- @Roundpeg22 Nothing, if you do it yourself, £50 if we do it for you
http://bit.ly/YLEnM in reply to Roundpeg22 # - RT @thecardcoltd: @NikkiPilkington blogging and updating meta tags n our new site // good start to the week #
- RT @pimlico_flats: @NikkiPilkington Just a crude & silly bit of SEO followed by some local history // better than nothing! #
- @JackyMisson nice one! sounds like a fab weekend! in reply to JackyMisson #
- @pimlico_flats everyone needs a Nikki occasionally Thanks for RTs in reply to pimlico_flats #
Archive for the ‘Twitter Musings’ Category
Twitter Weekly Updates for 2010-03-21
Will ‘buzzing’ replace ‘tweeting’?
Last week, Google started rolling out a new feature to Gmail users…Google Buzz. For now, those using Google Apps to manage their domain’s email miss out on Buzz, but Google have promised that they will be enabled in due course. Buzz is Google’s first serious entry into the social networking space, aimed squarely at the likes of Facebook and Twitter. Whilst Google have long been expected to expand into this area, Buzz ended up sneaking in under the radar somewhat, perhaps because Google didn’t want another high-profile damp squib on their hands (remember Wave)? But you can be sure that Google is serious about Buzz, and sees it as a core part of it’s future strategy.
Twitter goes international – does it have a chance?
A recent study by SemanticHacker shows the overwhelming majority of tweets are in English. The majority of Twitter users are still from the US but other countries are catching up fast. As US growth is decreasing dramatically Twitter needs to internationalize fast to continue their growth story.
How to do so? First, individual language versions are a prerequisite for success. Only after Facebook localized their website with a specific language version did it take off in Germany, making it the largest social network in Germany with about 11 million unique visitors at the end of last year. With the roll-out of five language versions, the latest being German, Twitter is hoping to catch onto the international markets.
Using Google Reader to make sense of Twitter
I just wanted first to say thanks to Nikki for the invite to show how I use Twitter in my business and how it helps me keep on top of what is going on in Spain.
Recently I put up my twitter mosaic on my blog so you could admire all of those beautiful people who I follow. Now there are some people on there who I shouldn’t be following because I started using Twitter a long time ago and used something called autofollow (Forgive me for I have sinned). One shortened word, “Don’t!!!”. It allows spammers to send you rubbish all the time. Twitter is a broadcast medium and a conversation at the same time. If you are just broadcasting then you are not listening and you need to listen to your market.
Social media is now the best way to get up to date with relevant information about what you are interested in. If you are reading this then in theory you are interested in Spain because you have a desire to come to the country either to live or visit. So what do you get from my Twitter acounts @grahunt and the more corporate and businesslike @valprop? Well news and views about Spain and you get to discover how others are living their lives here for good, bad or indifferent. However I get a lot more from Twitter.
I live here and, as I said, I follow my market and keep on top of what is going on so that if anyone asks me a question I can answer it from a position of knowledge rather than guesswork. I use various tools to do this, one of which is the rather wonderful Google Reader (If used right) but another is Twitter.
When you go to www.twitter.com it seems a rather empty thing, this is why the majority of people go there, think to themselves “This is Useless” and leave never to return. Twitter depends on what you are doing with it and in order to do something with it you need to get inside it. This is done by using Twitter tools rather than just Twitter itself. Personally I use Tweetdeck to follow and send messages (Although others prefer tools such as Seismic or Mixero) and I use Google Reader to follow RSS feeds on terms mentioned in Twitter. Let me explain more.
Let’s say you are interested in Valencia where I am. You can set up a Twitter Search at http://search.twitter.com
Now the actual results are nothing to write home about. There are flights to Valencia, Valencia in the States and other Valencia stuff in Spanish. You probably wouldn’t want to scroll down or go onto page two etc… etc … etc… So you need to use the little orange icon in the top right corner. That is an RSS feed. When you click on it it will give you the option to follow in Google reader. Google Reader is brilliant because you can have one line summaries of everything and check every mention of Valencia on Twitter since the last time you looked with links to articles, pictures and loads more. (Just hope that Antonio Valencia doesn’t have a good season at Manchester United. The day he signed was hell as sifting through everyone Twittering about it was awful)
Why do you want to know this information? Well you will find absolute gold there including property for sale in Valencia, stories about great days out, pictures of places you will want to visit and people to follow in Twitter who will give you much more information by following their tweets and also you can engage in discussion with them to get more info about the place, in other words you have somebody on the ground who can give you the background of the place.
Remember you can do this for any term but let us stick to Valencia.
On Tweetdeck you can organise your contacts you find into columns so that you don’t miss what they say. You could follow me for example on @grahunt or the more business based tweets on @valprop and you would be flooded with info about Valencia and Spain as I use the quite brilliant Posterous service along with sharing stuff I find on Google Reader to post news that will be interesting to anyone who is thinking of coming to Spain. (My Posterous blog of interesting stuff can be found at www.grahunt.posterous.com . At times there is stuff not related to Spain too) In Tweetdeck you could put everyone you follow in Valencia into a single column to separate them from family and friends for example just like you do in Facebook maybe.
How does it benefit me as a business. Well I have defined RSS searches such as “Moving to Spain” “Going to Spain” etc set up. They tell me when someone is thinking of coming over, is on the point of coming over etc… If i feel the information I supply can be helpful to them then I will follow an message them. Get this though, I will not spam them with sales offers. Remember, I don’t like being spammed so I don’t see why anyone else should like it either. Make the initial contacts friendly and informative. You can move onto email, Google Wave or wherever later for more in depth conversations. The person who has tweeted “Right that’s it I am moving to Spain in January” is usually happy to start up that conversation and then just believe in the power of the random connection. You never know where an initial contact will lead but the fact that it can lead somewhere means much more than idly sitting around and hoping that clients knock on your virtual door wanting to buy your product.
