the Free Hypnosis Social Network
Why Twitter Is A Powerful Tool For Hypnotists
Hi Everyone,
For those of you who don’t know my background is actually in business, marketing, management and all that good stuff. I love being able to take the knowledge from those fields and apply them to my other love, which is hypnotism. I recently wrote a guide for hypnotists on how to use Twitter. I get asked the question by other hypnotists all the time so I thought I would share this blog post with the community. I have edited it to make it more Hypnothoughts friendly as this post comes from my hypnosis blog. I just felt like sharing with the community since it's almost the 4th of July. I hope everyone has a GREAT TIME!
What Is Twitter?
So, I’m sure you heard about this social media giant called Twitter. Even if you don’t know about Twitter I’m sure you have heard something about it. It seems like everyone is using Twitter nowadays or talking about Twitter. If your one of those people into computers and the internet I’m sure you already have an idea of what Twitter is or you may have used it. If you’re not really into the whole web 2.0/internet thing then you may not know what Twitter is. Either way, I’m going to take a giant leap here and assume a good potion of my readers have heard about this powerful tool, but just aren’t sure exactly what it is and why it’s so powerful.
For those of you who don’t know Twitter is a website that allows people to micro blog about anything in their life. Micro-blogging is just like blogging, but you are limited to a certain number of characters per post. In the case of Twitter you are only allowed 140 characters. You can post as much as you want, but you have to fit what you want to say within 140 characters. I know, your thinking how can I express what I really want to say in only 140 characters? Trust me; I had the same problem when I started using Twitter. Micro-blogging makes it where you have to get really specific and clear about what you want to say.
It limits the conversation to the “real” meat in many ways. So now that you know what Micro-blogging is let’s continue. Twitter is considered a form of Social media, which I’m sure you heard before. Social media is another name for websites or tools that allow you to reach people in a social type of manner. Examples of social media would be Youtube, Facebook, Myspace, Bebo and a host of others. Smart marketers know how to leverage these tools to enhance their business and image. Eventually, you’ll be able to do that too with me help.
How Does Twitter Work
So Twitter is basically a social media tool which allows you to micro blog about anything you like. So how does this help me as a hypnotist or to promote my business? Okay, when you join Twitter you have the option to follow people.
Following just means you find what a person says interesting and you want to follow what they say. So let’s say you follow me on twitter. You don't have to by the way this is just an example.
To do this, you would locate me on Twitter using the search feature or other tools which I will provide at the end of this guide. You can also click on links if a person uses one to link to their twitter account. They typically look like the one above. Once you locate me you would hit follow and then I’m adding to the people you follow. So what happens then is once you follow me you’ll be able to see every post I make on your home screen for Twitter. You can also choose to direct message me or reply to what I said. This is done in Twitter by using the @ symbol and then typing the persons name. Example: @JohnDoe
You would then start typing your reply to that message after you put @JohnDoe. So a full reply typed up would look like this: [@JohnDoe Thanks for the post. Look forward to learning more.] You get the idea!
Most of the time if you follow people most people will follow you back. What this means is that they get notified when you follow them so then they end up following you as well. This means they can see what you have to say on their Twitter page. So do you follow me so far? Sorry for the bad joke ;) Once you join Twitter your goal is to seek out people you find interesting to follow and in exchange people who find you interested will follow you in return. In a perfect world you want to have more people follow you, if you’re planning to use Twitter to help with marketing your business and your image.
Why Twitter Is So Powerful
So now that you know the basics let me show you why Twitter is so powerful. Let’s say you follow me and let’s say I have 500 people who follow me. Well, if you follow me and I choose to follow you then everything you say will show up on my twitter home page. The reason is because I followed you so it’s showing up on my page. So if you respond to something I say or I respond to something you say all the people who follow me will be able to click on that conversation and see what you have to say. It’s almost like a viral effect. This is called leveraging. You just followed one person, which was me, but in exchange 500 people may possibly be exposed to what you have to say. That is leveraging and marketing at its best.
So let’s take it a step further. Let’s say you wrote a really great article about Hypnotism on your blog or you ran across an interesting article on a blog and you want to share it with the people who are following you. You would tweet it, which just means you type it in the box and hit send as long as it’s 140 characters or less. When you do this everyone who follows you will see it. Now, let’s say I follow you and I receive the link to this really cool article on Hypnotism. Well, I may decide to retweet it which means I would let everyone who follows me know about the article. Then, let’s say someone who follows me likes it. They may decide to let people who follow them know about it. Before you know it thousands of people have seen what you have to say or whatever it is you choose to tweet about.
