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Twitter Marketing with Your Mobile Phone – Part 7

Jason Katzenback — Thu, 14 May 2009 20:31:27 +0000

So I’ve been telling you how to use Twitter, and how important it is for you to post often and regularly, but unfortunately, you have a life and can’t be tied to the computer all day.

OK then, no Twitter success for you!

Just kidding.

While I am going to show you in a couple days how to auto post lots of cool things to your Twitter, the challenge is you NEED to be personal and that means you NEED to interact with your twitter followers, not just blindly post tweets at them. Now some may argue due to success they may be having spamming the heck out of their followers but all I can say is if you want long term success with your customers, then you MUST build relationships with them. That means allowing them to get to know you by communicating with them personally.

This can easily be done by any “Always On the Go” person by going mobile!

To sign up for Twitter on your cell phone, you’ll need to go to the ‘Settings’ tab in your Twitter profile, and then go to ‘Devices’.

**NOTE: Now, before we get started a friendly reminder: while Twitter does not charge you for posting Tweets and other actions via texting, your cell phone provider may. Double-check what your plan is before you start, or you might be very surprised when you get your next bill. If you’re going to be using Twitter a lot from your mobile phone, you should look into getting an all-inclusive plan that lets you send unlimited text messages.**

Now, back to getting set up. You’ll need to start with a ‘+’ sign, then your complete phone number. For those in North America, be sure to include the ‘1’ and the area code, for everyone else remember to start with your country code, but leave off the first ‘0’.

Twitter will then send you a text message, which you then have to reply to in order to confirm setup. Once this is done, you can either make changes from your phone, or on the web.

To get updates on your cell phone, you’ll then need to either text Twitter to turn the updates ‘on’, or do this from your Twitter homepage. Either way works fine.

Once you’ve got your phone set up, you can now go to your ‘Following’ page, and you can hand-select those people that you want to get mobile updates from. If you’re following a large number of people, this is an EXTREMELY important step to take to make sure that you’re not inundated with messages. Instead, pick a select few that you either want to get updates from (friends, mentors, etc), or need to get updates from (business contacts or prospects).

To turn “OFF” device updates, you can either:

Toggle the ‘Device Updates’ button that appears in the right-hand column on your Twitter homepage (right below the pictures of who you’re following).
Or, you can text ‘Off’ to your Twitter number (different for different regions); to turn off @replies as well, you’ll have to send ‘Off’ again when prompted to do so by Twitter.

Here are the numbers for Twitter in all of the different regions:

United States – 40404.
Canada – 21212.
UK – Vodafone users can text to 86444, people on all other UK carriers should use +44 7624 801423
Sweden – +46 737 494222
Germany – +49 17 6888 50505
Anywhere else, use +44 7624 801423 (UK number)

Remember that text messaging charges may apply. This is especially important to remember if you live in an area without a local Twitter number and must use the general UK number; your carrier may charge you long distance rates in addition to the fees for texting. Some carriers don’t, so it’s important to find out whether yours does or not before you send out hundreds of updates.

Twitter Mobile Phone Commands

ON: turns ALL phone notifications on.
OFF: turns ALL phone notifications off.
STOP, QUIT: stops all messages to your phone immediately
ON username: turns on notifications for a specific person on your phone.
Examples:ON alisa.
OFF username: turns off notifications for a specific person on your phone.
Example: OFF sarah
FOLLOW username: this command allows you to start receiving notifications for a specific person on your phone.
Example: follow johncow
LEAVE username: this command allows you to stop receiving notifications for a specific person on your phone.
Example: leave anybodybutjohncow

NOTE – Using on/off username from your phone only stops notifications to the place the command comes from; you’ll still collect a person’s updates on the web. There is no way to stop following a person on the web without visiting their profile and removing them. The off, leave, stop, and quit commands will only disable updates for the device(s) from which they were sent. However, if you follow someone from your mobile phone, you will also start following them through your homepage.

