To Tweet or Not to Tweet ~ I Confess My Twitter Sins and Answer this Age Old Question

by Julia D. Stege, MFA
@MagicalMarketer

It's Twitter's birthday. The social network is three years old today. At 8 million strong, Twitter is a force to be reckoned with in the online marketing community. It's getting to the point where you cannot afford to ignore the little bird any longer.

I am going to come clean with you. The past few months I haven't really been on Twitter at all. I was pinging posts from ping.fm to all my social networks and not logging on to see what was up in the twitterverse. I was kind of blocked, a one way tweeter without the bandwith to watch all those disjointed conversations streaming past my screen.

I was in love with Facebook anyway.

Even though they're often lumped together, Twitter is a totally other universe from Facebook, and I was grooving on the Facebook friendly. On Facebook you get to see great pictures and tag each other in pics and notes and easily see what's up with each other in a variety of forums, catch up with old friends, and play fun games, that in addition to all the cool marketing tools you can use on Facebook. It's not called 'crackbook' for nothing! It is addicting. I read on Mari Smith's blog that the average Facebook member spends 20 minutes a day on the network. That's a lot of time for a website which translates into a captive audience like none we have ever seen.

But back to Twitter. As I said, I was a one way tweeter. I only sent out messages and didn't read the ones coming in. Looking back on it, I'd have to say it was poor networking etiquette. I don't just go to a networking lunch and say my pitch without listening to and responding to other people, and the social networks are just an extension of the live networks I attend. OK, I'll forgive myself, now that I know better.

You see a couple of things happened to change everything. First, my RL (real life) buddy, Karen Clark (@funfelt), told me she has over 3,000 Twitter followers she's attracted by RT (re-tweeting) other folks' tweets and being an all around tweeterific gal! I'm intregued, but don't know who to RT!

Then I got a VA (Virtual Assistant = Sherene Alexis Curley @VASherene ) who introduced me to a boatload of Twitter apps and explained some basics to me, the most important of which was 1) how to magically unfollow everyone in my list who wasn't following me, and 2) learning what the hey a #hashtag is so I can find and follow simpatico friends.

Now I'm in #Hashtag Heaven!

I knew that a tag was a way to mark a topic with a keyword, but I didn't realize that you could follow and contribute to specific Twitter conversations using #hashtags. First I followed @hashtag on twitter, then I visited hashtags.org and put in a search for various phrases, like #loa (law of attraction) and #fb (facebook) to see not only what people are saying about these topics, but who's saying them. This is a way to find and follow and then RT the most eloquent tweeters in the topics I'm passionate about.

This is great because now I can tweet on topic, and I can click to follow folks based on our common interests and build a more authentic network of like minded people. What a relief. Now I just spent 3 hours on Twitter to commemorate Twitter's 3rd birthday and I'm feeling the love!

So my answer to the title of this post is a resounding YES. I have been reborn as a tweeter. Follow me at http://www.graphicgirlz.com/magicalmarketer and I'll tweet you to heaven too.

WANT TO USE THIS ARTICLE IN YOUR EZINE OR WEB SITE? You can, as long as you include this complete blurb with it: Magical Marketer Julia D. Stege, MFA helps people attract their perfect customers with a unique combination of Law of Attraction, wildly attractive logos and websites, and smart Internet marketing techniques. If you're ready to start attracting your perfect customers now, get Julia's free Magical Marketing Toolkit at http://www.magicalmarketingtoolkit.com See Julia's Law of Attraction Marketing Blog at http://magicalmarketing.blogspot.com

Obama Tweets on Twitter! How About You?

Barack Obama is widely known as the Social Networking candidate. Last year he recruited Facebook Co-Founder Chris Hughes to build his own social network My.BarackObama.com , he was the first of all presidential candidates to capitalize on the strength of his Facebook groups and now he is by far the most popular person on Twitter.com, now surpassing Digg founder Kevin Rose by over 13,000 followers.

This is significant news for anyone studying new internet marketing trends. Obama has been successfully using these social networks to mobilize millions of people and raise tens of millions of campaign dollars. He has unearthed the power of Facebook (where he has over 1.3 million supporters) to organize real-world events and gain the Democratic Party nomination for president over Hillary Clinton, the former party front-runner. Some predict he’ll be able to use his advantage on social networks to beat out McCain come election day.

What Does This Mean for You?

Social Networks are not just for kids or political candidates. Business people can use these fun free tools to network with friends, associates, colleagues and family, and passively market to these folks just by adding short updates, links, and posts. Just as Obama (ok, Obama’s aids do the actual work) uses Twitter to update contacts on what he’s doing and where you can learn more about it, you can use Twitter to let followers know about your latest blog post, what you’re doing in your business right now, or your latest sale. After I publish this blog post, I'll surely go to my Twitter account to announce it and post a link.

Similarly, on Facebook it’s easy and fun to stay in touch with people without inundating them with emails. I’ve used Facebook as a tool to follow up with people I meet at business networking events as well as a fun place to connect with old friends.

Hey, if you’re on Facebook or Twitter, let me know and we’ll connect there! Once we're connected, send me a note if you want to learn more how to use these tools to your advantage.

Want to learn how to use Social Networks to Attract Perfect Customers Online? Check out my upcoming 10 week webinar for web-challenged individuals. I’ll be offering a free introduction to this webinar on September 19th to show folks how I got to page one of google in 22 minutes by sharing myself authentically online. See details at http://www.graphicgirlz.com/teleconference.html