Not everything needs to be tweeted. No, really.

A friend of mine complained that someone he was following on Twitter filled up his entire feed. All he saw were tweets from this power user, and he had to constantly scroll to see anyone else. “I’m one awards show away from unfollowing him,” he said, adding that lately this Uber Tweeter had made note of people who had publicly unfollowed him for this reason.

“He tweeted that people said he was tweeting too much,” I said.

“Yes.”

“And that didn’t seem ironic.”

“Guess not.”

Are your followers thinking of unfollowing you because you just won’t be quiet? Maybe you’re tweeting too much.

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Are you using hashtags to your full advantage?

Twitter is a deceptively simple social network. You can set up your perfect Twitter profile. Feeds are either public or private. You can follow users, and be followed. You only have 140 character to speak your piece. And you can use a hashtags for organization. That’s pretty much it.

Except it’s so much more. Take those hashtags, for example.

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Are your tweets ready to take on a life of their own?

Twitter retweets have been a part of Twitter for as long as most of us can remember. Retweeting offers us a simple way to share someone else’s content with our audience and provides a good resource for networking and measuring our own success. They can also serve as great way to build our audience, if we choose to use them strategically.

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[This post is part of the ongoing series The Complete How To Guide for Twitter Marketing]

The book How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie was one of the first self-help books ever published. It is also one of the bestselling, have you read it?

For many salesmen and marketers, this book has been required reading for generations. But, the principals outlined don’t only work in the board-room. They also work online.

Tweeters everywhere would weep after seeing Dale Carnegie's Klout score!

If fact, Socialnomics author Erik Qualman has said that todays successful companies need to act more like Dale Carnegie and less like Mad Man, which means we all need to be in the business of winning friends and influencing people.

Now, influence, is nothing new in the world of social media. Klout.com, for example, has been trying to measure influence for years. But, the question always remains. How can we become more influential online?

One great answer to that question comes directly from Dale Carnegie’s list of Six Ways to Make People Like You. Here they are with a social media spin.

Become genuinely interested in other people.

All too often, people and businesses go to social media to talk about themselves. They talk about their products, their interests, and their business. But, as Carnegie points out, a true salesmen is excellent at turning the conversation around. People love talking about what they know best. Be interested in what they have to say, and ask them questions about the things that interest them. The key word here is genuine, though. If it isn’t genuine, it isn’t working.

Smile.

In person, a hearty smile can go a long way. A happy customer in a coffee line gets better service than the crabby one. When it comes to social, the key is to keep things on a positive level. We need to be brightening the Twitter stream, not brining it down. It is easy to complain online, but try tweeting with a smile on your face. You might be surprised with how far it gets you.

Remember that a person’s name is to that person the sweetest and most important sound in any language.

Every one of your hundreds of followers is an individual, not just an avatar or just another random customer. You need to treat them that way. Talk to them directly, treat them with respect, and become their biggest fan. When they have something to say, give them a retweet, or congratulate them publicly. Everyone loves to see their own name in lights.

Be a good listener. Encourage others to talk about themselves.

It’s not only polite to be a good listener, but it is a skill that can reward you in the board room. Twitter is a conversation just like the meeting room. We need to be listening just as much as we are talking. If we don’t listen, we will constantly dominate the conversation and ruin the benefits that we can provide. Listen in, and respond!

Talk in terms of the other person’s interest.

You may sell insurance, but it is unlikely that its what your customers want to talk about all day. Football, on the other hand, might be a subject that they love to discuss. When you converse about something that they love, they learn to like you more. When it comes time to buy insurance, there is a pretty good chance that they will buy from someone they like. Play your cards right, and that just might be you.

Make the other person feel important – and do it sincerely.

When you tweet, tell your followers how important and valuable they are. Don’t puff them full of fluff, but be genuine and enthusiastic. Excitement and smiley faces may seem dorky, but there is almost never a compliment that is poorly received. Let your followers know that they are important. Make them feel important and appreciated.

Dale Carnegie’s advice has been transforming mediocre, self-centered, salesmen into marketing machines for over 70 years. This stuff works, because it is centered on human emotions. We love to think that business is business and Twitter is Twitter, but we all know better than that. Our emotions are tied to each and every tweet we send. Learn it and embrace it, and your tweets will take you far.

[This post is part of the ongoing series The Complete How To Guide for Twitter Marketing]

Often times, the simplest sounding questions come with the most complicated answers. Trying to figure out what the best time of the day to tweet is precisely one of the questions.

