Twitter

Who Are You Connecting with Your Social Network?

by Sean Earley · 6 comments

If you want to be successful in business and in life, the more connected you are, the better.  It’s a simple fact.

One of the most powerful aspects of social media is in its ability to connect you with new people. To expand your network and grow your reach.

One even more potentially powerful aspect is its ability for you to help connect other people to each other and to help expand their networks as well.

Sometimes it really amazes me that we have such powerful, free networking tools sitting there at our disposal that allow us to do so much good and have so much potential at just a couple clicks or a Retweet, and yet, so many of us are just sitting there letting it all go to waste watching that stupid timer count down in Mafia Wars, or some other equally useless time sucking activity.

Am I making you feel just a little bit guilty yet? Good.

Ok, so here is my plan. [click to continue…]

Avoiding the Social Media Overwhelm

by Sean Earley · 2 comments

Before you make the decision to use any social media platform as a marketing tool, you need to evaluate it first and ask yourself how it best serves a specific purpose, otherwise there is the potential to just waste a lot of valuable time, energy and resources without gauging the results.

How, why and even if you use it can and will directly effect the bottom line.

So, before you go tearing into Twitter, or any social platform for that matter, first ask yourself a few, basic, key questions, make some decisions based on these questions and set some goals.

Basically, “how will this tool or platform help me?”

In order to do so, I suggest following the P.O.S.T acronym (originally put out by Forrester)

POST stands for: People, Objectives, Strategy, Technology.

1. People: Who are the people you want to be targeting and how do you identify them? Who is your demographic and where can you find them?

Is Twitter the best place to find them? Is Facebook? Is linkedIn? Or maybe Sprouter, Buzz, Etsy, Ning, Xbiz, Foursquare? Or…

Are there other platforms that might be better? Maybe there is a forum based on your niche that would be much more effective instead? Maybe a group? Does this demographic even use social networks?

2. Objectives: What are your objectives and what are you hoping to achieve?

Are you broadcasting a message or researching and gathering information? Are you trying to build a mailing list, or get more traffic to your website? Is it for education, communication, relationship building, or customer service? Is it a tool to generating leads, or to build upon existing leads?

Do you want to use it for input or output? Or both?

3. Strategy: What is your strategy? What is the ultimate goal of your efforts? How will you be using this tool to achieve your objectives?

How much time can you afford to spend with these tools in order to positively effect your ROI? How much time is too much time? Will you be in charge of this process or will you outsource?

4. Technology: Based on your plans, which platform is best suited to serve up these goals?

Once you decide on a platform, do you have a good understanding of how to use it? Are you comfortable using it or do you need training? Do you need tools or additional software?

So to summarize, Social media can be a powerful marketing tool, but it can also be an incredible time suck. Following this basic process and asking yourself some very important key questions first will ultimately define success or failure.

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I hope that you found this post useful. I’m going to be writing a lot more on the subject and I am even writing a book about it, so if you liked this one, don’t forget to go to the sidebar and sign up to my mailing list to receive all the latest updates and maybe some cool free stuff!

As always, if you have any input or questions, please leave me a comment.

All Your Tweets Are Belong to Us

by Sean Earley · 0 comments

I got tweetleaked today.

I made a post on Twitter asking if anyone could recommend a good tool box to buy in Germany, because well…. i need a new tool box… (long story…) and then a few minutes later, I received a strange mention on Twitter saying:

@seanearleyrocks your tweet has been taken away.

Of course I just had to check and see just what the heck that was all about. I come to find out it’s an art project by a guy in Berlin named Jens Wunderling and his site default to public where he takes people’s random tweets, prints them out on sticker paper and posts them in public. HA! Sweet!

Of course I wrote back to say: @tweetleak Neat… next time please use the tweet that says “Please send all your money to @seanearleyrocks to pay for an Aston Martin”

All kidding aside, I thought it was a cool idea. While I of course realize my tweets are public and open for the world to see, somehow it still gives off an invasive feeling by having your info put on display out in public beyond your control. That’s the point of the project after all, I guess.

Really makes you think, though.

P.S. If anyone still wants to send money to the Sean Earley needs an Aston Martin really badly fund, by all means, feel free…

Oh yeah, and can you recommend a good toolbox while you’re at it?

New Twitter Book – I Need Your Input

by Sean Earley · 1 comment

First an announcement for anyone who is interested. I am in the process of polishing off the second draft of my new Twitter related ebook. (Title has yet to be determined)

I know, i know… there are a ton of them out there, but instead of regurgitating the same old crap as everyone else, I wanted to take a little different approach and hit on some of the more unconventional topics in relation to Twitter, social networking, marketing and sales.

I think people will really like it, and my hope is that it will be a valuable resource on the subject. Might shock some people, might piss a few people off too, we’ll see… sounds good huh?

Anyway, before it’s all wrapped up and spell checked to death and I spend way too much time obsessing on the cover design and promo material, etc I wanted to take a little time and ask your opinion:

What Would You like To See in A Marketing Related Twitter Book?

  • Are there any topics that just haven’t been covered in other products?
  • Are there any burning questions you want answered?
  • Anything new and exciting that you think should addressed that hasn’t yet?
  • Any skills, solutions, systems, processes, methods you would like to see addressed or defined in more detail?
  • Do we need another Twitter book?

My goal with this is to not only write the kind of book on the topic I personally would like to see, but others as well. so your input is really valuable to me. So please feel free to comment or shoot me an email at:

seanearleyrocks@googlemail.com

I would love to hear your thoughts and get your input.

What is Your Follow Strategy on Twitter? – An Experiment

by Sean Earley · 3 comments

I am doing a little experiment and looking for some input specifically from online marketers regarding what your Follow Strategy and Behavior is on Twitter.

  • Are you a conservative follower or are you a follow whore?
  • Do you follow back everyone who follows you?
  • Do you only follow a few people whom you are interested in?
  • What is your criteria for following?
  • What is your criteria for following back?
  • Do you use following software? If so, what?
  • Do you use follow autoresponder software? If so, what?
  • Do you use multiple Twitter accounts for specific purposes?
  • Are you targeting your Follow behavior or do you just go for mass?

Please share your input via the comments, as I am really interested in your opinions.