Entrepreneurs-Journey.com Down-To-Earth Advice For Bloggers and Internet Marketers

It’s pretty clear that Twitter is the social media star of 2009, at least so far.

In case you haven’t got an account yet, make sure you go to Twitter.com and register for free. After you have your account, you can begin by following my updates –

http://twitter.com/yarostarak

I won’t go into the details about how Twitter works because Gideon Shalwick (@gideonshalwick) has a video coming out about that soon to teach the basics.

Twitter is essentially a micro-blogging tool where you are restricted to 140 character posts, which are meant to be updates from your life. It’s also a fantastic inter-communication tool, which I will explain more about in a moment.

Twitter can definitely be used as an effective business tool, but it can be abused as a time waster as well. You need to find a balance, so let me explain how I recommend Twitter is best used.

It’s Darren’s Fault

I’ve been a member of Twitter since Darren Rowse (@problogger) bugged me about joining. Darren has since gone on to become a super Twitter fan, starting a blog about it (Twitip.com) and becoming the number one Twitter user in Australia with some 30,000+ followers. Beware Darren when he becomes passionate about something!

I joined up after Darren’s recommendation and started exploring the service. At first you have to get your head around how the system works, how you can send direct replies @ certain people, what a direct message is and how it differs from a reply and all the other tips and tricks.

I used a desktop program called Twhirl, which sort of functions like an instant messaging client plugged into Twitter and other similar services.

Twhirl was good, but as I found out recently, Tweetdeck is better. This desktop client is, and I quote “An application that aims to evolve existing functionality of Twitter by breaking down Twitter feeds into more manageable bite sized pieces”. Simply put, you have to use Tweetdeck as it makes Twitter much easier to manage.

Chronicling My Travels

I first signed up to Twitter while on the second half of my travels overseas in 2008, so much of my early Twitter notifications were either Internet marketing related, or “I just landed in Rome” type messages. It proved an effective way to use Twitter as people told me they enjoyed my status updates about where I was in the world.

It was during this time that Twitter become more prominent in Internet marketing circles. Suddenly all the big players where emailing their lists trying to boost their Twitter followings. John Reese (@johnreese) quickly built his following passed 10,000 people after mailing his subscribers. Frank Kern (@masscontrolkern), Mike Filsaime (@mikefilsaime), Eben Pagan (@ebenpagan), Jeff Walker (@jeffwalker), Rich Schefren (@richschefren), and prominent bloggers, Brian Clark (@copyblogger), John Chow (@johnchow), are among many others who all have active accounts on Twitter from my industry.

Even celebrities are using Twitter. There’s Brent Spiner (@brentspiner), Wil Weaton (@wilw – a massive 50,000+ followers) and Levar Burton (@levarburton) from Star Trek (well I think Star Trek actors are celebrities anyway!), Kevin Rudd (@kevinruddpm) and Malcolm Turnbull (@turnbullmalcolm) from Australian politics and of course the most popular Twitter user of all time, Barack Obama (@barackobama), with over 230,000 followers at the time of writing.

This is only a small sample of the people using Twitter, with of course your normal every day Internet user being the most widely represented group on Twitter, although I believe it’s fair to say “tweeting” (to send messages on Twitter) is definitely NOT a mainstream activity.

It’s A Lot Like Email List Building

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Press play to begin streaming the audio or right click the download text link and choose save as or save link.

Download the MP3 [ 30 Minutes - 10 MB]

I meant to have this out to you on Wednesday last week after I recorded it, since the prior evening I attended a Third Tuesday meet-up in Toronto, which was the inspiration for the podcast. However, you see, I bought a new macbook pro.

Don’t get me wrong, I love my new mac, but this is my first mac and since I recorded the podcast on the mac there was a BIG learning curve to figure out how to get it ready for publication on this blog. As you will hear, it’s not quite right, but the message is definitely clear enough to enjoy. Apologies for the change in volume and odd shuffling noises.

How Do You Measure Social Media?

This Third Tuesday meet-up was a good one, the topic being – How do we measure social media? – with three expert panelists (Katie Paine, Marshall Sponder and Marcel Lebrun) taking questions from the audience made up of mostly PR and communications professionals, and related consultants and small business owners.

The idea of measuring the impact of social media is akin to measuring the effect of branding. Social media, much like branding, is often difficult to directly correlate with a business outcome, despite it obviously having a big impact on business results. I won’t go into here since I do so in some depth in the podcast, so have a listen!

If you are a blogger, a business owner or a person interested in the business side of social media, you will enjoy this rambling podcast.

Thanks to Joseph Thornley and his crew for putting on a great meet-up.

