Twitter, Social Networking: What's Your method?

[GT Bulmer]

Hello, Entrepreneurs:

The Twitter social networking site has developed into quite a popular phenomenon. It seems to be the new "In" thing.

Once you get there, you find there are a lot of tools or utilities or resources to help you manage or build your Twitter activity and your following. Personally, I do well just to be able to post my Twitter tweets a few times a day, never mind trying to learn how to use all the other stuff!

What I find is that my posts drop down the list in a hurry and get lost in the flow. It's not at all like a forum where you can carry on a conversation; everybody's tweets just zip past you like fence posts!

I know there are tools or utilities to help you track your posts, there posts and your relative conversations ... I just haven't taken time to look into it (and may not, soon).

However, I am wondering about the Twitter experiences of other Forum members:

How are you administrating YOUR Twitter activity?

GT
p.s. Just popped back in to add my Twitter ID! http://twitter.com/gtbulmer Follow me on Twitter and I will follow you.

[David Hurley]

Hi GT,

I haven't touched Twitter for a few days, which is a pity as it is a great tool for getting info and links posted in less than a minute.

Here's what I do: I post "off the wall" stuff - thoughts or insights that occur to me, snippets of info that I find interesting, witticisms, wise-cracks and so on. My aim here is to entertain and inform my followers so that they keep on following.

Into the mix I will occasionally post a link to one of my articles or blog posts. No more than 1/4 tweets, however. I also set up Ezinearticles to auto tweet when an article gets posted (which is cool because I set up SubmitYourArticle to churn out my articles using "Article Trickle" and one of the places they post to is Ezinearticles, which then notifies Twitter, so the whole process is automated).

As for conversations, I respond to some messages that are interesting or where I can add something extra.

I suppose a forum like EC is a deep river that flows slowly, whereas Twitter is a fast flowing babbling brook.

[TannyL]

Hi GT,
When you login to twitter you have links on the right top corner:
Home - there you will see all tweets from your followers. and you can see on the side bar your direct messages.
Profile - You will see only your tweets.

I send tweets almost everyday, but I don't count on it.

[Trent Brownrigg]

I still have yet to jump on the Twitter bandwagon. I see it talked about EVERYWHERE all the time, so I know I am probably missing out on something, but I just can't see the point in it. I've thought about signing up just to check it out for myself. Maybe I will do that now that I took the time to write this.

Does anyone actually get traffic from Twitter that is worth spending all the time on there? Meaning does it convert into money in some way, or is it just traffic for the sake of getting traffic?

[David Hurley]

Hi Trent,

Does anyone actually get traffic from Twitter that is worth spending all the time on there?

One point to bear in mind is that you do not need to spend a lot of time on Twitter. I use it for flashes of inspiration, quick insights, or quick news flashes. I go onto Twitter knowing what I want to say, say it and go. Less than three minutes a pop.

[Trent Brownrigg]

Hi Trent,

Does anyone actually get traffic from Twitter that is worth spending all the time on there?

One point to bear in mind is that you do not need to spend a lot of time on Twitter. I use it for flashes of inspiration, quick insights, or quick news flashes. I go onto Twitter knowing what I want to say, say it and go. Less than three minutes a pop.

Well that's good to know. At least it's quick!

[TannyL]

Yes, you can do it quick, but then people start to contact you an send you direct messages and if you want to build a name, you need to answer back, that takes time.

[David Hurley]

Hi Trent,

Ken Troyer over at the PipsPowerGroup.com forum posted a link to this 10 minute youtube video about social networking by Perry Belcher. I think you might find it useful - I did!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zn1cspHx7DU

There is another Perry Belcher presentation that specifically deals with the "I don't have time for Twitter" objection here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BuaON7dGYRE

The point IS friends and NOT selling.

[Trent Brownrigg]

Ok thanks for the info, I will check it out.

[GT Bulmer]

As others are saying here, Twitter is quick and easy - in and out.

Sign up is VERY quick and the learning curve for basic applications is almost zero. Sign up, sign in, start posting comments. Do a search for people you know and soon, you will have a following and you will be following.

Warning: some members claim tweeting is addictive. I would write more about that ... but I've got to hurry back to Twitter to see who's tweeting me now!

GT

[Evan]

I'm new to Twitter as well - (@EvanCarmichael) - I only signed up really because I did a search for my name / website and found that there were conversations going on thanks to people like GT and others who were my authors so I decided to get on board.

I'm by no means a heavy user and post usually once per day during the week and reply to a few comments. I try to focus on value add tools that I've discovered help me as opposed to talking about what I ate for lunch today.

I use TweetDeck to help me manage the various people I'm following.

As for traffic benefits, I would encourage people to focus on SEO over Twitter - Twitter can be fun and it's good to see what people are saying about you, but it can't compare to the search engines for driving business to your website.

Darren Rowse from ProBlogger, for example is a heavy Twitter user with almost 45,000 followers recently mentioned that less than 10% of traffic to his site comes through Twitter.

From my experience, social networking traffic (Twitter included) also converts at a far lower rate than search engine traffic. People who find you via a search engine are looking for answers to a particular problem and are more likely to buy your product / service. Twitter and other social networking visitors can help your traffic numbers but they usually come out of general interest and don't end up buying what you're selling. I haven't seen a website owner yet say they prefer social media traffic over search engine.

Overall, Twitter can be a small part of any marketing campaign but I would encourage all the forum members to focus first on SEO.

My 2 cents!

[Trent Brownrigg]

From my experience, social networking traffic (Twitter included) also converts at a far lower rate than search engine traffic. People who find you via a search engine are looking for answers to a particular problem and are more likely to buy your product / service. Twitter and other social networking visitors can help your traffic numbers but they usually come out of general interest and don't end up buying what you're selling. I haven't seen a website owner yet say they prefer social media traffic over search engine.

I couldn't agree more! I've been trying to drive this point into people's heads on my blogs and various forums for at least a year now.

Yes, you can get a lot of traffic from social sites but if it doesn't make you any money (or very little) then what's the point?! You can use the same time you spend on social sites building up your rankings in search engines to get traffic that actually converts into money!

[David Hurley]

I'm writing a series of articles about Twitter for my PLR members (see sig link) this month.

One of the topics is using SEO IN TWITTER via #hashmarks. If you have no idea what I'm talking about, I'll post a link here to the article when one of my subscribers publishes a version of it...

Tweetbeep and Tweetlater are also useful free resources to help you get more out of Twitter.

Check your stats and compare them with your rivals over at Twittercounter.com

Get yourself a Twitter grade over at Twittergrader.com

I agree that you should not spend all day tweeting at the expense of SEO and other stuff, just as you shouldn't spend all your free time socializing!! However, socializing is a good way to get yourself seen and known...

[TannyL]

I agree with Evan completely!

I have a new website, I started it for fun, but decided to try and make money from it.
I only have 5 or so pages on it, and all I did for is submit it to link directories and SEO it.

For a long time it was on google pages 1 and 2 and then I stopped adding content and stopped submitting. and it disappeared. i knew it will happen, but now I added a blog to it and i made a promise to my self to post at least once a week.

SEO is powerful, and there is nothing better than SE traffic.

[Trent Brownrigg]

Ok I decided to finally join Twitter and see what it's really all about. You can follow me if you'd like...

http://twitter.com/trentab