I like to think of it as a row of dominos. As one domino is knocked down it can affect a lot more dominos depending on where there placed. I remember one time on Twitter I posted an article I wrote and some people who followed me found it interested. Well, one of the people who followed me had a following of 300 people and so they posted it where all of them could see and so on and so on. Now, just because 600 or 900 people may follow someone and retweet what you have to say doesn’t mean everyone will follow you back, but the chances are really in your favor. I’ll talk more later about how to increase your tweeter conversion.
So this is why Twitter is such a powerful tool. Your words or what you have to say reach people in a way you never could. You’re able to possibly reach thousands of people in just seconds if done right. So let’s say you have created a new product or opened a new business, created a free hypnosis mp3 or e-book you want to share with people. Then you could use Twitter to spread the word. Now, I’m not saying you should just use Twitter to promote what you are doing as that could hurt you in time. There is a correct way to do it which I’ll get into in a moment.
Who Should I Follow?
Now, you’re asking me who should I follow? Well, you should follow people you find interesting or what they have to say interesting. People who tweet stuff you can use or what to know more about! For instance, I’m into business, marketing and hypnosis so I locate people interested in the same stuff I am and follow them. You always hope the person follows you back, but that isn’t always the case. You can find people with like interest using many different tools. One way is to look at the person’s profile. Twitter allows every user to create a profile which let’s you tell people a little about you and a link to your website. Mine mentions I’m a hypnotist and links back to this blog. So anyone who would happen to run across my profile can read it and see if I’m into the same stuff them as them. Heck, just the fact that you can place your website on a site that has millions of users is powerful!
Twitter also has other tools available such as a search feature to locate people. You can even locate people from Facebook, blogs and websites. For example, on my homepage for this blog I have to the right of the screen a box that says subscribe to whatsonmybrain.com and if you look down you’ll see line that says “Follow me on Twitter” which will take you to my profile when clicked. Tons of other people do this as well. So if you’re into the hypnosis world check out some hypnosis blogs or websites and I’m sure you’ll find some people you know or what to know on Twitter. Another good one to locate people is to look through my list of people following me. That is a great way to find people to follow. You have to figure that the majority of people following me find hypnosis interesting in some type of way so it’s a good chance you’ll find some people to follow.
I use a service that is located off of Twitter to find people with similar interest and that site is listed below:
* Twellow.com – A search directory & yellow pages for Twitter
This is one of the best resources to locate people in my opinion. If you were interested in Hypnosis you would type the keyword hypnosis in and then it would send you back results for everyone on Twitter who has the word “hypnosis” in their profile or in their tweets. As I mentioned earlier you get to have a small profile where you can tell a little about yourself and a link to a website or two. So I may look at a few of the people the results shoot back and read some of their tweets. If I find them interesting then I’ll follow them. I tend to use twitter for both networking and business so I follow people in the hypnotism field so I can help spread word about my blog and also network with other like minded people. I kill two birds with one stone (I would never kill a bird in real life) :)
What Should I Say On Twitter?
Well, that is really up to you isn’t it? Think of Twitter as an online party with tons of different conversations going on. Some people are talking about their professions and some people are talking about their day or a new girl they met or whatever is going on in their life. Some people post links to interesting articles so it can be shared with others. Some people post information about their business. Some people promote their websites or services. (hint, hint) It’s really up to you.
Me, I like to post about what’s new in my profession, my life, my business, projects I’m working on and a lot more. Sometimes if I run across a great article I’ll post it for everyone else to read. If I create a really good blog post or review I’ll post it to get more traffic. I try to provide VALUE to the people who follow me. If I want to become more known in a certain niche or market then I use it to network. Since my goal is to spread the word about this blog I will use Twitter to drive people here to learn more about me, what I do, my services and etc. So see, if you’re a smart hypnotist you’ll find a way to use twitter to enhance your business or image. Once again, think of Twitter as a party and eventually when you get to know people well you can invite them to your home, which is your blog or website where they can learn even more about you.
