Leverage Twitter “Favorites” Like Brian Solis

Are you strategically utilizing Twitter? Would you like to identify, understand, and successfully utilize the same strategy that thought leader and social expert Brian Solis uses? If your answer is yes, then the following post will help you take the first step. This post was complimented by Brian and received 173 retweets, 75 Facebook likes, 71 Linkedin shares, and 17 Google+ +1s. Consider the following post a road map into how Brian has successfully taken one feature on Twitter and made it his own recommendation channel.

Twitter’s most underutilized, outside of lists, and most valuable opportunity is the “Favorites” feature.You all know how it works but do you understand how to strategically utilize favorites? Do you use Favorites for anything other than to “bookmark” important tweets for research and future reading?

Brian Solis is a formidable thought leader in the digital space, author, and genuinely willing participant who engages with many who seek his help. Brian’s use of the Favorites feature is the reason for this post- it’s simple and simply brilliant.

How Does Brian Solis Utilize the Twitter Favorites Feature?

Granted, the vast majority of us, me included, do not have the name recognition, authority, and influence of a Brian Solis in the digital marketing space. But that doesn’t mean we can not utilize Brian’s strategy. Brian’s strategy is to Favorite the wide array of compliments, positive references to his work, and referrals he receives on Twitter. Like many websites that provide customer referrals, in quotes, Brian is leveraging his deserved popularity with people on Twitter.

References to Brian Solis’s Expertise

An example of people’s perception of Brian’s expertise:

Referrals to Brian Solis’s Work

An example of people’s referrals to Brian’s work, books, speaking engagements

People Quote Brian Solis

In what has to be the most flattering and effective use of Favorites is the collection of people quoting you, your book, or your speaking engagements. Here are some examples of people’s reaction to Brian Solis:

3 Ideas How You Can Utilize Twitter Favorites

1. Showcase Retweets: every time you receive a RT that is about your work, favorite (save) that tweet. People who thank you for your work including writing, speaking engagements, or opinions sought should also be Favorited. This stream will provide prospective followers with reasons to follow you
2. Tweet Your Favorites: as you begin to build your Favorites “bank” of goodwill, start tweeting the link to this section. Promote what people are saying about you
3. Tweet Other Users Favorites: help recognize people’s work by tweeting the link to their Favorites section as I did above with Brian Solis. This will also place you on the map as a person willing to share content and help other users. In addition, you might catch the eye of a user by promoting their work

4 Ways to Increase Clicks and Sharing of Your Content on Twitter

The numerous, vital, and long lasting benefits of social media networking for companies today place pressure on a marketing team to deliver the right message, at the right time, to the right audience, within the right social network. Combine these “must haves” with the right testing procedures for each campaign, and companies begin to realize and uncover the ROI of their social media networking. In my opinion without question, the most powerful social network for viral marketing is Twitter the micro-blogging platform. One of the simplest and most effective strategies for companies to increase more clicks and viral sharing on Twitter is through the Retweet.

Viral Sharing of Your Content: How to Get it Done

When consumers and companies begin to recognize your brand’s content via the Retweet,  try the following steps:

• Curate Content: write a solid article and showcase it with a succinct tweet:

• Thank You Tweet: write a tweet thanking the person-brand that RT’d your content. Do not cobble your thank you at the end of their RT of your content. Instead, honor their kindness by thanking the person-brand first:

• Copywriting: after completing your thank you copy, describe (“adoption & measurement”) the post you are referencing. By referencing and describing your post, you help your RTing partner to remember their RT of your content easily. More important is the fact that this description may be viewed by Twitter users who may have missed your article when it was originally tweeted and subsequently RT’d

• Link: remember to add the original shortened link at the end of your Thank You tweet. This completes the strategy by giving those Twitter users who missed your original tweet or the subsequent RT the opportunity to click through to your content

Twitter Communication: Always Have The Last Word

Twitter is now acknowledged, by savvy marketers and companies, as a full fledged direct marketing channel. According to many reports, unlike traditional channels like television, radio, email, postal, direct mail, and the telephone, Twitter and it’s digital brethren will see an increase in marketing activity and money spent on marketing campaigns. In our work as marketing consultants, we utilize Twitter as a direct real-time communications tool to initiate one one one conversations with consumers and prospective consumers. The following strategy, and the reasons for it’s effectiveness, will help you connect more deeply with your customers and prospective consumers.

Twitter Communication: Always Have the Last Word

Anytime a customer or prospect tweets their appreciation, approval, or a recommendation for you or your business, you should always respond. This response can be a simple thank you but it must happen. The most important strategy is to make sure you have the last word in the string of communication.

