10. Twitter can be a HUGE waste of time

Like most things online, you can waste hours of your time on twitter if you’re not careful. I’ve learned that when I need to get something done, I have to close TweetDeck.

9. Spam accounts have no value

Like most of you, I too have done my share of testing and experimenting with various types of spam accounts on twitter. Other than one account which will remain anonymous, none of my other attempts have had any long term value.

8. There is no need for paid tools

Unless you are running complex campaigns with multiple users for corporate accounts, or managing multiple accounts for clients, there is no need to pay for any twitter tools. A single user/brand can do everything they need with all of the free tools available.

7. Whining doesn’t help

Don’t like the new update twitter released? Too bad, all our tweets are belong to twitter. We want to use twitter, then we get to play by twitter’s rules, whining won’t help.

6. People are likely to retweet you if you talk about them

Might sound obvious, but the only times I’ve been retweeted by the A-listers is when I said something nice, or linked to them. Want some attention? You have to be the first one to do the back scratching.

5. You don’t own anything on twitter

Remember that awesome link that your friend tweeted at you about a month ago about that thing? Yeah, try finding it now. Oh, what’s that? You can’t? That’s right, that’s because it belongs to the twitter goblin! If something you think you might want to reference later comes across your twitter feed, put it somewhere safe. ie. not on twitter, lest it be lost forever.

4.  Need something? Just ask.

One of my favorite things about twitter is that I can ask virtually any question and get an answer within minutes. Traveling and need to know where to eat? Want to know the name of the soundtrack from your favorite video game from the 80’s? Best tool to use? Link to that one YouTube video with that one creepy karate guy? Somebody is sure to know, it’s like a personal answering service!

3. Twitter CAN make you money

Not by spamming, and not by sponsored tweets, but twitter is a great way to easily connect with new people you don’t know. More connections = more opportunities = money. I’m not saying that there is a direct correlation, but I have certainly picked up new clients and made money because of connections I’ve made via twitter.

2. Shut up once in awhile

As someone who has now written 10,000 tweets, I understand how addicting it is to always be the one saying something. But there is a lot to gain from just quieting down and watching every once in awhile. Sometimes I just watch a conversation rather than getting involved. There is great value in observation, you don’t always have to be a participant.

1. Twitter has no value

The value is in the people that you meet. No amount of followers, no custom background design, and no amount of retweets are going to replace the conversations you’ve had and the people you’ve met. The value is in relationships and will continue to be no matter what social platform we transplant ourselves to in the future.

Who was the first person you spoke to IRL (in real life) this morning? What did you talk about? Now, can you remember the first thing you read when you logged into Facebook?

If you’re like me, you have spent WAY too much time on countless social media sites over the past 2–3 years, obsessing over what your profile looked like, what your “friends” were up to, stalking pictures, and reading the never ending fire-hose of information from social news sites.

Good & Bad Investments

Any financial consultant will tell you that as you continue to add capital to an investment, the potential payoff increases exponentially over a period of time. As you continue to add to your investments, they begin to work harder for you. Also, any investment that doesn’t have a probability of a higher return than the capital invested would be considered a bad investment.

It is up to you how you spend your time. What baffles me are the crowds of people who complain about “not having enough time” but continue to make poor decisions with where they invest their time. Over the past few years I have done my share of time wasting online. As a night owl, I have logged more hours than most on YouTube, Wikipedia, Reddit, and numerous others. But choosing to waste time, and wasting time because of ignorance are completely different.

Social Media: The Time Suck

I am a fan of most popular social media sites, and frequent them often. Some of them have helped make me and my clients tens of thousands of dollars if not more. They are often entertaining and can sometimes be useful. But aimless activity in social media is the death of your time investments.

Everyone that works online should understand their goals with each social media site they invest time into. If you are spending time on any social site with no defined purpose, you are not going to get any real value out of your time invested in that site. Understanding begets focus begets success.

Good Investments in Social Media

One saying that my dad used to say is: “The Jack of all trades is the master of none.” Like most things, this holds true for social media as well. You simply can’t dominate Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Digg, Reddit, Delicious, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Flickr all by yourself. For your sanity and success you have to choose your spots.

What is the expected value for each social site you invest time into? If your goals are to build relationships and connect with people, the expected value in Reddit is likely 0. Understanding why you’re getting involved will not only help you set your goals, but also help you set your focus priority.