The Proper Way To Use Twitter
Now, one of the quickest ways to lose followers or not gain any followers is to constantly talk about yourself or spam people with links that are all about you. Remember I said earlier that Twitter is a form of social media. Twitter is about people at the core and you need to learn to connect with people. While you may use Twitter for networking or business remember that at the end of the day it’s about connecting with other people who have similar interest or you find interesting.
Remember, I like to think of Twitter as a party. No one likes the person at the party who only talks about himself. The most popular person at most parties is the person who is involved with other people, smiling, having fun, cracking jokes, asking other people how things went and every once in a while talking about themselves. If I do offer a product or something for free like an mp3 or blog post I make sure it provide values. I also don’t keep posting it over and over so more people can see it. That will leave a bad taste in the mouths of others. Just remember at the core of Twitter is people. I’m not saying you shouldn’t promote products, business or whatever, but just use common sense with how you put yourself out there.
Don’t Feel Overwhelmed
Spend some time checking out the site, mess with different things and check out the resources I’m going to provide you below. If you have questions post them in the comment below and I’ll help you out the best I can. We live in a time where technology is king and while you don’t need to be an expert at it you should at least know how to use certain tools to grow your business. I have received 7 new clients over the last 5 months just from Twitter! Now that is powerful marketing as it was completely free to get these leads.
Below I have included some free resources for all of you to check out.
Resources
How To Set Up Your Twitter Account
How To Set Up An Auto Response Back To New Followers In Twitter
Top Twitter Tools Explained
How To Be A Twitter Power User
Twellow.com
TweetLater.com
http://www.twollo.com/
For those of you who don’t know my background is actually in business, marketing, management and all that good stuff. I love being able to take the knowledge from those fields and apply them to my other love, which is hypnotism. I recently wrote a guide for hypnotists on how to use Twitter. I get asked the question by other hypnotists all the time so I thought I would share this blog post with the community. I have edited it to make it more Hypnothoughts friendly as this post comes from my hypnosis blog. I just felt like sharing with the community since it's almost the 4th of July. I hope everyone has a GREAT TIME!
What Is Twitter?
So, I’m sure you heard about this social media giant called Twitter. Even if you don’t know about Twitter I’m sure you have heard something about it. It seems like everyone is using Twitter nowadays or talking about Twitter. If your one of those people into computers and the internet I’m sure you already have an idea of what Twitter is or you may have used it. If you’re not really into the whole web 2.0/internet thing then you may not know what Twitter is. Either way, I’m going to take a giant leap here and assume a good potion of my readers have heard about this powerful tool, but just aren’t sure exactly what it is and why it’s so powerful.
For those of you who don’t know Twitter is a website that allows people to micro blog about anything in their life. Micro-blogging is just like blogging, but you are limited to a certain number of characters per post. In the case of Twitter you are only allowed 140 characters. You can post as much as you want, but you have to fit what you want to say within 140 characters. I know, your thinking how can I express what I really want to say in only 140 characters? Trust me; I had the same problem when I started using Twitter. Micro-blogging makes it where you have to get really specific and clear about what you want to say.
It limits the conversation to the “real” meat in many ways. So now that you know what Micro-blogging is let’s continue. Twitter is considered a form of Social media, which I’m sure you heard before. Social media is another name for websites or tools that allow you to reach people in a social type of manner. Examples of social media would be Youtube, Facebook, Myspace, Bebo and a host of others. Smart marketers know how to leverage these tools to enhance their business and image. Eventually, you’ll be able to do that too with me help.
How Does Twitter Work
So Twitter is basically a social media tool which allows you to micro blog about anything you like. So how does this help me as a hypnotist or to promote my business? Okay, when you join Twitter you have the option to follow people.
Following just means you find what a person says interesting and you want to follow what they say. So let’s say you follow me on twitter. You don't have to by the way this is just an example.
To do this, you would locate me on Twitter using the search feature or other tools which I will provide at the end of this guide. You can also click on links if a person uses one to link to their twitter account. They typically look like the one above. Once you locate me you would hit follow and then I’m adding to the people you follow. So what happens then is once you follow me you’ll be able to see every post I make on your home screen for Twitter. You can also choose to direct message me or reply to what I said. This is done in Twitter by using the @ symbol and then typing the persons name. Example: @JohnDoe
You would then start typing your reply to that message after you put @JohnDoe. So a full reply typed up would look like this: [@JohnDoe Thanks for the post. Look forward to learning more.] You get the idea!