6 Reasons Why it is Important to Have the Last Word

• Acknowledgment: by sending the last tweet you let people know that you received and understood their tweet
• Etiquette: by thanking people you show the Twitterverse you have manners and will properly recognize people for their effort
• Recognition: your tweet will provide  the recognition that your customer/prospects are important to you
• ReTweet: by retweeting a customer/prospect’s tweet you are sharing it with your audience of followers
• Hashtags: by using the hashtags your customer/prospects use in their tweet to you, you are providing recognition of their importance to you as your tweet cirulates within hashtag streams they believe are important to them
• Top of Mind: by thanking everyone and having the last word, you stay top of mind with your customer/prospects

Twitter Success: Do You Have Twitter SOL?

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Do you have Twitter Sol? If you do then you are utilizing and leveraging Twitter for all it is worth. You are making friends, networking, and making a difference. If you don’t have Twitter Sol you are not being heard, you have not opened lines of communication, you are not leveraging the network, and you are not making a difference- you are just there.

Twitter Status Quo

Most people and companies do not take the time to learn all of the features, functions, and strategies the network has to offer. After a frustrating time trying to blast spam or Noise messages of sales, the final chapter is an abandoned account which creates problems:

• Perception: that the company or person did not take the time to learn or engage on Twitter could tarnish the brand in their consumer’s eyes
• Listening: that the company or person no longer cares about the consumer’s concerns, stories of using the brand, or problems with the product or service
• Communication: even if the company or person listens to the network they no longer have a tool they are willing to use to engage these consumers. Instead they will allow anything and every opportunity to pass all because they established a Twitter account before creating a strategy

Twitter SOL

Strategy: Do you understand how to leverage Twitter to perform

• Keyword searches
• Prospecting for new clients
• Networking
• Monitoring your brand
• Defending your reputation
• Creating offers
• Measuring ROI via keycodes
• Broadcasting
• Announcements
• Creating a “viral army” of people or companies that will carry your messages forward
• Recognizing people and companies via messages
• Copywriting hashtag events
• Replying directly to your prospects
• Privately messaging
• Follow vs. Follower ratios 1:1
• Attract a targeted Following
• Segment through list building

Opportunity

• Find “Real Time” conversations
• Monitor multiple keywords
• Engage with prospects
• Create alliances
• Network with industry-niche Associations, companies, people
• Ask for guest post on blogs
• Set up meetings

Luck

• Contact from prospect
• Recognition by your industry or prospects
• Timing of offer or communication
• Right place at the right time
• Engage with prospect who do not communicate via email, postal, telephone or traditional channels
• Find employees, partners, contractors
• Discovered by online media, mass media, different countries or cultures

Twitter Strategies: 8 Reasons To Make “Following” Widget a Blogroll

What fixes or features would you implement on Twitter if you were one of the principles? If I could fix something simple it would be to give each user control over the “blogroll” aka people you follow list that shows on the right side bar. This “following” widget shows the last 36 people or companies you have followed. What if you could choose the 36 people or companies who are displayed in this widget? This widget then becomes a true blogroll and it’s functionality becomes very important. This is what I could accomplish with this new feature:

8 Reasons to Make “Following” Widget a Functional Blogroll

• Showcase: I could provide exposure for my most influential people-companies I follow
• Best of Class: my following widget could be populated with the best providers of information
• Perception: the perception of me or my company suffers in the eyes of my followers if less than appropriate or different people are showing up in my following widget aka blogroll
• Change: provide each user the ability to change their “blogroll” daily, weekly, or monthly. This would allow me to run blogroll themes. Examples would include best of social media; social media companies, best hyper local resources, best regional information, niche information
• Hashtags: I could feature the most prominent Twitterers from hashtags
• RT: I could feature the most prominent RTers of my information as a recognition and thank you
• DM Abusers: I could feature companies or people who use the DM as a spam messaging channel; This would be a warning system for users
• Unfollowing: this could be a list of people or companies I am about to unfollow

Twitter Strategies: How Secure Are Your Tweets?

Courtesy Bouncer Wiki

Have you ever been stalked? I have. Have you ever had your home robbed? My parent’s home was robbed. Have you ever been confronted by an unknown person? I have. Security in today’s world is often a consideration we fail to understand. Either we feel safe, we reason we are not celebrities and thus immune, or we do not worry about the subject altogether. Twitter is a wonderful real time communication tool with ramifications if you are not careful. Like real estate, location-location-location, security begins with protecting your plans or location.

Personal Security Risks: Tweets That Tell Too Much?