The “what time” debate has raged on for years already, and it will only continue. I mean, we honestly still haven’t figured out what the best time for email marketing is, how on earth are we suppose to understand Twitter already?

There are several theories out there that attempt to answer this question. For example, theSocialMediaGuide.com suggests that 9:00 A.M. Pacific Time is best. At the same time, Fast Company suggests that tweets sent at 4:00 P.M. are more likely to get retweeted.

But, doesn’t this all depend on who follows you? Surely audience type influence when the best time to time to tweet is!

Well, there are a few theories out there that suggest tweeting during high activity periods will garner more retweets.

Dan Zarrella makes this correlation in an article over at ProBlogger.

For this task, there are a few handy tools that can help. For example, WhenToTweet.com analyzes your current Twitter stream to find out when the most activity occurs. Tweroid.com is another similar service, but it provides a much more comprehensive overview including weekday breakdowns and @reply measurement.

Tweet intensity stats from Tweriod.com.

But, this clearly isn’t an exact science.

Could It Be, Anytime?

Perhaps anytime is a good time to send a tweet? I am personally not sure that any of these theories are solid enough to make major adjustments to ones schedule. That said, I do think there are a few rules of thumb that can help us out.

• Keep work time and play time in mind. Tweets during the hours of 9 and 5 will hit on work time. Also, keep different time zones in mind, depending on where you live.
• You can Tweet more than once. Twitter will prevent you from sending the same tweet twice, but you can change things up and sneak in a link a few times per day. No one actually reads every tweet, so repeating yourself a few times can only provide benefits.
• Know your audience. I once read about a lawyer that worked with young start-up businesses. He did most of his tweeting late at night because that is when his customers were online. When are yours online?
• Maintain good context. People are in different moods at different times of the day. As an example, I like to keep things a bit lighter in the middle of the afternoon. Harder, more straight-forward business usually takes place in the morning.
• Watch for interaction. If you spend enough time on Twitter, you should start noticing some of the trends on your own. I notice that people converse a lot more during the evening hours than they do during the day. It may not be that way for everyone though.
• Don’t over-stack tweets. Sending a whole bunch of tweets all at once is never a good plan. Tweets should be spread out in a naturally progression. No one likes a stream hog.

Guy Kawasaki once shared an interesting note about deciding when to tweet. He said, “Try this experiment: take your most interesting tweets (as measured by how many people retweet them, perhaps) and post them again three times, eight to twelve hours apart. I used to think that people would complain about repeating tweets, but I’ve never had a complaint. My theory is that the volume of tweets is so high and most people check in at about the same time every day, so people don’t notice repeat tweets.” (Source: InterLink One)

Overall, I don’t think most of us really need to worry about any of this. Tweets tend to come and go pretty easily. Certainly a lot more so than email. As long as you are regularly sharing and conversing on Twitter you will get the retweets and attention that you deserve.

Yesterday I wrote two blog posts, but I didn’t get to publish either of them. It wasn’t that they weren’t done – they were. It wasn’t that they weren’t good enough – they were. It just wasn’t the right time.

Yesterday was one of those days when everything was changing by the hour. This has not been uncommon this spring as our state continues to be inundated with massive amounts of water and flooding. So, with everything changing, what was appropriate to post on the blog was changing as well. Yesterday’s blog posts will be published eventually. They are just waiting for the right timing.

Set Your Watch

This of course has me thinking about timing this morning, and it reminded me of this infographic that I stumbled on a few days ago. Now we are talking about the timing of Twitter and Facebook. This is not an uncommon topic, and the data always varies a little bit.

When should I tweet? How often should I be spreading my message? These are all questions that marketers are, and should, be asking.

Know Your Timing

Is there anything shocking here? Hardly, but there is plenty that is important. Timing plays a pretty big role in marketing. When to release, when to pivot, and when to insert the call to action. All of these decisions are based on timing. Sometimes, waiting for the right time can be difficult, but it is usually worth it.

[This post is part of the ongoing series The Complete How To Guide for Twitter Marketing]

As an internet marketing blogger, there is an endless supply of topics for me to cover. The market is changing quickly, and blogs like mine are only trying to keep up. Facebook and Twitter have dominated the social media discussion for awhile, but there are always newcomers like Foursquare and Quora. The one thing we rarely talk about, though, is what will happen when these services go away. What will we talk about when Twitter closes it’s doors?

What will happen when the Twitter birdy flies the coup?

Now, don’t get me wrong, this isn’t is a ‘Twitter is dead’ post, but, I do want to clarify some things about it. So, let’s break it down.

