Small Business Blog

We set up a Twitter account ages ago and then neglected it for months. Although we have been managing a few other accounts for different purposes, we never put the time behind building our own follower base. About two weeks ago, with a paltry 60 followers, we launched an experiment with one objective: get to 1000 followers without spending more than a few minutes a day. We passed that milestone earlier this week.

We reached the goal by using various free and paid Twitter tools. Here’s the run down of the tactics we used:

• Socialoomph.com. We created a free Socialoomph account and starting using the Auto-follow and automated welcome message feature. Auto-follow checks your follower base periodically and automatically follows anyone who’s already following you. The welcome feature, as the name implies, sends out a welcome message to new followers.
• Twellow.com. We listed our account for free at Twellow.com. A quick Google search will point you to many other Twitter directories.
• Tweepsearch.com. We used Tweepsearch.com to search profiles for various keywords pertaining to our business. Tweepsearch allows you to run broad searches, and then narrow your results down by searching within a certain user’s follower base. Once you hone down your list of results to a manageable number, a “Follow All” option appears. This task is implemented by TweepML.org, and it empowers you to follow dozens of users at once.
• Hootsuite.com. Hootsuite.com has an efficiently laid out interface that lets you view all of the activity on your account pretty quickly. You can also manage more than one account, without having to log in and out of Twitter. We used Hootsuite to tweet (of course), but also to track mentions and retweets, and to respond to others’ tweets.
• Mentions. Promoting your existing followers attracts new followers. Mention your followers and retweet your followers’ most interesting posts. Join the conversation and you’ll make new friends.
• Hummingbird 2. Hummingbird was the only paid Twitter tool we used. The software is $97, which isn’t cheap, but we found it to be a huge time-saver. Hummingbird monitors conversations for your specified keywords and automatically follows users who meet stated criteria. If you reach the 2000-marker, where you are capped on following more people, Hummingbird automatically unfollows those who aren’t following you back, one at a time. Once you set it up and turn it on, Hummingbird can run in the background.

If you’re not ready to spend the money on Hummingbird, you could duplicate the functionality on your own. Set aside 30 minutes a day to search keywords and reach out to new users.

Keep in mind that the above list references only a tiny slice of the tools and strategies available for promoting your profile on Twitter. Also remember that mass following and unfollowing can get you banned, so don’t get reckless in your actions.

The above actions helped us get to 1000 followers in a relatively short period of time. The next challenge is to get to 2000…and that may take a little longer. We’ve hit the 2000 limit on the number of people we can follow. So we’ll keep you posted.

What are your favorite Twitter tools?

*Post disclosure: this post contains an affiliate link to Hummingbird. All opinions are mine.*

A report by Econsultancy and Online Marketing Summit attempts to understand how companies are quantifying the value of social media. Admittedly, we did not buy the report, but we did read the 24-page “free sample.” Two statistics jump out:

• 61 percent of companies have tinkered with social media, without jumping in, full board, to a social media strategy
• 13 percent of companies are not doing anything at all

Do these numbers imply that the social media landscape is less competitive than, say, your local phone book or local search results? To answer that question, we’d have to know similar usage data on those other forms of media. One thing’s for sure, the popularity of social media is growing. Facebook traffic, for example, is exploding to the point where this site is the second most popular on the Web. And this means social media is poised to get more competitive over time.

Understanding this, do you think there’s a closing window of opportunity for your small business to secure a position in social media before Twitter, Facebook and others become bogged down with endless clutter, the way search engine results are currently? Could be. Remember when businesses first started launching Web sites? Those who got in early swooped up the domain names and ushered in fundamental changes to entire industries (travel and banking sectors come to mind). It was a lot easier to establish first-page ranking when you weren’t competing with the whole world, right? Those who came on to the Web scene later in the game have struggled to build and maintain visibility under generic key phrases. Could the same thing happen with social media (or has it already)? (continue reading…)

How To Post Automatic Updates to LinkedIn From Your Joomla Site

Small business owners and entrepreneurs often don’t have the time to delve into establishing themselves in the social media realm. Some have ignored Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn altogether, while others have lonely profile pages that are starved for content and followers. Are you feeling that dilemma? If you are, and you have a Joomla-based Web site, we have a solution. (continue reading…)