I know you appreciate a no-nonsense, tell-it-like-it-is article. Most of us appreciate a straight message. If you have read my blog before, you probably came back because you know that I will tell it just how I see it.
I know another guy who does this. I do not know him very well, personally, but I know his work. I respect his work. His name is Chris Brogan (Twitter Chris Brogan), and he is a man with a powerful message of building your networks and building trust.
Chris Brogan’s message of building trusting networks of supporters is valuable, and I believe it can benefit you. I believe it enough that when he asked others to help him to spread the word, I did just that. I was not singled out and approached for it, I was not cohersed, I was not bribed, I was not paid, and we are not in cahoots. I believe in the message he delivers, and I know that it works because it is precisely why I am writing this to you right now. This is my testimony that his hard work deserves merit.
I want you to check out his new book. Even if you think you do not want to buy it, I would like you to look at the reviews. The outstanding reviews of this book, alone, should give you confidence to recommend it to others … even if you do not think it is for you.
Maybe you are saying, “Oh, so you are peddling another book, huh Mark?” Yes, I am, and just as I have said about my own book, “Twitter for Business: Twitter for Friends”, I would never do so unless I strongly believed that it was done with value to the readers. In fact, I believe the two of these books are great companions, and should be a part of your reading plan. Click here to order “Trust Agents” and Click here to order “Twitter for Business: Twitter for Friends”. If you order them together on Amazon, you can save on shipping and have some excellent professional help at a cost far less than having either of us come directly to you, and much less than the cost of lost opportunities.
Twitter Fame can come from tweeting frantically, as if your butt is on fire and Twitter will bring you a bucket of water to put it out. If you have not already learned this tactic, I will explain it. According to many estimates, there is a very small percentage of “power users” who send the majority of all updates on Twitter. How extreme is it? As a Harvard Business study pointed out, 10 percent of Twitter users account for 90 percent of Twitter updates.
Allow me to shock you for a moment with an observation.
Twitter Politics, Pandering, and Popularity
Some of the most powerful Twitter users are using old school tactics of politics, pandering, and heavy handing to get their word out. When this happens, they throw the great notion of transparency and dignity out the window.
Why do they do this? Power is the best answer I can find. It is a power that is largely more about ego than money … it is a power that some hold dear as they seek to be “King of the Geeks” or “The Most Popular” on Twitter. To their regret, it still does not return all that they hoped. They just find a few pea-brains to clap their hands and make them feel important.
Sure, you may not see this behavior, but it is just another part of my job to tell you it is there, and that it is quite pervasive. It has an impact on the whole community, and I hope you can see why it matters.
When considering that “other” 90 percent of Twitter users, I find it tragic that so many people have not yet found the great enjoyment and value of reaching out and joining the great conversation of Twitter. More tragic than that, is that it can lead to an ever greater opportunity for the “power users” or “Twitterati” to influence Twitter with a narrowed view designed to suit their agenda. Sure, you can say that it still allows for the voice of the people, but when it gets too carried away with chasing an algorithm to appear as the most popular, it is still a deception in many ways.
The tactics that some seemingly “valuable” Twitter users will use is to play a role to make others believe “how Twitter really works” and what is “important” to the Twitter community. Fine, call them “leaders”, and in some ways, they are. I want to remind you that it is easy for many people to fall into a bad habit and think it is the right thing to do because “everybody else is doing it”. Your parents surely posed the question to you something like: “If all of your friends were jumping off a cliff, would you do it, too?”
Some of these “valuable” users (often called Twitterati) try to promote getting more Twitter followers, and others will try to manipulate and even threaten others to promote their message. I saw the latter in a really ugly way when somebody who previously unfollowed me and blocked me then joined into a petty power play asking people to unfollow my Twitter feed, hoping people would stop listening to me. It was totally political and childish, and it was not because I was poaching whales or beating up little kids. I was simply being honest, and being me … many people sent me messages of respect after that rant.
It was not too long before this person came to seek me out and talk up their respect for me while asking for favors again and asking me to retweet their latest promotion. I guess my retweet was valuable, but yet, not quite valuable enough to treat me like a real person, but rather a megaphone.
Quick, Twitter … Get Me a Bucket!
The type of user I am talking about will often tweet like their butt is on fire and somebody should bring them a bucket of water. They try to send enough Twitter updates to be sure that everybody will see their name, without regard for whether it is good, bad, or indifferent. I would never complain about somebody tweeting a lot, because I do that, but I try to keep it interesting, relevant, and a two-way communication. However when people just send a rapid-fire barrage of popular links from Google Trends, Digg, Stumble, and Alexa Hot Urls with some advertisements for their clients who hired them for their amazing social media acumen mixed in there, and sent with hopes and demands for others to retweet it for popularity, the relevance and value of Twitter suffers. Then they will retweet some random thing that you sent, just to remind you that you should be retweeting their agenda, and if you do it, you may get even more of their favor of retweeting something you sent that they never even read or cared a damn about. It can even be worse with an innuendo that if you do not cater to them, they will badmouth you and tell people to unfollow you. It all gets far too High School-like. Now, I have a different reason for asking for a bucket … See the video below. 😉
Have you ever apologized for something that you have not yet done? That is what I am doing here, but at the same time, Twitter may thank me for it later.
