by Jack Humphrey blogs from The Friday Traffic Report (follow him at @bendtheweb

Have you noticed all the electronic and tree-based books that have come out on Twitter? There’s an amazing amount of verbiage being thrown at us for such a simple service. The sheer volume of training guides, paper books, and in-depth courses on using Twitter is kind of weird when it surrounds a service that worships brevity, 140 characters at a time.

You can learn about the hottest 3rd party applications that purport to make Twitter more useful, efficient, and effective on thousands of sites. You’ll find over 11,000 search results on Amazon for “twitter.”

On the flip side, there are only a little over 13,000 results on Amazon for “rocket science!” Can a simple microblog actually be almost as complicated to understand as rocket science? Requiring just as much training in order for us to understand it? Don’t forget, Twitter’s history makes it a toddler compared to the much longer history of rocket propulsion.

This made me wonder if there really could be an overlying theme or practice which could sum up in one sentence the most important thing you need to know to be successful using Twitter to generate buzz.

The one thing I believe is more important than anything else about how to use Twitter to gain followers and to move crowds in your direction is this:

90% of what you share on Twitter should be made up of personal insights and thoughts along with a heavy dose of helpful links, while 10% should be made up of messages that more directly benefit you.

90% Helpful Stuff (Giving)

This can be anything really, but should be made up of links and messages that help your followers do something better, find neat things they appreciate, and thereby bind them to you in a positive way. The more the pattern of linking and messaging follows the interests of your ideal followers, the better your buzz will be when it comes time to ask them to visit your blog or take a look at your latest “thing.”

Variations on the “helpful” theme, depending on the market you service with your website, blog, or store, can include funny, controversial, political, or newsworthy things.

The feeling of following you on Twitter should be like “Hey, here’s something from Darren. He always has good stuff!” And the clicking of the links you share in Twitter, when your followers think this highly of you, becomes second nature. A foregone conclusion. Dare I say, automatic?

Won’t that be nice when it comes to the 10%, more self-serving tweets?

10% for You (Giving and Taking)

Now that you have done such a good job providing an overwhelming amount of great things to click on or ponder by your followers, you can certainly ask them once in awhile to check out your latest blog post or something else that directly or indirectly benefits you.

Now, you still have to massage your message with an air of altruism. And you still have to come through with something good on the other end of that link. That’s why proper blogging is in order and why you should follow the 90-10 rule on your blog as well.

Because you follow the 90-10 rule, your followers will come to know you as a giver. So a blatant advertisement isn’t going to fit the character you’ve shown on your Twitter stream.

Think of the most favorite person you follow. If they are doing their job, and they probably are, then when they post something that obviously helps them out, like their latest post or some other content on a site they own, you aren’t repulsed by this.

Your reaction is probably very positive because you’ve been to that person’s site before and they live up to the same spirit of giving that they do on Twitter.

So the number of times you click on 10% of their “taking” tweets isn’t much different than the number of times you click on 90% of their “giving” tweets. That, to me, is the heavy duty power of Twitter.

You might have to think about the power of that for a moment. But after you clear away all the twitter tools and mountains of strategies and tactics flying about, I believe this philosophy is really the heart and soul of Twitter networking.

It doesn’t mean you wouldn’t benefit from some books and courses on Twitter. But get this down pat first, and the rest is going to support something of value rather than some short-term, possibly cheesy set of tactics.

Is 90-10 Some Hard-Fast Rule?

No. I’ve never actually tallied up the percentages myself. Twitter isn’t rocket science after all. 90-10 is just used to help me prioritize how often I post different things on Twitter. I just strive to make sure that I give way more than I take from my Twitter following.

And remember that you shouldn’t feel like you’re really “taking” anything from your following just because you are pointing them to your stuff. As long as you work to provide content on your site that’s as great as the other things you share on Twitter, you’re actually working to help your followers even when they are helping you.

–

Jack Humphrey blogs at The Friday Traffic Report. You can also find him trying to stick to the 90-10 rule on Twitter.

© 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips.

This is a guest post from Mark Hayward, you can follow him on Twitter @mark_hayward. The article focuses on helping business folk, both big and small, who would like to start blogging.

Do you own a business? Have you noticed a dramatic decrease in sales because of the current economy?

Here’s the thing: For people like Darren, Brian Clark, and Leo Babauta blogging is a full-time job, a primary source of income, and most importantly, a real and profitable business model.

But, what if you find yourself in a different camp?

Perhaps, if you’re like me, you own business that provides a service, manufactures goods or sells consumer products. Blogging is NOT your business, but you use (or would like to use) it as a tool to market and promote your venture.

