Erik Folgate — Orlando Internet Marketing Specialist

An Application To Bring Quality Back To Your Twitter Stream

by admin on February 12, 2010

There are several different schools of thought when it comes to Twitter. Some people believe you should follow as many “targeted” Twitter users as possible, because there’s a good chance they’ll follow you back. But, even though that user looks like someone with similar interests, they might be a horrible Twitter user. My philosophy for building a following is to let your content do the work. If you consistently engage in conversation, post relevant links, and Re-tweet relevant information about what interests you most, people will follow you. But, what about the people you follow?

It’s very tough to start conversations, re-tweet meaningful information, and participate in what other people are talking about if your Twitter stream is filled with a bunch of garbage. There are two ways to solve this issue.

Set Up A Group

If you want to follow anyone and everyone in hopes of building a bigger following for yourself, you could always set up a group in a third-party Twitter client such as HootSuite or Seesmic. Simply start a group called “Most Important” or something similar and specifically pick out the people that you want to follow closely. This will give you a separate column to see their tweets separate from your regular Twitter stream filled with spammers and other annoying people.

Use TwitCleaner

I just used TwitCleaner for my personal Twitter account and a couple of corporate accounts that I manage. Visit the site, and log in with the Twitter ID that you want to clean out. The TwitCleaner will run a report and DM you a link to your account. Go to the DM and click on the link. You’ll then see a break down of all potentially annoying and spamming Tweeters that you follow. It breaks it down into categories such as people who only tweet links, only tweet the same links, have been dormant for over a month, and so on. You can uncheck all of the Twitter accounts that you want to keep, and the rest get mass unfollowed. The beauty with this application is that they don’t just do a mass unfollow right away. They spread out the unfollow over a period of time so it doesn’t trigger a warning flag with Twitter about your account. You’re going to lose some followers of your own when you do this, but it’s worth it. You’ll have a much cleaner Twitter stream, and it’ll make it easier to bring quality back to your account.

My advice for small business owners looking to get into the world of Twitter and start doing some marketing on Twitter is to be careful with who you follow. If you don’t keep guidelines on who you follow, your account will become less about quality, and you’ll end up only pushing out promotions instead of participating in the conversation going on by your customers. Only follow customers and other industry related Twitter accounts, and this will allow you to post more quality content over the long-term.

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HootSuite is the Best Twitter Client For Social Media Marketers

by admin on January 14, 2010

I can’t remember who tipped me off to Hoot Suite when it first started up, but I am glad they did. It really has been a lifesaver web app for me. I manage about 20 different Twitter profiles right now, and there is no way that I’d be able to keep up with them if I didn’t have a good Twitter client to manage them. There are dozens of other Twitter clients out there that will manage multiple accounts at one time, but many of them are desktop applications that eat up a lot of memory and slow down my computer when I have 10 different web pages open, iTunes, FTP client, and instant messengers.

hootsuite HootSuite is the Best Twitter Client For Social Media Marketers

So, what’s so great about Hoot Suite?

Allows you to add multiple social media accounts
Supports Twitter, Facebook, Facebook Pages, Ping.fm and Wordpress.com Blogs
Twitter stats for all URL’s shortened using their ow.ly service
Keyword tracking with separate columns
Saved searches
Twitter lists function (which can be used as a group type setting)
Option to schedule tweets for a later date/time
Browser bookmarklet allows you to tweet instantly, schedule a tweet and shorten links – all with the click of a button
HootSuite provides desktop apps to compliment the web app too: Mac and PC programs, Chrome and Firefox extensions, even Greasemonkey scripts

Three Features That Make My Life Easier

The ability to schedule Tweets for later is so great. I am a purist when it comes to social media, so when I am at the computer, I use that time to interact with people, Re-tweet, and reply to people. But when you manage small business Twitter accounts, there are promotional tweets you need to get out there, so instead of spamming people with them all in one cluster, I schedule them for later and space out the tweets. Another great feature is the statistics that Hootsuite keeps for you. Any link you tweet using their personal link shortener, ow.ly, will track how many people click on that link. This is great, because small business owners usually want an idea of how many people are interacting with their Twitter content. You can also import RSS feeds to whatever Twitter account you want all within the Hootsuite interface.

HootSuite is Cloud Computing

There’s no importing or exporting required like when you have a desktop client. It saves all of your settings, because it’s a web application. I love this, some people reject it, but I want my entire digital life to be at my finger tips as long as I have internet access. This is why I am a huge fan of Google Apps for small business owners as well.

