Twitter |

Is Twitter Right for My Business?

October 17, 2011 By Debra Simpson 1 Comment

This is the first episode of an ongoing series on Twitter, what it is and how to use it for business.

Twitter is one of the most popular social-media sites on the Internet, but how can you use it to get more business?

On Twitter there are over 100 million potential customers are talking, sharing ideas, and shaping communications in a way that we’ve never experienced before. This social network has shattered traditional marketing and communication concepts. In the world of Twitter, collaboration and customers are king.

Twitter is a social network that gives you the ability to post messages of 140 characters or less. It’s a network with members throughout the world, and when you send out a message, Charles in London and Mary in California can read it at the same time. Imagine the possibilities for your business!

If you understand the concept of sending a text message from phone to phone, you can pick up Twitter easily. Tweets are a form of micro-blogging that have enabled users to share massive amounts of content in the form of short text messages that they send to unique sets of people or entire groups. Twitter is one of the original platforms for micro-blogging, and it has ruled this space since its creation in 2006. Micro-blogging has increased the speed of information ten-fold, in contrast to writing a blog post or writing an in-depth consumer report.

Filed Under: Twitter Tagged With: online marketing, Tips, Twitter

Twitter, One Spoke of Your Social Media Hub

February 1, 2011 By Debra Simpson 2 Comments

Debra Simpson on Twitter

Syndicating Your Content
Show Notes: January 31, 2011

In previous episodes of Syndicating Your Content you learned about Creating A Social Media Hub and using a WordPress blog as the center of the social media hub.

In this episode we spoke about:

Choosing Friends
Tweeting Regularly
Being Visible
Promoting Events
Sending Traffic to your blog

Some highlights of our comparison of Twitter usage between 2009 and 2010 include:

Users with 100+ friends have increased by three-fold to 21% since 2009.
22.5% of users accounted for about 90% of all activity
80% users have made fewer than 500 tweets
Significantly more users are disclosing their location, bio and web information in Twitter profiles
In looking at how long Twitter users have been on the service, one of the surprising discoveries was how many of people have joined this year. From January, 2010 until mid-August, 2010, new users accounted for nearly 44% of the total Twitter population. People who created a profile before January 2009 only accounted for 4.7% of the total population
When it comes to number of friends that people have on Twitter, only 0.05% have more than 10,000, and only 2.05% have more than 1,000. The vast majority of users – 95.8% – have less than 500 friends
72% post updates related to their personal life, activities or interests. One in five (19%) say they post personal updates once a day or more
62% post updates related to their work life, activities or interests, with 12% doing so on a daily basis
55% share links to news stories. One in ten (12%) do this at least once a day
53% retweet material posted by others, with 18% doing so on a daily basis
52% send direct messages to other users, with 11% doing so on a daily basis
40% share photos with others, with 12% doing so at least once a day
28% share videos with others, with 8% doing so once a day or more
24% tweet their location, with 7% of users doing so on a daily basis

Filed Under: Online Radio Show Tagged With: Audio, online marketing, Social Media, Twitter

Ferret Out Those Who Claim Mastery of Social Media

September 25, 2010 By Debra Simpson Leave a Comment

I’ve been blogging since 2005. I started at Blogger and discovered WordPress in January 2007. I’ve had two self-hosted blogs and have been programming in WordPress exclusively since then.

North San Diego Business came out of a need to show the small business community, in 2006, what a blog looked like, and what it could do. To that end, the weekly North San Diego Business At Large podcast came into being.

When Facebook and Twitter came into the small business community you saw a plethora of “social media masters” come out of the woodwork. Their fees ran the gamete, but were usually pretty hefty. One firm was asking $500 a month for their services. It seemed to me that some were cashing in on the craze. More power to them!

However, some in the small business community were left in the dust. Dazed and confused, they left business sponsored social media events without a clue how to implement social media into their business.

So when I hear of yet another Social Media Mastery series I have to ask a few questions, especially when the series costs you an arm and a leg. Here are the questions I would ask.

How long has the “social media master” been around?
Does the “social media master” have a blog?
Are they blogging regularly?
Have they been blogging long?
Is their blog at wordpress.com or blogger.com?
(there are some exceptions to this question)
Do they have a Facebook profile?
How many friends do they have?
Do they have a Facebook page?
Do they have any custom pages on their Facebook page?
How many fans do they have?
How many connections on Linkedin?
How many followers do they have on Twitter compared to how many Tweets they’ve sent out?
Do they share information online or just promote themselves and their services/products?
Do their course outlines tell you what you’ll be learning?
Have you heard of them before?