When I was just getting started as a small business blogger one of the smartest observations I heard on the subject came from Shana Albert (a.k.a The Nanny612). She stated, quite simply: ‘I don’t make money from my blog, but I make money because of my blog.’

In essence, Shana uses her blog to strategically drive traffic to her business website where she sells pre-school curriculum. Her words of wisdom have stuck with me and I think any business, whether large or small, can really succeed in doing the same thing.

Further reading: check out Darren’s previous posts on ways of making money BECAUSE of your blog.

Blogging is for pimply-faced kids!

Surprisingly, a lot of business owners that I meet on a daily basis have a sentiment similar to the one above. In fact, most think;

Sure blogging and social media are great if you enjoy spending your days ‘cyberloafing’, but they certainly can’t help me to promote my business.

Quite honestly, I find it shocking and awfully hard to believe that MANY business owners still have this general view of blogging and social media.

A Personal Case Study

For those of you who might not know, I own a small business in the Caribbean. When I was first getting started I really had no budget to pay for advertising and marketing. As such, I have utilized nothing but blogging and social media for the past couple of years to promote my business. More specifically, when I took over this B&B venture there were no reservations, no customers, and no prospects. In a short period of time I have been able to go from a no cash or customer flow to maintaining a 70-100% occupancy rate depending on the month. (Yes, even in this economy!)

My business provides me with an opportunity to meet incredible people from all over the world. Most recently, I had a guest visiting from a neighboring Caribbean island and, he too, runs a small hotel.

During one discussion the gentleman told me that his business was down a whopping 75% over the past year. According to him, the lack of customers and drop in business could all be attributed to the state of the economy. Truly, I felt awful for him.

While I wholeheartedly agree that the collective global economy is in terrible shape, I asked him what type of promotion and marketing he was doing so that his customers could find him and to help keep his business in the public eye.

His answer (and I think this explains a lot):

‘We are doing what we have always done.’

Upon further investigation, I found out that ‘What we have always done‘ equated to a fairly decent website if it was the year 2000 and a U.S. based reservation service that is paid a percentage to make bookings for him. That’s it.

To be fair, my guest was a bit older and I think he was afraid to embrace new technology and marketing methods. But it tends to boggle my mind that even in this hyper-technical age he and many other business owners are missing a HUGE opportunity to promote their business in an extremely cost effective manner.

Unfortunately, the conversation with my guest ended and I did not have the time that morning to discuss the issue further. However, if I had the time, and or, if you know a business owner in a similar situation, the following is what I would have passed on to him;

Ten Tips to Help You Blog Your Way to Small Business Success

Tip One: Define your goals

Whether you are a plumber, bike retailer, or cafe owner start by assessing your business goals and how you would like your blog to help you achieve them - e.g. Do you want customers to find you? Do you want to be on the front page of Google? Are you all about selling more services and product?

Tip Two: Research keywords

Before you begin blogging have a look at some of the keyword tools like the one found on SEO Book and determine what your potential customers and clients are actually searching for. If your business is active in a mostly local market, or generally for clients in a small town, then include the town’s name in your research. The information gathered from running a couple of keyword searches is extremely valuable when it comes to writing posts that are targeted and meant to highlight specific information.

Tip Three: Use free tools

I think many small business folk are turned off by blogging and social media because they are under the illusion that marketing online costs a tremendous amount of money. My chosen platform for my business website and blogging is WordPress, which, I am sure most of you know, is free to use and has some amazing free themes. (Note: If you want to spend a couple of dollars you can get Thesis theme.)

Tip Four: Educate the consumer

When starting a blog that revolves around your small business the general tendency is to want to publish a bunch of SPAM posts that extol your virtues. While it is okay to do this once and a while, I have found that educating the consumer works tremendously well and is highly effective. Also, please remember that there is a big difference between using your business blog to tell your story (How you came to own the business, defining your passion, etc.) and just telling people to buy your product or service because you are the best.

Tip Five: Allow 3 to 6 months for return on investment (ROI)

There are a few schools of thought when it comes to measuring ROI for business blogs. We all, myself included, are searching for that magic bullet that is going to draw in more customers. However, from my own experience and in discussion with other business owners who blog, three to six months seems to allow enough time to put up an adequate amount of posts (even if you only publish once a week) and to also obtain a quantifiable and measurable amount of customer data.

Tip Six: Research the competition

Small business owners sometimes feel funny inquiring about what their competition is up to. Keep in mind, this is business, I highly recommend having a search around the web to discern what your competitors are up to. In most cases I think you will be pleasantly surprised to find out that they do not have a strong web presence. And if they do, you will now know that you need to step your game up a bit more.

Tip Seven: Keep it simple

Business blog posts do not have to be extravagant Pulitzer Prize worthy affairs. If you should find yourself stuck for topics, or are facing blogger’s block, have a look at this post I recently did, 31 Blog Post Ideas For Small Businesses.