Twitter is a tool, nothing more and nothing less. It just happens to be the first real-time communication tool to hit mainstream popularity. For reasons that belong in another blog post, Twitter captivated the hearts and minds of the world, but then again, so did MySpace.

The MySpace Effect

I couldn’t possibly count the number of times someone has reminded me of MySpace’s fall from grace. They especially love to bring it up as I am informing them of the benefits of Twitter. They say, “what if Twitter crashes, like MySpace.” As if the slight possibility of Twitter shutting down or loosing market share should prevent us from using it now. Well, my answer is simple. MySpace didn’t go away, and I mean that both literally and physically.

For all intensive purposes, MySpace died. Facebook sucked the life right out of it, but if you really look at the core of what MySpace was, it never went anywhere. MySpace was one of the first sites that allowed people to connect with friends online. It had many flaws, and provided Facebook with a perfect market opportunity, but at the core, inter-network communication with text, photos, and videos was the meat of the service. For most people, the only thing that changed was the URL they typed in to see their friends.

What Twitter Really Is

This is my point. Twitter is a tool. What is provides for us is a platform for real-time communication, and that is exactly why is has changed the world. Perhaps someone will come along with a better method for facilitating that conversation, but real-time exchanges will always be a part of our universe.

Take the telephone as an example. It enabled us to communicate by voice, over long distances. The tool of the telephone has changed significantly over time. The companies responsible for the infrastructure have even changed time and time again, but you would be crazy to suggest that the telephone is going somewhere. I think it’s here to stay.

Killing Tool Talk

The very thing that I spend time talking about each and every day on this blog isn’t really Twitter, or Facebook. It isn’t even the internet. Those are just the current tools that we use to deliver messages and create conversation. They are the medium, but we are the brush. We have been introduced to new tools for communication and connection. Now we are just trying to figure them out.

I think this is why it is so important for us to not get caught up in the tools. I don’t like to spend a lot of time writing how-to guides and step by step manuals on using Twitter. I don’t even like blogging about the hot new tools on Twitter. Why? Because they change, and they will keep changing. The thing that I would rather talk about. The thing that you need me to talk about, is the change that these tools are ushering in, and more importantly, how marketing needs to adapt to them.

So, take this as my charge to the social media world. To all of the so-called social media experts and consultants out there. To all of the marketers trying to learn the ropes. Don’t bother becoming a Twitter expert. Become a real-time communications expert. Figure out how to use tools like Twitter for productivity and human engagement. Figure out how to use them to spread messages and understand crowd thinking. These underlying rules of communication will last a lot longer than the newest way to measure your Twitter followers. Trust me.

So, get busy. Go communicate in real time, and for now – use Twitter.

[This post is part of the ongoing series The Complete How To Guide for Twitter Marketing]

On Twitter’s recently updated homepage design, they make the promise that with Twitter you can receive ‘instant updates from your friends, industry experts, favorite celebrities, and what’s happening around the world.’ Following your interests is exactly what Twitter does best. One of the keys to enjoying Twitter is to be following an engaged group of people around a common interest.

Believe it or not, but finding new people to follow used to be much more difficult than it is today. As part of Twitter’s last major update, they included several features that will help you follow new users based on proximity and interest. Here, are a few ways that you can use Twitter.com to find and develop new followers.

Using Twitter’s Built In ‘Who To Follow’ Feature

One of the best ways to find new people to follow is the ‘Who To Follow’ feature built right into the Twitter navigation menu.

This feature was built to suggest people you don’t currently follow that you may find interesting. The suggestions are based on several factors, including people you follow and the people they follow. Basically, Twitter utilizes user information to make smart suggestions on who you might be interested in. The suggestions are constantly being updated as you use the service, so you may want to check in every now and again.

Follow Key Lists

In a previous lesson on Twitter, we covered the Lists feature. This feature allows individual Twitter users to group people they follow together into one convenient group. One of the major benefits of this feature is the way it groups people together. For someone looking to follow people based on interest, this is a goldmine. With lists, similar users are grouped using a near fool-proof, human, curation system. Be on the lookout for lists that fit your interest and follow key individuals from that list. If you need some help finding good lists, you can check out Listorious.com.

Follow Other Follow-ees

One of the simple, old-fashioned, ways to find new followers is to simple gleen users from others. If there is a Twitter user that you enjoy, go take a look and the people that he is following or the people that are following him (or her). Chances are many of these people will also be of interest to you and are worth following. This is one of the oldest methods in the book, but it still works.