Most of the time if you follow people most people will follow you back. What this means is that they get notified when you follow them so then they end up following you as well. This means they can see what you have to say on their Twitter page. So do you follow me so far? Sorry for the bad joke ;) Once you join Twitter your goal is to seek out people you find interesting to follow and in exchange people who find you interested will follow you in return. In a perfect world you want to have more people follow you, if you’re planning to use Twitter to help with marketing your business and your image.
Why Twitter Is So Powerful
So now that you know the basics let me show you why Twitter is so powerful. Let’s say you follow me and let’s say I have 500 people who follow me. Well, if you follow me and I choose to follow you then everything you say will show up on my twitter home page. The reason is because I followed you so it’s showing up on my page. So if you respond to something I say or I respond to something you say all the people who follow me will be able to click on that conversation and see what you have to say. It’s almost like a viral effect. This is called leveraging. You just followed one person, which was me, but in exchange 500 people may possibly be exposed to what you have to say. That is leveraging and marketing at its best.
So let’s take it a step further. Let’s say you wrote a really great article about Hypnotism on your blog or you ran across an interesting article on a blog and you want to share it with the people who are following you. You would tweet it, which just means you type it in the box and hit send as long as it’s 140 characters or less. When you do this everyone who follows you will see it. Now, let’s say I follow you and I receive the link to this really cool article on Hypnotism. Well, I may decide to retweet it which means I would let everyone who follows me know about the article. Then, let’s say someone who follows me likes it. They may decide to let people who follow them know about it. Before you know it thousands of people have seen what you have to say or whatever it is you choose to tweet about.
I like to think of it as a row of dominos. As one domino is knocked down it can affect a lot more dominos depending on where there placed. I remember one time on Twitter I posted an article I wrote and some people who followed me found it interested. Well, one of the people who followed me had a following of 300 people and so they posted it where all of them could see and so on and so on. Now, just because 600 or 900 people may follow someone and retweet what you have to say doesn’t mean everyone will follow you back, but the chances are really in your favor. I’ll talk more later about how to increase your tweeter conversion.
So this is why Twitter is such a powerful tool. Your words or what you have to say reach people in a way you never could. You’re able to possibly reach thousands of people in just seconds if done right. So let’s say you have created a new product or opened a new business, created a free hypnosis mp3 or e-book you want to share with people. Then you could use Twitter to spread the word. Now, I’m not saying you should just use Twitter to promote what you are doing as that could hurt you in time. There is a correct way to do it which I’ll get into in a moment.
Who Should I Follow?
Now, you’re asking me who should I follow? Well, you should follow people you find interesting or what they have to say interesting. People who tweet stuff you can use or what to know more about! For instance, I’m into business, marketing and hypnosis so I locate people interested in the same stuff I am and follow them. You always hope the person follows you back, but that isn’t always the case. You can find people with like interest using many different tools. One way is to look at the person’s profile. Twitter allows every user to create a profile which let’s you tell people a little about you and a link to your website. Mine mentions I’m a hypnotist and links back to this blog. So anyone who would happen to run across my profile can read it and see if I’m into the same stuff them as them. Heck, just the fact that you can place your website on a site that has millions of users is powerful!
Twitter also has other tools available such as a search feature to locate people. You can even locate people from Facebook, blogs and websites. For example, on my homepage for this blog I have to the right of the screen a box that says subscribe to whatsonmybrain.com and if you look down you’ll see line that says “Follow me on Twitter” which will take you to my profile when clicked. Tons of other people do this as well. So if you’re into the hypnosis world check out some hypnosis blogs or websites and I’m sure you’ll find some people you know or what to know on Twitter. Another good one to locate people is to look through my list of people following me. That is a great way to find people to follow. You have to figure that the majority of people following me find hypnosis interesting in some type of way so it’s a good chance you’ll find some people to follow.
I use a service that is located off of Twitter to find people with similar interest and that site is listed below:
* Twellow.com – A search directory & yellow pages for Twitter
This is one of the best resources to locate people in my opinion. If you were interested in Hypnosis you would type the keyword hypnosis in and then it would send you back results for everyone on Twitter who has the word “hypnosis” in their profile or in their tweets. As I mentioned earlier you get to have a small profile where you can tell a little about yourself and a link to a website or two. So I may look at a few of the people the results shoot back and read some of their tweets. If I find them interesting then I’ll follow them. I tend to use twitter for both networking and business so I follow people in the hypnotism field so I can help spread word about my blog and also network with other like minded people. I kill two birds with one stone (I would never kill a bird in real life) :)
What Should I Say On Twitter?
