth over at Blogussion wrote an awesome article about how to use ReFollow to clean up the people you are following. I unfollow people who constantly tweet affiliate links. I also unfollow almost everyone who doesn’t follow me back.

There are a few people who tweet about useful things that I always re-follow after

Step 7. Stay Active And Don’t Rush

There is no point in following people and building a following unless you are going to be active. Interact with the people who you follow. Get to know them, befriend them.

There is no point in rushing to get tons of followers if the ones you have now don’t care. If you selectively follow people and slowly build your following, you’re Twitter experience will be far more powerful and useful than those who grow fast and never interact.

These 7 easy steps will put you well on your way to harnessing the power of Twitter.

Do You Harness the #PowerOfTwitter with Twitter #Hashtag Optimization?

Blake Waddill — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 06:01:48 +0000

Twitter is an amazing resource for both marketing and finding information. When I first started on Twitter I made a lot of mistakes, but now I’m starting to really understand the power of Twitter and how to effectively use it.

One powerful tool on Twitter that I’m still experimenting with is #hashtags. Using hashtags wisely can easily yield your tweet hundreds if not thousands of extra views, and possibly make your tweet go viral (the goal of every tweeting marketer).

All this leads me to one huge question: Why isn’t there more hype about THO yet? That’s right, Twitter Hashtag Optimization!

THO – Twitter Hashtag Optimization

The whole web marketing community is hyped up about SEO. SEO has the ability to give your site long term exposure on Search Engines that Twitter Hashtag Optimization could never hope to offer, and it reaches a much wider user base.

The problem with SEO is new small sites can not compete with the big boys. SEO also takes time to implement. It could be weeks or months before SEO starts to pay off.

Twitter searches put everyone on an even playing field. Twitter Hashtag Optimization can instantly generate traffic for any site, anytime, under any conditions. That is the famous #PowerOfTwitter.

Mashable wrote an awesome article about how to get the most out of hashtags, but they didn’t go into detail about how marketers could use hashtags effectively.

Use THO When You Tweet

It seems obvious, but simply adding one or two (at the most) hashtags to your tweets could greatly increase their exposure. It’s easy to just hit the retweet button and not bother to use hashtags.

If you already spend any time at all researching keywords and long-tail search terms, you should consider researching popular twitter hashtags and using them wisely. That extra 2 seconds it takes to add hashtags could cost your dozens of retweets and thousands of visitors.

Do you use Twitter Hashtags? What success have you had with them?

5 Twitter Newbie Mistakes To Avoid

Blake Waddill — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 05:01:20 +0000

Twitter is a huge social media force now, that is no secret to anyone. In fact, according to Alexa, more than 3% of all internet users visit Twitter daily.

Many people have been on board for years while others (like me) have only been using twitter for a few months now.

People use Twitter for a variety of reasons including socializing, gossip, marketing, researching, and making money.

When I started on Twitter, I was in a big hurry to get as many followers as quickly as possible and didn’t really know what I was getting myself into. I made several mistakes that I wouldn’t make if I had to do it all over again.

1. Joining In The Twitter Follow Back Frenzy

One of the fastest ways to build a following on Twitter is to follow massive amounts of people and hope they follow you back. After a couple of days, just use a 3rd party program to unfollow the people who didn’t follow you back. Profit!

The fundamental flaw of this is that I don’t give as rat’s ass about 99.7% of the people whom I followed or follow back. I think it’s safe to assume those people feel the same way about me.

Translation: out of 1000+ followers, only 3 (at most) of them care.

Generating massive followers by just tweeting is almost impossible unless you are already famous, so the follow back frenzy has some merit for getting your account known. After all, who wants to follow someone with 3 followers?

If I could do it over again, I would mass follow selectively although I would only follow about 100 over the number of people following me (to avoid being lumped into the full on follow back group). Twitips recommends Tweepi for this process since it gives you more stats about the people you are following rather than mass following like an idiot.

2. Trying To Get Followers By Participating In Trending Topics

When I first started, I thought getting involved in trending topics would let my tweets be seen by tons of users who would follow me for me great wit and charm.

The problem… Have you actually ever read any of the trending topics and what people say? #ChrisBrownsBowTie? #Itsnotcheatingwhen? Seriously, did I really think the people who were tweeting about this stuff really cared about what I had to say?

If I could do it over again, I would pay careful attention to trending topics and wait for ones that are relevant to what I write about. Then, I would write a post about the trending topic, so it would get maximum exposure when tweeted.