I have tried to make it pretty clear to my readers that I recently wrote a book titled “Twitter for Business: Twitter for Friends”. The book is now ready for orders, and I do not plan to let anybody forget it.
So why am I apologizing?
I wrote a really useful book to help new and experienced Twitter users alike, so that should be a good thing, right? I guess you could say that I am apologizing for the self-promotion that some people may complain about. After all, it may seem pretty self-serving to repeatedly tweet about my book. Well, I am sorry, but I plan to do just that.
I plan to tweet it, blog it, and scream it from the top of my lungs for a few days. I can only hope that people will understand that while I am feverishly trying to get the word out that it is intended for the betterment of Twitter. I believe that when enough people read the book, it can have a great value to the Twitter community. Hopefully my many friends and followers on Twitter will forgive me, and thank me later!
I am asking for your help!
I know you may have better things to do than to help me promote a book, but I am asking for your help. If you will review the Introduction and the Table of Contents, I hope you will see this as a worthwhile effort.
Nearly anybody with a blog or other Website that is worth reading has heard of Twitter by now. The bloggers who use Twitter efficiently may already have realized some of what I will share here, but from what I have found, many bloggers have not. To say the least, I am shocked just what a small percentage of blog owners and authors are actually using Twitter, and even more shocked by those who are not embracing the synergy the two can produce when used properly. Note that while I say “blog”, this is completely interchangeable with “Website”, so don’t be confused.
Twitter-Improved Traffic: A Simple Example
As a simple example of how Twitter can improve your blog readership, I will use the blog you are presently reading. While looking at my statistics to find how many people arrived at this fledgling blog via Twitter, I found that an estimate of nearly 15,000 unique readers arrived by way of Twitter over the past 30 days. I say estimated because it is challenging to provide an exact number due to the many readers arriving by way of Twitter clients not providing an accurate source (although my numbers will be much clearer in May). This is more than the number of subscribers to my Twitter feed, which is presently just over 11,000 but was far fewer last month (ref TwitterCounter). So how did that happen? In short, people read it, talked about it, and retweeted it.
Blog Traffic Numbers: The Real Scoop
I will write more on this later, but I find that too many people find it convenient to try and lie about the real traffic of their blog. Let’s face it, this stuff is trackable. Some people may say that traffic estimates generated as a result of Twitter is bloated or that it is not so great, but just a simple look at Compete.com or Alexa.com will reveal a lot of what I am telling you. Of course, these are usually a bit behind and do not reflect an exact accounting, but they are usually reasonably close. I share this with you because I want to provide a real example for the purpose of this article.
When considering these numbers, let’s weigh in the facts that this blog was launched in December 2008, and my Twitter account only had 78 followers on February 7th of 2009, and it is a targeted blog about social media marketing and search engine optimization. I am not seeking everybody to read my blog, but rather the right people to read my blog. Be sure to also look at your own blog / Website and review the numbers and percentage of increase. It is pretty eye-opening what Twitter can do when used properly.
The traffic and level of engagement prompted me to question how Twitter has changed blogging. Here are just a few things that i found.
Twitter-Improved Reader Engagement
I will show examples of blog reader engagement separated into three parts, but this remains only one of the three areas of benefit derived from Twitter discussed in this article. There are many ways to determine reader engagement with a Website. Some ways blog authors have traditionally found valuable to measure the reader’s engagement are as follows:
Time on Page: The average time the user spends on a page is a good measure of whether they are actually reading what you have to say. This is clearly subject to the type and length of content you provide, but in any case, readers who are not interested will not stick around very long. A minute is a very long time for many internet readers. What I have found in the measure of time on page is that readers initially engaged by Twitter will spend more time reading my blog, totaling about three minutes per page view. This is a significant increase over users arriving from other sources, and is longer than any other source.
Page Views Per Reader: The number of pages each user visits is a strong reflection of the user’s interest in your industry, beyond the single topic of the initial page they viewed. I have noticed an improved page views per reader coming from Twitter, up .5 page views per reader compared to other sources, which is a significant sign of reaching the right audience.
Blog Comment Volume and Quality: An important measure for the blog author is in how many comments, and the quality of comments the blog post receives. When writing something relating to Twitter, I have witnessed great results for blog comments, on this blog and others. One of my recent blog posts relating to Twitter usernames has received upward of 140 approved comments. I attribute much of this to the fact that many readers already have some knowledge of the author, and are already a part of a conversation. A blog is one way that they find out more information and continue the conversation. I think many bloggers would agree with this finding.