Well, that is really up to you isn’t it? Think of Twitter as an online party with tons of different conversations going on. Some people are talking about their professions and some people are talking about their day or a new girl they met or whatever is going on in their life. Some people post links to interesting articles so it can be shared with others. Some people post information about their business. Some people promote their websites or services. (hint, hint) It’s really up to you.
Me, I like to post about what’s new in my profession, my life, my business, projects I’m working on and a lot more. Sometimes if I run across a great article I’ll post it for everyone else to read. If I create a really good blog post or review I’ll post it to get more traffic. I try to provide VALUE to the people who follow me. If I want to become more known in a certain niche or market then I use it to network. Since my goal is to spread the word about this blog I will use Twitter to drive people here to learn more about me, what I do, my services and etc. So see, if you’re a smart hypnotist you’ll find a way to use twitter to enhance your business or image. Once again, think of Twitter as a party and eventually when you get to know people well you can invite them to your home, which is your blog or website where they can learn even more about you.
The Proper Way To Use Twitter
Now, one of the quickest ways to lose followers or not gain any followers is to constantly talk about yourself or spam people with links that are all about you. Remember I said earlier that Twitter is a form of social media. Twitter is about people at the core and you need to learn to connect with people. While you may use Twitter for networking or business remember that at the end of the day it’s about connecting with other people who have similar interest or you find interesting.
Remember, I like to think of Twitter as a party. No one likes the person at the party who only talks about himself. The most popular person at most parties is the person who is involved with other people, smiling, having fun, cracking jokes, asking other people how things went and every once in a while talking about themselves. If I do offer a product or something for free like an mp3 or blog post I make sure it provide values. I also don’t keep posting it over and over so more people can see it. That will leave a bad taste in the mouths of others. Just remember at the core of Twitter is people. I’m not saying you shouldn’t promote products, business or whatever, but just use common sense with how you put yourself out there.
Don’t Feel Overwhelmed
Spend some time checking out the site, mess with different things and check out the resources I’m going to provide you below. If you have questions post them in the comment below and I’ll help you out the best I can. We live in a time where technology is king and while you don’t need to be an expert at it you should at least know how to use certain tools to grow your business. I have received 7 new clients over the last 5 months just from Twitter! Now that is powerful marketing as it was completely free to get these leads.
Below I have included some free resources for all of you to check out.
Resources
How To Set Up Your Twitter Account
How To Set Up An Auto Response Back To New Followers In Twitter
Top Twitter Tools Explained
How To Be A Twitter Power User
Twellow.com
TweetLater.com
http://www.twollo.com/
Comment
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Comment by Karena on February 5, 2010 at 11:14am -
Thanks.I have just joined Twitter,although as I am not very computer literate it will take years to work it all out.LOL
Karena.
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Comment by Joshua Houghton on July 6, 2009 at 5:39pm -
Hi Craig,
Great Post and a great addition to the information already presented. Would you be willing to repost this at the Twitter for Hypnotist Group? I think it deserves to be there as well. Thanks for taking the time to put this together and I have always enjoyed your blog as well.
Joshua Houghton
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Comment by Craig Eubanks on July 6, 2009 at 5:31pm -
Joshua has written a very informative post on Twitter.
I'm going to add to it based on my experience. First a little background... I've been using Twitter since early 2007. Less than a year after the Twitter launch date (March 1, 2006), so you can say I was one of the early adopters.
At first I played with it to get to know it. In the same way I played with Facebook, blogging on Wordpress, Google Adwords, etc. Before I invest serious time into what is claimed to be the latest 'hot' way to make money online or promote a business.
Since then I've been testing it as to viability as a marketing tool with one of my clients who sells his products worldwide. Up until recently, it wasn't easy to discover if Twitter was doing much for you. At best you could look in your log files or web analytics program to determine traffic from Twitter.com... but that was about it.
Recently there have been a number of "twitter tracking" tools to hit the market. So far, the majority of these are free, which tells me the whole twitter business model has yet to solidify. It also means you need to realize the tool you choose may go out of business one day and cease to exist. This is important to consider when you use free services online.
Most tracker services for Twitter also offer URL shortening (example: bit.ly/085mY). This is important because Tweets are only 140 characters. Long URLs take up way too much real estate.
