The Most Popular Twitter Tools And Why They Are So Popular

When it became clear that Twitter is a bona fide phenomenon, everyone jumped on the bandwagon to come up with all sorts of tools and applications. There are so many out there to choose from, wading through them can be quite a job in itself. One of the first things many new to Twitter complain about is that once you begin following and being followed, response can be overwhelming. So, many tools focus on organization and filtering. Others are time savers that let you make the most of Twitter without having to constantly be on it. To help you out, here are a few of the most popular Twitter tools and the cool things they can do for you and your business.

Tweetdeck is a kind of overall organizer that connects you with contacts over Twitter, Facebook, and other social media. With the browser you can create groups, filter tweets, and keep up with favorite subjects. The easy to navigate screens spread everything out in front of you so you can reply, direct message, retweet, add to favorites, etc.

Twhirl ranks almost as high on popularity lists as Tweetdeck, but also allows you to manage more than one account within one application. For those with multiple businesses, blogs, or just want to keep a private and a public account, this is for you.

Tweepler is a tool that helps you organize your followers and decide if you want to follow them back, or just ignore them. It gives you helpful stats about followers and generally streamlines the decision making process.

Twitpic allows you to post pictures on Twitter. You can post via your phone, their API, or the Internet. Useful for both social and business activity, this application pretty much speaks for itself. After all, a tweet is a maximum of 140 characters, and a picture is worth a thousand words!

Twitoria helps get rid of clutter by scanning your account to see who has been inactive for certain periods of time. It can also help you track down spammers.

Twitpay lets you give and receive payments via your Paypal account. It makes payments incredibly easy and mobile, no need to use your desktop or laptop.

Twitter to WP/ WP to Twitter; great for bloggers, Twitter to WP posts your tweets on the sidebar of your WordPress blog. WP to Twitter sends an automatic update when you post something new on your blog.

Twit(url)y tracks the urls that are currently being twittered about. Use this site to see who’s got the most talked about sites and what’s on the minds of Twitter users. It tells you who has the most active tweets in real time.

MrTweet calls itself “your personal networking assistant.” Use it to find which conversations are most important and relevant to you. It can help you track your relationships discover new networking opportunities.

These are just a small slice of the incredible tools available to make your Twitter account work harder for you. Adding just a few of the applications to the already powerful Twitter can make the difference between just doing well, and having huge success online.

What’s Your Story?

What story does your website tell your customers? Is it a hard luck story of a business that hasn’t undergone a revision in ten years? Is it a story about a cutting edge company that’s up on the latest trends? Your website’s appearance certainly DOES tell a story, but today I want to talk about a different kind of storytelling.

Today’s customer will go out of their way to avoid “advertising”. On the television, we fast forward through commercials. On the computer, we employ pop up blockers. So, how do you get your message out there to a population that is putting their hands over their ears and singing “la, la, la”?

There’s good news because everybody likes a good story. Blendtec has really tapped into people’s desire for a good story with their “Will it Blend?” series of videos. Originally, they just blended things like marbles, but now they’ve started blending brand name items, so that they advertise Blendtec, as well as the company that makes the item their blending (that’s smart marketing!).

So, how can you use storytelling on your website?

First, you can write about your company’s story. Make good use of that “About Me” or “About Us” space. Don’t just give the bare minimum details. Tell us a tale.

Is this a third generation family business started in Grandaddy’s basement? Did your parents go without to send you to college so that you could fulfill your dream? Did you leave a high paying corporate job to strike out on your own, braving the entrepreneurial waters? Don’t have a tale? DON’T make one up!!! Find another place on your website to practice storytelling.

Tell us an anecdote about your customers. First person, we call these testimonials. But you can tell stories about your clients third person, as well (you’ll probably want to make sure these are positive and don’t use names or identifying details without permission).

Let’s say you have a car repair business, and you helped someone get home to their family for Thanksgiving by staying late the night before the holiday. That’s a good story! It tells something about the lengths you’re willing to go to, your commitment to your customers and, if told right, it should make for an interesting read.

Educate your visitors. Tell them an interesting tidbit of history about your area of expertise. Coffee companies do this a lot. They tell you about why different roasts are different. They give you the history of coffee. They manage to increase your enjoyment of their product (and convince you of their expert status) by telling you more about something you may have been drinking for years.

One caveat– do make sure your educational information is interesting. If you can’t figure out how to make your writing interesting, hire someone who’s an expert. It will be money well-spent. Just because it’s educational does NOT mean that it’s automatically storytelling.

Finally, you can experiment with using something other than the written word to tell your story. Whether it’s videos or pictures, today’s audience is very visually oriented.

Show them pictures of that before and after renovation. Give a video tour of your manufacturing facility. If you’re really creative (or are willing to hire someone really creative), you can create a cliffhanger serial about an employee or pretend client that changes on a regular basis and keeps visitors coming back for more.

This is just a small taste of the possibilities for storytelling on your website. Take a look at your site and see where it could benefit from a bit of a story.