Tip Eight: Forums are your friend

One of the most common complaints I hear from business bloggers who are getting started is ‘Nobody is coming to my site.’ Is that so? I don’t care if you trade in rare eighteenth century chess pieces or high-end designer shoes; chances are a niche forum exists for your specific business. Do a simple Google search to find out where your customers are hanging out online and make a visit to those sites. Promoting your small business within a forum works best when you approach it in the same manner as step four. You need to educate the consumer and gain member trust before you can start endorsing yourself (otherwise you will be seen as a troll).

Tip Nine: Be consistent

Quite possibly the most important piece of advice for any small business blogger - You NEED to be consistent in your efforts.

Tip Ten: Once you are blogging regularly branch out into other social media

Starting a comprehensive social media and marketing plan can really help to give a traffic boost to your business blog. Social media does not have to be intimidating and you can easily start by uploading a few well tagged and described photos to FLICKR and then possibly move on to YouTube, FaceBook, and Twitter.

If you are a business owner who is struggling in this economy, or if you know of someone who is hesitant to embrace the power of blogging for business promotion, here are a few of additional resources that might help.

• ProBlogger - 21 Ways to Write Posts that Are Guaranteed to Grow Your Blog (not specific to small business but still great information!)
• Chris Brogan - Cafe-Shaped Business
• Duct Tape Marketing - My Social Media System
• Small Biz Survival - Small Biz 100

Are you a ProBlogger, or business owner who blogs? What are some tips that you might offer?

Mark Hayward owns a business and lives in the Caribbean. He is co-founder of the nonprofit, Train for Humanity, and you can follow him on Twitter @mark_hayward.

I’m regularly asked by readers whether they should use Article Marketing as a way to build their blogs traffic. My answer is always the same - ‘I’ve never done it, but I’ve heard that others have had some success with article marketing.’ So today when Andrew Hansen offered to write this guest post of his experience of article marketing I thought it’d make an interesting read.

Article marketing for traffic is by no means a new concept, but as old as it is there are still great misconceptions about the best way to use it as a tool in creating new targetted visitors to your blog.

I was inspired to make this post after I recently checked the traffic stats for an old niche blog that I hadn’t worked on for a number of months.

It was a blog that we launched almost solely on the back of article submissions and article traffic and now despite server changes, half the site getting lost, total reindexing and other drama, the traffic to this site from the search engines continues to flow, see below diagram:

And primarily from the search engines…

Not an enormous amount, but for a site that hasn’t been touched in months and survived all the mentioned havoc, it’s not bad.

The big benefit of article marketing is that it allows you to generate both quick traffic and traffic that lasts when done properly. Furthermore it allows you to generate traffic in 3 separate ways that I’ll illustrate in this post.

Before we begin, let me clarify that by article marketing, I mean the submission of articles to directories, blogs and websites in order to gain exposure to your website through your author biography links.

Article Marketing Traffic Generation Part 1:

Just by submitting your article to a directory, you give it the potential to be found by other people interested in your topic, who are searching through that directory.

It’s not a lot of traffic but it’s fast and it’s relatively targetted.

When we started this site we went on a steady article marketing campaign, submitting a few articles each day to some of the big article directories like ezinearticles.com.

I couldn’t get a screenshot for you, but in the first month or two of this site, ezinearticles.com was the number one source of traffic to the blog (where Google now is in the second shot above) pushing more than a thousand visitors a month to the blog, just from that single directory.

That’s one of the fast traffic elements. Again it’s not enormous traffic but is is fast and targetted. Just having your articles in the directories can bring you traffic. The point to note though is that this is not the MAIN source of traffic that article submissions can bring…

Article Marketing Traffic Part 2:

This next kind of traffic is the one that a lot of new blog and online marketers got stuck focusing solely on and that’s “bum marketing” - just another word for submitting an article to a popular directory and trying to have it rank for a long tail keyword.

Because article directories like ezinearticles.com are old, strong, authoritative domain names, the content you place on them can outrank content optimized for similar terms that you put up on your own (new) website. So when you submit an article that is keyword optimized for some long tail keyword, that article on the directory can get quickly ranked in the search engines, and the author link can be followed to your website.

But this traffic is also only temporary. For more reasons than there are time to list, these pages tend to rank well quickly but drop off quickly too, meaning you see an increase in traffic from the search engines, but it doesn’t last if that’s your only strategy.

This happened with the site above too. In the next couple of months we started to see our search traffic creep up to the same level of traffic the article directories were bringing in.

Most article marketers will stop there and wonder why their traffic dries up within a month or two. That’s part 2 of getting quick traffic from your article submissions but the 3rd and most important part is yet to come.

