tdog.blog

Twitalyzer.com offers a very interesting service: they rank your Twitter usage and tell you how well you’re doing in various areas:

• Influence, or how many followers you have
• Signal, represented by a signal-to-noise ratio
• Generosity, or how much you reference and retweet others
• Velocity, or how much you tweet over a rolling period
• Clout, or how much others reference you

Here is a screen shot I took on Friday February 27, 2009. The service is being upgraded right now, thanks to a jump in traffic that has made their hardware melt. So be patient if you go out there. I opted to delay this post just in case they needed more time!

As you can see from my chart:

• I have  a very low influence (I need more followers, so follow me @myerman)
• My signal-to-noise ratio is astonishingly high, which means 8 times out of 10 I will be providing you with a URL or retweeting others (ie, I won’t be wasting your life with useless tweets)
• My generosity is low (so I need to work on referencing others and retweeting them)
• My velocity is low (not enough tweets during the past week, but I feel like I’m right on target, really)
• My clout is super-low (I need to get more retweets and references)

Some Thoughts on Improving Your Use of Twitter

The key metric here is influence. How many people follow you, how many times are you retweeted, and how many times are you referenced. If these numbers go up, then everything else goes up. The key to gaining influence is making sure that your tweets have value to others. Try to include one (or more) of the following in your tweets:

• A URL to a resource
• A hashtag
• An @ reference to another user
• A retweet (RT) of another user’s tweet

Putting these kinds of things in your tweets will make them more useful. Another key to success is generosity. Reference other users and retweet what they say–this will open users to other networks, most of which they can’t access easily. Eventually, those you retweet will reciprocate by referencing and retweeting you! But of course, you’d better have something interesting to say….so this all kind of loops back on and reinforces itself.

At the end of the day, Twitter isn’t much different then other communication channels:

1. Know your audience.
2. Create content targeted to that audience.
3. Start conversations that drive deeper engagement.

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Finally, I’ve managed to put together a little video on using Twitter. Sorry for all the false starts, my first attempts were made using a PC. I know, what was I thinking, right? I eventually got back to my beloved MacBook Pro, and voila, easy as pie. Shot the screencast, did some quick edits, uploaded, done.

But that whole “Mac is for people who actually want to get things done” thing is a post for another day.

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Jacob Morgan, a social media consultant, is trading links for a few minutes of social media consulting.

Personally, I like the idea that he’s doing this–if for nothing else, he’s thinking on his feet and marshaling his resources (in this case, his native expertise) to get something else he wants: traffic and rankings.

Think about doing it in your own business. And hey, if you want some free advice, click the link above and then follow his instructions.

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Here’s an oldie but goodie but from XKCD, a webcomic about “romance, sarcasm, math, and language.” Check it out to get an inside peek at how a geek’s brain works. I love the recursive humor in this piece called Marketing Interview. I’ve felt like this many, many, many times: get called to the prospective client, get grilled, then get asked to make a pitch. Hey, you called me, right?

Marketing Interview

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One question I get asked a lot is, “How do you conduct research online?”

Truth be told, there are plenty of ways to do research online, some that will cost you a fortune and others that will only cost you time and energy. Some are qualitative (rich with details) and some are quantitative (i.e., more measurable).

Here is a random sample of research methods I use when I’m looking into a new opportunity.

1. I usually start with Google Alerts. You can set these up for free, having Google send you daily or weekly alerts for certain keywords or phrases. You’ll get a list of links with context in each email.
2. Once you get the hang of alerts, sign up over at Yotify, it’s pretty much alerts on steroids.
3. Don’t forget about Google Zeitgeist. There’s a ton of data in them there hills. Especially the hot trends for today.
4. Do some searches on Technorati and Buzzfeed. You’ll learn some of what’s going on in the blogosphere.
5. Check out PopURLs. It’s a buzz aggregator that will show you the top stories and content on NYTimes, Huffington Post, Newsvine, YouTube, Delicious, Magnolia, Reddit, Digg, Mixx, and more.
6. Once you’ve got a good handle on the top-level activity, then start digging around inside of Reddit, Digg, Mixx and others. Spend some time with Delicious, you’ll find lots of folks have bookmarked interesting material for you.
7. Do some searches on Twitter.
8. Don’t forget Wikipedia.
9. Here’s a list of 99 other research resources.

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