NETWORKING YOUR WEBSITE: A Twitter Case Study

Networking Your Website

by Rita Wilhelm

I love meeting and networking with people in online communities. Just the other day, I met a fascinating person in Sweden by the name of Stefan Svartling on a social network called SocialMedian. We were both commenting on an article that someone clipped about using Twitter.

Stefan is a very active Twitter user. You can view his profile at http://twitter.com/svartling . At the time of this article, he has 1,343 people that he is following, 1,418 people that are following him, and he has a whopping 6,640 tweets! ( Just think about how many tweets that is in a given day!)

Many folks who use Twitter, have a disproportionate number of people who they follow, as compared to those that are following them. This typically means that they are just going out and trying to follow every Tom, Dick and Harry they can find, in hopes that people will start following them. So, Stefan's statistics are certainly worthy of noting. I was very pleased when Stefan agreed to be interviewed. I think you’ll learn a lot from him.

Here’s the interview:

Stefan, Can you tell me a little bit about your business?

I have three brands on the net, Svartling, Clipotech and PRYLINFO. They are all networks of websites and search engines that I market in different ways.

My most important brand is Clipotech. It's both a Tech Blog Network & a searchable KnowledgeBase. I have worked on the search engine for around four years, where I have "handpicked" every website in the search index to control the quality of it. It is now indexing around 11,000,000 pages!

Wow! That’s impressive. Can you tell us more about your KnowledgeBase?

My KnowledgeBase is made with Google Custom Search. I add new websites continuously (only English or Swedish). By using this search engine you are guaranteed to only find quality information and no spam and other junk. You can also refine the search results by clicking on one of the categories. For example "Knowledge" or "Gadgets".

You can say that this KnowledgeBase is filtering the web for the user so they don't have to!

What made you decide to use Twitter to help you market your business?

I joined Twitter in 2007, but I didn't "get it" at that time, so I put it on "autopilot" via TwitterFeed with almost no followers at all. In August 2008 I had a look at it again and started to use it for real. I found out early that it was perfect for marketing my brands, so I started to Tweet links to both my websites and to "Knowledge" search results from my KnowledgeBase.

For example if I tweet about a new Social Network service, I also put a link to my KnowledgeBase to find more info about the service. Many followers click on my links and visits my websites to read more information about what I tweeted.

How has using Twitter impacted your business?

My "Knowledge" links works really well, and I had many positive comments about it. I've got many more visitors and users because of this. Google is not the only traffic source anymore. Twitter is almost as good for my sites.

Are your Tweets all business tweets, personal tweets, or both?

I tweet both business and personal tweets because you need to interact and be personal on Twitter to succeed. You cannot go on "Autopilot" and think that you get many followers. You need to talk to your followers.

Since I stopped using Twitterfeed and started to interact, I've got over 1000 users. That in only six months!

Tell me about your daily Twitter routine.

I use Twitter all the time. Most of the day I tweet from my iPhone via the Twitter App Tweetie (here I would put a "Knowledge Link" from Clipotech if it had been a tweet or blog post :) ). This combination makes it possible to tweet wherever you are and whenever you have the time.

From the iPhone I scan through my 800 RSS Feeds in Google Reader for something interesting to tweet. I also scan through my Twitter stream after good tweets to ReTweet (RT). Twitter is brilliant as a news feed. Therefore it's important to follow people with the same interests.

When I'm behind a computer I use Feedly to find interesting news to tweet. I think Feedly is great because it integrates Google Reader with both Twitter and FriendFeed in a very productive way. It's really easy to tweet directly via Feedly.

I use Twhirl as a Twitter client on the computer, I think it's awesome in many ways and it makes me more productive than with other Twitter clients.

What other social networks do you frequently use in addition to Twitter?

I use FriendFeed a lot, both as a lifestream service and as a communication tool. SocialMedian is another service I use. Not as much as the other, but I think it's a great service.

What 3 tips would you give someone who would like to start using Twitter as a marketing tool?

1. Be engaging and interactve. That way you build up a great community with trusty followers
2. Don't use auto DM's (automated direct messages). They are really annoying and unpersonal.
3. ReTweet a lot. It’s a great way to get many followers, because all users wants to be ReTweeted.

Thanks for sharing your tips with us Stefan. We have learned a lot from you.

Rita Wilhelm is founder and president of SnapMonkey Inc, which is a company that provides both online marketing consulting to businesses, as well as easy-to-use web-based technologies to help businesses effectively promote themselves on the web.