Article Marketing Traffic Part 3:

This is what ensured that I locked in traffic from Google, used article marketing to create an authoritative blog and claim traffic that won’t dry up even if I want it to.

From the beginning, with each article we submitted to a directory, we left two links in the author biography. One link was to a post of content on my blog that was related to the article but contained more detail than the article. So I submit an on “exercise balls for fitness” and put a link in the author bio to a post on my site at the URL: http://myblog.com/exercise-ball-workout-tips with the anchor text “exercise ball workout” or some keyword that I want to rank for with that post.

The other link in the author biography always went to my blog home page but with a different keyword as the anchor text with every submission. We followed the same submission frequency and guidelines for about 4 months and you can imagine what happened.

Our search engine traffic didn’t dry up, but continued to increase. The only thing to note is that it didn’t increase from the articles at ezinearticles.com that were getting found in the search engines, it increased from our own blog posts getting found in the search engines, in many cases outranking the ezinearticle.com submission we made on the very same keyword!

From there it took off. The extra search engine exposure caused other bloggers to find us and link to us, all that incoming link value made our domain more authoritative so that all the new content we added was getting indexed and ranked at light speed and pretty soon our traffic had tripled.

Another thing to note is that with enough work, our own site now became the big authoritative, strong domain. We didn’t need to submit as many articles to the article directories anymore because it could rank just as well being up on our site.

It’s these factors that ensured that we still see traffic despite all the drama that happened with this site and that keeps that traffic flowing today.

I hope this gives you an insight into the power of this kind of “triple whammy” article marketing and that it’ll inspire you to start an article marketing campaign of your own.

Andrew Hansen has helped thousands of bloggers and aspiring online business owners to discover profitable niche markets, drive quality traffic to their blogs, and turn their traffic streams into cash through his blog at AndrewHansen.name, and his blogging and traffic generation software Firepow. Subscribe to receive updates and learn more about how Andrew can help you make more money online.

by Ryan Barr (@ryanbarr) from SpookyIsMyName

Twitter is considered a micro-blogging service and though its original intention was to allow users to keep friends and co-workers in the loop, it has transformed to a vast social network of its own. For those that aren’t aware, a social network is defined as a group of people or friends that share a common goal or interest. Some users on Twitter find no reason in leaving their little community of friends, family, or office mates; they have little interest in wandering the depths of
the Twitter public in search of new ideas.

It’s quite obvious that you can’t force anyone to follow you nor can you really force anyone to go hunting for new information. You can, however, offer someone the content and dangle it in front of their face like a cruel dog owner and encourage them to click that follow button. Though it seems fool proof, this trick isn’t as rock solid as you may think: you have to actually offer content that is desirable.

Now, how do you offer great content and still keep your Twitter somewhat personal? It is pretty simple: find something you are very interested in or experienced with and start talking about it in most of your tweets. Then, on the side, post about other interesting personal moments in your life such as what fancy meal you are eating, movie you are seeing, or place you are visiting. The less posting about sleep or bathroom trips you take the more likely you are to receive followers.

Great content doesn’t just fall from a tree and into your hands; rather it is your structured ideas that form it. In fact great content can even be hidden behind a boring tweet. For example, take these two tweets I’ve fabricated:

“Just saw a good movie with some friends.”

“Went and saw Taken with a few friends. Great movie, amazing storyline, and tons of action. It is a must see for anyone!”

They both state that I saw a movie, but one is a bit clearer and provides more information. Here are some tips to focus on when structuring your tweets:

• Be clear and concise with your tweets; avoid filler words, slang, or shorthand (unless you really have to cram the words in there). Being able to understand what you are saying is extremely important.
• Remember that Twitter’s character limit is 140 characters. Though it may seem that characters get used up fast, a lot can be said within a tweet.
• Take note of what your followers are interested in: what are they replying to? what is being retweeted the most? what is creating a bang within your network? Knowing what is returning the most allows you to better target your tweets.
• Be consistent and organized. Posting heavily about an interesting topic one day and neglecting it for a week will do you no good if you want to attract followers who are interested in said topic.
• Most Important: Pace yourself! No one is more annoying than someone who hops on Twitter, fills the timeline with tweets, then disappears for some time. Even in a less extreme, no one enjoys someone who posts spontaneously. If you have issues pacing yourself try a service like HootSuite or TweetLater

Some simple tips can return amazing results so don’t let them float past you. Also, when tweeting, remember that retweeting information can do more to help you than hurt you. Many services highlight when people retweet and your users might not have seen that tweet before and could be affected by it themselves. As well, retweeting information can also show users who aren’t following you that you care about that information which could also result in an easy follower.

