Helping You Rock Out Your Site Like A Rockstar!

There are so many ways people use Twitter. Some with good social media practices and others who exploit the systems just to get followers. Chris Brogan recently wrote Get More Twitter Followers TODAY, a kind of tongue-in-cheek, but had insightful suggestions for people to use Twitter more effectively rather than crap on the system. By the way, I mentioned it because you should read it.

While I agree on most of his points, it is rather a tricky situation. Depending on what kind of information you are tweeting, you may need more than 20 tweets a day. And unfortunately, for those who answer questions that could be valuable to those needing certain information (like support questions for a script or as I often hang around the #wordpress, #wp, and WordPress trending topics), you will have to reply publicly rather than direct message others (DM.) Quite a few successful bloggers have become what they are because of Twitter, like Richard Darrell of Minervity. In less than 6 months, his resourceful web design site has become quite popular. There are many more only that have also done the same in their own niche.

However, it is important as you, the Twitter user, must adopt some type of personal guidelines to influence, and retain meaningful followerships while at the same time, not focus on how many followers. Basically, focus on quality, not quantity. The auto-tweeting rubbish going around promising a multitude of followers do NOT live up to their name. How do I know this? Because I painstakingly experimented and although it was not harmful, and did pull in some followers, I was not impressed. Most were not meaningful connections and I only got a few, less than a dozen. On the same note, my Twitter stream ( @blondishnet ) was auto-tweeting annoyingly spammish (yes, that is not a real word, but I like it), more than once a day. It gets even more annoying to see more than 10 people in a row through the public stream who have subscribed to such a service and that is pretty much what their streams are all about. For me, I unfollow them as they have nothing of interest I want to read. Besides that, the sites are ridiculous. How are you going to reach the people who are truly interested in your information, whether you give out resources or advice for free, or have a product for sale.

It is your responsibility to use Twitter in a way that does not cause spam or people to unfollow you because of what you say. In fact, causing enough people to follow or to spam are part of Twitter’s terms of service and you can be suspended. The great thing is that Twitter is free, so whether you are on their for business or leisure, you will meet people, but remember, use common sense.

What is your personal Twitter user policy?

Let us face it, for those with small businesses, when you raise it from ground up, you will become passionate about your business. You want people to know and do business with you. You want to shout it out to the world that you have a business.

The issue is – how do you shout out about your business?

Of course, with social media, it brings the information of your business straight to consumers, and sometimes virtually for little cost if you are good at it. However, you will find other businesses out there doing almost the same thing that you are doing. Please notice I said ‘almost’ as some people offer a unique twist on their product.

I have seen business owners of small and large companies dish it out in forums and over twitter because they both happened to post in the same topic that a person asked what type of services are out there that offer a certain type of hosting. Now, no matter what business you have, some of you will automatically have a red light going off in your head on how wrong the previous phrase was. There should have been no arguments. The question was not to a particular person.

Consumers are not idiots. They do not want to see some political-type debate go on about a service they were honestly asking for advice. In fact, they are more than likely to go somewhere else and not even bother clicking on any of the links of the businesses involved in a tiff. Or the other possibility is that they might blog about the spat and others might even avoid those businesses.

It is okay to be passionate about your business. It is not okay to press your business on others nor shoot others down unless there is a truly something illegal or immoral about the other business. You could be potentially hurting the brand you have tried hard to build for yourself and your company and even on a personal level – your blog.

I hope that my message is heard and taken in with humility and a newfound respect for other business owners.

Have you ever experienced a spat between business or blog owners? What happened? What other types of advice can you give?

In late May 2009, I applied to become a social media intern for FanHistory.com (the company is FanHistory LLC.) Fanhistory as I mentioned in another blog is a wiki site for fans. Already this site had over 750,000 articles in a variety of fandoms when I took the position. When I first joined, the site was barely pushing 2,000 visitors a day and now only a few months later, it is pushing 3,000 visitors a day. The owner had already made several social identities dedicated to bringing the site’s content to as many people as possible.

Some of their social identities include:
- Group page and a Fan Page on Facebook
- Account at Identi.ca
- Account at Twitter

…as well as various accounts through Fanpop, LiveJournal, and many more.

The one thing that I think is interesting about FanHistory.com is that not one person can really say that they are not a fan of anything. Fandom can contain celebrities, pop culture, internet websites, hobbies, writing, and so much more. This site is relevant to most anyone. That is why the data is the most precious commodity this site holds. FanHistory has a lot of potential educational value for those wanting to document and learn about the different aspects of each fandom. It is ran by volunteers who have an passion or even an interest on certain topics in fandom.

When Michael Jackson passed, myself as well as Laura Hale (the founder of FanHistory.com), and the other administrators of FanHistory.com scurried to make a decent page for the pop icon. Why? Because at the time he was a relevant topic and we were sorely lacking in information on him. After filling his page out, plugging it in the various social networks and even I re-tweeted it through my own stream, traffic has gone up. This is just one topic of several and even David Spark wrote about it at Mashable recently in the article, Trending Topics: 5 Ways Companies Used News Trends for Business Success. As a side note, FanHistory.com was also spotlighted at AboutUs.org for July 2009.

