Posts Tagged ‘Twitter’

I’m following over 700 people on Twitter so I’ve looked at a lot of Twitter pages.  Yes, I look at pages and tweets closely before making a decision to follow someone.  Some profiles are pretty sparse, while others are fairly elaborate.  What’s the saying? “You only have a few seconds to make a first impression.”   This is especially true on Twitter where people scan your page, then instantly make the decision to follow or not follow.

So how do you customize your Twitter profile page to maximize followers? Here are my top tips:

• Make sure you fill out your name so it’s searchable. This sounds so simple, but consider this:  The Humane Society of the United States is @humanesociety, but the profile name is listed as HSUS.  If you use the Find People search on Twitter and type Humane Society, the HSUS page does not come up because the Twitter search only searches the Name field, NOT the username.  A better name would have been Humane Society of the US.
• Fill out the Bio and Web site fields. This is a perfect opportunity to link your Twitter page to your company Web site or blog AND provide a short elevator speech.  The bio and URL add perspective and credibility.  You can be formal, you can be clever, or you can be funny in the bio field.  Check out other bios for good ideas.  I like @pmohara and @neagle.  In addition, I hear from many, many people that if someone has not provided a bio or URL, they are much less likely to follow that person. Read the rest of this entry

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• Tags: Design, marketing, social networking, Twitter

I was talking to one of the Cat Herders (Project Manager) at Matrix Group today.  She said she was trimming her Facebook friend list and unfriending some people.  Unfriending.  It sounds so… ummmm… unfriendly.

Facebook says that the average user has 130 friends but I know people who have hundreds, even thousands of friends.  500 friends?  I can’t imagine many people who have that many friends with whom they would willingly share personal updates, photos, even their full birthday.  So I asked around and got some good insight into the friending and unfriending business.  These findings don’t represent a large group, just my friends! :-)

• There is a group of Facebook users who will accept friend requests from anyone and who actively try to expand their friend network.
• There is another group that views Facebook as a place where they can communicate freely so they only connect with true friends.  For these folks, Facebook is a place for personal communications, often about self, family, kids, friends.
• There was a general consensus that the new Facebook homepage, which splits updates between News Feed and View Live Feed, makes it harder to see updates from your entire network of friends, which makes it more challenging to have a large network.
• Many people have been cleaning up their lists on Facebook, Twitter, and other social network recently.  They’re actively unfriending people so they can manage the communications and flood of updates.
• Even if  a person has a large network on a platform like Facebook, they are more than likely only interacting with a small subset of friends. Indeed, the Facebook sociologist says that no matter how large their friend network, Facebook users tend to “comment on stuff from only about 5-10% of their Facebook friends.”

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• Tags: Facebook, social networking, Twitter

Twitter was super smart when they created their API and encouraged developers all over the world to come on in, use their API and develop their own applications using Twitter data.  But wait, what’s an API, you say?

API stands for Application Program Interface.  Wikipedia defines an API as “an interface that a software programs implements in order to allow other software to interact with it.”  In the Web world, APIs allow systems to talk to each other, request each other’s data, write to each other’s systems, etc., within a defined structure.  In Twitter’s case, the Twitter API allows software developers to request information from Twitter, especially the tweets by Twitter subscribers. The API allows requests by date range, keyword, usernames, etc. Read the rest of this entry

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• Tags: Twitter

I was at a conference recently where one of the attendees mentioned that although she’s on Twitter, she doesn’t understand half of what’s being said. “What’s a DM?,” she said. “And what’s the difference between RT and via?”

Twitter is deceptively simple.  You get 140 characters to speak your mind or share some news.  In some ways, Twitter is a lot like instant messaging ((IM) because people use acronyms to shorten common expressions. I found a good list of acronyms that pop up a lot of Twitter on the Examiner.com site.  My favorites?

• LOL – laughing out loud
• BTW – by the way
• IMHO – in my humble opinion
• TMI – too much information
• FTF of F2F – face to face
• LMK – let me know
• TTFN – ta ta for now

In other ways, Twitter is different from IM because it has its own protocols and etiquette. Here’s what I’ve learned: Read the rest of this entry

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• Tags: social networking, Twitter

I had the pleasure of being part of a panel at today’s Grow Smart Biz conference, sponsored by Network Solutions.  Our topic was “Integrating Traditional Marketing with Social Media.”  Despite being the last panel of the day (we started around 4:20pm), I estimated that over 80% of the conference attendees attended the panel.  And by the number of questions raised, this is a hot topic for sure.

You can read a nice recap of the panel on the Solutions are Power blog, but here were my take-aways: Read the rest of this entry

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• Tags: Blog, Facebook, LinkedIn, marketing, Sales, social networking, Twitter

I started following Martha Stewart on Twitter because I had heard that she tweets recipes.  How hard can a recipe be if it’s tweeted?  But then I got to wondering: am I following the real Martha Stewart? What if someone is impersonating Martha on Twitter?  I know this happens a lot because there are dozens of Sarah Palin and Barack Obama accounts.

It turns out that Twitter now offers Verified Accounts. When an account is verified by Twitter, it means they’ve been “in contact with the person or entity the account is representing” and verified that it is indeed the official Twitter account for that person.  It does not mean, however, that Twitter has verified that the person is actually writing the tweets.  Not having a verified account does not mean that the account is not the official account, either.  (Hmmm… too many NOTs in that sentence.)

