Becoming a social media powerhouse in one week (phase 2)

Phase 2 of 5
This will complete your Twitter setup and allow you to grow your followers without having to spend a lot of time searching for and following random people (although doing some of that will help you tremendously). Also, if you are using Twitter for your business, tracking the number of clickthroughs you get from your posts will be of benefit to you in determining what language generates the most response.

2. Automating following people who follow you on Twitter and enabling trackable hyperlinks
2.1. Now go to a new Web site at http://bitly.com/
2.2. Click the "Sign up for Bit.ly" button
2.3. Complete the form including your Twitter login information and hit the "Set Up" button
2.4. To test that it worked, click the "Home" button
2.5. Type the URL of your favorite Web site into the top URL bar, but don't click any buttons yet.
2.6. Now type a message in the box immediately below. Something like, "Check out my favorite Web site."
2.6. Click the button below the URL bar and you should see it attached to the end of your message.
2.7. Now click the "Post to Twitter" button. This should be your second Tweet if you go back to your Twitter profile page.
2.8. Now go to a new Web site at http://www.tweetlater.com/
2.9. Click the "Register" button in the upper right-hand corner of the page
2.10. Complete the form making sure to include your bit.ly.com login so that they are connected.
2.11. Click “Create Free Acount”
2.12. Your personal Tweetlater homepage will come up. Click “Manage My Keyword and Tracking Reports”
2.13. Set the frequency of your reports and type some keywords in there you’d be interested in tracking, such as your name (spell it both full and short), your business, or anything else in which you are interested in tracking.
2.14. Click “Save”
2.15. Click “Accounts”
2.16. A menu bar will appear under that. Click “Edit Account”
2.17. You’ll see a table in the middle of the page with your Twitter user name. Click “Edit” in the 10th column
2.18. Check the box titled “Automatically send a welcome message”
2.19. Type a welcome friendly message in the box thanking future Twitterers for following you. You can rotate direct messages (it’s considered a best-practice) by enclosing all the text in curly brackets and separating each message with piping like this {Thanks for following my tweets! Feel free to send me a direct message so I know a little bit more about you.|Are you into direct marketing? I am, but it's not all I tweet about. Keep in touch!|I'm starting to get a lot of followers. Tell me how you're different and why I should take notice.}
2.20. Click “Automatically Follow People”
2.21. Click “Save”

Becoming a social media powerhouse in one week (phase 1)

Phase 1 of 5
This post is a step-by-step guide to get you set up in such a way that your social media presence is integrated and automated, so that one text message can update your status on four social media sites. This post assumes you are relatively new to computers and have no social media presence as of yet. It will get you set up for Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Blogger and include your cell phone.

1. Getting set up for Twitter
1.1. Visit http://twitter.com/
1.2. Click the "Get Started, Join" button
1.3. Complete the fields shown and click "Create my Account"
1.4. Click the "Settings" button in the upper right-hand corner of the page
1.5. Complete the Account information and click "Save"
1.6. Click the "Devices" tab and enter your cell phone number
1.7. Now grab your cell phone and you should receive a text message. Text back to confirm.
1.8. Add the five digit number to which you just texted to your phone's list of contacts and call it Twitter.
1.9. Now send a test message to it. Try something like, "Hey, glad to be on Twitter!"
1.10. Now send a text with the message "off."
1.11. Send it a second time. This will prevent you from getting buried in text messages with everyone's tweets.
1.12. Click the "Picture" tab
1.13. Click the "Browse" button to upload a photo of yourself. The best photos here are just of your face, are crisp, clear images and should be flattering if you care what people think of you.
1.14. Click save and then click the "Design" tab
1.15. (Optional) You can create a custom background (to be explained in a future post) or choose one of the canned backgrounds by clicking on your favorite.
1.16. Click "Save Changes"
1.17. Now click the "Profile" button in the upper right-hand corner of the page and you should see your picture, the background you chose and the test text message you sent.
1.18. Click "Find People" in the upper right-hand corner of the page
1.19. Type "Phillip Barnes" into the search box and my name and picture should come up.
1.20. Click the follow button to the right of my bio. You are now following your first person! I will follow you back within a couple of hours, so you will have your first follower. Then you're official!