Transparency is a staple of Web 2.0 and social networks yet how much information is too much? The following are the type of tweets that could be security risks to you or a loved one:

• Locations: tweets that divulge your exact location
  Why: you have no idea who is following your tweet stream and monitoring your whereabouts-giving exact locations places you in a position to be approached; add a close likeness in your bio picture and you are “findable”
• Times: tweets that provide exact times of your location or a location you will be in the future
  Why: these tweets can provide a possible unwanted someone enough information to locate you
• Future Travel: tweets that outline specific travel activities with time or time frames
  Why: the possibility of a burglary, although remote due to address information and other logistics needed, is not impossible considering the amount of information available about you especially when criminals know you are leaving your home

Business Security Risks: Lose Your Job, Business, or Advantage

Like our personal safety, our businesses should remain secure. The following tweets could be a security risk to your business or your job:

• Partnerships: tweeting your new partnerships before they are solid business arrangements
  Why: competitors looking for partners could be monitoring your efforts with an eye on your business partner
• Sales: tweeting your new accounts, new contracts, new consulting gigs
  Why: competitors can quickly act to attempt to under cut price, provide better product or service, and steal your new clients who are yet to be sticky to you or your company
• Future Niche: tweeting your intention to pursue a new niche
  Why: this alerts your competitors of new or fertile ground to be examined. If you believe you are first to the party–don’t tell anyone or you will have company
• Business Travel: telling everyone you are attending a conference filled with your prospects is a sure fire way of attracting added unwanted competitors
• Personal Opinions: As the Ketchum PR disaster already taught us, if you have an opinion detrimental to your customer you would be best to zip it and not say a word.
  Why: if you have to ask why you truly do not get it
• Realtor Open Houses: this is especially ominous. Be careful to have security measures in place before tweeting your open house information
  Why: Incidents of open house crimes are on the rise nationally with murder, rape, attempted rape, assaults, and burglaries some of the felonies committed

Twitter’s Conversational Search: The Search Google and Facebook Seek to Emulate?

FoxBusiness.com published this deansguide article 3- 18-09

The new buzzword in the world of search, and a concept being posited as the downfall of Google, is “conversational search.” The idea being that searching within Twitter, Linkedin, or other social media network search engines is a more robust and valuable search strategy than utilizing Google search. The thought is that the search results on Twitter could lead the searcher to conversation(s) that provide more targeted information, possibility of immediate communication, and feedback.

The following is a retrospective look at our original Twitter case study that highlighted David Murray’s successful job search utilizing Twitter.com as his main tool. Within Dave’s strategy were 5 major tips that any job seeker can use to begin the process of delivering their value to their strategically targeted audience(s). This is a fantastic case study for the value of conversational search: injecting yourself into your desired conversation resulting in an opportunity.

The case study of David Murray written by David Meerman Scott is a powerful example of how to utilize Twitter in your employment campaign. The article “How David Murray Found a New Job via Twitter” provides 5 advanced tips that are very important to consider—if you plan to utilize this free broadcasting tool:

1. Use Twitter: This sounds easy but the first step is to recognize that if you want to stand apart, you need to begin to utilize social media tools your competitors may not be using–yet.
2. Create Keyword List: List all of the keywords for the company, industry, people, and niche you wish to “follow” on Twitter. An example of David’s keyword list: “Social media jobs”, “Online Community Manager”, “Blogging jobs”, “Hiring social media”, and other keywords that fit his job search criteria.
3. Twitter Search: Twitter Search is an internal search engine that you will input your keywords into to find conversations by people who are connected to the industry, jobs, companies, and niches you wish to contact.
4. Google Reader: David then pulled the RSS feeds of his keyword conversations into Google Reader and “made it a habit to check these first thing in the morning every day.”
5. Introduce Yourself: David found conversations related to his job interests and he “took the liberty of introducing himself via Twitter.”

The Results: David was hired as “Assistant Webmaster, Client Services for The Bivings Group.” And as David states “Many times when inquiring about the open positions, the jobs had not been officially posted” and “How cool that on Twitter you can express interest in a job opportunity that hasn’t even been announced yet?”

Wachovia Bank Update: New Twitter Strategy Matches “Connectivity” Goals

Direct Message to deansguide from our friends at Wachovia Bank

If you have followed the deansguide series of critiques on Twitter.com business strategies, one of the companies I outlined was Wachovia Bank: “Bank’s Twitter Strategy: Lack of Strategy Hurting Brand.” In this critique, I pointed out the following:

1. They had no discernible strategy
2. Their lack of strategy in following people (audience of customers) could be perceived negatively
3. They were not being true to their Twitter Bio mission

Wachovia’s Old Strategy: Follow a minimal percentage of audience-clients on Twitter

The results can be seen in the “follow” and “followers” categories where Wachovia was following only 11% of their audience.