Trim the Fat

Once you have a clear understanding of your goals for social media and the sites you are going to use to help you reach them, it’s time to adjust your workflow. Remember, wasting time on purpose is a hobby, wasting time because of ignorance is inexcusable.

Some social media marketers suggest that a workflow for social media can take as little as 60 minutes per day. Setting up and refining a process will help keep you on track and stop you from wondering off into the far corners of the internet. Remember, this is work, you can play later.

Reap the Rewards

Refine your time spent on social media sites to focused attention and I’m betting you get hours back out of each day. In addition, the time you do spend will actually produce results, rather than remaining stagnant and unremarkable.

Continue to add and invest time into these refined processes and strategies, and eventually your momentum will begin to work for you. Like a good financial investment, time well spent in social media will eventually begin to snowball, and time you spend will have more and more affect in the end. Rather than having your efforts dispersed because your efforts were spread too thin, and your focus unrealized, more time spent will begin to mean bigger payoffs.

With an understanding of your goals, some focus, and a plan, anyone can plan and start an effective social media campaign.

Photo Credit: steve.grosbois

Probably like you, I own a small business. Who doesn’t these days right? Also like you, and everyone else that owns a computer, I’m on Facebook. And just like everyone else on Facebook, I get inundated with “Become a Fan” requests at least 6–8 times a week. These requests are generally for fan pages of small businesses, either that friends of mine own, or friends of a friend of mine own.

Now, let me be honest, I think my small business is AWESOME. But I also realize, that unless I’m giving you money, or you’re a client of mine, you really have no reason to “become my fan” on Facebook. It’s great that we’re friends and all, but I don’t expect anyone outside of my industry, or who I do work with, to find anything that I do professionally, exciting or worthy of fandom.

It reminds me of Eddie Murphy: “What have you done for me lately?” — I especially don’t want to become a fan of business pages who’s business I don’t even use, read, or know about! I can’t endorse something that I don’t use. That doesn’t mean we’re not friends, or that I don’t like you, it just makes sense.

I know that everyone out there by now has heard that this social media thing is all the hype, but signing up for a Twitter account and creating a fan page for your business on Facebook doesn’t mean that you’re “doing it”.

If you’re a small business and trying to kill it with social media, you need to think about what you’re providing your users. Most people aren’t going to like you just because you’re you, even though you’re wonderful. Try a few of these things:

• Create some face-melting content
• Give away stuff, people love that
• Run a contest that users might actually have a chance at winning
• Respond to your users
• Don’t go missing, if you’re not if front of your audience, someone else will be

Rather than just putting up a fan page with links to your site, put your back into it and do something valuable for your users. Then you might actually have something worthy of becoming a fan of. Don’t expect to sign up for a couple of accounts on the most popular social networks and thing that everything is going to work out for you. People now more than ever are looking for reasons to not pay attention to you. Between all of the media channels, Facebook games, Twitter, YouTube surfing and the like, there is more than enough distraction in our lives — we don’t need another vanilla install fan page to be a part of that will spam our inbox with notifications that we really don’t care about.

What does work are the brands and businesses that go out and do all of these bullet points to the max, and then some. Think about the websites that you repeatedly visit, even when they don’t notify you that there’s something new to see. What are they doing that you’re not?

YouTube is not a simple video hosting site anymore. YouTube has more than 100,000 viewers and 2.5 billion searches, and that is a whopping 25% of the total search traffic on the internet! (Source: comScore Media Metrix) What this means for your business is that YouTube is a virtual gold mine waiting to be exploited by anyone who wants to build, monitor, and enhance the brand image through reputation management. Experts say that YouTube has to be treated as a separate search engine now, and that means using Search Engine Optimization (SEO), or more precisely Video Search Engine Optimization (VSEO) to garner more viewership for your videos, which in turn will bring in more revenues for your business. Using videos effectively to convey information that lasts in the memories of the viewers longer is a SEO strategy that has been harped on from time to time by leading SEO players in the industry as well as most experts in seminars, webinars, and conferences on the changing faces of SEO. VSEO is the faster and more effective way to help your business gain more visibility on the internet, and what better place to use videos to promote your business than on YouTube.

