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This past year I've had the honor of traveling the country as a social media speaker sharing on all types of social media topics like using Facebook for business, how to blog, video basics, and many other topics.  One of the top statements that I've heard this past year while traveling is some variation of this: "Twitter is stupid, I don't get it" which normally leads into a discussion on how Twitter can be used to help your business.

Is Twitter Stupid or A Great Source of Traffic?

One of the things I usually try to point out to people is that Twitter is a great referring source of traffic to your site.  During this past year, it is responsible for 22% of referring traffic.  The only traffic referrer to beat it was Facebook at 33%.  The bounce rates as well as time on site are very similar between the two social networks.  So is Twitter stupid, or a great source of traffic?  I'd have to say the latter.

Twitter Is Stupid, Only Celebrities Are There.

This is another common complaint I hear.  Since you only hear of big name celebrities like Oprah or Justin Bieber on Twitter in the media, many thing that is the only people signing up and using the social network.  Here's a really great visualization of Twitter adoption in the US over the past few years:

As you can see, there are many more signing up for Twitter each & every day.  In fact, over 100 million users are active each month according to Mashable.

Twitter is Stupid I Don't Care What You Ate For Lunch

Why should someone care what you ate for lunch or what you did last night for fun.  I get it, not everyone is going to care about everything you do.  But, if you take some time listening to what others are doing, you can learn a tremendous amount of information about your sphere.  And, build some of the strongest relationships with people.  This past year I made a trip to Seattle to speak and while there some of my Twitter friends a meetup while I was in town.  Thanks to my friends Stephanie, Dale, Linda, & Debra, & Chris, I spent a wonderful evening with a great group of friends, all that I mainly communicate with just through Twitter. So while some may not care about those types of things, I cherish the friendships I have made through Twitter over the past year.  I know more about some of my friends on Twitter from the other side of the country than friends of mine that live within 5 minutes of my home.

So Is Twitter Stupid or Valuable?

I am not going to force you to use Twitter in 2012, but as for my business, I know I will be continue to integrate Twitter into my online marketing strategy.  If you are not sure how to get started there, that is understandable.  Here's a few great resources to get you going in the right direction:

• Get More Followers- Chris Brogan
• 7 Way To Be Hated on Twitter- 210 Consulting
• 50,000 Tweets and All I Got Was Everything- Scott Stratten

If you want to connect with me on Twitter, you can find me @JB140

What's your Twitter capacity? My arbitrary number is to not follow more than 2222.

Seems reasonable enough until you start to get close to your self-imposed capacity and realize placing caps upon your direct message conversations may be a wee bit trickier than you think. The only reason I ever follow someone back is if I think I may want to talk privately with them at some point in the near future or I really like their tweet collection.

That means it might take a day, week, month or year before a person makes a pithy tweet that inspires me to want to lurk about their stream and respond once in a while. I am not an impulse link clicker or someone quick to follow back. It's because I keep thinking of reaching my information overload breaking point. I want to enjoy Twitter, not have my stream move by so fast that I'm receiving 100 tweets per second on an active day (LOL). The record for that with me was approximately 116 new tweets in my stream right after I posted a tweet. My eyes popped because I did not see that coming and realized I needed to have a cut off regarding how many people to follow...

I've made amazing friends in social media and we habitually hang out in Starbucks or restaurants together when we do meet in real life. I don't drink much (one is my capacity) but I will go to a bar for socialization if enough of my blogging buddies or relatives are there, however bars are never my first choice for socialization because I like to bring my kids with me. Think public and family friendly if you're trying to connect with a distant social media acquaintance for the first time outside of a business venue or event.