So do you now get why I place such a huge importance on Twitter? It is real time and gets you the info about just about any subject you want right now. Compare it with the search engines which will find you the most relevant websites about your search term. However the information on those websites might well be years old in many cases. Twitter is more immediate.
Get yourself on Twitter and blog about your impending move to Spain and I will find you and follow (I will then of course hope to sell you a house because you will trust me due to the fact that I have given you so much great information 
)
)
A guest post from Graham Hunt – thanks Graham!
The trouble with people who tweet is…
The trouble with twitter.
The trouble with twitter is now that it is so mainstream that everyone has an opinion on it and are not afraid to share it.
Fortunately they all conflict on how to get the best from twitter, so it’s still fun
Tweet what you eat?
I was reading on Facebook the other day where someone had updated their Facebook status with ‘Stop sharing what you eat on twitter”.
There were 5 or 6 ‘likes’ and 3 or 4 comments agreeing with them. I didn’t agree because it’s the little things that make a person a whole and
enables me to decide to continue following them, or not. Building a relationship and starting a conversation is easier when talking about the
smaller things like whether to have cheese or ham in your sandwich…
All work makes Jack such a dull boy…
Have you ever seen a tweetstream with no personal references in it?
Do you follow any?
Does that person engage with you?
My experience is no, someone who solely tweets about business doesn’t engage,
They are there to broadcast their business message and it’s dull to read! But what they do get is relevancy when you do a search in the twitter
stream for particular information. I have found 2 business tweets a day work well for our same day courier business. If you do a search, we
are near the top everytime, something we have been unable achieve with our website until recently. So do the solely business tweeters have the edge
over the non business tweets? What do you think?
Who are you and what do you do?
When I gain a follower I always ask what they do, and sometimes I get a response back that I find rather rude… “Read my bio”. Yes, rather than participate in a
conversation the person tells you to read their twitter bio. Their 160 characters defines them as a person and tells you everything you need to know, of course it does.
Imagine walking down the street, meeting an old friend and asking them what they are up to now and they respond with “Google me” or worse still “look at my website” or
they thrust a business card into your hand and you have to look, rather than listen and get to know then. Imagine chatting to another parent at the school
gates and you ask what they do and “read my bio” is the response. Even worse you get chatting in your local pub and ask the person you are talking and
drinking with what they do… and getting “read my bio” as a response.
“Read my bio” is a conversation killer. There is no worse conversation killer than “read my bio”, it’s almost like saying I am too important to bother with you.
BUT…
But people still tweet what they eat, send each other links to describe themselves, start a conversation and gain business from twitter. Being a person works.
I know, I get phonecalls everyday from people who say “how are the kids? how are the dogs? and can you move XYZ for us”. Over the last year we have won
huge amount of business through twitter, and long may it continue. It starts with being a person first and a business second, and that may involve
mentioning food, drink, fun, sharing jokes and participating in the community, sharing the wins and commiserating the losses. But most of all, it involves
being a person.
Sarah Arrow
Sarah is the most followed courier on twitter in the UK, possibly the world. Not a bad achievement for a regional courier with national coverage.
The trouble with twitter, a guest post by @Essex_Courier.
When Retweeting goes wrong…
The other day I got a spammy DM from @seo_specialist – it said ‘Visit my site and click on my Adsense at [site removed].
It’s not the first of it’s kind I’ve received, but it bugged me, so I tweeted out:
Moan put out into the Twitterverse, I disappeared off to do something else, and thought nothing of it.
When I got back, I noticed the following Tweet in the @ column of Tweetdeck:
Can Social Media help me find my Fairway Taxi?
Obviously I’m a massive fan of social media, but a late night conversation with someone who’s not quite converted yet led to this post.
In the conversation I was lamenting the fact that for the past 10 years I’ve wanted to own a Fairway taxi. One that looks like this:
Some people dream of Audi A4s, some want Maseratis and Lambourghinis – I want a good old London cab.
7 seats, diesel engine, turns on a sixpence (so easy to park), and just look at those curves!
Stop spamming me with Follow Friday!
I caught a Facebook post / Twitter status from @grahamjones this morning – it appears that he’s had someone unfollow him on Twitter because they see his #followfriday recommendations as spam.
It’s true to say that if you follow a lot of people, then it’s difficult to see the real content in amongst the constant #followfriday messages on a Friday, and if someone sends numerous FFs, then it could get a little annoying.
But I’m a great believer in Follow Friday – I think it’s important to recommend people for your followers to check out, so what to do?
7 New Twitter Apps from Killer Startups
Date: 28th May 2009
Comments: 3 Related Categories: Innovative Twitterings, Interesting Tweets, Twitter Apps, Twitter Fun, Twitter Musings, Twitter News, Twitter for Business
Comments: 3 Related Categories: Innovative Twitterings, Interesting Tweets, Twitter Apps, Twitter Fun, Twitter Musings, Twitter News, Twitter for Business
I’ve been a fan of Killer Startups for a while – the premise is that they add 15+ startup sites a day and allow users to vote on them. Unfortunately not as many people as could be are voting, and it seems that there are lots of (ahem) Killer Startups missing out on publicity, so if you could take the time to pop over and have a nose around, I’m sure it would be appreciated!
As this is a blog about Twitter, I’m only going to feature recent Twitter related posts on there, but there are others that are well worth a look too!