Like good SEO strategies, VSEO strategies have to be deployed using certain parameters to gain maximum results. You cannot have your video clips placed on YouTube to develop your business or to manage reputation without knowing the best ways to make your videos work for you. Your VSEO for YouTube should also include basics of good SEO, and that is to create quality content in this case, it’s the videos to make your viewer or searcher get the relevant info he or she is seeking, and make them want to visit your site to seek further info, or to see what you offer. There are a few simple tips that will help you use YouTube to your maximum advantage.

• Create quality video content. Use good equipment to create videos of good visual and audio quality. Bad quality will turn off viewers, and thereby, your potential customers.
• Make sure that you make videos that have information that is useful. Do not host irrelevant videos to waste your time as well as that of your prospects.
• Use the search algorithms of YouTube to your advantage. Manipulate parameters such as title, description, tags, number of views, and ratings to derive maximum traffic.
• Include the URL of your site in the watermark and metadata of the video. Don’t forget to include logos or anything that you feel will boost your company’s image. Building brand consciousness is easier this way.
• Make your videos catchy and short. Most viewers don’t care to sit through long, uninteresting videos. Retain their attention by sending the message across in a way that will make them sit through the video without flinching.
• Place the video including the site map on your own site, as well. This will help searchers and search engine spiders find the content easily.
• Using Hi-Def videos are great for picture quality. But, for better streaming purposes, it is better to stick with YouTube’s size of 320*240 (QVGA), and maintain an aspect ratio of 4:3. It’s no crime to use Hi-Def resolutions of 1280*720 pixels and an aspect ratio of 16:9, but lower resolution pictures can load faster, and we want customers with all types of internet connections both fast and slowóto view our videos, don’t we?
• Practice makes perfect. Allow feedbacks and ratings from viewers, as this will allow you to learn from mistakes, and help you make better video content in the future.
• If you think all this is way over your head, and you think you donít have the time to do all this; hire a good SEO company to help your VSEO on YouTube.

Repair or enhance reputations, build brand image, and lure more traffic to your website making effective use of VSEO on YouTube. Don’t forget the fact that the higher your videos are placed in the rankings of YouTube, the higher they’ll be in search rankings of the formidable Google. So, good VSEO on YouTube is a win-win situation for you!

For my 5000th tweet I thought I’d do a quick post about why I follow the people I do on my personal twitter account. The people I link to are the ones I’ve actually met

Starting from the top:

@mattcutts — Gotta follow him, cause I do SEO and well.. He’s Matt.

@chriswinfield — Chris is the man for social media promotion, had the pleasure of working with him multiple times, great guy, great work.

@garyvee — I actually was following his blog before he was a super star, cause I love wine, Gary’s awesome, but you probably knew that.

@dannysullivan — Kinda like Matt, a must follow, except his tweets get pretty interesting the later into the night it gets..

@acquireworth — Personal friend and health nut, also knows a crap ton about mixx.

@austincurtis — Personal friend, Actual Ninja, and sick ass designer, also does wedding photography on the weekends.

@stuntdubl — Much respect to Todd since I started out in this game, been following his blog since Day 1. Glad to get to know him on a personal level now too.

@oilman — He got hired on as my boss, so a mandatory follow.. He mostly just makes fun of me.

@robertpalmer — Personal friend, known him since high school, now he’s a kick ass desinger and blogger. Also owns the most spots on my favorite tweets list.

@zefrank — Who doesn’t love Ze?

@gregboser — SEO vet, infamous for viral conference interview videos that ask people if they know the definitions of obscure words.

@factive — Another go to guy for social media and just all around marketing. Lives in my home town (San Diego)

@sspencer — Infamous for confusing conference attendees with high level technical presentations, definately knows what he’s talking about.. Or at least sound like it..

@bcerwickd — Personal friend and coworker

@timhalberg — Personal friend and kick ass wedding photographer, seriously, if you need wedding photos hit him up!

@sugarrae — Much respect to Rae for knowledge on SEO and Affiliate Marketing.. But I’m not afraid of her like everyone else on twitter, she’s a shrimp.

@aussiewebmaster — Frank knows his stuff, fun to listen to cause of the accent and I always enjoy a blunt view.

@martinbowling — Super funny guy, loves beer (still waiting on that story

@brentcsutoras — Yet another go to guy for social media, tons of respect to Brent. Always enjoy catching up at meetups, and occasional IM’s because of the LOADs knowledge he has.

@redreinard — Personal friend and business partner for years. Genius programmer. Don’t talk to him, he’s busy.

@wldaily — What can I say? I love wine, I want all the deals I can get!