I have experimented with four so far:
1. BudURL (http://budurl.com) - Originally free, they now have a tiered paid service in addition to the free service. The free service doesn't tell you much of use anymore. I think these guys might have been the very first of the tracking services.
2. Twitclicks (http://twitclicks.com) - Has some nice features such as showing you locations where people live who click on your tweets, and if they clicked on Twitter or Facebook or somewhere else.
This is very useful since many people direct their tweets on to Facebook. We discovered 70% of our clicks came from Facebook and not Twitter itself.
Twitclicks also shows you other info like what browser they use (Firefox, Safari, IE, etc.) and what operating system (Mac, Linux, Windows) but this isn't useful info for marketing.
Their are 2 big problems with twitclicks, first they seem to have a lot of down time where it can't draw data from Twitter. The second is, you don't actually have an account. You sign in with your twitter ID.
There has been a lot of problems with people setting up sites that require your twitter ID and what happens is they hijack your account to spam with. Twitclicks doesn't do this, but it made me nervous to try them at first. I prefer to setup an account with these services.
3. Hootsuite (http://hootsuite.com - These guys have some pretty cool features. You can monitor multiple Twitter accounts (Yes people use more than one twitter account). You can even assign other users access to your account and what they can do in your account. This is something larger businesses would make good use of.
Hootsuite provides URL shortening and tracking, and a dashboard area where you can post from. You can see your full twitter stream, or just your posts. They also have a "most popular tweets" function, but it's buggy.
You can view stats by day, week, month, year, or date range. And it shows you regions and where your clicks came from. (see graphic)
I find the interface to be a big cluttered and slow because it's using heavy AJAX and Flash. But overall it was a solid performer, and a great choice if you plan to delegate your twitter functions to other people.
My guess is these guys will soon start charging for their full service offerings. They have some big clients but no revenue model. At some point their burn-rate on startup cash will catch up to them.
4. Bit.ly (http://bit.ly) - Bit.ly (pronounced bitt-lee) was one of the original URL shorteners, they have recently jumped into the Twitter tracking game. They are free, and pretty simple to use.
Bit.ly gives a lot of good information. It's probably the most detailed on an individual tweet basis. (see graphic)
But, what they don't do well is tell you which of your tweets (twitter posts) are most popular over time. I find this to be extremely useful. It's a form of market research. It tells you what the people following you like most.
They also don't show you overall stats like total clicks per day or all time. Makes it hard to gauge trends.
Finally they use a color scheme which doesn't have much contrast. Very annoying when looking at a lot of data.
I think these guys have a lot of promise. All my dislikes are easily fixed. This is one I would recommend to start tracking your twitter marketing.
5. Su.pr by StumbleUpon.com (http://su.pr) - This is my current favorite. So far it's been awesome. But, it's by invite only and invites are hard to come by. It's still in Beta, which means it's only going to get better. it also means you'll likely have to wait a bit before it's open to the public at large.
What I love about su.pr (pronounced "super"), is their dashboard layout which shows me most of what I need to know at a glance. They also allow you to 'schedule' tweets for later posting (very useful for marketing purposes), and even show you best times of day to post based on historical data.
With a click I can look at Recent Posts, Most Popular, and Scheduled. As you can see, when possible it shows you a thumbnail of the web page or a photo from the link posted. It shows clicks, stumbles, reviews on stumble upon, the text of your tweet, and the title of the web page in the link.
You also can post and shorten the URL in the dashboard (not shown), and you have the option to post to Twitter, Facebook, or both with a single click. Pretty cool.
On the right are quick views of all time clicks and time of day clicks. You can click on these to get larger detailed graphs. You can also get more detailed info on each twitter post (see below)
You can see who retweeted it, how many followers they have (are they an 'influencer'), where the traffic came from, and click traffic by day, week, month, or year.
It also shows 'stumbles'. I won't go into what Stumbleupon is all about now, but they are a good source of traffic yet many people don't know much about them.
I'm really liking su.pr and I know some other heavy hitters like Tim Ferris are also beta testing this service, so my bet it this will come out on top as the premier Twitter tracking service.
Another reason I like them is the integration with Stumble upon. This adds another potential source of traffic. Also StumbleUpon is cash flow positive so they won't disappear anytime soon.
--==>>> KEY TAKEAWAY POINT <==--
No matter what anyone says about social media, if you plan to use it as a business tool... Track and Measure!!!
