6 Questions To Ask Yourself Before Hiring a Twitter Expert

How To Get The Most Out Of Twitter Promotions

It’s a known fact that everyone loves freebies. Anything free will do from products to gift cards to service subscriptions. If you’re giving away something free and promote it correctly, you’re sure to receive a beneficial amount of traffic and new followers from it.

One of the best methods of running a promotion is through social media, with Twitter being an obvious first choice. Let’s take a look at some of the steps you should take in order to get the most out of your Twitter promotion. These tools were used by us at Kitchen Stools Direct when we did our contests on twitter.

Get Organized

You’ll need a detailed outline of your goals and the steps you’ll follow to achieve those goals. You’ll need to market your promotion so that people will know about it. What methods will you use? You’ll need a way to measure the success of your promotion. Will it be based the number of new followers you get or maybe how many retweets your article explaining the promotion gets? How will you keep track of new followers, retweets, hashtags, etc? Will you use an online tool like OneKontest or Wildfire to manage your contest?

All of these details need to be worked out and defined before you begin your promotion.

Pick a Method

Let’s go into a little more detail about how you’ll measure the success of your promotion. You’ll need to pick a metric to be measured. The best methods for spreading the word and measuring the success of a Twitter promotion are:

• Requiring users to follow your account. You can offer a special prize to the first 100, 500 or 1000 users. Alternately, you can also offer something special to every 100th, 500th, or 1000th user that followers you. The numbers you use are of course up to you, but these are the most commonly used.
• Requiring a retweet of an article or blog post. You could create a blog post explaining the promotion and then require that people retweet it in order to enter. This is a great way to get the word out on Twitter; a great giveaway is sure to get lots of retweets.
• Requiring the use of a hashtag. Come up with a creative hashtag and require users to add it to an original tweet about your product, company or promotion. This is also a great way to get the word out.
• Requiring a retweet and hashtag. This is the best of both worlds and the most commonly used method.

Choose Your Prize

Now, what will you offer users who follow, retweet or use your hashtag? You will need to choose your prize wisely. Even though everyone loves freebies, it’s still important to make the item worth their while. Some very popular options include: gift cards, free shipping, free samples, promotion codes for apps, and service subscriptions (1, 3 or even 6 months free it’s up to you). Budget is an important thing to keep in mind. You don’t want to promise something that you can’t afford.

Add it All Up

Whichever method you choose, be sure that you’ll be able to accurately keep track of who is participating. It will be a huge pain to count hashtags, but a retweet button lets you know exactly how many people have retweeted the item. As long as you make a note of how many followers you had before you started, this method is a piece of cake with a little subtraction.
Of course, you could always just use one of the Twitter contest tools mentioned above; it will do all of the hard work for you.

Success

You’ve executed your marketing plan, you’ve gotten the word out, people are participating and word is spreading, sales are increasing, so that could only mean one thing – your Twitter promotion is a success! Following these steps you’ll be well on your way to reaping the benefits and getting the most out of your Twitter promotion. Remember, it’s about about proper planning and execution. Good luck!

This was a post by Lior who works for Kitchen Stools Direct, a bar stools and kitchen stools online brand.

Five Ways to Do Good Using Twitter

Perri Blake Gorman aka @bethebutterfly is an expat living in Hong Kong, connector of experts, Twitter passionista, social media trainer and consultant, blogger, reformed head hunter, environmentalist, lover of children & animals, & citizen of the world.

People who aren’t on Twitter ask me all the time why I love it so much. There are a million and one reasons really, but one in particular is the unbelievable global community I have seen grow around doing good for good’s sake.

The campaigns, the retweeting, the fundraising, the Twestivals, the #LOVE. The good news is it isn’t all virtual. Lives are actually being changed. Not all through Twitter alone clearly, but awareness and spreading the word is a huge part of what many organizations need to achieve their goals.

Every action each person takes helps.

“I am only one, but still I am one. I cannot do everything, but still I can do something; and because I cannot do everything, I will not refuse to do something that I can do.” – Helen Keller

1. Make a List for Charity

There are a number of exceptional lists to follow out there. You can check out the directory of charity lists on Listorious and search through them for inspiration to customize your own list.