Now, contrary to what you may believe, it doesn’t end there. What is the point in providing great information to your followers, gauging their reactions, and gathering statistics without putting it all to work? Start or find a blog to post on with your newly discovered information, provide helpful articles or encourage your friends to become a more powerful Twitter user. Don’t let your resources and knowledge go to waste, social networks exist to share information and the more you get involved the more return you will see.

© 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips.

Today Ali from Ali Adventures (and other blogs) shares some tips on writing for the web.

You’re an experienced blogger. You know all the basics: you’ve read all about writing useful and unique content, and all your posts use subheadings, thoughtfully bolded text and bullet-pointed lists to be as reader-friendly as possible.

But could you be doing more? I spent two years working in an IT company, with overall charge of documentation, and these are some of my top tips for outstanding articles that deliver a brilliant experience for your readers.

In a world of Stumbles, Digging and Tweets, the few seconds after a reader arrives on your blog are vital, and the first post they see must provide a great reading experience.

1. Set Line Spacing to At Least 130% (1.3em, 16pt)

One of the most irritating mistakes on a blog – and one of the easiest to fix – is having lines of text that are too cramped up. Small clear text is fine, but scrunched-together lines make your posts look heavy and uninviting.

Check your blog’s stylesheet and look for a section (probably in “post” or “entry”) which specifies the default line-height in posts on your blog. It should look something like this:

.entry { font-size: 1.4em; line-height: 1.65em; }

If your lines are too cramped, change the “line-height” to a higher value. It’ll be an em (like mine), a percentage or a pt value (like font size). You can find out more on the W3Schools line-height page, or convert between em, percentages, pixels (px) and points (pt) at http://pxtoem.com/www.pxtoem.com.

2. Offer a Printer Friendly Version of Posts

With longer posts, or a series of post, it’s nice to provide a printer-friendly or downloadable version. One simple way to do this is to compile the post(s) into a pdf, and offer a downloadable link. (You can use software such as pdf995 to create pdfs for free.)

Think about which posts readers might want to print: perhaps detailed instructions, or posts which require a lot of concentration when reading.

Another ways of doing this is to install a plugin such as WP-Print that automatically generates a printer friendly version. A lot of big sites (such as newspapers’ websites) offer a “print this page” button, so it could make your blog seem more “pro” to a reader.

3. Mix Lists and Paragraphs

Bullet-pointed lists are great for getting your message across quickly and clearly. But if your whole article consists of lists, readers are likely to feel as though you’ve just written an outline and presented it as a complete post.

A lot of lists can also make the text look “choppy” on the page, as the reader’s eyes will skip from one to the next.

Try having a few short lists, then a couple of full paragraphs. The variety both in the writing style and in the visual look on the screen will help keep the reader’s attention – increasing the chances that they’ll read right to the end of your posts.

4. Use On-Page Anchors

If you’ve written a long post with several subsections, it’s worth putting links at the top so the reader can navigate around the post easily. These are called “anchors”, and you can find out full details here.

To use an anchor in your post, switch to the HTML view, and put the following near the top of the post, where you want the list of links (the “myanchor” text can be anything you want, but it should be preceded by a hash symbol):

<a href=”#myanchor”>Jump straight to an anchor</a>

Then, wrap these tags around the heading of the relevant section. (Note that this time, “myanchor” does not have a hash symbol.)

<a name=”myanchor”>Section heading</a>

Using anchors is particularly important if some of your post might not be relevant to everyone reading; for example, if you’ve written a list of “Online resources for designers, writers and programmers”, it would make sense to save your readers from wearing out their scroll wheel. You could give links at the top like this:

• Resources for designers
• Resources for writers
• Resources for programmers

5. Use Links Generously

As well as using links in places where they’re considered “necessary” (linking back to previous posts of yours on the topic, acknowledging the source of images, linking to blogs you’re quoting from), try thinking of links as gifts to your readers. One of my blogging friends, Sid Savara, wrote recently in an email to me:

I try to link not just as a source, but for sort of “Easter Eggs.” That is, each link in my article can lead someone down a whole new rabbit hole.

This is exactly the right attitude. Readers who feel delighted by the richness of your posts, and who have found extra resources through your links, are likely to come back to your blog for more.

6. Use the Title Tag for Links

If you put a title tag in your link, readers can get extra information about the link when they hover over it. This is especially useful if you’re linking words in the middle of a sentence to a different blog post, as the post often won’t have the same title as the linking word.

You can set the title to anything you want. It’s often useful to give the title of the post or page you’re linking to, along with the name of the blog it’s on (if it’s not your own one). If you’ve set the link to open in a new window, it’s helpful to mention this in the title tag too.

To add the title to a link using a visual editor, click to edit the link, and look for an option called “Title”.