FYI: Everything does not have to be a business meeting. It is a huge mistake to believe that as a business owner you can command a return call from another business owner simply by dangling the theoretical carrot of the possibility of doing business. I may not want what you want and vice versa. Having experienced not always getting what I want makes me perfectly fine with not giving in to the demands of others. Silence, NO and no thank you are an integral part of my vocabulary when I am trying to be less colorful (LOL). ;-)

We all can talk publicly to who ever we want to tweet to but both people have to be following each other in order to do a direct message. I say this because people have complained that they have followed me and I have not followed them back. Hmm... Maybe if we actually spend some time having conversations on Twitter there would be nothing for you to complain about because at some point I would want to send you a direct message due to our interesting conversations (LOL). ;-)

The nature of my start-ups require that I meet with people all the time, so I like going to events but don't like to be event stalked. If you are going to invite your social media peeps to stuff always give them plenty of room to accept, defer or reject the invitation. Not going doesn't mean they don't like you, it just means they are sufficiently obligated by a previous engagement. Do send reminders of your event. Don't spam the crap out of people you are trying to get to attend.

There will be times that I publicly mention that I owe someone a phone call or plan to invade their territory while on a road trip. When I ask people about places to visit, stay or eat I am really interested in their answers. I have to sleep. I have to eat. I have to collect eye candy for my kids and blog. Do feel free to suggest stellar places. Don't feel free to attack your competition to get my attention or potential business. You have no idea who my friends all are and I only endorse what I've experienced and liked.

People don't pay me to write about them or their products. I write about what interests me, how I feel about random stuff and what I like. Once in a while I even write something useful that is real estate related (LOL).

If Twitter is nothing but a numbers game to you then move on and be happy not to follow me. The flashes of follow, un-follow, follow, un-follow to keep popping up to the top of my followers list will not entice me to follow you. Using programs that get accounts to auto follow you will only get you in trouble if enough people complain about it. Yes, I have set my alarm to rise early to answer e-mail and discovered I was following new people I never followed... That is always a bit disconcerting because I actually pay silent attention to the people I am following. I undo those when I do discover it because I like talking to the people I do follow when not lurking to see what they've been up to lately. I know more about a lot of you than you think but that's another blog post (LOL).

If you use Twitter to chat and share stuff that interests you then yeah, we can chat and share stuff and eventually follow each other across social media accounts... If you don't care about connecting with other people, even if only a handful of peeps, while the rest of the world lurks and engages in electronic conversation voyeurism then why are you there? Twitter is a useful communication services tool, not a reciprocal social media obligation...

I have nothing against marketing and sales... It's your presentation that makes or breaks you. I have made several purchases as a direct result of people sharing their stuff on Twitter. I think it's amazing. I'm very fond of a lot of my tweet peeps. :-)

Yeah... that's me hanging out in 140 characters or less... seriously (LOL).

If you think you're talking to a secretary or virtual assistant you need to get that silly little thought out of your head. I am live actually listening to Pandora and Jango when I say I am listening to a particular tune at a particular time.

I usually listen to Internet radio while I'm writing and playing in my social media accounts and will check out other artist music links when people send them to me. I like listening to my own music as well as the compositions of others.

Expecting me not to listen to my own music is kind of stupid. I create what I want to hear so why shouldn't I listen to it? There is a "Play All" button on my Jango radio station that will let you hear all 35 of my songs.

There is also a buy button for any song that gets played on Jango and Pandora. When I hear an artist I like I buy the song if I want to add it to my collection. I like when Indie Artist follow me and chat about their music. Twitter gives you access to businesses and the people behind those businesses. Did you know that PDiddy, Martha Stewart and Pleasure Ellis will actually answer you back? I've been having a running chat with Zuri Allen Star for months now (LOL).

There isn't anyone else fooling around in my Twitter accounts. I am real on Twitter. So now you know...

P.S. I direct message a lot which is usually why I'm there. The music tweets are my way of letting my tweet peeps know I'm live and lurking in their stream. MY DMs go directly to my cell phone which is how I know I need to go log in, so don't abuse the privilege. People who constantly send crap to my cell phone get unfollowed. You can only direct message if both sides follow each other so I'm careful not to DM crap to my tweetpeeps because I would hate to have people I like unfollow me for acting stupid with their valuable time...