Use Twitter Search

Twitter search can be a really easy way to find new followers. If you are interested in frisbee golf, a Twitter search for that term will give you hundreds of results. All of them will be from people who have conversations about frisbee golf. Follow the interesting looking users and continue to search additional terms. If you are hoping to follow people in your surrounding area, Twitter search will also allow you to do that. Using Twitters advanced search you can find new users using proximity.

Find Friends

Under the ‘Who To Follow’ section on Twitter’s website, you will also find the ‘Find Friends’ tab. This tool allows you to connect to other social media accounts to import you contact from those services. This is an excellent way to follow people that you are already know and communicate with on other services. You can even use this tool to invite friends who have not joined Twitter yet. Perhaps you can convince them to start talking and tweeting.

Developing a Follow Policy

In a previous post, we covered some of the basics of following and following back. In particular we addressed a couple of options when it comes to deciding how many people to follow and how many people to follow back. You can read more here, but this is something that you will want to figure out as you begin following and communicating with new people.

Twitter is one of the best-known tools for following an interest and creating conversation around it. The first step is finding the right people to follow, and the second is getting involved in the conversation.

[This post is part of the ongoing series The Complete How To Guide for Twitter Marketing]

Well, you win some and you lose some, right? It was less than two weeks ago that I did a post lamenting the problems with online measurement and metrics. You can read my rant here, but today I am actually going to cover some of those very metrics. You see, it’s a double edged sword. While the problems with metrics still exist, we need them to measure how effective our efforts in social media are. Ignoring available data would be wrong. We just need to handle it properly.

What Are They For?

The thing to keep in mind when using stats and analytics is – everything in moderation. Stats can be great if we use them right, or they can be trouble if we let them control our day. Here’s a simple formula for success:

1. Check stats monthly.
2. Track and chart the ones that matter
3. Make adjustments according

If you find yourself checking them daily, or even weekly, you may have a problem. Unless, of course, you are monitoring a singular campaign – which is forgivable.

Which Stats Matter

According to Olivier Blanchard, the author of Social Media ROI and an authority on the subject, we should be tracking those things that help us determine and measure our business goals. Basically, business objectives become social media objectives, and we use measurement tools to track how all of those things are lining up. You can hear Olivier say it much better than I in the latest episode of the Better at Marketing Podcast.

So, without further caution, or aeidu, here are five good tools for tracking your progress on Twitter.

Replies, retweets, and regular old tweets.

Tweetstats

Tweetstats is part of the old guard. They have been there since the beginning doing their thing, and doing it well. They take an inward look at your tweets, measuring your own activity. They can tell you who you like to interact with the most, and what time of day you like to tweet. Most of these stats aren’t overly helpful – just interesting. The most powerful stats on Tweetstats surround your actual tweet frequency and type. If you click on the line bars for each individual month, you will get a nice breakdown of your activity.

From the graph above, we can see that activity on this Twitter account is fairly healthy. There is a good balance of tweets, replies, and retweets. Frequency has some noticeable valleys that could be improved, but overall it’s pretty good.

Real influence isn't easy to measure, but it is getting better.

Klout

I have covered Klout before in a far more in depth way than I will here. Klout is a tool that attempts to measure your level of online influence on Twitter and Facebook. This is a flawed measurement for many reasons – like it only takes into account Twitter and Facebook. Either way, it is currently the best tool available and worth a glace. Like Tweetstats, this will primarily grade your overall activity, showing you areas where you need to improve in how you use Twitter properly.

Bit.ly provides a clean breakdown of all clicks to your links each day.

Bit.ly

Bit.ly is not specifically a Twitter stats tool, but it is the most popular tool on Twitter for creating and sharing short URLs. This makes it a useful tool for regular tracking. Bit.ly will basically tell you how many times a user clicked on your links. For many of us, most of our links are shared through Twitter, so this can give us a good idea of how likely people are to follow through with things that we recommend to them. If used right, this data could tell you which type of links get the most activity, and which get easily ignored.

Twitter mentions of a certain domain broken down by month.

Backtype

On the subject of link sharing, there comes a handy tool called Backtype. This tool basically measures the number of times that your URL is shared on Twitter. It is a simple, but important, metric if your goal is to gain more traffic to your site. I like this tool because it tracks shares and user engagement. If you are trending upward, then you are definitely doing something right.

Another chart, and another data set.

Google Analytics

While this is the farthest removed from all of the sites above, it can still be used to track your Twitter activity. Specifically, it can be used to measure how much inbound traffic you are receiving from Twitter. If Backtype tracks shares, and Bit.ly tracks clicks, then this will show you how many people actually make it to your site. More importantly, it will show you what they did once they got there. This is hugely important, because in marketing we are usually using social networks, like Twitter, to drive traffic to our site. We not only need to measure the amount of traffic, but also the quality of traffic (bounce rates, goal completions, etc).