@username + message – directs a twitter at another person, and causes your twitter to save in their “replies” tab.
Example: @itty Good to hear from you!
D username + message – sends a person a private message that goes to their device, and saves in their web archive.
Example: d miguel want are we still having lunch after the meeting?
WHOIS username – retrieves the profile information for any public user on Twitter.
Example: whois samuel
GET username – retrieves the latest Twitter update posted by the person.
Example: get munchausen
NUDGE username – reminds a friend to update by asking what they’re doing on your behalf.
Example: nudge catballeine
FAV username – marks a person’s last twitter as a favorite. You can reply to any update with FAV to mark it as a favorite if you’re receiving it in real time.
Example: fav johncow
STATS – this command returns your number of followers, how many people you’re following, and which words you’re tracking.
INVITE phone number- this will send an SMS invite to a friend’s mobile phone.
Example – invite 426 212 4235

If you’ve got the web on your phone, you can also use Twitter’s mobile browser to post updates and get messages. Go to http://m.twitter.com on your phone, and you’ll be prompted by the Twitter login. Once you enter your username and your password, you’ll have a graphic interface that’s a slimmed-down version of the Twitter homepage you see on your computer. You can send updates by typing in the ‘What Are You Doing” box, just like you would at home.

In the next post I am going to go over a couple differnt ways to interact with your followers via…

“Mobile + Twitter + 3rd Party Applications”

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Twitter Marketing – How to Get Started

Jason Katzenback — Tue, 05 May 2009 16:43:33 +0000

Selecting Your Twitter Identity

One of the first things you need to know in order to get started on Twitter is what your user name will be. You’ll need to put some thought into this; your user name is what everybody will use to identify with you, and it’s not very wise to change later (in terms of followers) once you get going.

You can use your user name as an opportunity to tie your twitter account into your online brand. If you’ve got an established persona (like, say John Cow) use that. If you’re best known as yourself (and that’s what you want to promote), then go with that.

I’d avoid using the product you’re ultimately going to promote as your user name – it will make everything you say seem like you’re trying to sell something, and that is not the way to be successful with social marketing. Plus, you may decide to promote another product at another time, and you don’t want to have to start all over again. It’s important that, whatever name you choose, real or persona, that you come across as genuine in both your profile and posts.

Although you can change your user name later, once you start using the new one, your old one becomes available for someone else to use it. If you do feel that you have to change your user name once you’re signed up, make sure to do it early on before you build a following. It also is a pain if you are using other services that need to log in to your twitter account, as they will stop working once your user name is changed.

Another thing you could do is simply start another Twitter account with another email address, and keep the first one dormant. It will keep anyone from swooping in and taking your name. You could also do this proactively with several names in order to keep people from starting accounts that relate to your brand name.

If you do not have a brand and do not want to use your name then pick a specific keywords for your Twitter account that represents your market, it will help your account rank high in search for that keyword. The search engines are loving Twitter and for example, my Twitter account shows up 3rd in Google for the term “johncow”… which of course of that brand i am using

When looking for keywords, I recommend that you try to find a solid two-phrase keyword phrase that represents your niche and gets good traffic. You, of course, will want to promote your Twitter page with that keyword too… but we get into that later. You also want it to be something easy to remember.. but be prepared to get frustrated because just like domains, a lot of good names have been registered and next to nothing is on them. A good example is http://twitter.com/holistichealth, that would be a great twitter account to own if you were in that niche and the person who registered this, has not made a post since October 2008. You will want to to create a list of 20 or more keywords and use all variations available. An example is…

holistichealth
healthholistic
holistic-health
health-holistic
holistic_health
health_holistic

Creating Your Twitter Account

Go to https://twitter.com/signup to create your account or click on the “Get Started – Join” button at http://twitter.com/.

The information they ask for to sign up is pretty simple – full name, user name, password, and email address. As you move through the fields, Twitter will let you know if your choices are acceptable (i.e. a user name that’s not taken, an appropriate password, etc.)

Once you’re signed up, you’ll need to fill out your profile area. It is very important to have as complete a profile as possible; people don’t like to follow people with no information in their profile. Upload a photo or image to use as an avatar; this will also help you gain more followers. You can either use a real image of yourself, or a logo, or other image associated with your brand, or even a stock photo that fits the image you’re trying to create. Anything is better than the Twitter default.

When you’re filling out your profile, you’ll see a box that says “Protect my Updates.” If you choose this, all of your posts and messages will not appear in the public timeline, and can only be seen by people you are following or who are following you. Since you’re signing up to Twitter to promote yourself and your business, I do NOT recommend you do this.

Twitter will also ask you if you want to find friends (contacts) that you have through Gmail, Yahoo, AOL, Hotmail, or MSN. Twitter will search through the contacts that you have in the chosen account, and tell you which ones are already signed up for Twitter. You can always return to this later if you won’t want to do this right away.