Twitter is important to me. I like chatting with people in London, Japan and Rio. ;-)

P.P.S. All my lines are in the Do Not Call registry so don't add me to any database to send me computerized messages or try to solicit the crap out of me (e-mail first if you're advertising something). You will get into trouble... I hate those computerized messages. I like chatting with real people but you have to understand that a social media relationship is not the same as a business relationship. :-)

Today I am sharing part 2 of my series on Social Media Engagement vs. Sales. Last week I shared Six Steps to Converting Guests to Fans of Your Facebook Page. It covered several different issues that I have seen on various Facebook Pages over the past few months. This post is today is going to venture into the world of Twitter. Twitter is another great resource for growing your business online. Nowhere else on the web can you engage people and have so many conversations at once. But what I have found is that many have turned Twitter into their spam grounds. They set up accounts and try to garner as many followers as they can in the quickest means possible. The concept is that if they get thousands of followers they will have a giant net to share their products to and will in essence sell more things. But what I have found is that this is not the case.

When you build a twitter profile where there is no engagement, it results in a very low return on your investment. I am somewhat an open networker. I will accept anyone as a friend and give them a chance to show me they don't belong connected to me anymore. Yesterday I received an auto from a new follower from which I have been able to find 7 things that everyone should NOT do with their twitter account. The following points all came from one single account.

7 Ways to be Hated on Twitter.

1- The auto DM. When I first started on Twitter, I thought it was a good idea to send an Auto message to every new follower with information about me and a link to my site. In the beginning it was actually an effective tool to me as the first followers to my account were friends that I knew. But I learned quickly that spammers and others began to abuse this feature. I quickly disabled it and have since really started to notice the annoyance of users that use those type of services. Over to the right you can see an automated message from the account I recently followed. Their message sent said: "Thanks for following! I HATE SPAM! You won't get that from me. Maybe check out my blog of Twitter tips/tactics for marketers/networkers." My next action was to unfollow and block their account.

2. Creating Good First Impressions- If your first impression is trying to convince me you hate spam and don't do that through a spammed message, you have already lost me. A much more effective way to meet someone on Twitter is to listen to what they are saying and engage with them. Joining into a conversation is really easy to do on Twitter as people are constantly posting things wanting you to interact with them. When you see someone post something that you either have an interest in or a way of adding to the conversation, simply do that.

3. Stop Talking To Yourself! I try to spend more time listening & interacting with others on twitter than I do talking about myself or my business. I don't use a specific formula for this, I just try to keep the conversations more about others instead of me. When everything is all about you and nothing about your friends/followers, they will listen and follow along for a short while, but after a few days of all you and nothing about them they will move on and ignore you.

4. Mentioning Others Make You Human- When I look at your Twitter stream do I see you interacting & talking to others? Or is it littered with you spewing junk all over the place? If all I see is you spitting info without any interaction, it is a pretty quick indicator to me that you are someone that will be spamming my stream and also add zero value to me. Remember, you are coming into my stream of Twitter, it needs to be beneficial to me not you. When your stream shows that you will connect with me and do something valuable to me, I will want to pay attention to you.

5. Share Your Website- This one blew my mind yesterday in the spammers DM to me. He mentions that I should visit his blog for tips to help. But when I visited his profile, there was no link to a site. If you want to be helpful and give me advice, then you need to give me an avenue to travel to it. Just saying visit my blog or website won't cut it if there is no link to it. Your profile on Twitter is a powerful part of your Twitter Account. Adding that link takes only five seconds and helps you to look like less of a spammer.

6. What's Your Ratio? When I look at your profile, do I see you following thousands of people with a lot less following you back? When I see a profile like this, it screams that this is someone just trying to get more followers and isn't very interesting. If you share things that are relevant & engaging, people will want to follow you and you will have many more following you than who you are following. Because of spammers trying to capitalize on this by following more and more people, Twitter installed some guidelines. You can follow up to 2,000 people initially. Then you are only allowed to follow 10% more than those who are following you. So if you have 10,000 followers, you can only follow 11,000 at any time. As your number of followers grow, you can also follow more again.

7. Skip the Selling & Gimmicks- You have minimal characters on your profile to share what it is about. If you are taking that premium ad space to try and promote a gimmick or something you are selling, you will be turning people off. The profile yesterday started out fine by saying that they provide Twitter tips/tactics and Social Media marketing which can be helpful. But after that, they added a gimmick to try and get more exposure and followers by saying "I promote people w/10k+, RT for an add to daily RT list. I follow back!" When I saw this sentence I knew instantly that this person was someone I did not want to interact with anymore. Then, I visited their profile on Twitter.com to see what other junk I may find.

