Bluewire Media Web Strategy Blog » Charlie Carter

3 Ways to Implement Twitter Lists for Your Business

Charlie Carter — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 06:52:59 +0000

Twitter have now finished their staged roll-out of the new ‘Lists’ feature across the social media network. Let’s take a look at where Lists are capable of playing a role in your businesses social media activities.

Monitor Your Market -

With many brands and companies now openly embracing social media as a new business tool, Twitter has made both market and competitor information more readily available as well as easily shared. It’s important to be aware of what’s happening in the marketplace of your business and above all, knowing your competition. With Twitter lists you simply group a number of your own user directories together that can monitor this activity (you may also like to make this list private). Once you have created these lists, all the tweets are available in one timeline making it much easier to digest. In fact you don’t even need to follow them directly as long as their tweets aren’t protected.

Managing Conversations -

In similar fashion to my last Bluewire Media blog post, Connecting with Customers in the Social Web, monitoring clients and Twitter users commenting about you and your brand can often be invaluable. In fact I recently discovered a tool that will automatically list users that you have had conversations with on Twitter. With only a couple of clicks the Conversationlist will set up and self manage users that you have recently engaged with. I find it is an incredibly useful way for your followers to see who influences you on Twitter. Check out http://conversationlist.com/

Influencers (especially those who Tweet in different timezones) -

If your follower count is more than say, fifty it’s going to be exceedingly difficult to read every tweet that rolls through your Twitter feed. Those with a following count in the thousands should forget it all together. But by listing your influencers on Twitter you can now read all those really interesting and helpful links and tweets at the moment it suits you. You probably also follow a few people/brands from overseas which may be in different timezones to your own. By collating those users in a specific list you will be able to peruse the information they shared to their followers whilst you were sleeping over a cup of coffee in the morning. Perfect.

How are you finding the new List feature from Twitter? Is it a help or hindrance? Tell us in the comments section.

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Charlie Carter co-ordinates Bluewire Media’s sales and marketing activity. Charlie also has an avid interest in social media and you can follow him @dangercharlie on Twitter.

Social Media Brisbane: Bluewire Media is a leading internet strategy, web design, online marketing company in West End, Brisbane, focusing on the property, finance & health sectors.

Connecting with Customers in the Social Web

Charlie Carter — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 06:25:29 +0000

I recently came across a terrific example of social media usage in business from a Slideshare presentation by Jonathan Crossfield of the Australian web hosting and domain company, NetRegistry.

One case study particularly stood out which involved an interaction @NetRegistry had had with a fellow Twitter user.

How would you rate this example as a first impression for a business engaging a potential client?

Notice how NetRegistry were able to intercept this conversation and direct the user to the relevant product page in a clear and professional manner.

It is now becoming more common for brands to develop social media strategies to monitor and engage discussions about their products in the social web.

Why are they doing this? It’s because these companies see the value in delighting their customers with knowledge about their products who in turn are more than happy to share these positive experiences with their friends and networks!

By using social media tools that are freely available on the web, your business can achieve a higher level of customer interaction at the problem solving level, which for many, is usually their first step.

Check out Jonathan Crossfield’s slides at Slideshare.

How are you interacting with your clients via social media? Tell us in the comments section.

Social Media Brisbane: Bluewire Media is a leading internet strategy, web design, online marketing company in West End, Brisbane, focusing on the property, finance & health sectors.

1300 258 394

The Art of The Retweet

Charlie Carter — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 02:46:25 +0000

To RT or not to RT, that is the question.

RT (for those unfamiliar with the abbreviation) stands for retweet and if you’ve ever come across anything interesting, funny or simply worth sharing to your followers you may have ‘retweeted a tweet’ at some point.

A retweet in basic terms is to repeat/cite a message (a tweet) by somebody on Twitter. There are a few ways to achieve this but the most common method is to begin the tweet with ‘RT’ followed by the username of the person who tweeted it and finally duplicate the content of the original message.

For example:

RT @Bluewire_Media: New blog post about retweeting!

The process isn’t perfect. It’s slightly awkward and sometimes a little daunting for new users.

Twitter is well aware of the value of a retweet and actively encourages it. At the same time however, Twitter wants to take out some of the guess work and help streamline the whole process. To assist in achieving this goal they have announced Project Retweet, an official built-in retweet feature to be implemented into the social networking service in the coming weeks (if not days).

A sketch of Project Retweet by Twitter founder, Biz Stone

Now that we all know how to retweet and also understand that Twitter is about to make the process a lot easier, here’s the next thing to consider: “how do I get retweeted?”

Dan Macsai over at fastcompany.com takes an in-depth look about the not-so-simple-science of observing your “retweetability” by studying a few facts and stats from Dan Zarella’s: The Science of ReTweets.

Here is a list of the top 20 best and worst words that can affect your own “retweetability”.

Most ReTweetable Words & Phrases

1. You

2. Twitter

3. Please

4. Retweet

5. Post

6. Blog

7. Social

8. Free

9. Media

10. Help

11. Please retweet

12. Great

13. Social media

14. 10

15. Follow

16. How to

17. Top

18. Blog post

19. Checkout

20. New blog post

Least ReTweetable Words & Phrases

1. Game

2. Going

3. Haha

4. Lol

5. But

6. Watching

7. Work

8. Home

9. Night

10. Bed

11. Well

12. Sleep

13. Gonna

14. Hey

15. Tomorrow

16. Tired

17. Some

18. Back

19. Bored

20. Listening

The retweet is certainly a powerful tool for many Twitter users due simply to the fact of how quickly you can spread and share interesting conversations online. With some understanding on how to perfect the art of the retweet you will ultimately gain more from your experiences and add even more value your networks.

Social Media Brisbane: If you would like to know more how social networking can assist your business please contact us on 1300 258 394.

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