How Organizations Use Twitter

Barack Obama’s successful presidential campaign in 2008 was perhaps the best example of an organization using Twitter to solicit donations, raise awareness, and call people to action. During the campaign, tens of thousands of Twitter users followed Barack Obama at http://twitter.com/ barackobama, where campaign staff used the service to provide the thencandidate’s whereabouts on the trail and kick off new donation initiatives. (Even though election laws mean the account can no longer be updated, it has hundreds of thousands of followers at the time of this writing.) The power of Twitter works for much smaller organizations, too. Groups such as churches and local charities can use Twitter to provide an additional way for members to connect, plan, and reach out beyond their immediate community. Preachers tweet about their planned sermons, youth group directors tweet about events, and local soup kitchens tweet when they need help. Whether it’s extra hands for a project, far-reaching assistance with a fundraiser, or some other big idea, Twitter can enable organizations operating on a budget to think on their feet. New organizations have also sprung up through Twitter. Some people have commenced their own donation campaigns on Twitter and encouraged other. Twitter users to donate and then tweet about it. But Twitter isn’t meant for charities. Enthusiasts of just about any interest have banded together on Twitter. Lets take it as an example, you can find organizations for food and wine lovers, sharing recipes and swapping restaurant reviews on Twitter. (You can search for the subjects that interest you on http://search.Twitter.com.) For example, musicians use Twitter to spread the word about concerts, song releases, charitable efforts, and their daily lives as celebrities. (Even Britney Spears has an official Twitter account: @BritneySpears.) John Mayer (@JohnCMayer) live-tweeted from the Grammies. Musicians working hard to make a name have used Twitter to engage thriving, and involved, fan bases. Twitter has also been a big help for community efforts. Whether it’s Amber Alerts, fundraisers, searching for kidney donors, or rescuing James Buck from an Egyptian jail (http://twitter.com/jamesbuck/statuses/786571964), Twitter has shone as a tool for social good. Plenty of people in the world want to lend a helping hand, and Twitter’s platform makes it easy, in real time, with a global network of connections.

How Individuals Use Twitter

Looking at Twitter for the first time, you might be compelled to ask, “But why are all these people, many of whom seem like just random strangers, talking?”At first glance, Twitter seems flooded with disjointed conversations, interactions, and information. You can find news headlines, political debates, observations on the weather, and requests for advice. The idea of Twitter can be a bit confusing for new twitterers (people who use Twitter). People have several reasons for using Twitter: ✓ To connect: Most people start using Twitter to forge connections and be a part of a community. Others just want to be heard. Twitter lets millions of people around the world hear what you have to say; then it lets you connect with the ones who want to hear from or talk to you about your passions, interests, and ideas. ✓ To record: Some people tweet as a way to take notes on life. They use Twitter at conferences, events, or just walking around and may even jog their own memories later about something that happened or what they’ve discovered. For example, if you’re walking down the street and you notice a new restaurant you want to check out when you have more time, you might tweet about that. Now everyone who follows you knows about this interesting-looking place, and you have a way of remembering to go back there yourself. ✓ To share: Some people use Twitter to share what they think, read, and know. They may tweet links to great articles or interesting items, or they may tweet original thoughts, ideas, hints, and tricks. Some tweet notes from speeches or classes, and others share choice bits of their inner monologue. Even when this information can get pretty obscure, with millions of listeners, someone’s bound to find it informative or interesting. ✓ To stay in touch: Whole families and groups of long-term friends use Twitter to stay in touch. Twitter can send public or private notes to your friends, and it stores all sent messages, which means that you don’t lose your thoughts when you close your browser (or your desktop application). Connecting to one another on Twitter is a great way to preserve an initial contact, such as at an event or conference, in a way that lets you gradually get to know them more over time. Twitter lets millions of people around the world hear what you have to say; then it lets you connect with the ones who want to hear from or talk to you about your passions, interests, and ideas.Twitter is pretty easy to actually use, meaning everyone from your 8-year-old cousin to your 90-year-old great-grandma can figure out how to use Twitter and say hello. Because you can access Twitter by using either a computer or cellphone (or both!), it fits into mobile lifestyles and brings you closer to the everyday thoughts of those you’re interested in.