Up till recently this has been a HUGE frustration for those of us with a Direct Response Marketing background. If you can't determine if the time is worth while spending on social media, how can you know if you shouldn't be doing something else instead.
Especially as one-person businesses... boot-strap enterprenuers, every minute of your working day is extremely valuable. Time is the one resource that once used... is gone FOREVER.
I point this out because it's very easy to get sucked into Facebook and Twitter and waste hours and hours of your time. Before you do this, you need to know if it has a positive impact on your business.
At a bare minimum this means at least measuring traffic to your website and clicks on the links your post.
My take on Twitter has trended toward looking at it as a trickle in the bucket of what makes businesses go. I'm still testing various strategies for lead generation, and the jury is still out. It doesn't work at all for direct selling of products or services, but that makes sense. You only have 140 characters to say anything.
It is useful if you are a large company to find out when people are saying things about your company. There are automated search tools that can monitor all twitter traffic for keywords related to your company. Zappos, Jet Blue and others have gotten great word-of-mouth using this strategy. They also have about a dozen people handling their twitter program.
So I'll leave you with this parting thought... Before you jump into any new technology or tool for your business, first ask "is this useful", then ask "will it take time away from something I know is working". If it still makes sense, then learn the tool and develop a strategy that fits in with your other marketing systems.
If you have any question on Internet Marketing or how to apply Direct Response Marketing principles to your practice, ask them in the Internet Marketing for Hypnotists Group here on Hypnothoughts.
Cheers,
Craig Eubanks
HypnosisMarketingTips.com
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The Internet's #1 Marketing Resource**
exclusively for Hypnosis Professionals!
http://HypnosisMarketingTips.com
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** Google search ranking Oct 2007 - May 2009
Yahoo search ranking Dec 2007 - Apr 2009
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Comment by Joshua Houghton on July 6, 2009 at 7:57am
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Hi Everyone,
First off, thanks for the nice comment Don! I don't know if I consider this post the most helpful ever seen on Hypnothoughts :) but I thank you for the compliment. Let me see if I can answer some of your questions Don! First off, the e-mail pasword isn't shared or anything. Heck, you don't even have to put it if you don't want to. If you like just scroll down the page a little and hit the skip this step button. The reason they want the e-mail address is to search for people in your e-mail address book that may be on twitter so you can locate them and follow them.
That is all, I never do it personally as it's pretty easy to find people on there, in my opinion at least. So if your not comfortable I would NOT put your e-mail, but know if you do more then likely things would be fine. I usually just skip that step.
As for your other question. Yes, if someone follows you back they can read your past tweets if they choose too. This is down by just clicking on the username of the person. This is why Twitter is so powerful and is similar to building a list in many ways. If you posted some really great stuff over the last few months then people who follow you over the next few days can still go back and view your old tweets. Powerful stuff in my opinion.
To be honest, that was a good question as I had to think about it for a moment as I never thought about that really, but yes you can. When you join Twitter let me know what your username is and I'll follow you! You may want to send it to my inbox as I don't want any adverstiments rules to be broken. Thanks don and everyone else for your comments. If you guys like I'll post more business related stuff/marketing.
Josh
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Comment by Don on July 6, 2009 at 4:42am -
P. S. I think your comment about Twitter being a party holds true for Hypnothoughts as well.
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Comment by Don on July 6, 2009 at 4:41am
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Hi Joshua,
This is the most personally helpful posting I have ever seen on Hypnothoughts -- and there have been many!
A couple of questions (which are probably answered in your links). When someone follows you back, do your previous tweets become accessible to them, or just the tweets you enter after that?
Secondly, they ask me for my e-mail password. WHAAAAT? I don't know how many waranings I have read not to reveal your passwords to anyone. Some blighter could get hold of that and do all sorts of damage -- including being able to get my other passwords by going to the sites I have visited and entering "forgot password" so that they will e-mail me a re-set one. Maybe I could create a separate Google E-mail account just for Twitter, but what the heck to they want my password for?
Anyway, thanks for all your help. You've won a convert.
Don
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Comment by Susan French on July 4, 2009 at 5:55am -
Joshua
Thank you so very much for this. It was immensely helpful. I've been scratching my head lately trying to figure out how to use each of the social media sites. I LOVE your metaphor of being at a party.
Great, great information.
Thanks again.
Susan
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