To add a title in HTML code, add it like this:

<a href=”http://www.problogger.net” title=”ProBlogger site”>

7. Create a Style Guide

The IT company I worked for had a “style guy” that covered everything from how titles were capitalised to how “alt” tags should be used on images (for accessibility purposes). Your writing will look more polished and professional if you’re consistent: for example, do you use single or double quotes? Do you capitalise words like “Government” and “Senate”? Do you write “website” or “web site”?

It’s worth creating a simple style guide for your own blog. This doesn’t need to be a huge task – you can just add to it as you go along.

If you have guest posters, or if you employ writers to work for you, you could give them your style guide and ask them to keep to your house style – to make sure that posts are consistent.

Do you have a tip for writing outstanding content that wows readers by being easy-to-read and looking professional? Share it in the comments!

About the Author: Ali is a freelance blogger and writes for a number of popular blogs (see her current list here). If you’d like to hire her, drop her an email at ali@aliventures.com.

By Rich Brooks
President, Flyte New Media

What is Social Media?
Like any emerging idea, the definition of social media is still a little blurry around the edges. And, like that other popular Internet pastime, social media may be something that is difficult to define, but you’ll know it when you see it.

Social media is an umbrella term that includes interactive broadcasts such as blogs and podcasts, as well as social networking Web sites. These Web sites often allow visitors to become users or members, create profiles, and upload and share content through the Web site. There are hundreds–if not thousands–of social media Web sites out there, but here are a few of the more popular ones:

• MySpace: Originally a place for bands to promote themselves, it has become one of the most popular sites on the Web today. Anyone can create a profile and there are no identity checks. Companies targeting consumers often set up shop here.
• LinkedIn: This networking Web site allows you to create a profile and connect with colleagues, give and get recommendations, and find people outside your immediate network for new opportunities.
• Facebook: One of the fastest growing social media sites out there. It started as a site just for college students but is now open to everyone. Although it has fewer members than MySpace, its growth and buzz is enough to make Google nervous.

As you travel outside the U.S., there are plenty of other social networking sites that are more popular in other parts of the world.

Read article…

By Holly Berkley

Picture yourself at the ball game cracking through a bag of dry roasted peanuts. You’re on your second handful when that familiar red and white logo pops up on the big screen advertising an ice-cold Coca-Cola. You immediately track down the next vendor with a basket of ice-cold drinks. This is called “pin point marketing.” It is the process of delivering an appropriate message at the right time that produces actual results.

In contrast, let’s say you are enjoying those same peanuts when an advertisement for Toyota Trucks pops up on the same screen. It’s a nice ad, but not nearly as effective. This is an example of “interruptive marketing.” It is not truly targeted because it is not what you are actively looking for at that moment.

What does this scenario have to do with your business? Well, rather than wasting valuable marketing dollars on billboards, 30-second television ads or radio commercials (all examples of “interruptive marketing”) focus your energy on putting your product in front of potential customers while they are looking for it. Unlike when people watch TV or listen to the radio, Internet users are actively looking for a solution to a problem. If you can place your product in their path at the right time, you’ve made a customer. The most cost-effective way to achieve this is by combining your marketing message with important content that users are already actively seeking out.

Start by submitting “how-to” or “industry news” type articles to relevant Web sites in your industry. Unique Web content is important to all size companies. And, buying custom content is expensive and time consuming. As a result most companies are willing to trade a free plug for your Web site or company for an informative, well-written article.

Read article…

by Darren Rowse

There are many reasons that a blog post might get spread widely through ‘ReTweets’ (when one person passes on the tweet of another) but one fairly obvious, yet often overlooked one, has to do with the length of your blog post title.

Yesterday on TwiTip I published a post with a formula for getting ReTweeted on twitter. You can read the full thing for yourself but the author of the post (@louisedoherty) proposed that to increase the chances of one of your tweets being ReTweeted that you need to keep your own tweet shorter than the 140 characters allowed by Twitter so that the person can include other information (your username, the @ symbol and the letters RT).

I’ve seen the wisdom of theory of Louise many times in my own use of Twitter. If I tweet something that is the maximum of 140 characters it make it more tricky for followers to retweet - they either have to change my tweet or don’t do it.

OK - so this applies to bloggers how?

Twitter can send you a lot of traffic if a link to one of your posts gets spread around via ReTweeting. Just look at the Top 100 Retweeted Links on Twitter at the moment - as I write this the top one has been passed on 331 times which means it is a link that could have been viewed on Twitter by many thousands of people.

To help the ReTweet thing along a little keep your titles short. They don’t need to be 3 words long - but keep in mind that when someone is going to tweet a link to your post that they will usually include:

1. The title of your post

2. A URL (often shortened using tinyurl or some other shortening service which means it’ll be anything from 20 to 26 characters)

They may also want to include a comment about your link.