Building a Presence on Facebook

Earlier It’s been said that if Facebook were a country, it would be the sixth most populated nation in the world. Imagine being able to get your message in front of the Facebook nation free. That’s exactly what Facebook is offering companies with Pages: an online location for businesses, organizations, and individuals looking to market themselves to the Facebook community. Not just for businesses, Pages can be created by not-for-profit organizations, public figures, entertainers, photographers, and professionals of all types. Facebook Pages are fun and easy to set up, provide a powerful set of online tools for engaging with your customers (or, as they are called in Facebook, fans), and easy-to-understand metrics to measure your success. Every day, 3.5 million people become fans of a Facebook Page, according to eMetric’s February. 2009 Facebook Usage Metrics Worldwide study. That’s a lot of fans. Although popular consumer brands, such as Apple, Coke, and Skittles enjoy large installed fan bases, smaller brands, business-to-business (B2B) companies, consultants, and personalities can also build a loyal following by using Facebook Pages to enhance their businesses. Prior to online social networks, companies centered their Internet strategies on their Web site. Typically, advertisements and promotions focused on driving traffic to that site and success was measured by traffic metrics and conversions, such as how many forms were completed or how many items were purchased. Now, the market is throwing these companies a twist: With the growing popularity of social networks in general, and Facebook in particular, people’s online consumption habits are changing. For one, they’re spending a lot of time on Facebook. The average Facebook member visits the site an average of nearly 18 times per month, according to recent figures by Web traffic analytics provider comScore. That’s why marketers like you can no longer be content to stay on your.dot-com islands. In response to the challenge, many marketers are adapting their Internet strategies to include these major hubs of social activity by using a mix of advertising, promotional, and word-of-mouth campaigns to drive awareness, traffic, and engagement. And they’re interacting with their customers in new and unprecedented ways. Facebook has remade itself to satisfy marketers’ needs to take part in the conversation. They’ve managed to balance commercialism with its members’ strong desire for privacy while fostering an open, transparent environment where discussion flows freely between consumer and marketer. It’s within this new Facebook marketing paradigm that the role of traditional marketing is changing. It’s no longer a question of whether your business should have a dedicated marketing presence on Facebook. Now, the only question is do you really need a Web site anymore! Think again.

How To Attract 57,000 Likes And Become Famous On Facebook

How To Rise To Facebook “Fame”

I bet a lot on Facebook. I bet that its social graph will become ingrained in the internet itself. I bet that most of the big websites, including Google, will rely on it for personalization. I bet that it will become the de facto way that people get recommendations about new products and services – that it will tell me what movies to see, what books to read, what products to buy. That is why, when it comes to the promotion of my own brand, I will do just about anything to increase awareness on The Social Network. And in Facebook terms, awareness equals likes.

Where I Was 8 Months Ago

In early 2010, I had a regular Facebook page like most people. I used Facebook to catch up with old friends and look through people’s pictures. But the more time I found myself spending on Facebook, the more I realized that there had to be a huge business opportunity in a site where literally everyone I know managed their social life.

But common sense told me that people don’t like to be bothered with business while they’re on Facebook. They’re there to see what everyone else is up to. So, instead of creating a fan page for my company, I created a fan page for myself. Fair enough, but I still had a problem. Why would anyone besides the small percentage of my friends who didn’t think that creating a fan page for yourself was conceited and ridiculous actually “like” my page? I needed to provide something genuinely interesting for them to follow.

The “Aha” Moment

In poring over status messages to see what people “liked” the most, I found that simple, positive statements were the most popular. Quotes, song lyrics, and proverbs did especially well, but original content that had the same sentiment as popular sayings seemed to do the very best in terms of quantity of likes and comments. It seemed people appreciated unique, inspiring words.

So I started saying the things that I genuinely felt each day. Now, I’m not sure if this is your cup of tea; I happen to be a really optimistic person. But I found that status updates like “Surround yourself with people who believe in you” and “Take it one day at a time. You’ll get there.” really resonated with people. I was getting way more likes than I ever got on my private page.

My System

Now, how to reach more people? The most obvious thing I could think of was to click the “Suggest To Friends” link on my fan page. I had already suggested the page to all of my 337 friends (yes, I had to individually click on each name – man, my finger was tired!), and 115 of them had liked it. My goal was to reach 1000 likes within the month.

I asked my brother if he minded if I invited his friends. He said OK, as long as I did the inviting. So I did. And that’s how I got another 100 likes. But more importantly, I realized the simple of power of inviting people’s friends.

I immediately wrote a personal e-mail to 10 people I consider good friends asking them if they would suggest my page to all their friends. 4 of them were willing to do it. Within a week, I was up to nearly 600 likes.

That was when I implemented one of the most basic rules in the Facebook Marketing Playbook – adding a landing tab introducing myself and asking people to “like” me. As I continued on my strategy of e-mailing people and asking them to suggest me to their friends, this page converted people into “likers” at almost twice the rate of the page without the landing tab.

Two months in, I had already gotten 1200 likes on the page, and people were loving the content. I was getting about 5 new fans a day naturally from people who suggested the page on their own. But this wasn’t enough for me - not if I was going to leverage my fan base to promote everything I did for years to come. This was way too valuable an effort to slow down.

