Category: Twitter

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Our New Twitter Executive Program

For those of you who want to get going with Twitter but don’t know where to start or are too busy to tweet (write a Twitter post) we’ve created our Twitter Executive program. Now we know that this program is not for everyone, and that many of you can set up and do Twitter successfully all on your own, but this program is for the person who wants to outsource Twitter.

With our Twitter Executive program you will get:

  • Twitter set up and account configuration
  • Consultation with Nancy McCord to understand your business objectives
  • Integration into your blog, website, and other social networking platforms
  • Personal training on using TweetDeck
  • Training on how to use Twitter effectively
  • One business week of multiple posts per day on Twitter
  • List of our resources to watch for great content to tweet about

If you really don’t want to do your own tweets after set up, for very select group of clients we will ghost Twitter. You can find out more about these two programs and our pricing by visiting our Twitter services page on our website.

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HootSuite Reviewed

Do you have multiple Twitter profiles like I do? Then HootSuite is just right for you. I have a Twitter account for my business under the name mccordweb and due to popularity and name recognition I now have a second Twitter profile – nancymccord. For me it is a problem to do tweets in two places – too time consuming.

HootSuiteWith HootSuite, I can post to both Twitter accounts or just one account with one click. I can even schedule tweets to one or both whenever I want from one online control panel. In fact that is the beauty of HootSuite, it is an online application that really saves you time. You can have as many Twitter profiles set up as you desire. Then when you want to tweet, just click on the profile icon to assign where your tweet will be published. It’s easy!

HootSuite even allows you to review @ replies and direct messages for each profile on one very handy screen. For me, the power Twitter user, this is excellent news!

Now the reality of the situation is that HootSuite does not replace TweetDeck for me at this point, hopefully TweetDeck will add a multi-profile management option in the future, but for now does not. Typically during the day I will have TweetDeck open to monitor Twitter traffic and topics and also a browser screen open with HootSuite. This way I can rapidly tweet with one click yet monitor my groups and traffic.

HootSuite is not an application to replace TweetDeck, which is still hands down the best Twitter aggregator that I have tried, but it does make posting to multiple Twitter profiles easy which you simply cannot do with TweetDeck.

Just be careful if you have multiple Twitter accounts in posting the same content to all. Twitter can consider this spamming and will close your account so be judicious about when you tweet about the same topic on multiple Twitter accounts.

You can sign up for access to HootSuite for free and check it out for yourself.

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TweetLater Reviewed

Have you ever wondered how the top Twitter users send you those automatic messages when you start to follow them and how they auto follow you? Are they up all night clicking follow and drafting messages back? No, they are using in many cased a free online service called TweetLater.

I have been testing this new application and consider it a must have for any Twitter “power user”. It is free to use, but you can upgrade to the Professional version and get more features, but the free version is certainly handy and does a few very cool things.

  • Allows you to set up an auto responder sent automatically to anyone who follows you.
  • Allows you to follow (or not) them automatically when they follow you.
  • Allows you to unfollow them automatically when they unfollow you.
  • Allows you to schedule tweets for future publishing.
  • Allows you to enter tweets and will meter out their publishing automatically – like a drip campaign.

I have been using TweetLater mainly for the auto responder feature and find it a great tool for building and connecting with others. If you want to consider the Professional version, it will cost $29.97 a month. In the Professional version you will be able to:

  • Manage multiple Twitter accounts.
  • Allow account access to an assistant
  • Schedule @ replies and direct messages to when the recipient is online.
  • Schedule reoccurring tweets and supply alternative text for rotation.
  • Choose to mute specific uses without unfollowing them.
  • Use TweetCockpit as your Twitter power user interface.

For my personal needs the free version is a good fit. People who may be interested in the Professional version may be product managers and advertising agency account managers.

If you are not using Twitter, you may wonder what is all the buzz about, why invest my precious time? With the research that I have done this past month, what I have found is that some people are actually selling their Twitter traffic services. Let’s say you have 20,000 followers, you tweet about a product and include a link. Even if 10% of your followers went to visit the link, that’s a whooping 2,000 new visitors exposed to your product or service. There have been some interesting stories lately on the Web of entrepreneurs making thousands of dollars a month driving traffic to paying web clients in this manner.

What does this all mean for the everyday business owner? Well first, I’m not going into business selling traffic, but what that does tell me is that if you have a new service, a new product, something you want to promote. You can do it easily, for free, to others in your wider social network thereby exposing your products, services, and content to a massive audience all by yourself. All it takes is some time to build your Twitter following base while interacting with others. It’s actually a win-win situation have fun, build followers, build website or blogsite traffic. TweetLater is just one of the tools to use in your arsenal to get and build your following in your first step towards marketing yourself and services online for free.

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Best Practice for Posting Twitter to Facebook

I’ve been doing some testing on the best practices for feeding your Twitter posts to your Facebook status, and I have some new recommendations for you.

First, I post much more frequently on Twitter than anywhere else. Twitter followers are used to this and conversations there are a stream of consciousness back and forth. The Facebook and LinkedIn worlds are different. You can easily lose followers by feeding your Twitter status directly to Facebook and be confused by friends as spamming them with status updates. It is just too much information for Facebook, but the interaction is what grows your network on Twitter.

This is what I do, first I stopped feeding my Twitter status through Facebook with the Twitter application I had installed before. Now I use two applications and select when I update Facebook and LinkedIn. I use TweetDeck and choose to send my status to Facebook about once or twice a day tops. Then I use Ping.fm to send a status update one more time to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and FriendFeed. By turning off the Facebook Twitter application, now only when I want to my status moves to Facebook using TweetDeck – a much more user friendly plan to not alienate Facebook users with the volume of posts that an active Twitter user will typically generate.

Ping.fm is an excellent tool if you want to feed your status to LinkedIn, FriendFeed, Facebook and Twitter all at the same time. I am finding that typically I will have both TweetDeck open and Ping.fm open throughout the day. Now if Ping.fm will just allow me to schedule posts.  You can create posting groups, but I have not figured out if Ping.fm will schedule posts yet.