That’s not all you want to think about - you then should consider that for the link to be ReTweeted it will include all of the above information plus:

1. The username of the person being retweeted with the @ symbol (usually 5-12 characters)

2. The letters RT and sometimes a : as well as a space after it (3-4 characters)

You can see that the number of characters is starting to add up so shorter Titles can definitely help.

Lets workshop it:

• The title of this post is ‘A Secret to Writing Posts that Go Viral on Twitter ‘ - that’s 52 characters (with space at end)
• Lets say that the URL is shortened with Twurl - that’s 22 characters
• Lets say that the person tweeting it adds the words ‘Reading: ‘ at the start of the tweet (9 characters with space) and ‘ - cool post’ at the end (12 characters with spaces).

So far the original tweet is 95 characters long.

And would look like: ‘Reading: A Secret to Writing Posts that Go Viral on Twitter http://twurl.nl/qejpzq - Cool Post’

Lets just say it was @chrisbrogan who made the above tweet. As Chris has a lot of great followers at least one of them is bound to retweet it.

At the very least their retweet would read:

‘RT: @chrisbrogan Reading: A Secret to Writing Posts that Go Viral on Twitter http://twurl.nl/qejpzq - Cool Post’

We’re still under the limit of 140 and with 29 characters to spare could have added a few words to our title.

This is not something that I would spend a lot of time on and I would not compromise my titles too much to get them down in character length - however as someone who has seen significant traffic from Twitter over the last 6 months it is definitely a factor that I keep in the back of my mind as I blog.

PS: another reason to keep titles down in length is that Google has a cut off of 70 characters when it displays page titles in search results. A title over 70 characters gets chopped off mid title which could decrease the chances of someone clicking it. I’m told that other search engines cut off titles at as little as 65 characters so perhaps that is a better cut off point.

by Bill Nickerson (aka LoneWolf) from Howls, Cookie Crumbles and Ramblings (follow him @LoneWolfMuskoka).

It seems that we, as human beings, are facinated by numbers. I’m not talking about a mathematical fascination although many people do find numbers interesting of themselves. No, what I’m talking about is a facination with quantities, statistics and measurements. We use numbers to express value, make comparisons and to rank things, including ourselves.

This tendancy spills over into almost every thing that we do and it is apparent that Twitter is no exception. Almost every day we will see tweets about follow numbers (or unfollow numbers), rankings and statistics. What do all these numbers really mean and where do they come from?

I’m fairly new to Twitter, but one thing that I have noticed in my few months of following and tweeting is that many people are confused about the numbers and some of the activities that take place around them. So let’s take a few minutes and see if we can understand some of what is going on.

Follow Me, Follow You

There are two very important numbers in Twitter that often give rise to confusion. The first is Following which counts how many people you are listening to. The other number is Followers. This counts how many people are listening to you.

When you visit the Profile page of a user you will see both of these numbers listed (as well as Updates which we’ll talk about later). You can even list the followers and follows for the person if you are interested. These numbers can give you a good indication of the popularity of a person and the value of their tweets.

Followers

Since Twitter is an opt-in service, a high number of followers will usually indicate that the person is providing content worth following. It may not necessarily be interesting to you but that is only something that you can decide by looking at their tweets over time. If you see recent updates on their profile that you like then it is worth following them for a time to see what they say. You can always unfollow later if you don’t like what you see.

Follows

When you see someone with a high number of follows it is usually an indication of someone that is very social and who likes to engage with other people. It means that they are open to tweets, replies and direct messages from a large group. You will often see that their recent updates are full of replies to others as well. They use Twitter to have conversations.

Having a high follow count does not mean that they are reading every tweet that comes their way. Some have follow counts that are in the 10’s of thousands and it just isn’t possible to read all the tweets that flows in their Twitter stream. It is likely that they are closely following a few good friends with and answering replies and direct messages. They will occasionally fish for nuggets in the general stream as time allows.

While the above observations are true in most cases, you will find some people with large follow counts who don’t actually read tweets of the people they follow. They are only following people to take advantage of the large number of people in Twitter who automatically follow back. It allows them to build their audience. These people are not interested in conversation. Rather they are interested in broadcasting.

Twitter Rules for Following

Twitter has set in place rules for following to reduce the amount of abuse in the system. These rules may change as Twitter evolves.

Followers

There are no limits on the number of followers that you can have. If you are popular then this number may rise much higher than the number of people you follow. Most popular people on Twitter will follow pretty much everyone who follows them but there is no requirement to do so. There are a couple important reasons for for them to do this.

• It is polite — Twitter is about conversation.
• You cannot receive a direct message from someone unless you are following them.
• They may also check their Twitter stream periodically or serach for specific keywords. They might find something of interest in what you say.