Of course, for those involved in fandom that have fanfiction sites, celebrity gossip sites, fanart sites, and just about anything fan-related can easily become involved in contributing. On a SEO angle, you would be able to add your link to the relevant topics that are on FanHistory.com, therefore getting a link back to your site. It is a no brainer in my opinion, especially when adding the link to your relevant topic is free, and the site gets a pretty good amount traffic.

Now, this is just a beginning to this case study, but with further work, I am confident that all of the administrators will make FanHistory.com soar in traffic. Of course, my hopes are that other tech sites like TechCrunch, and WebProNews can write FanHistory.com. It might not be as fancy, but it is definitely full of relevant information to those looking for a central point for their fandom. In a way it is a wiki and a web directory in one.

The bottom line is -plugging your site into the social network does take a bit of work, but with a bit of time, it does pay off. Try it if you have not already.

Have you ever to contribute to FanHistory? Do you have a site that you have used social media techniques and have made your site more success?

Social Media has been big in 2009. Some social networks have risen to the top and some have even fallen. However, there has been an alarming number of people getting the wrong impression about social media. As Brian Clark Copyblogger states in his article Since When Are Blogs Not Social Media?, people are trying to make social networking synonymous with social media.

This is wrong.

Wikipedia states in their Social Media article:

Social media is online content created by people using highly accessible and scalable publishing technologies.

Wikipedia also states in their Social Networking article:

A social network service focuses on building online communities of people who share interests and/or activities, or who are interested in exploring the interests and activities of others.

So, social media is a practice that can be done within social networking. Social networking is NOT social media. This is very distinct. Blogs are a just one way to spread content online. They are very much a part of social media. In farming terms, to blog is to sow, and to share it on any social network is to watch your blog grow with readers.

What is social media to you?

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Social Networking sites have become popular over the past few years. Each place competes and adds new features to keep their visitors interested. These sites provide a way to:

• Connect with other people in similar niche
• Find old friends and possibly connect with extended family members
• Provide entertaining applications
• Sell products or provide an online business presence

It is all about interacting. What sites are better? Well, that is something that can be argued. Whether it is Facebook or MySpace or Twitter or something else, they provide the same basic services when taking away all the extra shiny stuff.

So many new sites have surfaced and attracted so many people because the service may be unique. People are sharing their links from other social networks so their followers and friends can connect with them at other places. What use to be the normal “I will just join these three places” has become a couple dozen. People use blog widget services like DandyID to show visitors every online social identity.

I am no longer getting the definite feeling I use to a couple years ago that social networks are trying to have open cat fights, but focus more on strengthening and upgrading their core product to provide more efficient services.

So, here is my thoughts. It does not matter how many networks you belong too. If you are there, I will follow you back. It makes everything far more fun when you can meet new people and share similar experiences. These experiences make for great conversation.

What was the first social network you joined? How active are you? Do you feel you have made some pretty good connections?

Yes, I did say ‘pitchman’, but really- you are a salesman of your blog even if you are not selling anything for cash. You are trying to connect and influencing people whether outside or inside your expertise. Like Billy Mays was, he was confident in his products and with his loud voice and knack for selling. He was successful in pitching his products. He made his products memorable and many people, even myself can say that when I see OxiClean or Awesome Auger, Billy Mays comes to mind. His power to demonstrate that his product was effective, influenced me to buy it.

Your blog is your product. Every word flows from your thoughts. As I remember Liz Strauss said that bloggers should write in their own way and not as if it were for a newspaper. People cannot discover your wonderful nuances when it is black and white. Make your blog you, and sell it.

I will say this- as a graphic and web designer, there are many tutorials out there. Many are similar, but each are different in how they are presented. Usually it is presented in the way that the tutorial writers knows and so as the reader, you have to figure it out. Some tutorial authors may phrase their material in a way that is difficult to follow. Others might be easy to figure out. However, this same principal can be applied to blogging.

How do you pitch your blog? What tools do you use?

With the passing of Michael Jackson in mid 2009, there has been an amazing thing. People are showing their concerns for Michael Jackson and spreading news via Twitter, Facebook, blogs, normal online news sites, and more.

Of course, Michael Jackson has always been someone to talk about. He was a very influential man within pop culture. For decades he has been a celebrity. People grew up to him on television and through music. People even grew up with his family too. I remember when I was young that my father use to blast his Thriller album loudly. I cannot forget it even though I was so young at the time.

Music artists across many genre have publicly said that his music and dancing influenced some of their work at one point or another. Although the majority of his life was without the social media that exists today (like the internet), he stuck to several principles when in the public eye.

• He was true to himself even if some decisions were not accepted by others.
• He influenced others and became an expert to others who were in the same industry.
• He had a team of people besides himself at getting the word spread about his music.
• He was consistent with his music and dancing by breaking new barriers and delivering a better song each time.
• He successfully branded himself not just as a person, but on a business level too!