Twitter will also show you a list of suggested contacts. This usually includes the more popular Twitter accounts, mostly celebrities and large companies. You can follow these if you like, but it’s unlikely that many of them will follow you back. A better idea is to try and find people within your niche, and follow them. You can do that by searching on a keyword relevant to your category at https://twitter.com/invitations/find_on_twitter or search http://www.twellow.com/

Once you’ve got your profile done and updated your contacts (if you chose to) then you can click on the ‘Devices’ tab to set yourself up for Twitter on your cell phone; you can get text messages of Twitter messages, and also send a broadcast from your phone. This can be very useful if you’re away from your office a lot (like much of us are) but you still want to be sending regular updates.

Another tab you want to go to right away is the ‘Notices’ tab. This is where you can choose how often Twitter contacts you. I would recommend disabling the New Follower Emails. Otherwise, every time someone follows you, you’ll get an email notifying you. Since your goal is to have followers in the thousands, that would be a lot of email cluttering up your inbox.

Personalizing Your Twitter Page

Finally, the ‘Design’ tab is where you can mess around with your color scheme. You can choose from their pre-created theme colors or templates, or upload your own customized Twitter page. If you’ve already got an established website, this is a great opportunity to make sure that your Twitter page reflects the same design sensibilities. With http://twitter.com/johncow I created a custom background that matches the JohnCow blog, but also adds a personal touch to it.

Remember, Twitter is a social platform and you want your followers to feel like they know you, so create something that gives them a little peek inside. As you can see from my background, I added a picture of a trip to Niagara Falls and a Christmas picture from Disney World. I also however, put the urls to the different businesses i run and put a little slogan on the top of the page.

A fantastic resource for creating a free and professional looking background is http://freetwitterdesigner.com/ but there are also paid services out there as well. I do not have any recommendations for paid services, as with a service like Free Twitter Designer I see no reason to pay for one… but if you want to, then just search Google and I am sure you will find a few

Another extremely important thing to keep in mind is that your profile bio needs to be short and to the point but you will want to have keywords in there that people will search for when looking for other people to follow. Do not put long tail terms in there, keep them top level and make your profile flow.

Also remember that in your profile you will want to add the URL of your main site, this is linked to from your Twitter page and will be visited by people checking out your profile… and YES people will look at your profile. I was confused a while ago as to why people were direct messaging me in Twitter and asking me for personal mentoring, then I realized it was because I had mentioned in my profile that I am a “Mentor”… so yes people do read your profile

And there you have it – everything you need to know to get set up on Twitter. They really make it as easy as possible. Next, the harder part (well not really hard but harder ) – how to post Tweets and start to build your following.

If you want to check out the other lessons in my “Twitter Marketing Training” series, then go here… http://www.johncow.com/twitter-marketing-for-your-business-free-blog-series/

Checklist

Create a list of potential user names, keeping in mind your goal (branding, name recognition or keyword ranking)
Make variations of each potential username
Got to https://twitter.com/signup and create you account
Fill out your profile (image, bio, etc) in full
Create a custom background

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Twitter Marketing for Your Business FREE Blog Series

Jason Katzenback — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 20:57:01 +0000

So have you heard of Twitter… ya right… like who hasn’t?

TV, News and every blog on the internet is talking about it and when Ashton Kutcher challenged CNN, it started to really explode… and then Oprah had it on her show and well lets just say the Twitter server had to work overtime!

It seems this once seemingly “stupid” and “useless” (yes, i heard many a person say this) microblogging system is taking off and is leading by example.

I’ve been playing around with it for over a year, and while it’s been fun, there’s also serious business applications to using Twitter as well. I am not talking of the spamming systems that are popping up, where they teach you to add followers and then promote stuff to them left and right. I mean real honest to goodness “solid” business advantages to using Twitter…

BUT (and it is a big one)

…in order to take advantage of it, you need to be on it (as a famous lottery commercial, in Canada anyway, once said, “You can’t win if you don’t play”) and you have to know how to play by the rules.

So I’m here to show you how to get in the game and start playing with Twitter.. the RIGHT way!

This will be the first in a series of posts that will teach you how to use Twitter, from the basics of what Twitter is and what it can do, to the more complicated aspects of it and how you can use it to promote your business.

Here’s some of what I’ll be covering:

By the end of it you should be a verifiable* Twitter expert.

*Well, maybe not really verifiable, since I don’t think that I have the authority to do that, but you know what I mean.

Oh and make sure to follow us at http://www.twitter.com/johncow and add us as a Friend on FaceBook while you are at it too