Putting It Together

Remember, use these metrics responsibly. Define a set of objectives, set goals, and use these metrics to track your progress. Statistics aren’t there for the sake of it, they are there to help you reach a set of goals and objectives. There are many other ways to track Twitter. What are some of the tools that you love?

[This post is part of the ongoing series The Complete How To Guide for Twitter Marketing]

Everybody knows what an automated DM is, right? You don’t need to be using Twitter for long to understand this type of messaging, and why it is so disliked amongst Twitter users. Automated DMs are direct messages sent to your Twitter account once you have followed someone on Twitter. The idea is that you can use these to thank someone for following you, which is always a nice thing.

Here's the story of a man, a plan, and Twitter spam.

The problem with them is that some brilliant marketer along the way decided that these nice little messages could be turned into and an opportunity to spam people with a link to their website. So, now we have automated DMs that sound kinda like this:

Hi there! Thanks for following me. Please buy illegal prescription drugs from me at http://mywebsite.com

Many Twitter users find these direct messages annoying and consider them to be spam.

Marketing Tool?

For the record, automated DMs are not a marketing tool. Plain and simple. The idea of spamming whoever follows you on Twitter might be a great way to get a few clicks each month, but I promise you, you aren’t building a lasting customer base that way. This is not a Todaymade endorsed method of marketing or engagement.

…extended rant removed for purposes of brevity…

What are DMs Really For?

I have attempted to use Twitters Direct Message in the past to connect and share information with people that I know. Personally, direct messages are a system that I like and make every attempt to use. Other’s, however, have become so inundated with spam messages that they no longer use the feature. This is unfortunate, and gives you an idea of how most people view automated messages.

Why They are Just Wrong

Auto-responding DMs are not a practice that I have adopted for any of my accounts, nor suggest to any of my clients. While there are a some immediate benefits (like 5 clicks per month) there aren’t enough positives to make them worth it. No one wants to be ‘that guy’ unless they have to. And I, don’t have to.

Twitter is a tool for community and building relationships. If I am intended to connect with someone and read their blog, it will probably happen with or without the automatic message.

How to Use Them for Good

So, clearly, I am not a major fan of automated DMs. My usual response has been to ignore them, but I have recently changed my mode of attack.

First, before I get into that, I want to clarify that not all automated DMs are, in fact, spam. Some of them are a sincere-ish attempt at connection. For example:

Hi my name is _______ and I look forward to connecting with you. I like to blog at http://mywebsite.com.

These are better, and these are the types of messages that you can actually do something with. Here’s my simple bit of advice. If you get a direct message like this, automated or not, take three seconds to respond. I have started doing this of the last few weeks and it has been an excellent method for making new friends and connections.

The premise that I take is this. If you feel comfortable shoving your link in my face, then I can feel comfortable to doing the same thing to you. So, I end up with something like this:

Hi, thanks for the message. I blog too at http://todaymade.com/blog. I would love to hear your thoughts. Thanks!

Simple enough, right? Give them a taste of their own medicine, right? Sometimes, my “spam” falls on a spammer and I never hear back, but sometimes I do. More than once it has resulted in an ongoing conversation that has been taken to the public world soon enough. This is a simple strategy that really started as an experiment, but is highly effective for creating connections with those that are actually interested in talking.

Why this Works

This method works for me for a couple reasons that I want to clarify. First of all, I have previously outlined several methods that can be used to develop a follow policy. Mine is simple, I follow by interest. If you follow me, while it may take me a couple of days, if I find you interesting I will follow you back. This method is opposed to automatically following everyone back, something I have done before with disappointing results.

My point, is that due to my follow policy, this method is possible. Users can only send you a direct message if you follow them, so being selective is a great way to ensure that you aren’t constantly being spammed. The other point that it brings up is the quality of the person I am following. Everyone who is sending me an automated DM has been pre-vetted by me in some way. I have, somehow, decided that they look interesting enough to follow, or are in the right category of business. This means that I only get a few automated DMs at a time, and they are from fairly high quality people.

Without those two factors, I don’t think this method would work nearly as well.

Return Spam?

There are some that say that I am just returning spam for spam. Maybe I am, but it doesn’t feel that way when it actually results in a conversation, which it does about 50% of the time. Who knows, this is just an idea that I am experimenting with. It might work for awhile but may not work always work. Would love to hear your thoughts.