The viral world of Twitter
I decided to list some resources and tools that can be useful, if you are becoming a Twitter power user and you are interested of using Twitter as marketing media.
MARKETING TOOLS
http://www.twiveaway.com
Brad Gallen has created this campaign based marketing tool. It is free, but you need to promote brad_callen and reTweet his message to get in. Program is simple to use, you create a campaign, fill Twitter account credentials, reTweet message and reply message, that contains campaign giveaway link to followers, that has reTweeded.
http://www.twitternetmarketing.com
A Community for Internet Marketing & Home Based Business Marketing “Tweeters”. A lot of instructional material, videos, eBooks and articles.
http://www.tweetergetter.com
MLM strikes Twitter by Multi Level Tweeting. The concept is simple, when you retweet the message in the form below, you will automatically start following the 6 people in front of you in the system. A message posted on your twitter will automatically be formatted with your unique link. Meaning that when people follow through to this site, they will have to follow you in position 1 to use the system themselves. Now when those people refer others via their link, their new followers will also follow you in position 2 and so on down 5 levels deep. By the time you reach the 5th position, you will have thousands, if not tens of thousands of new twitter followers… and it NEVER stops growing!
http://twitteringfortraffic.com/ezview
reTweet and get Twitter traffic guides for free.
http://www.twittad.com
Post Twitter Account for Advertisers to Purchase. Opt-in to advertiser campaigns. For example, if you are a small business owner on Twitter you can advertise a product that interests you, and get paid to do it!
http://www.twitbacks.com
Free Twitter background for personalization and marketing purposes.
http://www.twitpic.com
Twitter picture sender. Upload your image and tweet it. Service creates a short link and description to Twitter account automatic. There is also a nice real time picture tweet map on their front page, that shows recent pictures on their location.
FOLLOWER MANAGEMENT
http://www.twitaddict.com/hummingbird
Commercial highly ranking Twitter network creation tool. I’ve followed some users stats and see up to 500 follower addition per day. System aims to build targeted network for selected niche and is a must tool for Twitter marketers even though you can do most of the work by combining free tools available here and there. Created by Masiab Labs.
http://www.twittertrafficmachine.com
Another commercial software for generating Twitter traffic created by Bill Crosby. The system explains how to grow a twitter account rapidly with total automation via 5 videos. In video 6, they show how create a viral affiliate business.
http://www.tweetlater.com
Schedule tweets, keyword tracking, follow up email. Comprehensive productivity tool for all Twitter power users. Free and Pro version available. I use this to get quarter daily tweets related given keywords to my email and to automate follow up emails to all new followers. Strongly recommended.
http://www.friendorfollow.com
List friend, that do not follow you, followers, that you do not follow and followers, that you follow. To create a dynamic community, you may want to have equal amount of followers and followed people on your account.
http://www.untweeps.com
If you find people, that are not making any posts and showing any recent activity, you may want to drop them from list. This application lists all recently active / inactive people from your Twitter account. Again this is good for keeping your community on dynamic state.
http://www.dossy.org/twitter/karma
Makes follow / unfollow really easy.
http://www.tweepler.com
Easy, enjoyable way of processing your Twitter followers. View a list of New Followers and classify them in one of two “Buckets” Follow (meaning you wish to follow them back) and Ignore (meaning you don’t wish to follow them and want to archive them out of the way, reducing clutter).
http://useqwitter.com
Qwitter e-mails you when someone stops following you.
STATS AND COUNTERS
http://twittercounter.com
Get your and any user daily stats graphically presented. You can also make your profile featured and advertise it to get popularity. List top ranking Twitter users.
http://twitterholic.com
Lists top ranking Twitter users by their follower base. You can get your own stats from that site too.
http://xefer.com/twitter
Makes charts from your Twitter activity. Nice graphics!
http://tweetstats.com
Graph your Twitter Stats including: Tweets per hour, Tweets per month, Tweet timeline, Reply statistics. Web2.0 interface.