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Posted to THE NATIONAL NETWORKER. To subscribe for your free newsletter, go to http://www.thenationalnetworker.com/. For the complete National Networker Relationship Capital Toolkit and a free, continuous RSS feed (available either by traditional RSS or by direct email), go to: http://thenationalnetworkerweblog.blogspot.com/. You are also invited to click our buttons:

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NETWORKING YOUR WEBSITE: A Twitter Case Study

Are Social Media Jobs In Demand?

Strategy: What Say You? with Jay Deragon

Businesses are increasingly looking for people who fit the titles of social media manager, social media strategist and social media contributors. Justin Williams writes: I have included a graph that shows from 2005 to current, Social Media Jobs have increased by 325%, this is astounding! More and more employers are seeking positions to be filled with their company.

Upon reviewing a handful of the job posting for social media positions one may conclude they are all the same, at least the job descriptions appear to be very similar. Most of the job descriptions appear to focus on candidates who know how to use a listing of social technology with little if any emphasis on relationship or communication skills. Now consider the irony of a business manager, who has little or no experience with social media, telling the HR Department to find us people with social media experience. The natural reaction by the HR people is to define the job responsibilities, skill sets and compensation. One must wonder where does the HR Department go for information concerning “social media jobs”? Most likely they look for previous job postings for social media positions created by other companies and simply copy the descriptions.

Does Business Know What To Ask For?

All this “social stuff” has little definition that can fit neatly into a job description. When you look at the landscape of practices one can see a variety of tools and techniques used by those who have large audiences of followers. Most of the dominant people who garner a massive audience follow a simply rule of sharing insights or passing along insights from others. However the dominant trait of these current “social leaders” is that they relate to the “audience” in a very human way. In other words they are either gifted with communications skills or have learned the art and science of human interaction using social tools. I am not talking about all those sites and people who push out massive marketing messages claiming to have the most current tools or the best advertising schemes. Rather I am talking about those people who simple engage people into dialog, share profound knowledge about the dynamics of human interaction with technology and do so in a very human way.

Finding people who truly understand the value of social media for businesses isn’t as easy as buying an IPhone. The IPhone has set records in sales and became a hit largely because of its design (art) and functionality (technology). When you hire a person to help your business maximize the potential of social media you need to focus on those who understand the art of human relations along with the science of using the technology to accomplish specific aims. The irony is that the art of human relations built on technological interaction is more about knowing how to continuously learn to create and satisfy human experiences. The experiences are centric to attention, attraction, affinity and audience preferences which we discussed here.

As most organizations know, hiring the wrong people for the wrong job can be extremely costly. It is even more costly if you assume everyone knows how to leverage social media for your business purposes and with your audience of suppliers, employees and customers. Be careful what you ask for.

What say you?

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Posted to THE NATIONAL NETWORKER. To subscribe for your free newletter, go to www.TheNationalNetworker.com. For the complete National Networker Relationship Capital Toolkit and a free RSS feed, go to: http://thenationalnetworkerweblog.blogspot.com.
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Are Social Media Jobs In Demand?

Would You Like an Apple or a Berry?

By Chris Kauza
Technology Editor

How do you stay in touch with your network? This month I wanted to investigate some of the more popular devices used in networking – especially since we are currently considering upgrading ours.

We are a boutique consultancy, and are finding that we need to be able to text message and instant message more than we have in the past. That means we are not only spending a lot of time talking on the phone, and we are also doing more texting and IMing (instant messaging) while “on the go”.

As for me, I currently have a five year old Motorola Razr. I had a Blackberry Pearl when they first came out, and really enjoyed its features. However, I went back to the razor, because I didn't need the enterprise functionality of the Pearl, and only used it for calls, quick email checks and playing music.

We don't need many of the enterprise-class functions found in Blackberry's offerings. We have been very intrigued by Apple's iPhone and Blackberry's Bold. We've narrowed our considerations down to Apple's newest iPhone and either Blackberry's Bold, Curve, or Pearl.

The iPhone is cool, but we have heard and experienced horror stories where people have not always been able to send e-mails on time, accidentally hanging up phone calls with inadvertent touches on the touch screen, and a menu navigation difficulty while multitasking (i.e. - driving).

Price is relevant but longevity and functionality are more important, as are:

• Ease of use.
• Support.
• Upgradability and Memory capacity.
• Durability.
• Global portability.

Web browsing is interesting at this point, but most uses will be for phone calls (cell and Skype), e-mail, texting, playing games and listening to music.

So what do you do when you find yourself in a quandary? You through the question out to your network.