@TheMadHat — Can you say Bacon Explosion? Had one at IM Spring Break, it was fantastical, made one this past weekend, it was awesome-sauce, can’t wait for the next one.

@JordanKasteler — Good guy and party animal! Co-Founder of Search & Social.. It’s a fitting name.

@Oatmeal — Have you seen his comics?! Follow him. Find them.

@davesnyder — The other co-founder of search & social, really really nice guy. Super smart business mind.

@neoblog — Nice guy, did some really cool studies of twitter a long time ago.

@monicawright — She’s a MAINEiac! Like, from Maine. Super nice, SEO chick.

@MandaOtto — Good conversation when you engage her, seems to know what shes talking about

@lisabarone — Kneesockz!!! With a “z”, pretty funny, emo, oh, and she writes stuff.

@problogger — Mad respect from Day 1. If you’re reading my blog and you don’t know problogger, you’re doing it wrong. (or im doing it right, and its because of problogger)

@aaronwall — runs seobook, duh.

@webuildpages — Have they tweeted on this account? Used to be the home of some of my favs..

@neilpatel — Super smart marketing tips, pretty goofy though, just take him serious when he’s on the podium.

@barrybowman — I have a personal friend named barrie bowman that has red hair, i just thought it was way too much of a coincidence, i followed cause of that, this barry actually tweets out some cool stuff from time to time

@brentdpayne — does the seo for chicago times, always cool to see what he’s working on, plus we’ve had some really interesting dialogue over twitter

@leeodden — ranks #3 for “online marketing” — nuff said

@davenaylor — smart guy, good ideas, good accent, gotta mix in some foriegners

@andybeal — another authority in the space for sure

@vanessafox — Tons of respect, love the collaboration between seos and developers that she brings to the table

@jillwhalen — Had some interesting conversations for sure with Jill, as I’m sure most have

@davidkeffen — Funny guy, some corny jokes and good conversation

@copyblogger — Mad respect for this guy, I make sure to catch everything he puts out. DO IT

@katemorris — Smart Chick, Super nice, makes friends with everyone

@griffingranberg — Good guy, super happy all the time, dunno about you, but I need somma that in my work day!

@MichelleRobbins — Very witty and knows her geek culture. Also super nice. Helps run SEL and SMX

@rustybrick — Always has some good content to contribute

@Rhea — One of my favorite new “internet friends”, knows a crapload about SEO, puts up with sugarrae, and she and her husband are basically the gender inverse of me and my wife.

@calebkimbrough — Awesome texture designer, if you’re looking for textures, follow him.

@Pamela_Lund — Another one of those nice girls that knows about internet marketing, sorry guys, shes taken.

@GabGoldenberg — A super nice guy this time! Lots to contribute about SEO

@purposeinc — Hosts think tank and the infamous poker tourney at pubcon every year, good guy.

@audette — Good conversation, knows SEO, likes good beer

@BarbaraBoser — The attractive side of gregboser, rockstar for social media promotion!

@VirginiaNussey More good convo, when you engage.

@JackLeblond — Really good guy, totally outgoing on twitter, totally not in person

@brianchappell — Hits it hard with social media, also same as above!

@dharmesh — built twitter.grader.com (remember when that was popular) had some good convo with him, also runs onstartups.com — info about startups, good stuff

@dreaminaction — good convo, blogger doing her thing!

@shellyfagin — Good convo yet again! She does SEO too

@pratt — Good guy, knows his stuff, fun to hang out with

@sallymander — she was originally my 100th follower, then I got unfollowed so she was #99, shes also really funny

@chiropractic — Chiropractor + Marketer = huh? I dunno but he rocks it! Way cool, rocks it on the local, and gave me some free adjustments!

@kristy — After sallymander, kristy became the 100th follower that stuck! She turned out to be a good one too! Also funny and witty, and nice!

@DanteMonteverde — A little of this, a little of that, knows what he’s doin, but its hard to find him!

jimboykin — been around for a long time, not super active on twitter though..

@joannalord — kinda like my little sister, cause shes so small. Super funny and really easy to tease!

@danzarrella — Social media rockstar, he’s with hubspot currently. Seriously knows his stuff.

@pageoneresults — Gets mad if you follow him for no reason, funny to talk to. Good for listening.

@cshel — Another serious female technical mind, also really funny.

