Entries Tagged 'Twitter' ↓

I have just recently designed, developed and launched a new website for my client Quest Wellness. This was my first website developed on the awesome CMS (Content Management System) Expression Engine. Expression Engine had a bit of a learning curve to it, however once I mastered this I find it to be one the best and most flexible CMS I have ever worked with.

So what else did I do besides the website. I integrated the website blog and event calendar into their Facebook Fan Page and Twitter account. So now when Quest Wellness updates their blog, or adds upcoming events, their social media sites will be updated automatically. Also, the website and relevant pages where optimized for search engines (i.e. Google, Yahoo, etc.) based on key words and phrases.

In terms of measuring the results of these effort I have integrated their website, Fan Page and Twitter account with analytics so that they can see how many visitors the get, how long the visitors stay at the site and what the visitors are looking at. This is important to understand in order to determine which of their marketing activities are successful.

If you would like to learn more about this project, or what I could do for your company or organization, please do not hesitate to contact me.

I am about to go on a bit of a rant here, just to warn you.  Now don’t get me wrong, I love Twitter and concept of micro-blogging, but the Twitter-sphere has become insane!  It has become spamming nightmare!  Just this morning as I was going through my Twitter followers, looking for those that I believe are posting interesting content and I would like to follow,  my followers were increasing faster than those I was removing… YES I remove followers!

I remove followers… GASP!  Yes, as eveyone and their dog is preaching about how to increase your followers, I am removing some of mine.  To me it is about “quality” and not “quantity”.  If you have followers, that are not reading your tweets, then do you really have a follower?  It would be like saying… If you Tweet in a forest, and no one is there to hear it, did you really Tweet at all?  Some of the things that I look at when I evaluate the quality of a “potential” follower are:

• Are they a real person, i.e. is there a picture of them, do they post more than just links back to a site, etc.
• Are they Tweeting ways to increase your Twitter followers (sure sign of a spammer) or some other link generation strategy!
• Do they follow more people than would be reasonably possible, e.g. if they follow tens of thousands of people then it is a pretty good indication they are not reading the Tweets of who they are following.
• Do they follow other people of similar interests, or are they just following anyone with no real discretion as to the content.

These are just a few of things that I look at when deciding if I want to keep them as a follower, and I have no hesitation of blocking and reporting someone for spamming.  I believe the quality and integrity of myself comes into question based on who I follow on Twitter, and just as importantly who I allow to follow me on Twitter!  So please people of the Twitter-sphere, let’s crack down on those that are ruining Twitter for the rest of us, or it will become just another spamming – if not already so – tool like email has become!

OK, I am done my rant now, feeling much better!

I have a lot of clients who are new to this Twitter thing, and they commonly ask what is Twitter?

The best way I can describe it is to compare it to your Facebook status, assuming your are familiar with Facebook.  Twitter is just like your Facebook status with one exceptional difference: I call Facebook status “private broadcast” whereby only your friends can see your status updates; as compared to Twitter, which I call “public broadcast”, where anyone can see your updates or more commonly referred to as Tweets.

So why Tweet then, I guess it depends on what you are trying to accomplish. If all you ever do is communicate with your friends, which are probably on Facebook, then I wouldn’t see the need for Twitter. However, if you are running a business or organization, and you wish to attract more customers, then Twitter is a great way to accomplish this. Twitter is great for getting your message out into the world without a great deal of effort. More than likely there are others out there that are interested in what you are Tweeting, and if you carefully craft your Tweets you will have numerous followers in no time.

This brings up another topic… Twitter followers. There are many out there that look to the number of followers as important, my preference is the “quality” of followers. Are your followers real people and businesses, do they share a common interest with your business or organization, and are they active on Twitter themselves? I quite often go through my list of followers and remove those that are not relevant or lets say not reputable – I believe in quality over quantity.

So I guess what the next logical question would be “what should I Tweet”? Twitter started off as a means to communicate with friends on what’s going on in your life.  I don’t know about you, but I am not interested in what they had for dinner, or if they are going shopping, or other day-to-day activities. What I am interested in is what have they created or found on the Internet that would be interesting to me. This is where the key to attracting followers is; Tweet interesting articles, blog posts, stories or whatever that you believe would be of value to your followers or potential followers. The other key is if you have created the interesting article on your blog or website, then include the link back to the website page or blog post. This will generate more traffic and potentially increase your chances of generating new customers.

In an upcoming blog post I will give some quick tips on how to use Twitter and how to create interesting Tweets.  Until then you can follow me on Twitter @davidwagner.