A couple of notable lists are:

• Mashable

• NonProfit Orgs

• Alyssa Milano’s

2. Donate Your Background to a Cause

Your Twitter background is valuable real-estate. If you don’t have a background, or you would like to share it with charity, there are some you can download for free.

Charity Water has some really gorgeous ones.

3. Tweet, ReTweet or Join a Team for a Good Cause

A notable example of this is Jonathan Wilson from @OperationSafe. He has worked enormously hard to build a team of Tweeters that actively ReTweet on behalf of the charity to help spread the word.

He has also created a list to bring the team together.

Larger organizations may have their own Tweeters, but don’t make assumptions. Tweeting on behalf of an organization takes a greater time commitment, but some people have time to give and not money. If you are a tweeter and have a cause that you care about, contact them and volunteer to tweet on their behalf. Depending on the size of the organization they may be very happy to have the help, or suggest a way for you to be involved like a Retweet Team Member.

Platforms like CoTweet can make it easier for organizations to manage multiple tweeters.

4. Wear the badge

We all know and love those cute little stickima-jiggys on people’s avatars, but they actually mean something! You can change them up or wear a few at a time! Go nuts!

The Twibbon site has something for everyone.

5. Organize Your Own Charity Tweetup

Tweetups are a really fun way to meet your Twitter friends in person and take the online relationships offline. Why not do something in true Twitter spirit and pick a charity to support when you Tweetup. Big or small, every little bit counts.

This is a guest post courtesy of Penn Olson.com, you can read the original post here.

How to use Tweasier’s Scheduled Tweets

Tweasier’s Relationship Management Tool

Here is a video we have done on how to use Tweasier’s Relationship Manager Tool.

Twitter statistics, Twitter metrics, Twitter analysis and Twitter reports – Tweasier launches new stats section

As readers of the Tweasier blog will know, we have been busy over the last six months working hard on improving our Twitter management application. One of the key things ours users have been asking for is better Twitter statistics which can be exported and manipulated in programs like excel – so you can make your graphs look how you want.

Well I am proud to announce that we have moved things on significantly and we are going to continue to do so. Our Pro and Premium account users now have access to these new statistics but you can test them too with our free 7-day trial.

Social media measurement is critical to understanding the success of your social networking activities. Twitter statistics can be critical in helping to identify how effective your online campaigns have been. Twitter metrics are a clever tool which can help you identify your potential reach and the size of your audience.

In our twitter management application we have packed it full with useful statistics that can all be exported and shared with your friends or colleagues. We know you want to be able to justify using Twitter as a business tool, so we have shaped our application offering accordingly to help you show your influence on Twitter.

We have created an analytics dashboard that allows you to see your most important Twitter statistics in one place. We have also created several statistics sections which are clearly labelled and broken down into relevant categories.

Our new Twitter statistics clearly show you the following:

Twitter Network Statistics

· Who are the most influential friends and followers in your network?

· Who are the most popular friends in your network by number of friends?

· Who are the most popular friends in your network by number of followers?

· Who are the most popular followers in your network by number of friends?

Mentions

· Total mentions of your twitter account.

· Who has been mentioning you on twitter?

o This will help you to see who you are engaging with

· Hourly mentions –when during the day you have been mentioned the most?

· Daily mentions – which day you have been mentioned the most in the week?

· Weekly mentions – this table shows you how many mentions you got in a week and compares it to the last four weeks

· Monthly mentions

Retweets

Do you want to know how popular your tweets are? Who shared your tweets and why well this section will help you identify that.

· How many RTs of you?

· How many RTs to you?

· How many RTs by you?

· A table which shows how much of your content was normal tweets versus you sharing RTs with your network

Link Content

· Total links shared by you

· Total links shared by everyone in your network

· Total number of tweets from your network that contained mentions

· Total number of tweets that contained questions

· Total number of tweets that contained RTs

Bit.ly Links

· Our full Bit.ly integration means you can shorten links in Tweasier share them and track that link for unique clicks.

· See which links you shared through Tweasier were the most popular.