Show Notes

1. Introduction to the Third Tuesday event
2. What we mean when talking about measuring social media
3. What this means for bloggers
4. Why it’s the conversation that matters most, not the influencer
5. No industry wide standards for measuring social media are available
6. Not many people are actively measuring, only monitoring
7. There is an opportunity to provide a database of influential sites ranked by social media analysis
8. Use social media to assess how your competition is perceived and use that information to compete
9. Consulting firms providing social media data mining services
10. What changes to ad budget spending at companies means for bloggers
11. Why being an influencer in any niche is so important

Click Here to Download the MP3 [ 30 Minutes - 10 MB]

You can follow me on Twitter here – http://twitter.com/yarostarak

Did you notice the tipping point? Twitter hit the tip somewhere in the last few months and it’s clearly gaining serious critical mass.

I’ve had a Twitter account for many months but largely ignored it because social media is such an attention suck and I already spend too long in front of the computer as it is. I’ve successfully ignored Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn and I thought I’d do the same with Twitter, but alas, sometimes you can’t let things pass or you may miss out on opportunities.

I like to focus on one thing and become really good at it – in this case blogging and running my business – but you don’t want to get left behind either, and since Twitter isn’t too labor intensive to manage (compared to Facebook or MySpace), I’ve decided to bend to the will of the people and get active tweeting.

Twitter looks like a lot of fun and since it’s really like blogging but without massive wordcounts, it should be easy enough to maintain.

How Many Signs Do You Need Before You Take Action?

There have been a few signs lately that prompted the decision to become an active Twitterererer, for example…

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Update: The links in this post now point to the sale page for the SMARTS program, since the program went live. If you haven’t seen the video yet, here’s the link: Going Natural 2.0 Video.

Also I called Don Crowther “Dan” in this article and have since fixed it – sorry Don!

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StomperNet have released a new video that provides a fantastic discussion of what Social Marketing is, why it’s so critical to the future of Internet marketing and ends with three (well four really) practical ways you can use social media sites to drive traffic to your site.

Here’s the link -

Social Marketing: Success without SEO, Pay-Per-Click or Affiliates

The video is long – 50 Minutes – and the tips start about half way through, but it’s worth watching from start to finish, especially if you have not looked into using social media and Web 2.0 sites as a means to market your blog or business.

Social Marketing Is Huge

I don’t know about you, but I can’t keep up with all the social media and Web 2.0 talk lately.

Not a day goes by where I don’t get some notification from Facebook and given the growth numbers the site is putting up, it won’t be long until Facebook rivals MySpace, the current traffic leader.

Then there’s YouTube, the video sharing site that apparently every single American who uses the Web goes to watch at least once every day.

…And that only skims the surface. There’s social networking sites like LinkedIn, bookmarking sites like Digg and Delicious and collaborative resource sites like Wikipedia. Plus every day a new Web 2.0 site is born offering yet another way to connect with people and drive traffic back to your site.

It’s so overwhelming, most of the time I just take a quick look at the few sites I frequent or keep profiles at, then go back and post an article to my blog.

However every now and then something comes out about social marketing that I take notice of because I don’t want to be left behind and I trust the source of the information.

The “problem” with social marketing is how different it is to traditional marketing. You can’t even smell like you are trying to sell something or just using the site to build links or traffic back to your site, because as soon as you do – BOOM – you are banned.

To make social marketing work you have to…well…be social. Yeah, not surprising, but very true.

Social marketing is about community participation, but you can have a business agenda. You are there first and foremost to be an active and valuable member of a community and if you are smart, use your profile and connections to drive traffic and links back to your site.

Everything has to be organic and friendly – it’s actually a wonderful way to market a business because it’s like talking to friends. There’s no hard sell because hard sell simply doesn’t work – it’s not even permitted.

How Do Top Marketers React

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Talk about an odd couple. Social networking giant Myspace has teamed up with internet phone provider Skype to bring Voip (voice over internet protocol) service to Myspace IM users. The proposed service update would provide Myspace IM users the ability to enable voice chat.

This will bring voice chat to Myspace in a big way. Skype is the worldwide leader in Voip technology, and this pairing should provide a fantastically intuitive edge to social networking.

Earlier this week Myspace announced their API release, which would be huge for third party developers. This second big announcement could be just what Myspace needs to edge out Facebook once and for all in the social networking market. Facebook seems to be the more innovative company, but with over 80 million registered users, how could anyone not be bullied by Myspace?

This race for social networking supremacy is far from over but Facebook is rumored to have a “big announcement” coming within the next few days or weeks. Speculation would lead me to believe that the proposed 4 billion dollar partial buy-out of Facebook, may be the announcement that we are waiting for. All of this is strictly speculation at this point though. I guess we’ll have to be surprised together.