@jawnuthin — personal friend, HILARIOUS, one of the funniest people I know, Also — the next Jeff Buckely, I wish he tweeted more

@cbui81 — personal friend, fellow food lover, runs a basketball blog

@anderhyder — MY BEAUTIFUL WIFE!!!!!!!!!

@juliemackenzie — really interesting conversation in times past

@stephenfry — one of the top twitterers, pretty interesting..

@streko — super smart, knows what hes puttin down, makes fun of other friends, fun to watch

@graywolf — tons of respect, reading since Day 1, great Google rants about once a week

@ChristinaGayle — Copywriter, conversationalist, interesting

@weirdnews — run by brentcsutoras, crazy stories from this account, fun stuff

@joshuaseo — Pretty interesting dude, fun conversations

@cjweb — puts out good content and resources especially for desingers

@tonyadam — yahoo who? metro friend #2, and super talented marketer, plus super funny and fellow mos def lover + scotch drinker /mancrush

@visualfuture — sallymanders husband, funny guy, good conversation

@melanienathan — link builder, another hilarious chick, super fun conversations

@sarasowrong — personal friend, talented writer/editor, musician

@Mark_S — My Cousin, He’s a riot, literally, he’ll cause a riot in your house.

@WarrenWhitlock — Met him at pubcon last year, followed cause of interactive twitter presentation, pretty interesting

@heatherlloyd — Client turned friend? Shes awesome, Rockstar copywriter, super hilarious, speaks her mind always!

@shimonsandler — good content, interesting stuff

@matterhornpat — we were on a panel together, good guy, good convo

@shashib — brings power strips to conferences to share! sweet.

@skitzzo — good guy, lots of opinions, I enjoy the bold stances, even though I don’t always agree.. Fellow poker player

@scottpolk — knows his stuff, always good for a laugh

@btabke — runs pubcon

@ravenjon — puts out some of the best seo tools on the market

@alisond — really good convo and puts out good content and studies

@chris_hart — funny guy, knows his stuff, tall

@remarkablogger — authority in the space, really good content and voice

@thesearchguru — super nice, copywriting chick

@alandowling — personal friend, super talented illustrator/film maker

@MrsOilman — wife to the infamous Oilman, it is rumored that she may/may not really exist, fun to watch her tweets when Oilman gets in trouble

@gregfinn — Awesome guy, works with ChrisWinfield, writes some really good stuff (OGC)

@yummyman — seems to know his stuff, had some good conversations back in the days..

@AnimalRza — Personal Friend, go go dancer, lives in San Fransisco now

@lorenbaker — good guy, has a funny hat on in his avatar, throws kick ass conferences with davesnyder and jordankasteler

@netmeg — super funny, great conversation

@patrickwinfield — good designer, works with the OGC crew at 10e20

@outspokenmedia — follow just to make sure I catch all the posts that come out 96 times a day

@chrisbennett — Good guy, good content, good conversation, fellow Audi R8 lover

@MarkKnowles — created pixelsilk, the best cms Ive seen yet.. Also a really nice guy

@NathanJohns — Super nice, super helpful googler

@hsatterwhite — hahahahahahahahaha

@imjustcreative — good design resources

@henshaw — personal account for ravenjon, good guy, funny guy

@airdisa — we have ties that go waaay back

@CJohanSmith — Personal Friend, Engineer, Just got funding to dev a product that you’ll probably buy soon

@chase_reeves — Personal Friend, Hilarious man, smart sob. Keeping him to myself

@godhammer — some of the funniest conversations Ive had

@zaibatsu — One of our last hopes for a non celebrity “power user” — also super helpful and generous

@Szetela — PPC ROCKSTAR! + Stories for days!

@toddmalicoat — stuntdubl’s attempt at a segregated personal account… I don’t think it worked.

@camsna — Personal Friend, Since high school, we lived together, travelled across the country together, climbed a mountain together, he’s the next Eric Clapton.

@pearsonified — Creator of the Thesis Theme. Sickness.

@diythemes — Account for the Thesis theme

@khyder — No, its not me, It’s my cousin Kelly! She plays volleyball for one of the best college teams in the nation.

@kid_disco — Don’t email him, he’ll add your email to a spam list. Smart guy, tall guy.

@timstaines — Another nice guy, good conversation

@joehall — smart dude, good content and good tools

@chelleface — Personal Friend, lives in Texas now.