Timeline

· See the total tweets published so far since you joined us

· Tweet frequency – see how many tweets have been published

· Hourly tweeting – when is your network the busiest

· Daily tweet frequency

· Weekly tweet frequency

· Monthly tweet frequency

Friends

· See all of the people you have followed in the last two weeks

· See which friends were acquired through our searches so you can refine your searches for better targeting

Followers

· See all of the people who have followed you in the last two weeks

· See which followers you have acquired over the last two weeks

Searches

· See how effective your saved twitter searches have been within Tweasier.

· Our tables show you how many searches you have

· Which is the most productive search?

· How many people you have followed and unfollowed from these searches 

Twitter usage

· See which Twitter clients your friends and followers are using most from Tweetdeck through to Hootsuite here you can see them all and track them.

If you don’t have a Tweasier account you can sign-up here.

If you have any questions about any of this, please feel free to contact us by email and we will do our best to help you out.

Best wishes,

The Tweasier Team

Is this tweet the worst ever done by a brand? Discuss!

My eye was caught by this tweet today and I was flabbergasted anyone could have thought this was a good idea for a brand or a person to send out.

I don’t know what they were thinking and I can only suppose the brand wanted to get noticed for a tweet but I think this is one of the worst tasted tweets I have ever seen. If not the worst.

If ever there was a case proving you should be careful who manages your social media channels this is it. If you are a large brand or a small company please provide some kind of social media policy and make sure the person who is representing your brand has common sense and good taste.

What are your thoughts guys I am genuinely interested? I think it’s simply awful.

Allowing Twitter into British courtrooms could be a mistake

In this country cameras and any other form of recording equipment are banned from our courtrooms to stop the media interfering with live trials, but this week the British Chief Justice actually ruled that there is to be no ban on using the social network Twitter in the courtroom.

Twitter finally became a courtroom tool last week when a court judge allowed mediamen to tweet from a bail hearing for WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. However, two days after this ground breaking moment another judge barred it, so it’s clearly still a contentious issue.

I have to admit I am slightly worried what a micro-blogging service like Twitter could do to a live trial and I think they need to treat this area with real caution. I have been a big advocate of Twitter since it started way back in 2006 when there were only a handful of us using it in the UK but even I think a move like this needs to managed very carefully.

I am not a huge fan of the US system that allows cameras into a courtroom as I think it trivialises the cases and create a bit of a media circus around something which is usually extremely serious and often distressing.

One good point to make here is it is only journalists that are allowed to tweet from the courtrooms and this is a positive thing as they have to abide by a professional code of conduct. At least that means that a normal member of the public can’t start sharing their opinions about the case live on social media.

To write a tweet you often need to paraphrase a sentence or paragraph, and in doing that sometimes you can miss key elements of a story. This is usually fine with trivial matters but with court case I fear this could cause problems and lead to some form of misinterpretation. I also wonder if people, namely witnesses or worse still criminals themselves, will be able to follow a trial by logging onto the relevant twitter stream.

There is no doubt Twitter is brilliant for feeding us all with the latest tit bits of information but I think courtrooms are no place for this social network. What do you think – is it a good or bad thing?

You can follow me on Twitter here.

Don’t Just Retweet it – Personalise it!

For many, Twitter has become the go to place to obtain real time information by people all over the world. If you like what you see and/or want to share it with others you can “retweet” it.

Rather than just retweeting a link, blog post, article, etc. why not personalise it a little? In other words, what exactly about the item (you are about to retweet) struck you enough to pass it along? What facts, statistics, and/or data did you find to be the most helpful and informative? Was there a quote or paragraph that really stood out to you? If so, share that information with your Twitter world, as well!

I think it helps make you sound more like an actual person with real thoughts and feelings, rather than just an automatic responder (if you will) when you take the time to mention something specific in your retweet.

A few options I have seen as of late are:

• Including a hashtag within your tweet to ensure that those who are interested in the topic you are retweeting can actually find it. Most social media dashboards like HootSuite, TweetDeck, Twirl, etc. allow for you to follow any hashtags that are of particular interest to you.
• Try summarizing to indicate what you feel is the most relevant information to share with others.
• Provide your thoughts and feedback on the article. It might be that while you find it interesting, you do not entirely agree and it would be good to make that clear when you retweet.
• Reference a specific line or phrase that you feel is most important.
• Give a good ole’ fashioned shout out to the person who sent you the article in the first place, by simply saying “thank you for passing this along @XXXX.”