I had completely run out of friends and acquaintances to e-mail. So, I did the next best thing: contacting popular people on Facebook and asking them if I could get them to suggest my page in exchange for services, shout-outs, or, as a last resort – cold, hard cash. Most people ignored my request. But some bit. And for far less money than it would have cost me to run an ad campaign, I had my first 5000 likes. I was just over 3 months in.

I kept my system going, finding people with 3,000+ friends and incentivizing them to suggest my page. Eventually, the system expanded to my asking people if they could do a status update about me on their page as well, telling their friends to like me. I had a goal of reaching out to 20 popular people per day, and found my conversion rate to be about 10%. But it was getting expensive, especially because I wasn’t receiving any return on my investment yet.

Thankfully, that was when I realized I had reached a tipping point. By month 4, with over 10,000 likes, I was able to offer people a “sponsored” status update on my page in exchange for the friend suggestions. So rather than paying people, I was able to do a trade most of the time. This made my effort sustainable again.

In the last 4 months, my likes have quintupled, a combination of putting out high quality, authentic status updates and maintaing a systematic approach of e-mailing Facebookers. The page has a light viral momentum (it’s no Double Rainbow), of about 50 likes per day on its own.

The Road to 100,000 Likes

Whether there are a limited number of popular people for me to e-mail I don’t know, but I’ve also found that sending page suggestions a second or third time to the same group of friends can eke out a substantial number of additional likes (about a third as many as the first wave of suggestions yielded).

And more importantly, I’ve made enough money from the page that I have been able to recover my marketing costs and invest in an employee to send out e-mails and keep good communication with the folks that promote my pages. So far this year, my SEO and social media business has added nearly $300,000 in revenue from likers of my page who learned about my company through my landing tab.

My goal is 100,000 likes before the end of the year. I may not be the first person to make money from a Facebook fan page, but I believe I have proved that building a big audience on Facebook can be straightforward – and even profitable.

Sharing Your Thoughts, 140 Characters at a Time

You may have heard of Twitter but have no idea what it actually is. Twitter is basically a powerful mobile social network that enables you to keep up with the people, businesses, and organizations you’re interested in — whether you know them personally or not. It also lets you share what you’re doing with the world — everyone from your family and friends to complete strangers. (You’ll have to bear with us to find out why you would want to do that.) Harvard Professor Andrew McAfee (@amcafee) describes Twitter this way: “With Twitter, my friends are never far away.” And www.Twitter.com itself says that The New York Times calls Twitter “one of the fastest-growing phenomena on the Internet.” Time magazine says, “Twitter is on its way to becoming the next killer app,” and Newsweek noted that “Suddenly, it seems as though all the world’s a-twitter.” What will you think? Every day, we see dozens of new ideas and ways to use Twitter. In this chapter, we do our best to introduce the basic ideas and explain how Twitter works and why it’s so powerful.

Figuring Out This Twitter Thing

Twitter is a fast-evolving, surprisingly powerful new way to exchange ideas and information, and stay in touch with people, businesses, and organizations that you care about. It’s a social network — a kind of map of who you know and who you’re interested in (whether you know them personally or not) — that you can access from your computer or your cellphone. Twitter has one central feature: It lets users instantly post entries of 140 characters or less, known as tweets, through the www.Twitter.com site or your cellphone, or by way of the numerous applications that are available for both. On the most basic level, Twitter is a mobile social network that combines elements of short messaging services (SMS or texting), instant-messaging communication tools, such as AOL Instant Messenger (AIM), and blog publishing software, such as Blogger or WordPress. Like blogging, your tweets are generally published to the world at large where anyone can read them on Twitter. com (unless you choose a private account, so that only those you choose can see your tweets). Unlike blogging, you’re limited to just 140 characters. Like instant messaging, you can communicate directly with people (through direct messages), but unlike instant messaging, each message has its own unique resource locator (URL), so each message is actually a Web page. Instant messaging also lacks the social network “following” features of Twitter and basic ideas like “publish-subscribe” and one-to-many broadcasting of messages. Think you can’t say anything meaningful in 140 characters? Think again. Not only are twitterers innovating clever forms of one-liners, haiku, quotes, and humor, but they’re including links — in 23 percent of all tweets by one measure — and links carry a lot more information and context. Writing 140-character messages seems trivial. But headlines and very short advertising copy are famously hard to do really well — and known to be powerful. The idea of Twitter sounds simple — even a little too simple. But when you think that millions of people around the world are posting Twitter messages, following other people’s Twitter streams, and responding to one another, you can start to see the significance behind Twitter’s appeal. True, Twitter can look like it’s full of noise. But once you find interesting people and accounts to follow, your Twitter stream shifts from a cascade of disjointed chatter to one of the most versatile, useful online communications tools yet seen — that is, if you take the time to learn to use that tool correctly