@AshleyDorris — Personal Friend, Wedding Photographer, Another funny one

@BrascoAtWMR — my updates for content from webmasterradio.fm, good guy

@seosmarty — Good content, rare but good

@Matt_Siltala — Good conversations and engagement

@fairminder — Nice guy, interesting to talk to

@zerbetron — eye makeup Rockstar! also roller derby champ! Good conversation! Nice chick

@loriorr — MY MOM! Yeah, you all are freaking out about your parents on facebook, mine have been there for days, now they’re infiltrating twitter!

@daver — Really smart dude, funny, good conversation and jokes

@paulgallaher — Personal Friend, Known since Middle School! He’s a journalist, a real one, like for newspapers! *ducks from lisa*

@blafrance — really interesting tweets, pretty funny

@garretcurtis — Personal Friend, Actual Ninja, Kickass film maker

@jamesprola — Personal Friend, Another kickass film maker

@thomaskranzle — Personal Friend, Seriously one of the best photographers, videographers Ive seen, hit him up if you have a client that needs product work or work in the field

@lauralippay — yahoo what? Awesome chick, super smart

@susanesparza — badass writer chick thats published!

@KoryMaine — Another Cousin! Heard of the band Tool? <- better than their drummer

@cesarserna — kick ass tools and stuff, really nice guy, fun to hang

@rebeccakelley — pretty funny follow, we had fun making fun of panelists from the audience one time

There’s lots of great material out there on how to build up your twitter account(s) and get followers by doing all kinds of cool things that result in quality followers that will sustain. This post is not about that.

If you just want to get followers because you like to see your follower count go up (who doesn’t?) — it’s really simple. Just start posting keywords to your account that other people are likely to track and autofollow.

Yesterday evening I posted:

And got 15 followers as a result, all related to one or more of the keywords listed in this tweet.

If you like this, leave a comment with some keywords you have noticed you have gotten autofollowed from!

Back by popular demand, here is the sequel to the original 14 Tools of Highly Effective Twitter Users. A round up of some of the best tools available for your maximum twitter pleasure!

backtweets

To kick it off, backtweets is a great way to find, track and monitor links that spread on twitter. Check out advanced mode to search specific date ranges and users.

doesfollow

For all of the users that are obsessed over who’s following who: doesfollow will tell you exactly that. Just put in the two users and it plops out if they follow each other or not.

hootsuite

A tool that allows you to manage multiple accounts, schedule tweets, and track success all in one.

MicroPlaza

MicroPlaza is a service that takes all of the common tweets and links from the people you follow and groups them into “tiles” so that you can easily digest the important stories that come across your timeline without having to frantically scan your ever updating twitter feed.

MindMeTo

If you’re not into some of the more robust GTD applications, MindMeTo might be just for you! Just tweet or dm @mindmeto what you need to remember, and at the allotted time, it will send you a dm with the reminder. Simple.

polldaddy

From the popular polldaddy service comes polldaddy for twitter, just put in your question and possible answers and tweet it out!

twickie

Archive a twitter response thread! If you’re like me, conducting business on twitter is a no-brainer. So it’s probably a good idea to have a backup of your communication ey? (Also see tweetake from my last post)

Twitdom

Come one! Come All! A resource for finding twitter applications and tools. That is, er, besides my blog of course..

Twitoria

Shows you which of the people you follow hasn’t tweeted for the longest time so you can boot em!

twittercounter

Don’t lie, we all know we’re all obsessed with our follower counts. This tool shows us a nice little chart of our follower count progress along with projections.

Twitterfall

Twitterfall is a cool way to see popular topics or custom search queries on twitter search that allows you to control display metrics. It also takes the query load on it’s server so your browser doesn’t have to do all the work.

twitterhawk

A targeted marketing tool that helps you find, follow and even tweet people that are talking about things that you are interested. (paid service)

twollo

Find and follow users who are talking about your terms of interest. Much like twitterhawk, but you can’t tweet at people.

URL Shortener

Yeah I know, there are a ton of url shorteners out there, but how kick ass is it to have your own? That way, all your links say your domain in them no matter what. Sweet. Here it is the latest and greatest way to create your own URL Shortener:

If you enjoyed this post.. Please follow me @kennyhyder, also be sure to check out the original post if you haven’t already!

Lately it seems there’s been an upsurge in nay-sayers against social media and the people who are heavily involved in the social media space. The general consensus is that people are sick of hearing the term “social media guru”, or other related terms.

