Jeremy Toeman of LIVEdigitally asked “Will Normal Folks Ever Use Twitter?”

His assumption that a rise unused Twitter accounts were people who had abandoned Twitter, not spam or data errors led him to the conclusion that Twitter should take his advice and add some feature to make status updates a game.

Might be something to that.. but the whole post seemed to old school to me.

The assumption appeared to be that Twitter users are just media consumers and some experts have to tailor the experience and tweet the show.

That’s how the corporations who run old media think.

Twitter is the greatest listening tool ever invented.. but it would be foolish to assume that we are getting a mass market here.

And that’s the point… Twitter users (not those looking at it or signing up for an empty account) are past the buzz of “why would I want to know what someone had for breakfast?” and now having real conversations with real people.

Regardless of what else Twitter or others do.. we’re not going to stop talking to our new friends.

Do we really need a point system or badges when we are having a conversation?

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@JesseStay has a great way of explaining the NO RULES philosophy:

I get so bugged when I see so many people trying to tell me how to write my Twitter stream. Some say I have to have multiple accounts to organize the data. Others say I can’t run ads and my content can’t be promotional in any way. Funny thing is most of those people are promoting something of their own, whether they admit it or not. Personally that doesn’t matter to me.

What matters to me is that I can use Twitter the way I want to. I can write everything in one stream if I want to

Catch the rest of his post here

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Twitter and LinkedIN now work together to allow you to integrate as much as you’d like.

Putting to things together and creating something better, like chocolate and peanut butter.. what I call the Reeses Effect

Your professional contacts will know what party you went to last weekend (they already do).

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Want more people to interact with you on Twitter?

More readers for you blog?

Or maybe you just want to spread your message to the widest audience?

Here’s how: Give people what THEY want.

So many authors, blogger, entrepreneurs come to me asking “How do I get noticed?”

I tell them to do what I do… STOP trying to get and start giving.

This is not a sermon… it’s just good marketing. You will succeed when you find out what your audience wants and give it to them.

Want more Twitter followers. Be follow worthy. Be seen as someone who GIVES help, support and attention to others.

One great example of GIVING is my friend Azim Jamal. He and his co-author Harvey McKinnon wrote a book called The Power of Giving. They get attention from it, but gave all the royalties to charity.

When it came time to promote The Power of Giving paperback, they asked how they could reach more people with the message. The answer GIVE MORE. Azim went to a blogger convention and talked to bloggers about how they give. 50 interviews with bloggers that they could use freely.

NOT talking about Azim and his book.. it’s all about them. Here’s one with Big time blogger and NY TIMES best seller Chris Brogan (author of Trust Agents

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Last night Coach Deb was live with Mike Filsaime at the MarketingDotCom command center in Long Island, NY. In a fun and light “Friday Night Live” format Deb and Mike share a wealth of strategies and tips from successes achieved with Social Media.

Watch the replay now & learn:

• How to get hundreds of people to LIVE! off-line events using twitter and other Social Media

• Tips on hastags and FriendFeed

• How to get 23,000 visitors from Twitter

• Get a  sneak preview of the NEW New Media online marketing software & social site-building system — Quan$ite™

The first few minutes start out slowly as the crew gets things set up, but I promise you it’s worth the wait once Deb and Mike get rolling.

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One common stage 2 idea is that you can reach different people in different time zones by setting up a repeated tweet every few hours.

Fact is, you will reach more people with that specific tweet, and if you are tweeting just the one tweet it’s likely that almost no one will notice.

Unfortunatly, most of the tweeps using this technique fail to add any real valud beyond the self promotional tweets. So while I would never say that you should not repeat a tweet (after all, or mantra is NO RULES) I do regually caution against having a profile page that is full of “come and look at me” type tweets

@GuyKawasaki wrote a piece today showing his results when he repeated a tweet:

You would think that the skies would open up, and I’d get struck by
lightning by the Twitter gods. Think again. In the case of repeating a
tweet four times in thirty-two hours, there was a big spike for the
first tweet, but the next three still yielded very good results. In
total, the four posts resulted in 5,059 clickthroughs in tranches of
1,481, 1,415, 1,208, and 955; note, however, I looked at the server log
and approximately 20% of these clickthroughs are bots. 700 people
signed up for this service, by the way, because of my four tweets.

As suspected, more people saw the tweet each time it went out and the total clicks went way up.