Wachovia’s New-Improved Engagement Strategy

As of today March 12, 2009 Wachovia has aggressively fixed their follow strategy by following every one of their followers. By adopting this strategy, Wachovia now has created the following:

• Open line of communications with audience via Direct Messaging
• Created the perception that they wish to communicate with their audience
• Provided their audience with recognition by following each person or company who follows Wachovia on Twitter
• Demonstrated their willingness to listen to their audience
• Quickly tap into customer conversations and solve customer services challenges that may exist
• Demonstrate they are one of the leaders in the Banking industry in regards to social media and audience engagement on Twitter

Wachovia Bank March 12, 2006 Twitter Account

Twitter Transparency: Inner Architect’s Strategy

For the sake of being transparent, honest, and forthright, I feel it is necessary, as the Business Director for Inner Architect, to state our Twitter.com strategy on Twitter. Over the course of the last month I have reviewed the Twitter strategies, or lack of strategy depending upon how you utilize Twitter, of the National Association of Realtors and Wachovia bank. Let’s take a look at what we are accomplishing here on Twitter:

Two Account Strategy: deansguide

My Twitter.com deansguide has the following functions:

1. Engage: Spend time investing in my Twitter relationships, my selected communities, conversations, individuals, and companies by following nearly everyone who follows me
2. Communicate: Direct contact with people or companies
3. Research: Gather content ideas, valuable links, and industry information for repurposing
4. Go-To-Source: Try to be a go-to source and resource of valuable information by providing the best tweets as often as possible
5. Recognize: Recognize great content, ideas, attitudes, and kindness by ReTweeting or writing about any person or company that is creating and giving value on a continuous basis
6. Network: meet and network with people in Silicon Valley (near my home) and around the country

My goal here is to contribute to the twitter community as much as possible.

Two Account Strategy: Innerarchitect:

Our Twitter.com Innerarchitect account has the following functions:

1. Research: Find content that matches our business goals, provides fresh perspective, and helps us build our library of value
2. Follow: The main focus of this account is to find content, research our industry. Consequently we are less active in following. We try to follow people specific to our industry, read, and listen more on this account.
3. Recognition: We will not follow everyone that follows us as that is not the focus of this account. What we will do is recognize people and companies that inspire us and provide value on a ongoing basis
4. Activity: We will produce less content (Tweets) on this account because our focus will be to listen to conversations and gather information

Conclusion

If you are a company or individual concerned with ratio of followers to those you follow, then consider deansguide as the place to be on Twitter. On deansguide, I provide value and follow most everyone to build their network numbers.

If you are interested in our company mission, information, and writing consider following or checking in with Innerarchitect. We will focus on companies interested in social media and

National Association of Realtors’ Twitter Strategy: Update

A few weeks ago, I wrote an open letter to NAR asking them what their Twitter strategy delivers to their constituency. My point was to highlight the fact that NAR dubs itself “The Voice of Real Estate” yet they did not give Realtors a voice when on the social media site Twitter.com.My original post “National Association of Realtors’ Twitter Strategy” shows the following screen shot of NAR’s Twitter account:

The date of this shot above was February 17, 2009 and it shows that NAR was follow 0 as in zero Realtors on Twitter.

Strategy for NAR:

The best strategy for NAR would be to follow what well known pundits like Guy Kawasaki and companies like Starbucks do with their Twitter strategy: follow everyone. On Twitter the best method to recognize your audience, and that is the main focus or should be for NAR, is to follow them when they follow you. Here is an example provided by Starbucks Coffee:

Starbucks follows all the people and companies that follow them. They engage their audience and provide their audience, consumers, and evangelists the opportunity to directly communicate with them.

3 Benefits For Following Everyone Who Follows You on Twitter:

You can’t receive DM aka direct messages from your audience of Realtors UNLESS you follow them back. Simply put when a Realtor follows you, the ettiquette and strategy of following them back immediately opens the lines of communication. This allows you 3 advantages:

1. You can receive feedback on your products and services
2. You can measure your marketing and social media campaigns
3. You can open a direct dialogue with the audience you claim to serve

Update on the “New Strategy” at NAR

Apparently somebody is listening but not really understanding. Whoever is in charge of the NAR Twitter strategy decided to follow roughly 6% of the Realtors and professionals who follow them. Here is the NAR Twitter page as of March 3, 2009:

A Step in the Right Direction

Although this is a step toward the strategy they should consider, following 42 out of the 743 followers that are your direct audience and constituency seems a tepid effort at best. At least NAR is making progress in the right direction.