| http://desktop.seesmic.com Twitter and FaceBook AIR application. Follow and organize easily multiple accounts. You can collect userlists with this tool and its really useful for bigger accounts because it makes possible to manage important followers. Easy and quick way to share links, pictures and video with your friends. |
http://www.twhirl.org Twhirl connects to multiple Twitter, laconi.ca, Friendfeed and Seesmic accounts, displays notifications for new messages, shorten long URLs (using digg.com, bit.ly, snurl, twurl or is.gd) and cross-post your updates to Jaiku and many other sites like Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn and more via Ping.fm. Works on MAC and PC because it uses Adobe AIR platform. |
| http://www.tweetdeck.com TweetDeck is a third party Twitter client and personal browser for staying in touch with what’s happening now, connecting you with your contacts across Twitter, Facebook and more. TweetDeck shows you everything you want to see at once, so you can stay organised and up to date. Only bad side of the program is, that is uses API calls (100/hour) quite quickly. Especially this is a limit, if you have a lot of followed people. |
http://www.flock.com One of my favorite browser for social networking. Flock pulls all of your favorite people, places and content together in a convenient view and delivers a more personal experience of the web, where its users are more easily connected to what’s important to them. You need to see and use it to realize its power. |
| http://www.alertthingy.com/ AlertThingy mixes a lot of different social network utilities. Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, Tumblr, Yammer, Basecamp and Huddle integrations combined with cool RSS reader. Targeted for consumers and business users. |
http://www.atebits.com/tweetie-mac/ Tweetie mac is a simple and elegant multi column twitter client for Mac only. As a navite application it performs really fast and can hold multiple Twitter accounts. However what comes to functionality, its not as comprehensive as other clients. |
| http://www.nambu.com/ Nambu is one of the new comers. It support Twitter, Identica and laconica microblogging platforms. Supports iPhone! |
http://mytwittertoolbar.com Nice set of tools right on your browser bar! MAC, PC & LINUX. |
Finally other resource for Twitter client comparison: http://budurl.com/y5m5.
SEARCH TWITTER PEOPLE
http://search.twitter.com
Get tweets by keyword searches. Gives endless of marketing ideas.
http://www.twitterment
Twitter search engine. Looks up from tweets, profiles, URLs,…
http://www.twittervision.com
Funny Twitter map application, which shows tweets on map.
http://twitterfall.com
Real time stream of selected keyword based tweets. Excellent.
SHORT URLS
Short URL services are used simply to shorten long URLs. This is a must because Twitter tweeds has a character limit of 140. Side effect of using these services are, that they hide the actual destination page, so what comes to unethical activity like Mikeyy worm, they are not always safe to use. So my preference is to use normal URLs whenever possible.
http://tweetburner.com
Shorten, share and track URLs, converts urls to: http://twurl.nl
http://twitclicks.com
Shorten and track link stats. Twitter integration.
http://tinyurl.com
Very famous URL shrinker, that has a preview page feature too.
http://budurl.com
Shrink and track URLs. Get sophisticated stats for your links!
http://short.to
Makes short links and uses Google accounts for edit link feature.
http://bit.ly
Shorten, share and track links. Integrates with Twitter.
http://ow.ly
Shrink it. Simple.
http://tr.im
Trim URLs. Service emphasizes to process and delivery speed and has advanced tracking features for registered users.
http://is.gd
Compress URLs. Preview page and FireFox plug-in for additional feature.
More speculation about shorteners and interesting REST services.
OTHER USEFUL RESOURCES
Top 10 cardinal Sins of Twittering
Twitter and SEO Free Report (no optin, no reTweet)
114 Ways to Tweet – What to Tweet, How to Tweet
How to Manage your Followers and Followee
*****
Not enough Twitter apps and info yet? Then you must check this list of 250 Twitter apps!
Recursive nature of businesses
Dreaming
Have you ever waked up and after a while realized that you are actually sleeping? Then you wake up again, wonder what happened and start doing normal morning routines… something is still wrong, things are not on their original places. Then you realize that you are still sleeping! Usually fake awakening happens only once or twice, but sometimes you seem to fall to an endless like loop.
Programming
When you design and write web applications like project management system or unit testing framework, it is very likely that on some point you will use your own tool to manage current projects or handle tests. It is very usual on automation process to use program, that creates programs, that creates programs. Programmers talk about recursive functions, which simply means that function or procedure calls itself. They are regarded as little hard to understand, resource eating and dangerous by their infinite loop nature, but as well recursive functions are handy and powerful method implemented on paradigm state on LISP like languages.