I started a poll on both Plaxo and Linked and received the following responses:

Issues of sample bias and the like aside, we received a good response rate of statistically significant results, and a number of interesting responses. I thought it was interesting that we received roughly the same number responses from both LinkedIn and Plaxo. Secondly, despite all of the marketing and hype surrounding Apple, I don't see a significant difference between the iPhone and Blackberry. In fact, most (42%) would prefer a Blackberry. Of these, the responses were pretty evenly split between the Pearl, the curve, and the forthcoming bowl.

I also found it was interesting that roughly the same number of total respondents answered either iPhone or undecided. Of the “?Others” 4 people recommended the Treo (remember those?) and 2 recommended Google's Android. We are an Open Source company (as much as possible), and Android is very appealing – but it's still too new for us to adopt across the business.

One of the biggest reasons we are hesitant to get an iPhone is that we would be locked into a service relationship with AT&T – something we really want to avoid. Personally, I have consistently had a horrible experience with AT&T, both with their network reliability and quality, and also with their customer service. It was a painful experience, and one I do not wish to repeat

We currently use T-Mobile and have been very satisfied with what the service. T-Mobile also has a “hot spot” offering, which allows us to make low-cost calls from any T-Mobile hot spot - our offices, Starbucks, United Airline's Red Carpet Club - anywhere there is a T-Mobile hot spot. As the price of data services rise, costs is a consideration when thinking about the number e-mails, text messages, videos etc. that we are likely to be accessing in the coming years.

Why is this process important to networking?

A core aspect to networking is reliable connectivity. It's about the quality of connection. It's about the frequency and reliability of that connection. And this is true whether you're talking about a specific piece of technology, or an individual or company with whom you are trying to do business. If you cannot interact with them, if you cannot stay in touch with them and reach them when you need to, then the value of that contact decreases.

Choosing technology is not just about cool factor or a fashion accessory - much like the iPod has become today. It's about making sure you can connect and interact with those you want or need to, in ways that will help you be successful.

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Would You Like an Apple or a Berry?

Nokia: Oy Vey!, from A Media Circus

As Apple continues to conquer the digital download market, the threat of Apple achieving the same status in the mobile arena is weighing heavily upon the mobile industry. Apple’s potential stronghold in the mobile industry is subsequently posing a threat to various related industries. Entertainment and gaming are two industries becoming more inextricably linked to the mobile devices than ever before, and if Apple gains enough control over the handset, they will inevitably gain control over the things that run on the handset.

In response to Apple’s mobile play, Nokia issued a series of press releases announcing various devices and services for the mobile consumer.

Ovi and Content Convergence

The idea of content convergence is often mistaken. I often make reference to Henry Jenkins’ notion of The Black Box Fallacy which refers to how people tend to think, one day all of our media will be contained in one unit. This will most likely not be the case (can you imagine carrying around a cable box all day ).

The reality is that we will have many devices for different purposes (the bedroom, the car, personal devices) but the content will be interoperable across a variety of devices. (For example, Facebook online will contain the same information as the Facebook that is accessed via a mobile phone, however the interface will be appropriated for your phone, taking into account the time and place that one uses their phone).

The diagram above is a model of how content convergence/hardware divergence works.

As usual I digress, back to Ovi

Ovi is the name of Nokia’s new internet services brand. Ovi is Finnish for “door”. The metaphor here is apparent; Ovi is the door to your all of your digital content and your social network. Ovi will also act as a door to two of their other new services, The Nokia Music Store (a platform that rivals iTunes) and N-Gage, Nokia’s mobile gaming service.

Incidentally, I love the copy on the site that refers to N-Gage:

“Keep the action going while you’re on the go with the power of N-Gage”

This line furthers the notion that the gaming does not stop when you turn the console off. The convergent nature of emerging platforms is made for gamers on the go.

The Nokia Music Store

I got an iPhone about a month ago and the one thing I cannot do with it that I want to do (besides cut and paste) is download music on the spot. It seems like a no-brainer, right?

"The Nokia Music Store brings together a powerful combination of great music and great devices in an easy to use way. You can select from a huge range of music, including local music from your country, and download it directly to your Nokia device," say’s Tommi Mustonen, the head of Nokia’s music activities.

This is a big step.

Payment can be made by a variety of methods including paypal. This is certainly a big step as mobile commerce becomes more of a reality. There is another point in the release that I thought was very compelling,

…the Nokia Music Store aims to provide more locally relevant music than any other digital music store. If you want to see what others are enjoying, the Nokia Music Store provides a dynamic recommendations engine as well as genre-based instant playlists.

The one drawback to all this (for me) is that there was no mention of a US release date, however the music store will be opening across key European markets this fall with additional stores in Europe and Asia opening over the coming months.

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Nokia: Oy Vey!, from A Media Circus