The HootSuite iPhone App

I recently downloaded this, it’s only $.99, but it still has some issues. I got rid of Tweetie 2, because it would only access like the last 30 minutes to an hour of tweets, and I like scrolling further back than that, and the HootSuite app has the same issue. It also didn’t show all of my accounts to be able to send one tweet to multiple accounts. So, it’s not perfect, but I am sure they will update soon. Here’s a short video about the app:

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My Goals for 2010

by admin on January 7, 2010

I am one of those goal-oriented people that gets excited thinking about my goals, and actually reads about how to set goals and how to achieve them. I know, you hate me. You think I’m an optimist who lives in the clouds. That’s okay, just because I like to listen to motivational speeches sometimes and read personal development blogs/books, doesn’t make me an idealist. Anyway, new years bring new goals, and since I had a lot of great things happen to me in 2009, I want to share with you all my goals for this year.

Career

Help RezHub.com become a leader in online travel booking. This is my day job, and it has become my baby. I want to see this website succeed so badly, and I think 2010 is going to be a huge year for this company.
Get 3 new clients per month for Presence Media. We got 10 in three months, so I figure sticking with that formula would be a realistic goal for 2010. Presence Media is the internet marketing business my buddy Tim and I started last year. We help small businesses market their product and services on social networks and their websites.

Financial

Reduce our debt by one-third. We have about $60k right now, so hopefully we can pay off $20k this year!
Build a larger emergency fund. We own a house and are hoping to conceive a child this year, so I want a large cushion just in case something bad happens.

Spiritual

Read throug the Bible in one year. This one is so cliche, but I really want to do it this year!
Join a small group at our church. We’ve been attending since last June, and we’re ready to get plugged in. We just need to pick one and start going!

Physical

I want to run two 15k’s this year. The Gate River Run in Jacksonville, FL is a huge 15k and such a pretty jog. I did it two years ago, but I was also 15 pounds lighter, but I can do it again.
Be 210 pounds by June. I am about 227 now. 17 pounds shouldn’t be tough, but it’s always the smaller amounts of weight that are harder to get rid of and keep off.

Personal

Read 2 books per month. I will try to read one fiction and one non-fiction per month. I am starting with Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. It’s a bear to start with, but I’ll do something much shorter and less thought provoking after that. After I read every book, I am going to give away two copies on my Twitter profile.
Pray twice a week with Lindzee. This is a spiritual one too, but it’s also personal/relational. I want to be the spiritual leader more in her life, and I think this is an easy way to start.

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Twitter Marketing Strategies That Work

by admin on December 22, 2009

It’s no surprise that small businesses are following suit by marketing their products and services on Twitter. Twitter makes it so easy for small businesses to update their customers on upcoming events, sales, promotions, and new merchandise. However, there’s a huge difference between simply having a presence on Twitter and using to effectively market your business. Twitter has already been flooded with a lot of noise, so it’s tougher and tougher to stand out be heard amongst all of the noise and bull crap that is on Twitter. Here are a few strategies to help you market effectlvely on Twitter.

Make use of hash tags

When running a giveaway or a contest on Twitter as part of a marketing strategy for a client, I almost always incorporate a hash tag that I made up. First of all, it’s much easier to track participants of the contest/giveaway, and it easily allows Twitter users filter out the noise from what they want to read. For instance, I ran a contest on the popular Mac blog, Cult of Mac, and to enter the giveaway the readers had to tweet or re-tweet a certain phrase with the hash tag #cultofmac.

Prompt customers to participate

Don’t just give something away on Twitter to the first person that responds to you. Make them for it a little bit. If it’s a giveaway, make followers post a photo on Twitter or answer a question as their entry. If it’s a contest, make it somethig that could go viral like a short video or photo contest.

Host a Twitter Chat

A great way to make use of hash tags on Twitter is to host a Twitter chat. A great example of this is #greenchat and #bp. I started Green Chat for RezHub.comfor people to join in on green living and travel discussion on Twitter. Craig Kessler from Budget Pulse knew that the personal finance community was huge on Twitter, so he stated a Twitter chat about personal finance. So, on Wednesday nights at 7pm if you follow the hash tag #bp, you’ll see a running conversation from people around Twitter talking about personal finance. It’s great for spreading brand awareness and becoming an authority in your industry.

Don’t spam followers

Use the 4 to 1 rule. For every 1 marketing tweet you send out, make sure you send out 4 more tweets that are relational or conversational. If your Twitter account looks just like a billboard or newsletter about what’s going on at your business with no conversation or interaction happening, followers will get annoyed and bored by your Twitter account.

If you have questions about Twitter Marketing and wonder if it’s right for your business, please visit my company’s website, Presence Media Group. You can check out our portfolio and contact us with your company’s info and your marketing needs.

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Use Google Wave As A Project Management Tool

November 30, 2009

I’ve had a Google Wave account for about a month now, but I hadn’t put any time into figuring out how to integrate it into my everyday life. My philosophy is that technology should fit you, not the other way around. But many times, we try to figure out how to adapt [...]

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The Significant Of Twitter Updates Searchable in Google and Bing

October 29, 2009

About a week ago, Mashable broke the news about Bing and Google reaching a deal with Twitter to allow tweets to be searched within their search engines. To most people, this isn’t a big deal, but for social media marketing professionals, you know that this will have a huge impact on how Twitter [...]

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