This blog post was made from my cell phone. Ill teach you how you can set this up as well!

thePRguy: If You’d Rather Twist Than Tweet …

thePRguy: If You’d Rather Twist Than Tweet …

I know you don't think you do, but here's why you need to be on Twitter

Okay, I get it. You don't understand Twitter, you don't see value in it, AND you think it's a fad. But here is my case for why you should sign up today (and I'm not even getting a commission for this).

1. Satisfy your need for celebrity
You have two options, you can either read about pop culture icons in the pages of US Weekly, or you can get off the sidelines and talk to them directly! All your favorites are here, Kim Kardashian, Taylor Swift, Britney Spears, Suze Orman, Justin Timberlake, P Diddy, Oprah...the list is extensive. Twitter enables you to follow and be followed by these celebrities giving you direct access to what they're doing right now, or on what projects they're working. Sometimes you might even get a gem and watch Lindsay Lohan break up with her latest boy/girlfriend! AND, you can send them a message and have an actual conversation! Too cool.

2. Promote yourself and/or your small business
It's all about "me," isn't it? If you have a fledgling blog or business (particularly in the consulting, beauty, real estate or online marketing industries), or are responsible for promoting the business for which you work, Twitter can help you big time! Using related sites like TweetLater.com and MrTweet.net, you can automate the process of finding, attracting and starting relationships with the people you want to reach around the corner or around the world! Plus the search engine optimization you get from it and the direct links to your site can't be beat! If you have a Web site, blog or other social media presence like Facebook, you need to add Twitter to your promotional mix. I'll give you some more "how to" steps in a future blog post.

3. It's free and not a huge time-sucker
Unlike some other social media sites, you can get on Twitter, make a quick post (under 150 characters), check to see your number of followers or direct messages, and be back to whatever you were doing in a very reasonable amount of time. Now, if you have the time, you can spend hours searching for and following people (up to a maximum of 2,000 per day) to have a huge number of followers, but it's not necessary.

Here is information from LinkedIn regarding what business people think of which social media applications are important. Twitter seemed to have come up big here. See the results at http://polls.linkedin.com/poll-results/35931/uxtqg.

Two ways in which a campfire relates to direct marketing

Last night I invited a few neighbors over to discuss a first-ever block party for our development. I put a fire in my new fire pit so while we talked, the kids could roast marshmallows for s'mores and the adults could watch while we discussed ideas and plans for this party.

Long after the last red-hot embers turned to tan-colored ash, two things about last night made me think of direct marketing. The first was the way the wonderful smell of campfire smoke still still followed me around. The second was about our conversation of getting support for this party.

A great direct marketing campaign not only has all the mechanical elements such as headline, offer, expiration date, an image and messaging, but it also hits home with an emotional response. Seeing those kids, some of whom have never been near a campfire and the adults who felt like kids again made it clear that campfires create a positive emotional response. In your next campaign, try taking your audience back, waaay back, to a simpler time in their lives when they were kids and associate your brand with something they love about their own time growing up. It's something that will follow them around like the aroma of campfire smoke long after your direct mail piece comes and goes.

Direct marketing is all about the numbers, and so is life. During our conversation, we knew that we would need full support of our community to make the block party happen, so we had to think like direct marketers. We had to calculate the numbers for all the households in our block, and the number it would take to get sufficient momentum for the next planning steps. Unlike the acceptable two percent response rate typical in our industry, we're shooting for an ambitious fifty-plus percent! That will take a seriously targeted, multi-channel, multiple-touch campaign in order to reach that goal. But like a good direct marketer, I'm up for the challenge of blowing away acceptable numbers with a great results!

Twitter Profile Pic Testing

I saw a guy I happen to follow on Twitter do something interesting. He replaced his profile picture with an edited version in which he now had flowing, silky blonde hair framing his square, stubbled face. It was a bad photoshop job, but you can't really tell when you're looking at a 25x25 pixel thumbnail of it.

It will be interesting to see if he gets a lift in clickthroughs to his profile. Of course, once a visitor sees the image a little larger, they may choose not to follow him.

This got me thinking about the importance of how a profile picture is perceived by fellow Twitterers at such a small size. It's the only thing you have to capture someone's attention, so it should be clear, as attractive as possible, and probably accurate if you don't want to just bait people to your page. What your actual page looks like is another matter, but of equal importance.

Perhaps I should do some profile picture testing myself and see what happens. I think I'll skip the photoshop addition of long, blonde hair though, it just isn't me.