In their background image, they had added the following text:

The timeline and the blog linked above my bio have lots of information about how to turbo-charge Twitter and make money online through Twitter and social media in general. If you retweet my posts about my blog, I'll follow you, add you to my RT list, and give you a solo shoutout with lots of hashtags in it. I also add any users with 10,000+ followers that RT me to my RT list.

These type of gimmicks do nothing but remind me of MLM schemes of days before. Also, I don't believe there is any value that a spammer can add to me by spamming a tweet with my username and "lots of hashtags in it." Engagement is what makes Twitter and other social media platforms successful for your business. A great quote from John Maxwell comes to mind: If you are leading, but nobody is following, then you are just out taking a walk.

So, to keep yourself from becoming a disliked person on Twitter, please ignore the 7 practices listed above. Instead follow the habits of successful people on twitter like @lizstrauss and @chrisbrogan and you will see rewards come your way. I promise!

Originally Posted at: 210 Consulting- Social Media Advisors

photo credit

Why is Twitter showing all of my tweetpeeps as having zero follwers and not following me?

So I am parked in the park writing for my digital day job and just finished this article when I go over to tweet to a peep and notice I don't have any. No followers. Not following anyone. Nada. Nothing. Zilch. When did this happen? Go check your Twitter accounts and tell me if your Tweetpeeps are missing. So far, a brief link audit shows my blogging buddies are reflecting zero peeps and not following anyone as well.

Oh my word... say it is a temporary glitch...

http://blog.penelopetrunk.com/2009/12/04/theres-no-magic-pill-for-being-lost/

Penelope Trunk Is An Amazing Writer... Check Out "There's No Magic Pill For Being Lost." It had me staring at the ceiling for an hour thinking about just how hard keeping a marriage together can be... I am a huge fan and frequently lurk on her blog and remember the day she tweeted she was getting married. We fans were celebrating and rooting for her because she has been through an awful lot and has a quirky sense of humor and pathos about it. She's a pretty cool tweet peep and amazingly transparent writer who deserves to be happy. Now things are unraveling and she may not be getting married and I found myself wishing her circumstances would change for the best.

Sometimes, when our virtual friends hurt, we silently hurt with them. If you want to read an amazingly honest post go click the above link...  Her blog is incredible... I always look forward to checking in. She's feeling a bit lost right now so a prayer and a kind word would be very much appreciated. :-)

http://www.crn.com/hardware/222000747;jsessionid=IYBDWZMNLPWAHQE1GHRSKHWATMY32JVN

Being a tad bit geeky, I'm into this sort of news because I love computers and this has been going on for a while now. The idea of them receiving a $1.5 Billion fine amazes me... Take your time and click the links embedded within the paragraphs inside this article. Very interesting reading...

@heatherdamico (LinkedIn Profile) is a very cool tweetpeep looking to relocate to NYC. She is also mad fun to tweet with so go follow my social media buddy and give her a warm hello. 

Check out her LinkedIn Summary: "I graduated in June 2009 with a public relations major and journalism and speech communication minors from Otterbein College. Along with serving as Otterbein’s former Public Relations Student Society of America (PRSSA) Secretary, I have completed three public relations internships, a temporary event planning/public relations position and a media relations specialist position. With an interest in international public relations, I traveled to Europe for two months and visited 10 countries and 25 cities. With a passion for public relations, my career goal is to help companies build their brand and create audience awareness by using innovative PR strategies. I plan to begin a public relations career in New York City or Europe."

I love interesting writers and chicka wants to move to New York so how can I not help her? (LOL) Right now we are having an interesting "twitter dilemma." Seems a hoodie owned by a certain someone (another fabulous tweet peep) is being held hostage until Heather reaches 3000 followers. She's close, but not quite where she needs to be to give up that particular article of clothing (LOL).

We have until Wednesday to free the hoodie, so come out to play with us and go follow my girlfriend (LOL). You can follow me @CTannStarr if you want to keep up with the banter/saga.

Social media can be mad fun sometimes. ;-)