Let’s Not Get Butthurt

Now, first of all “guru” isn’t much of an official title anyway, so lets not get butthurt about someone who calls themselves such a thing anyway. And secondly, it seems to me several of the posts that I have read whining about this phenomenon are written by people who would likely be classified in the same categories as such “guru’s”.  Of course, there are many people whom I highly respect that are highly talented when it comes to the whole social media game, you can find them in my blogroll. But this isn’t why I’m writing.

3 Types of People — Connectors, Mavens & Salesmen

I think we all need to remember a few things about social groups and marketing. In The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell talks about the concept that there are 3 types of people: Connectors, Mavens & Salesmen. I’m going to assume that you’re familiar with the concept with these types of people. But in a brief description, Connectors are the types of people who know lots of other people, Mavens are the people who have lots of information, and Salesmen are the types of people who are persuasive.

We Rely on All of These People

In social media, we have and rely on all of these types of people and/or concepts. The connectors are the people that have 30,000 followers on twitter who can broadcast a message that everyone will end up seeing. The mavens are the 5 million visitors on reddit that keep the content fresh and honest. And the salesmen are sometimes the stars of our beloved youtube videos, or sometimes the magnetic headlines that we can’t deny a click.

It’s One Big Community

The thing is, these concepts apply to marketing, epidemics, social media, social groups, and probably a lot of other things. We all fell in love with social media a few years ago because it was new and different, and you didn’t have to be a “somebody” to play. And I would venture to say that many of us called ourselves a “guru” or an “expert” at one time or another. It may not be the case today, but such wisdom comes with maturity as we have all weathered a few storms in this ever evolving world of social marketing. The fact is, even though it is “social” media that we’re discussing, we still rely on a few key components. If we didn’t have the connectors that could spread the word, no one’s message would get out. If we didn’t have the mavens to vote us up, check the facts and leave comments, we’d have no audience. And if we didn’t have the salesmen to sell the message, entice the clicks, and drive the viewers, well no one would be interested at all. So really, in a sense, we’re all guru’s with our own parts to play in this gigantic social community on the web. And that’s how it’s going to continue to be, and that’s how it has to be. We all rely on each other whether directly or indirectly. Let’s not sweat the small stuff.

So I guess the only question is, what’s your part?

A collection of the 14 best tools available to help you manage and maximize twitter in alphabetical order!

Follow Cost

Enter a users twitter name:

And it gives you a rating on how detrimental it will be to follow that user:

The ratings are given in milliscobles, or 1/1000th of Robert Scoble’s twitter output. It also gives an index of what percentage of the user’s tweets are political and what percentage are @replies. More of a fun tool really, but will still give you an accurate idea of how much the user will pollute your feed!

http://followcost.com/

#hashtags

Hashtags are a popular way for twitter users to tweet and keep track of relevant queries in search.twitter.com, #hashtags keeps up with popular hashtag trending topics on twitter.

http://hashtags.org/

TweetStalk

Ever want to follow someone on twitter, but didn’t want them to know you were following them? Yeah, me niether, but in case you ever did, there’s tweetstalk:

Just download the firefox, install, and stalk away!

http://tweetstalk.com/

TweetStats

Statistics for twitter! TweetStats allows you to see all sorts of statistics from your twitter account like, month to month tweet frequency, daily average tweet density, aggregate hourly tweets, etc.. And, all of this without entering a password to your account, so you can see stats on others as well!

http://tweetstats.com/

Tweetake

Tweetake is a tool that I think is indispensable for anyone that conducts any sort of business on twitter. It allows you to download and save a copy of your twitter account. Followers, Tweets, DM’s, Favorites, you can save them all as a csv download for safekeeping. And if you’re as paranoid as I am about backups, this will be one more thing to add to the list!

http://tweetake.com/

TweetSuite

TweetSuite is a wordpress plugin that is a continuation of TweetBacks. The new and upgraded version includes automatic tweeting of new posts, most tweeted widget, recently tweeted widget, tweet this button, and several other twitter-tastic features to intergrate into your wordpress blog. It’s the ultimate twitter plugin for wordpress.

http://danzarrella.com/beyond-tweetbacks-introducing-tweetsuite.html

Twibs

Twitter business directory. Find businesses on twitter. Nuff said.