Follows

You may follow up to 2,000 people without any restrictions. However, if you want to follow more than that, you need to have enough followers so that the ration of follows/followers does not exceed 1.1 (or 110%). That means that if you have 4,000 followers you may follow as many as 4,400. If you have 10,000 followers you can follow up to 11,000.

The Follow/Unfollow Mystery Explained(?)

One of the great mysteries that has appeared in Twitter recently is the Follow/Unfollow mystery. I believe that there is a reasonable explanation for this.

The Follow

Since most people will follow anyone who follows them, someone who wants a big following need only follow lots of people to get more followers. Generally speaking, some of them will unfollow fairly quickly once they see the lack of quality tweeting but many will stick with it for various reasons. This part of the equation is easy to understand.

The Unfollow

The unfollow is the mysterious part. On the surface, there seems to be no reason for unfollowing if you want to increase your own following. However, if they only have 2,000 followers they cannot exceed 2,200 follows. In order to make room for a bigger following they must unfollow some to make room for new follows.

An Example

For example, if they are following 2,000 and get 1,500 followers out of that they cannot use more follows to grow since their limit would be 2,000 (110% of 1,500 is only 1,650 so they’re stuck with the 2,000 limit). However, if they unfollow 1,500 they can now follow 1,500 more people and hopefully garner another 1,000 or more followers.

At 2,500 followers they are now able to follow up to 2,750. If they unfollow until they are down to 500 again, they can add 2,250 new follows this time and get more followers. The cycle will repeat until they get the following that they want.

Ghost Followers

I believe that people are setting up what I call ghost followers. These are accounts that are designed to increase the following of a user or group of users. If they set up several thousand accounts and have them all follow their main account then they have a solid base of followers that they won’t lose that allows them to increase their follow/unfollow cycles.

I suspect that this kind of behaviour (or something similar) has been behind the recent Twitter cleanup in which people lost large groups of followers.

Tweet Nothings

Updates is the third number that you will find on your profile page. This is simply a count of how many Tweets you have made since you signed up for your account. It is usually a good indicator of how active you are on Twitter. When combined with the age of your Twitter account it gives potential followers an idea of what they can expect from you.

While the number of tweets you make on your account don’t tell us whether you have interesting information to follow or not, it is a good indication of your involvement. There are several different types of tweets that are all included in this one number. This includes replies (@someone) and retweets (RT or via) as well as open tweets. Direct Messages (D) are not included.

Twitter Analysis — Beyond the Basics

Sometimes we want to know more about a person on Twitter than just these three numbers. That is where the 3rd party analysis tools come in to play. There are several different sites that you can use to see different stats and rankings to help you decide whether or not you want to follow someone — or just to see you you stack up against others.

Some Sites to Get You Started

There are new sites popping up on a regular basis that provide value additions to Twitter and several of them are providing more statistics for you to look at. To get you started here are three that I’ve used:

• Twitterholic is a site that ranks users based on their followers, friends, updates or time on Twitter. The default ranking is on followers. You can check out where you are in the rankings as well as looking at the top 100.
• TweetStats can track the average number of tweets that you (or another user) post. It will graphically show you how many tweet for each of the past 5 months (including the current) as well as breakdowns of the times and days that you tweet and who you sent the most replies to. You can also see a Tweet Cloud showing the most common words in your tweets.
• Web Analytics Demystified tries to get a better handle on the quality of a person’s tweeting. Rather than just looking at raw numbers, they also look at the number of interactions between a user and other Twitter users. This is an indication of involvement in the community. They look at the number of times that you post replies, retweets and tweets with links. It’s not perfect but it does give you a different picture than the raw numbers.

You can find more at TwiTip TweetStats.

Where Do We Go From Here?

There are a couple of interesting stats that I’d like to see made available someday. Maybe someone is working away at these right now or maybe someone will start soon.

• Friends in Common This was suggested by my Twitter friend @ggw_bach. Just enter two twitter id’s and the app would show the intersection of their friends. This could be broken down into common follows, common followers and common friends.
• Degrees of Twitter What this application would do is map out follows and followers of a given user’s friends out to a specified degree. It could even be designed to highlight those that you currently don’t follow so that you could check them out.
• Weighted Follower Rankings When looking at the number of people following you (or someone you’re thinking about following) it would be interesting to know how many of them are active or influential in Twitter. It could build on the statistics of a site like Web Analytics Demystified as described above. This might give a stronger indication of the perceived value of a user’s tweeting.

So, what do you think? What numbers do you think are important on Twitter? Which ones matter most to you? Which ones do you look at when choosing who to follow? Now is your chance to let the whole world know.

© 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips.