Twitter Strategies: Tell a “Tweet Tale” To Influence

Twitter hashtag events, #Winewednesday and #Followfriday, have been a mainstay in helping wineries network with their consumers and affiliates, raise awareness for their brands, and open lines of communication. The most important strategy to ensure success during these events is to understand how to write creative tweets that illustrate why you are recommending a person or brand. One such strategy is what we call a “tweet tale.”

Tweet Tale: A Short Story

What is a Tweet Tale? The object is to create a micro-story that showcases the people or brands you wish to recommend to your followers. The following example of a Tweet Tale:

This Tweet Tale is based on a question asking readers if they have visited the Bardessono Hotel a fantastic Napa Valley resort, dined at Thomas Keller’s French Laundry, enjoyed St.Supery wines, danced at Napa’s newest event facility Uptown Theater, and visited vaunted Napa art gallery Cordair Gallery.

Tell a Tale:

If you get creative your  tale  will take the reader through a wonderful micro story, recommend your favorites, and create goodwill for your brand.

Ensure Your Facebook Page Is Seen: 4 Facts About Facebook User Consumption

Do you understand how important Facebook is to your business? Do you understand that content is the key determining factor in whether your feed is placed in the most important “Top News” feed? Do you realize that the time and day that you place your content can be the determining factor in placement in the “Top News” feed? Are you spending money on customized Facebook pages without understanding that your customized page will not positively effect how many people see your page? If you don’t understand what drives traffic to your Facebook page then the following statistics could be a basis for changing your current Facebook marketing strategy.

Vitrue: Days and Times Facebook Users Are Most Active

According to a fantastic article in SocialMediaToday.com the following findings describe Facebook user’s content consumption habits:

Mashable yesterday featured research conducted by Vitrue into the days and times that Facebook users are most active. As they summarize:

• The three biggest usage spikes tend to occur on weekdays at 11:00 a.m., 3:00 p.m. and 8:00 p.m. ET.
• The biggest spike occurs at 3:00 p.m. ET on weekdays.
• Weekday usage is pretty steady, however Wednesday at 3:00 pm ET is consistently the busiest period.
• Fans are less active on Sunday compared to all other days of the week.

Mashable’s Cashmore’s Take On Google Instant Search

Google’s new “toy” is a creation from the heart of their expertise and not another attempt at building a social network from scratch. Mashable’s iconic founder Pete Cashmore reports that ” Google Instant Search, which displays live search results as soon as you begin typing, provides results before a query is complete. By removing the need to hit the “enter” key, Google claims users will save two to five seconds per search. Two (2) to five (5) seconds does not sound like a lot until you extrapolate that time loss over the course of a work day of online searches.

Cashmore on CNN

“Are we too impatient to wait a matter of seconds for our search results? What’s feeding our new-found need for speed? And why does Google feel the need to answer our questions before we’ve even asked them?”

Pete Cashmore’s latest CNN column this week.

Commoncraft’s “Twitter in Plain English”: Start Here

This is our revisit to one of the simplest explanations of Twitter.com on the internet. It was done by CommonCraft.com a truly brilliant training video company. CommonCraft’s tag line: “our product is explanation” is one of the greatest tag lines today. Enjoy and pass this along to anyone who asks: What is Twitter?

Target Your Prospects on Twitter While Attracting a Targeted Following

Tip #1 when establishing your Twitter account is very simple: target the people and brands you want to follow and those you want following you. This simple, yet often overlooked strategy, is the basis for targeting the right people and brands for your business needs on Twitter. How do you create a targeting strategy on Twitter?

Steps to Targeting on Twitter

• List Building: begin your strategy by writing down the different categories of people and brands you wish to list on Twitter. Examples for the wine industry: “Napa Wineries” “Wine Sommeliers” “Tasting Room Customers” “Foodies-Restaurants”
• Segmentation: each category you turn into a list must segment (divide) your “paper” list relevant to your business. Examples: “Prospects” would be different than “Wine Club members” which would differ from “Affiliate partners.”
• Data Service: hire a company to perform a database enrichment where your list of current customers, who may be on Twitter-Facebook or 25 other social networks, can be identified through their email address.

Final Stages

Once you have built your Twitter lists, segmented them according to category, and identified your best customers who are on Twitter or Facebook, you are ready to build a targeted following as well as follow your targeted prospects.

Twitter Lists: Twitter’s #1 Advantage Over All Social Networks

Twitter lists help businesses from small to global segment, track, monitor, engage, and recognize their target audience. Whether you are monitoring competitors, establishing a new account, or creating campaigns for specific audiences, Twitter’s list feature is the best feature available in social media today.

In order to take advantage of the list feature, you must first know your targeted audience. One of the best ways to find brands and important niche specific people on Twitter is through Mashable.com’s Twitter List Directory.

Twitter List Directory: Mashable’s Top 5 Lists

There are thousands of lists on Mashable in dozens of categories- here are the top 5 lists on Mashable:

Top 5 Lists Links

1. @Mashable/Mashable

2. @Mashable/SocialMedia

3. @Mashable/Marketing

4. @Mashable/Tech

5. @Mashable/Media

Mashable’s “Web Faceoff”: Foursquare vs. Facebook Places

Mashable.com, the leading social media news source site, has instituted Web Faceoff an “ongoing series comparing technology apps or ideas.” In this week’s Web Faceoff, Mashable asked their readers “which location-based service  do you prefer: Facebook Places or Foursquare?”

Foursquare vs. Facebook Places: The Winner is Foursquare

Mashable’s readers responded overwhelmingly in favor of Foursquare- a complete blowout!

• 57.11% of the vote (1,611 votes), Foursquare remained the king of geolocation
• 18.86% of respondents voted for Facebook Places
• 7.73% (218 votes) said it was a tie between the two
• 16.31% of you (460 votes) said that you preferred another location-based service

Visual Results: Mashable’s Poll:

Slideshare: How to Share Your Presentation Content

Slideshare is a slick, easy to use,  tool for the masses to “upload and share Powerpoint  presentations and documents.” Whether you are a blogger, entrepreneur, own a small business or a large company, Slideshare will provide you with a platform for training materials, communications of ideas, or sales presentation visuals. The following is a short tutorial on Slideshare:

5 Reasons to Use PicApp Free Images on Your Blog

Bloggers are constantly faced with finding media, specifically pictures, that will both draw the attention of their audience and entertain. One of the biggest challenges is finding pictures that are not copyright protected. Beyond mining the Wikipedia’s of the world for your photo content, the best picture resource is PicApp.com.

5 Reasons to Use PicApp

• Free: the images are free to use
• Copyright: there is not copyright infringement possibilities as Pic App allows you to use their library of photos without legal ramifications
• Ease of Use: it is very simple to cut and paste the embed code into any blog article
• Search Engine Optimization: according to PicApp “All PicApp images include the right meta-data to assist search engines index the images and your posts better.”
• More Traffic: high quality images improve your blog content, help to ensure people stay on your blog longer, and helps to facilitate return visits to your blog

Twitter Strategy: Rate Your Recommendations with Exclamation Marks on #FollowFriday

Twitter hashtag events like #WineWednesday and #FollowFriday are powerfully effective networking events that allow participants to recommend people or brands to follow. These events are integral part of any Twitter launch in order to attract new followers, raise awareness for a brand, or begin to create goodwill within the network with your targeted audience. One effective new strategy to raise awareness is the utilization of exclamation marks within a hashtag message.

Exclamation Marks: Rating your Recommendation

A way to differentiate your recommendations of people or brands during a hashtag event is to place an exclamation mark after the Twitter “handle”

In this example for #WineWednesday, I placed an exclamation mark after @leesgreenberg. The results? Lee messaged the brand that he received an exclamation mark and that he was being recognized as special.

Benefits of Exclamation Marks

• Rating System: exclamation marks can be used as a rating system for your recommendations
• Recognition: using an exclamation mark is a method of recognizing people-brands
• Open Communication: because you are differentiating a Twitter from others this can act as an opening of the lines of communication in many cases
• Differentiate Your Brand: by utilizing an exclamation mark rating system you are showing your network that you are interested in them and putting maximum effort into your messaging

Twitter is a creative direct marketing channel. With an anthropologists’ zeal for experimentation you can begin to leverage the network as a tool for more than just simple broadcasting needs.