So before his official site or fan club ever came online, he was already a social media expert. Of course, it cost him money, but he connected with those who could help him on his journey. Michael Jackson will always be remembered for his work.

What will you remember about him? How can you use his successful climb in social media to influence your own?

Some of the blog articles I have recently started to publish have been about the social media venue, Twitter. Of course, like most systems that have gotten popular, there are people who abuse it by one of the following:

• Are people racking up numbers of followers to spam and not give valuable content
• Are bots created by people that rack a number of followers to spam
• Phish the site like they did during New Year’s Eve

Of course, for anyone who has done forums, and other types of social media places, this is normal, yet still annoying all the same. Of course, there are regular people out there who are not just politicians, celebrities, and businessmen. It is very much a diverse community. However, the name of the game people have come to get into is getting the number of followers… period. There are offered ploys by many in the Twitter community to “Get 10,000 followers in 100 days” and so forth. Although I can be optimistic, I was quite skeptical. I am sure it can be done, but some of the suggestions are quite agressive and frankly, for me, although I like to follow, I also like to try to converse with others. Come on, I spend 3 hours on Tuesdays with the GNO (Girls’ Night Out or trend topic #gno – A group of women on Twitter with a focal topic each week.) However, the formula of these ploys are done by simply joining and thinking that at least 25% of the tweeps that you follow each day will follow back. I know, I have subscribed to these out of curiosity and the fact that I knew eventually I would be blogging about things like what I am blogging in this article.

Tweepl is doing and experiment with Twitter that is a non-spamming bot to collect data on the value of collected followers and trying to prove that it is not important. Of course, with a lot of numbers, your tweets are streams on all of your followers timelines. However, they are not doing this. I am interested in what they will find out and will be following their journey from time to time.

However, anyone who uses Twitter can do the following if they are trying to organically build a following… that is, a meaningful one:

• 1. Follow 2-15 people in a day (this is depending on your time) and try to communicate with them honestly. You do not always have to tell them why you followed them, but try to take an honest interest and try to talk with them.
• 2. Even if you communicate with the people the day before, do not exclude them. They are worth the time and remember that. Everyone is worth a chance and worth the time.
• 3. Try not to use the Automatic -Direct Message (Auto-DM). It really may not pertain to anyone and if you do make one and could prov annoying. If you do make one, make a webpage specifically to welcome your tweep followerers by introducing yourself (not your business if you are one.)
• 4. It is okay to follow back for those who follow you first. However, if it is merely a business with no interest in communicating anything other than their specials, perhaps unfollowing is better. There are a few businesses that are honest people and have great products, so do not rule all of them out at first sight.
• 5. Engage new topics like: Question of the Moment, Fact of the Moment, Project of the Moment, Poll of the Moment, Thought of the Moment. These might bring a wonderful conversation. These are ones I actively use myself and enjoy the feedback.
• 6. Tweet your blogs, but do not overtweet them. This one is kind of an iffy, but if you believe you have content worth a look, then tweet it.
• 7. Visit some of your followers sites or ask them to DM you when they blog something new. If you have to ask daily, then do so as a reminder. It shows you are interested in at least reading their articles and they might give you a look in return.
• 8. It is okay to disagree with another, but to unfollow them based on the fact you disagree with them on an issue is not just rude, but ignorant. Arguments/Debates are ways to grow as a person and know more. Now, unless if it is totally against your morals, then perhaps it is best to bow out politely with a DM to the other tweep. They will understand.
• 9. Follow people who have filled out their profile either partially or fully. The profile might give you a clue if they are a person or a robot. Check out their stream and see if they have anything interesting to say. It might help as a great conversation starter.
• 10. If you have no idea what to talk about, try Tweetworks. It is another Twitter tool that you can use to focus on certain group discussions based on a topic.

Anyway, I am sure there are even more suggestions and sure it is okay to follow more in a day, but make sure you can handle it. Like anything, use Twitter with caution.

Here are some articles that Tweepl shares that I think are also worth both pluggage and read on the issue:

• Why numbers are not everything on Twitter by Bud Gallant – Tells how it is more important not to focus on the number of followers but the content quality of your tweets.
• Your Followers Are NOT Following You by Tweetworks – Lists reasons why people might follow or unfollow you and how to use twitter with meaningful conversations rather than bulk up in numbers.

There are far more blog articles on the issue and the majority of them read quite similar: Numbers are not always important.

So think about it. Why are you using Twitter? What do you want to talk about? What type of people do you want to connect with (if you do want interaction… at least I hope you do)? If it is for just the numbers, spamming and not for interacton, then why bother using it? What substantial topics do you have that another can take back with them or even respond?

In the end, remember: Real people will follow you if you are truly real with them. If you want the numbers and it makes you feel good in the morning, but you having absolutely nothing to talk about, by all means do use Twitter that way too. However, if you want to effectively use Twitter for what it was intended, then take this blog seriously. I did not waste 1000 plus words to come up with junk.