Assessing the reader engagement of Twitter users, both on a blog and on your Twitter feed, can also be measured by the comments received in reply to the posting of the blog link to Twitter. I find that some people will respond to the title of the tweet. It seems that every day I see somebody respond to the text of a tweet in a way that I know without question they have not read the blog post linked to the tweet. A great example of this was when I tweeted a blog post titled “Will Oprah (@oprah) Ruin Twitter?” and I received a lot of comments in defense of Oprah Winfrey’s use of Twitter. That was kind of silly, because the blog discussed the changes that may come from the inevitable increase in traffic and how a large influx of new users may change how we use Twitter. This absurdity should always be considered a measurement of engagement of your Twitter following and not of your blog. What it also points out is that Twitter users who do read your blog are likely truly interested in what you have written. If your Twitter account is managed properly and you spend time to get to know your followers and let them know you, blind comments should largely only happen with your newest followers.
Twitter-Improved Search Engine Optimization
Many search engine optimizers (SEO) will overlook the value of Twitter for improving search engine penetration. If they miss this part, they are making a big mistake. A reason many SEO will dismiss this value is that Twitter uses the “nofollow” attribute in outbound links, thus, no increased Google PageRank. Make no mistake; Twitter can greatly enhance your visibility in search engine results. This can come from many outside factors related to Twitter, as well as Twitter itself. I will just name a couple, but here are some ways SEO is enhanced by using Twitter. First, I should point out that Twitter’s Search is a Search Engine! As more people use Twitter search to find information, using Twitter will help many people to find your information. Aside from just Twitter searches, the likelihood of particular tweets being listed in other search engines referencing a Twitter tweet or one of the many Twitter-related applications along with your link are improved. Be sure to realize that each person who reads your blog also comes with a voice to further spread your blog in many other ways. Thus, each reader who finds your blog in any Twitter-related way has the potential to further propagate your message in search engines as well. It all adds up to make a significant end-result.
Twitter-Improved Call to Action
Along with the added benefits of brand recognition and brand loyalty, comes the greatest benefit of all … an improved call to action. This means that the message you distributed has gone beyond just readership, and the reader has heard and responded to your call to action. In my case, that literally means that they have made a call to reach me and discuss improving their market reach. For you, it may be that they enter their order for your product, apply for a job, donate to a cause, or many other possibilities.
How I measure a greater call to action from Twitter: It has become standard that I speak on the telephone (direct line *REDACTED DUE TO AGING WEBSITE*) or on Skype (username murnahan) to a minimum of five different inbound callers per day as a result of Twitter users who also read my blog. In addition to inbound callers, I also call at least five people I meet on Twitter to simply make an introduction and to get to know them better, so this certainly works both ways.
I make it my practice to reach people beyond the singular communication tool of Twitter, and expand my communications to other tools. This means that not only has Twitter greatly impacted my blog readership, it also goes far beyond blogging to reach people I would likely have never met otherwise.
How Does This Apply to You?
Surely some people reading this do not have a blog or Website, and may not have a great importance of reaching out to other people, but I think those numbers are fairly small. Most people who read this have a reason to reach others. If this is the case, you should not neglect the value of Twitter for reaching a very important audience.
Reaching a larger and more valuable audience is what I do for my clients, and what I am paid for. I have found Twitter to be an extremely useful tool. If you are getting frustrated and you want to see better results for your blog or other Website, please reach me to explain how I may help you.
Don’t Just Comment on Twitter!
If you made it this far, I hope that you will give me the honor of reading and responding to your comments right here on the blog. Yes, of course, your comments are also always welcome by way of Twitter, too. Please tell me what you think!
This is perhaps my simplest blog post ever! It came to me that there only two really important questions about marketing your business, online or otherwise. Sure, there are other questions to ask, but these are the two that matter above all others.
1.) Do you want more targeted leads for your business?
This is a really simple one for most people in business. If the answer is no, you clearly have no business here on this blog. If the answer is yes, we should be talking!
2.) Is it too late because you neglected it too long?
This is the single most punishing question to answer, but it is the most true and realistic reason people make bad decisions in their business. If you say that you cannot afford to market your business, you should really think again. The truth is that you cannot afford to neglect the things that pay you. Marketing should never be a cost to you, because it is what pays you. Without it, you are dead in the water. The better question should really be whether you can afford to not expand your marketing. Here is a simple reminder:
“The man who stops advertising to save money is like the
man who stops the clock to save time.” –Thomas Jefferson
Simple Enough?
I tried to make this my simplest blog post ever. If you think too far beyond these two questions, you may be missing the big picture. Once you have answered these two simple questions, there should be no reason to put it off for another moment.
I would like your input, so please give your comments here on the blog and also feel free to reach me by telephone (direct line *REDACTED DUE TO AGING WEBSITE*) or on Skype (username murnahan).