So, back to Martha.  The Martha Stewart Twitter account I found has a little blue check mark in the top-right corner; this indicates that the account has been verified.  So even if Martha is not doing the actual tweeting, there’s a good chance the recipes are actually hers. Read the rest of this entry

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• Tags: Twitter

I was on LinkedIn yesterday and the LinkedIn search engine helpfully recommended a couple of people for me to add to my network.  The list included a couple of people who currently work at Matrix Group.  While it’s every CEO’s dream to have a large network, I did not invite the staff to get linked up.  Why?  Because I think that for bosses, managers,and CEOs, there are unwritten rules of netiquette. Here are some of the rules I abide by when using Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and other social networks.

• Except for a few direct reports, I don’t invite staff to be my friend or get linked up. I imagine that some staff would view an invitation from me as wanting to know too much about them; at the very least, it could be awkward if they don’t want to get linked up and they have to turn down a request from their boss.
• I do accept invitations from staff to be my friend or get linked up. If they’re staff, they’re part of my extended family.
• I don’t accept an invitation to get connected unless I actually know the person. Even on LinkedIn.  Random strangers are NOT going to get access to my network just because they want to link to me.
• I do ask staff to follow this blog because I’m communicating with their clients through the blog and it’s always good for staff to know what the boss is broadcasting. :-)
• I do ask staff to follow or fan the company’s pages on the social networking platforms.  I’m not asking for them to friend me, but I am asking them to support our social networking efforts. Read the rest of this entry

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• Tags: Facebook, leadership, LinkedIn, social networking, Twitter

From homemade movies on YouTube, to movie and book reviews, comments on blogs, and entries in Wikipedia, user-generated content (UGC) has changed the Web forever. I can’t imagine the Amazon shopping experience without comments and ratings from other moms, the posts from the 500 or so people I follow on Twitter could keep me occupied and interested all day, and I thank God every day for the thousands of homemade Thomas the Tank Engine movies on YouTube that keep my five-year old enthralled on a rainy day.  Mashable reported that more than 82 million people in the US created content online in 2008.

So how come most organizations shy away from incorporating UGC on their sites? Read the rest of this entry

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• Tags: Blog, Facebook, strategy, Twitter, User-Generated Content, Web 2.0

One of the people I’m following on Twitter (who shall remain nameless) recently commented: “Prefer getting updates from my friends via Twitter. Much more efficient and I don’t need to see them.”  Hmmm….

I don’t know about you, but even though I love Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, yada, yada, I still really like getting together with my college buddies, grad school buddies, fellow DC Web Women, fellow volunteers for Doorways, etc.. Yes, it’s “efficient” to get updates from friends in far away lands via their social network pages, and I have strengthened ties with folks via Twitter and FB, but will my social networks ever trump my traditional networks?

I don’t think so.

A recent article in The Economist maintains that “(o)ld-style networks… are usually stronger than online ones, , and the trust between their members facilitates transactions of all sorts.”  Transactions like doing business together, hiring staff, and lending money.

For me, however, it’s not a black and white issue.  Here’s what I think is happening:

• Family networks will probably trump all networks because “blood is thicker than water” although we all know that families are also our craziest and most dysfunctional networks.
• School, fraternity and work networks will remain the strongest because these are ties that get developed over time and involve shared efforts. So for me, my Stanford and Matrix Group networks will continue to be my strongest networks.
• Offline networks that involved shared interests will remain strong because members have a common interest. These networks, however, will be expanded to include online members.  In fact, I expect these networks to be strengthened by the ability to connect with others worldwide, in different languages. Read the rest of this entry

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• Tags: Facebook, social networking, Twitter

I love Twitter.  Yes,  it’s information overload and there’s a lot of noise, but I love the commentary and the interesting links.  I also appreciate the updates from friends and family.  More recently, I am loving the Twitter visualization sites that are popping up everywhere.

So, what the heck is a Twitter visualization?  If you’re on Twitter, you know that there are millions of individual posts, replies, and discussions every day.  Figuring that people out there would want to do things with this flowing data, Twitter publishes an API (application programming interface) that lets developers have real-time access to tweets and some user information.  The result is hundreds (thousands?) of sites that let you search, map and analyze tweets, relationships between users, and topics.  Here are some of my favorite Twitter visualization sites.

• Twistori is my favorite.    Click on the words love, hate, think, believe, feel, wish and see a real-time stream of posts that contain these words in the tweet.
• WeFeelFine is a visualization of not just tweets, but blog posts and images as well.  Explore Murmurs and see a flood of tweets with the words “I feel” in them.
• Twittervision shows tweets from around the world, overlaid on a world map so you know where the tweet are coming from.  Twittervision is even available in 3D.
• Having an event?  PepsicoZeitgeist shows real-time tweets about Internet Week in New York City.  I especially love the top words from IWNY tweets.
• TweetStats lets you enter your Twitter username and see a bunch of statistics about your tweets, including when you tweet, average daily tweets, who you tend to retweet, etc..  Did you know all this about yourself?
• Twitter Friends Network Browser lets you see your Twitter network and click and drag to do fun things.
• Hashtags shows you the top hash tags on Twitter right now.
• MyTweetMap lets you see tweets from the people you are following, overlaid on a map.
• Dipity lets you explore tweets in a timeline format.

What’s fascinating to me is how Web designers and developers have found countless ways to transform the universe of Twitter data in new and different ways.  Each site introduces me to new people to follow and gives me insight on new topics.

How about you?  What are your favorite Twitter visualization sites?

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• Tags: social networking, Twitter, Web Design