http://www.twibs.com/

TwiTip: Host Your Own Short URL

TwiTip is a great blog for twitter users, run by Darren Rowse of ProBlogger. In this post Darren writes about how you can host your own short url instead of using a service like tinyurl. I personally perfer to use kl.am but this is not a post on url shortening services!

http://www.twitip.com/how-to-host-your-own-short-urls/

TwitPic

TwitPic is probably a service that you already use, or are at least familiar with. It’s most common use is with cell phones posting pictures to twitter for you. I like it because it also tracks views on each photo, and you can login to TwitPic with your twitter username/pass and see all of the photos you’ve ever posted.

http://twitpic.com/

TwitterBar

Post to your twitter from your firefox address bar! If firefox was my main browser, I’d totally use it.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/4664

Twittercal

Now this is a great idea, especially for twitter addicts that don’t already have an iphone or a crackberry. Twittercal lets you post events to your google calendar by sending direct messages.

http://twittercal.com/

TwitterFriends

Yay for friends on twitter! It’s all about the conversation right? TwitterFriends is a neat tool that allows you to look at the conversations you’re having with all sorts of statistics including: @replies recieved/day, links posted/day, retweet quotient, tweets/day, as well as the normal to and from tweet ratios between you and other twitter users.

http://twitter-friends.com/

Twitter Grader

Twitter Grader is a twitter ranking tool that grades your profile based on a number of factors and gives you a grade on a scale of 1–100, as well as a global rank in proportion to the rest of users. It is a fun tool that allows you to see just how “elite” your twitter profile is. I have done extensive blogging on this tool here: (1,2,3,4)

http://twitter.grader.com/

Twuffer

Now, I have to say, this is just an awesome name. Out of all the twitter mashup names, this is my favorite. Twuffer (hehe) is a twitter-buffer, that allows you to schedule and post-date tweets. Oh the possibilities!

http://twuffer.com/

I hope you enjoyed the post and found some new tools you can use! Also be sure to check out twitip.com and don’t forget to follow me on twitter! @kennyhyder

Since it’s inception, I’ve thought that Sphinn was kind of ridiculous. Almost like it was created so internet marketers could have a place to promote themselves without worrying about the unfriendly crowds that exist on digg. This is totally unnecessary. Just because SEO news doesn’t do well on digg.com doesn’t mean there needs to be another social media site dedicated to seo and internet marketing! If you’re in internet marketing, it means that you’re at least a little bit narcissistic, and you don’t need a SM site to promote your articles on. If they’re good, they get read, and if they’re not good, and your name is big enough, they get read anyway. But alas, these are the top 5 reasons why I don’t like Sphinn: 

1. Internet marketers don’t need a central place for internet marketing news — Thats why we’re the marketers! People hire us because we are up to date on what’s new, and what’s not. (and because we’re good at what we do) It’s not like we’re not all reading each other’s blogs and obsessed with what Google’s doing anyway!

 

2. Search Engine Land needs to open up comments — I can understand if Seth Godin wants to close comments on his blog, whatever dude, thats cool. But I just find it annoying that SEL has comments closed and they want everything to go through Sphinn. I don’t know how many times I would have commented on a post but then didn’t because I’m supposed to go to Sphinn. Open up comments already!

 

3. Multiple submissions to the same article — I’ve had this happen to me a couple times, where other users submit my post to sphinn at the same time, and it gets posted twice. Then you get 2 listings, and it never goes anywhere because the ‘sphinns’ are divided. This is a basic functionality that needs addressing.

 

4. Don’t send me sphinn links! — I hate it when im on twitter and someone posts a link to a new post or article, and I think I’m clicking a zi.ma or tinyurl link to the post, and i get taken to sphinn. We’re all marketers here, if you want a sphinn, put a sphinn link at the bottom of the post. I’m not gonna sphinn, or digg, or stumble anything until I actually see it!

 

5. Lack of content — Besides the fact that anything that hits Sphinn is something that we have all already seen, or commented on, the front page keeps ‘hot’ content up for a week! There are plenty of things being posted daily to have fresh content on the homepage daily. Maybe a new algo needs to be worked out to figure out what makes it hot so that old articles don’t sit on the front page for days on end.

EDIT: Disclaimer: I must say that I do love the content that searchengineland.com puts out, and I think the people that run Sphinn are great. I’ve had the pleasure of meeting several of them. 

http://twitter.com/GregBoser/status/1048080262