Retweeting is considered a compliment and in my opinion, personalizing the retweet makes it even more of a compliment. Twitter is a great way to stay current with anything and everything in real time. As Twitter states on their home page, Discover what’s happening right now, anywhere in the world.

This article is cross posted by the Tweasier team following permission provided from the original owner Marni Weinberg, you can read the original post here on her brilliant blog. We would like to thank Marni for sharing her content with the Tweasier community. If you have a blog post you think would suit our community, drop us an email.

The Top Seven Twitter Tools to Monitor Hashtags

As bloggers, our use of Twitter as a way to promote, engage and measure our influence is getting more and more sophisticated each day.  We participate in chats, contests, tweet-ups, and monitor several hashtags at the same time, just to keep up.

Last week I wrote about Klout, at the moment the most important tool to measure your online influence, and even listed the 31 Latina bloggers with a Klout score over 40. Today, I´ve put together a list of some of the tools that help you manage all the hashtags you keep track of and to keep archives of chats or parties you might have missed, or just want to relive.  Time to put your Twitter experience in overdrive.

1. Tweet Chat–If you’re a newbie at Twitter parties, then Tweet Chat is a great option to get you to hop in to your first one.  It refreshes constantly and allows you to see just one stream of the action while automatically updating your tweets with the hashtag of the chat, or room, you’re participating in.  It is also great if you want to search for a hashtag and see the latest activity.
2. Tweet Grid–For more advanced Twitter party-goers, or for those of you who just like to  jump in, this is one of the best ways to participate and host a chat.  While the site’s design is not very appealing, and it is confusing to find your way around it the first time you use it, once you get a hang of it you will find it much easier to participate in a live Twitter party. The beauty of it is that you can select the number of columns and what feed appears in each. So, in one you can have the party host(s), in another the hashtag stream, and in the last your @ replies.  You won’t miss a beat.
3. Twitter Search–Much like Tweet Chat, it allows you to search for a topic or hashtag and shows you the current live stream.  The Advanced Search option lets you insert more specific details for your query so you can find any topic you want to keep up with.
4. What the Hashtag (WTH?!)–Have you ever seen interesting tweets followed by some obscure hashtag (like #DLBChat) and wished you knew what it was all about? Well, WTH?! is a very useful “encyclopedia” of hashtags that creates pages with descriptions, related tags, official links to hashtag creators or owners, a list of the top contributors, as well as a stream of the last 10 tweets.  WTH?! is user generated, meaning you need to login and submit a hashtag for all the information to appear on its page.  If you ever host any type of Twitter chat, I suggest you submit it to WTH?!
5. Twapper Keeper–I’ve been obsessed with Twapper Keeper for a while now. It’s been the best tool to keep track of hashtags for clients and Twitter parties.  You can search for any username, hashtag or keyword and create an archive that is searchable and even downloadable as an Excel spreadsheet.  The archive stats are incredibly useful to report metrics on any given campaign or user.  I recommend you go now and create an archive of your own twitter handle. You really never know when you might need to grab a tweet you’ve sent.
6. The Archivist–Similar to Twapper Keeper, but with a more attractive design, it allows you to search Twitter and then save, analyze and export the data.  They have also made it very easy to share an excel or zip file of your archive. Another plus is that it allows you to save any archive privately.
7. Hashtracking–Relatively new to the scene, it allows you to track and analyze any hashtag.  The focus is more in premium services for users who need real metrics of their influence and reach, and for companies looking to analyze and identify the real players in their campaigns.

Do you have a Twitter tool you use to monitor hashtags?  What are some of the hashtags you are following at the moment?  Please share. We all learn.

This article is cross posted by the Tweasier team following permission provided from the original owner Ana L. Flores, you can read the original post here on her brilliant blog. We would like to thank Ana for sharing her content with our community. If you have a blog post you think would suit our community, drop us an email.