For example right now, Twitter Lists is trending. Each time someone retweets my post, I get 15-20 new pageviews instantly regardless of how few followers they have. It turns out Google Wave is trending again too. It’s amazing how much traffic 2-3 retweets of each brings to me.

3. Waiting To Make A Twitter Background

I waited just over 2 months to make a background for Twitter. I probably lost 500 potential followers in that amount of time.

Since putting my background up (nothing fancy, just a pretty gradient and Props Blog Dot Com styled all sexy), I have increased my followers by 33% in 10 days.

Suck on that boring Twitter default background!

4. Not Using A Third Party Twitter Client To Schedule My Tweets

I’ve come to realize that unless you’re Chris Brogan, you can’t get away with tweeting 22 times in a hour.

Since I’ve started scheduling my tweets 30 min – 1 hour apart (and Tweeting random cool things I run across in between), I’ve increased my followers by 33% in 10 days. Err… I actually think my CTR just got better.

5. Not Writing My Article Titles For Twitter

I’m all about magnetic titles. I was dumb and tried to write titles for search engines. It’s a waste of time for a blog like mine. I get less than 3% of my traffic from search engines, and Twitter is by far my highest traffic source.

When started writing stronger titles like Problogger, Copyblogger, and Chris Brogan Hang Out In Their Underwear, I get an amazing response, tons of retweets, tons of traffic, and life is good. If I had called it “Marketing For Smart People Video” I might have gotten a few clicks, but not many.

If someone’s post title doesn’t do the content justice or simply doesn’t bait a click like a scandal, I do them a favor and write something that people will click. I hope it helps.

Summary

Twitter is a growing network that is really confusing when you first start using it. When I started, I wish I hadn’t followed back, got sucked into stupid trending topics, waited so long to make a background, waited to start scheduling tweets, and written stupid article titles.

If you’re new to Twitter, don’t make the same mistakes I made. Oh yeah, retweet this and follow me! ;-)

Think Twice About Who You Put On Your Twitter Lists

Blake Waddill — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 05:01:43 +0000

**We interrupt your normally scheduled post with a Twitter List update**

About a two weeks ago, I was reading ShoutMeLoud.com and came across an article about the Beta for Twitter Lists. I wondered how exactly Twitter decided who to invite and hoped to be included.

Then about 30 minutes ago, I was looking at my secondary Twitter profile which I recently started (more of a mix of personal and blog instead of just blog) and saw that I was on 1 list.

I thought to myself “hmm, how am I on a list with my BlakeWaddill account, but not my Propsblog account.” The hamster started running… then the light came on.

My Initial Impressions of Twitter Lists (BETA)

It turns out my primary Twitter account was selected to participate in the beta testing. The first thing I noticed was the extra “stat” next to followers that keeps track of lists.

When you click on the list stat, it takes you to a list (shocker) of the different lists you are on. There is also a counter for how many people are on the list (following) and how many people are following the list (followers).

It turns out Greatest Review was selected for the beta as well, and he added me to his blogger list!

Naturally, the next thing I did was start a list. From your Twitter homepage just below saved searches is the tab for Lists. Just click on New list to get started.

You are then prompted to create a list name and decide if you want it to be public or private. I created a list called Whale Bloggers which included the normal cast of big name bloggers.

To add people to the list you can use their search function which sucks, or you can just add people to your list the same way you add a friend from their homepage.

You can select multiple lists or you can create a new list on the spot. Can you guess which famous blogger this is?

Twitter List Counts That Caught My Attention

By now, you’ve probably already heard about all the nonsense I mentioned above. If you haven’t, you now know what you have to look forward to. ;-)

As I was going through different bloggers to add to my Whale Bloggers list, I saw a couple of interesting things. Problogger, Chris Brogan, and Guy Kawasaki were on 250, 410, and 570 lists respectively while John Chow, Daniel Scocco, and Shoemoney were hardly on 50 lists each. Not shockingly, Mashable was on 1,250+ lists!

After I started checking my list, I noticed Chris Brogan, Problogger, and Guy were by far the most active Tweeters, follow back to some extent, and they were on far more lists.

Think Twice About Who You Put On Your List

The problem I see with adding people like Chris Brogan to your lists (he’s on my list, won’t come off, don’t get me wrong) is that he has a tendency to fill your entire feed when he is online.

When you start making lists, will you split super active twitters into a separate group for people who rarely tweet so you can hear more of what the quiet people have to say, or will you let them be drowned out?

I’ll be playing with lists over the next couple of days I’m sure. Expect a list for people who actively visit and comment here on Props Blog. I have to give my readers some luv.

Anyone else participating in the Beta?