New Houston Car And Home Insurance Company Website

We just created a new website for a local insurance agent here in Houston. The owner wanted it to look like most of the big insurance company websites and to have a patriotic (red, white and blue) color scheme. Check it out by clicking here:

Great Example Of Viral Marketing

My wife Jill showed this to me this evening and I had to share it with you.

Call the Nestle Crunch Hotline at 1-800-295-0051. When you are asked if you want to continue in English or Spanish, wait quietly for about 10 seconds and you will smile. Promise! Keep going and press 4. Listen to the options…then press 7. If you comment on this after listening, don’t give away the surprise. I promise you will be laughing.

This is a great example of viral marketing. How can you get people to talk about your brand the way people are going to talk about this?

Think Social Media is a Fad?

Think that social media is a flash in the pan that will pass, and you’ll just “hunker down” until it passes you by? Or that social networking is nice for teens but has nothing to do with your business? Watch this quick video and let us know if you still feel that way.

New Website For A Houston CPA

We just finished up the design of a site for a local CPA. He wanted a unique style and we delivered a site that suited his needs.

Check it out by clicking the picture below:

What Can You Expect from Social Networking?

Social media is being talked about everywhere these days and for good reason. Social media sites like Facebook and Twitter are bringing companies more business every day. In fact, Pepsi announced recently that for the first time in 23 years they are not going to be advertising Pepsi in the Super Bowl! Instead of doing Super Bowl ads Pepsi plans to spend 20 million dollars (yes, that’s million) on a social media campaign. This announcement highlights the shift for companies, both big and small, when it comes to spending marketing dollars on social networking.

Does Social Networking really work?

Asking whether social networking works is like asking whether any form of networking works? Why go to networking breakfasts? Why attend industry functions? If you don’t leave a networking breakfast with a contract, but you leave having made three good contacts, was it a waste?

Whether you’re talking about Facebook or Twitter or some other social networking site, it’s good to go in with an end in mind. What are you trying to get out of it? Are you trying to improve your brand? Establish communication with your customers? Take advantage of social networking’s viral aspect? Meet other industry leaders?

Each of these purposes will require a different approach. Twitter and Facebook are excellent for reaching out to your customer base and spreading your branding message. Linked In and Plaxo are better for reaching out to other business owners for forming strategic partnerships.

So, yes, social networking works, but only if you have a clear goal in mind and use the proper method to achieve that end. Approach social networking like any other networking event or like a trade show, and you’ll probably be happy with your results. Approach it like buying a billboard ad or sending out a direct mailing advertisement, and you might be disappointed.

What’s my ROI?

Trying to measure a Return on Investment, or ROI, for a company’s social networking strategy may be like asking someone to quantify happiness (although apparently some people try to do that). Measuring the effectiveness of your marketing is a big key to being successful. So, it’s understandable that a business needs to measure the costs of any marketing strategy it implements and then measure the monetary results to find out if the strategy is worth continuing. But how can you possibly measure the results of your participation in social media networks?

The good news is that the actual financial investment in social networking is pretty low. Unless you’re paying someone to do your social networking for you (or are purchasing advertising on a social networking site), you’re looking at more of a time investment than a monetary one. So, your dollar investment may not require a lot of return to justify what you spend.

However, as the saying goes, “time is money”. If you spend hours every day on social networking at the expense of other business activities, that needs to pay off. So, how can you measure whether you’re spending the right amount of resources on your social networking strategy?

Again, you’ll want to start with an actual strategy, complete with some measurable end.

Want to get out your brand message?

Perhaps the strategy is to increase the number of people following you on Twitter or the number of fans on Facebook. That’s something you can measure.

Trying to establish a particular contact within a company?

Map out how to get closer using Linked In. Did you manage to get linked in to a contact within the right company or within the right industry this month? Great! You’re on the right track.

Of course, there are some tools that can help you look at your numbers. You can use Google Analytics or other similar programs to track your traffic and see where it’s coming from– visitors to your site from a social networking site is a good indication that you’re doing something right. Each site generally has its own set of helpful tools, as well. For example, Facebook fan pages have an “insight” section that provides you information about the number of visitors, interactions and even demographic information about your fans.

So, what’s the bottom line?

The real return on investment for social networking is that it builds a community of people who go on to boost a company’s brand. It also provides a forum where a company can defend itself against detractors. In many ways, social networking sites are more of a public relations tool than a marketing tool.

The new media engages a company and its potential customers in a conversation. If people get value from your social media presence it will boost your company’s image and cause more word of mouth advertising to take place, and word-of-mouth is the generally the best possible form of advertising. While word of mouth traffic generated from social media is difficult to track in terns of ROI, it provides traffic that has already been convinced by “social proof” that your brand is worth viewing. These are potential clients who are already half sold on buying from you, so when you actually DO traditional marketing, you’re more likely to get a return.

Social media optimization is not about spending X amount of money and raking in Y amount of dollars through a clear connection. It’s about creating a positive, cooperative atmosphere that will eventually bring good results to your business. In order to maximize your profits, your company needs to build an excellent social media presence in 2010 and beyond.