What Guy left out was that he has a reputation for saying very smart things and engaging in real conversations with many tweeps.

What I prefer to see is self promotion with variety. I often use the same URL in a dozen or more tweets in a single day, for instance, the link to my Twitter radio show (http://TwitCastRadio.com). However, I use the link in unique tweets, mostly in answer to people asking me a question.

Sometimes, I’ll promote an upcoming event or show with several hints about the show. One tweet will have the show announcement, another will thank the guest I’ve booked, yet another will mention what we will cover on the show.

What about RT (ReTweets)?

Use the same ideas for tweets I see from those I follow, I often send out their message to my tweet stream. I’ll use the lazy RT button if that is available in the software client I’m using that day, sometimes I think what was written was perfect. But usually, I try to add value with a comment, or by writing my own tweet. Other times, I’ll see a link, read a post and end up with a blog post of my own (as happened today with this post.. thanks to @24k for the link)

It’s only 140 characters.. be creative and write more about your subject. Anyone seeing more than one will appreciate the details and you get a new batch of readers each time. When you get to have hundreds of thousands of followers, you can repeat without worry. Until then, give us unique valuable content whenever you can.

For me, great content is always great content. How about you?

Warren Whitlock
Co-Author of “Twitter Revolution: How Social Media and Mobile Marketing is Changing the Way We Do Business & Market Online”, speaker, social media marketing strategist, and publisher.
Read more at http://WarrenWhitlock.com

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Some get angry. Other change their follow/unfollow behavioral. I use dumb auto DM’s as a way to have some fun and spread a message of the futurity of sending a canned message in a personal medium like Twitter.

I started posting them when I say one that was offering me a way to learn how to use Twitter. I got thinking about how these tweeps sit at a computer looking at a screen that tells them that they can sell there wares to millions through Twitter. They mostly are newbiie going through stage to of the 3 Stage of Twitter Acceptance and haven’t figured out that almost everyone will view them with disdain, impersonal spam messages or maybe even a reason to unfollow.

I use #DADM – The DUMB AUTO DM OF THE DAY to remind tweeps who might have not turned off this feature. You can view them all for a laugh using the #DADM tag or by clicking here

Brad Trnaysky posted a comment on a Facebook post of my Dumb Auto DM of the Day

I really HATE the auto DM! it’s probably 50% responsible for some of the biggest names on Twitter un-following everyone. I think the easier solution is just un-follow the annoying people… but that takes time and energy I guess.

My reply to Brad explains more:

I’d love to see the chart where you show the other things that are responsible for un-follows and the methodology you used to get that figure.

Just kidding.

I understand your seniment. While I’d want to avoid using the term “hate” I know many who have un-followed tweept for this reason. However, it really doesn’t help.

You can @ anyone who hasn’t blocked you, so it’s possible to reach someone that hasn’t followed you. I assume anyone who thinks it through realizes that they don’t have much of a bond just because I return there follow, but I do as a nice gesture

Most tweeps figure out the futility of using auto DM. I use #DADM to help the newbies learn and have a little fun.

I guess my message is lighten up.. let’s share love, not set rules to ban people that are learning.. and have some fun!

autoDM, auto dm, twitter automation, dadm, hashtag

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I’m always logged in to Twitter… and access it with other browsers and software most of the time.

Didn’t notice the home page change until today… Nice.

I’ve done about 97 radio interviews where I referred to the BIG RED BUTTON to instruct new users how Twitter works… all those show archives are out of date. (you can still view it by clicking here– Twitter in Plain English)

twitter home page, how to tweet, twitter trends, twitter 2.0

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A $50,000 law suit was filed this week against a woman that tweeted about her allegedly moldy apartment:

This just in from CBS 2 Chicago

Horizon Group Management sued Amanda Bonnen Monday for publishing a false and defamatory tweet on Twitter May 12.

According to the suit filed Monday in Cook County Circuit Court Bonnen wrote an update that said “Who said sleeping in a moldy apartment was bad for you? Horizon realty thinks it’s okay.”

What you say on Twitter is just as real as what you say in public anywhere… though it would seem that a photo of mold and a note from a property manager saying they weren’t going to fix it would be a great defense.  (not a legal opinion.. I’m not a lawyer).

Watch what you tweet

UPDATE: A short comment can be defamatory.. and other legal issues: Will The First Twitter Case Be Dismissed?

moldy apartment, twitter lawsuit, defamatory tweet, twitter

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