Marketing
After second time, when I was involved with Multi Level Marketing company (GNLD & AMWAY) I realized same things that I found from sleeping loop and with making software tool, that was meant to create other similar tools. Many of the business opportunities are based on selling the very same opportunity to the new prospects. The law on majority of countries prevents this sort of activity and that’s why MLM companies has to have hard consumer products for sale too. While it is debatable, if study courses and DVDs are immaterial or hard products, because they could be delivered in digital format anyway, it is clear that this sort of business is on spotlight of business investigators.
Now what I want to say here is that majority of Internet business models follow the same idea. It has really made me think of longevity and also reliability and ethical base of such businesses. What we can surely conclude is, that relatively new to own business start up or Internet business are easily trapped to these recursive marketing products. Reason for this attraction might come from various reasons like: 1) lack of knowledge 2) hope for quick money 3) our natural tendency to recursive thinking and acting!
In fact, many people seem to realize it quite soon, if all the hype of the product is toward selling the opportunity or selling knowledge and tools, which can be used on any market and product promoting. It is definitely good idea to promote high converting products on their highest demand, but Joint Venture programs and product launches are very seasonal in their nature. I would never put all the effort on them, but invest and promote products and services, that has strong history, that rely on durable evolution and which has timeless benefit for the user. From such point of view you are more like making the business, not just quick money. Many has realized that nowadays and actually trend on Internet at the moment is on continuity products or membership sites in other words.
Now I don’t know, if you can benefit from these observations itself, but what I am sure, is that being aware of commonalities between different subjects in life can help you to understand bigger picture; how we act, why we act and when we act. Understanding these kind of things is always an advantage for marketer.
Some perspectives to Internet marketing business
Very few of us wants to go through all the education and learning involved with Internet affiliate marketing. Depending on how familiar you are with using computer and Internet, what is your experience with marketing in general, are you organized and business oriented by default, what are your writing skills and how motivated you are, how much capitals you have, and so on; it really can take from couple of weeks up to several month even years before you can start making profit with Internet marketing. In addition to hard work, there is always the “lucky” factor, that affects on how your start up is going to prosper.
Now many of us would like to shorten that curve. That’s why there is a lot of business opportunities available on Internet. You can buy business in a box, flip and buy websites, take courses, buy eBooks, DVD series, join to memberships sites, get private mentoring and so on. Someone who has started this business ten years ago, has a strong footprint because he can apparently focus on current business, not just learning and testing. Besides of that, most successful marketers has a giant email list of people from various niches. Most marketers are joined together to loan or rent their lists to each other.
We can clearly see, that market has become very competitive. Adsense and eBay tactics does not work anymore as they worked some years ago. Every day thousands of people promote new material on Internet, over 100000 domain names are sold every day. How on earth newcomers can tap in to the market?
I’d say, that there are no shortcuts. You need to make relationships, grow trust with other business holders, merchants and clients. You need to have knowledge about the market and products or services you are going to promote. Then you need intelligence enough to always create new marketing tactics. Even if you are an investor, you need to have knowledge, was it your or from third party. You need always to follow markets carefully. It’s not enough to have knowledge and skills, but you also need to be on the edge to see new trends. Something that worked yesterday does not mean that it works today and something that works today, does not mean it works tomorrow.
Keyword magic
I have yet started to understand the psychological aspect of marketing and advertising. Its all about keywords, which are used raise visions of desires, doubts, sometimes even fear. It can be really foxy if you go out and see, how they are meant to affect you. The keystone of any business is to attract certain people, move certain traffic and bring them to the certain funnel, where clients are ready to make action, was it a sale, a lead or just any response. On Internet making people respond is the only way to be in contact with them. Without response you never know what they want, what they really are after, where they are and so on. Often first contact is made by small ad, textual or image ad. It is truly a science itself how to make ads and track, how they work, but as well, when people have clicked the ad, all the keywords and phrases, that made them click the ad, should be present on next page, where they are directed. Page is called landing page. LP should continue the thought process that client had on mind, when he clicked the ad. LP should fill the expectation of lander and what we got here to fulfill it? More text, pictures, symbols, aural signals and video.
I’m not going too deep to this subject, but just to say, that from the first point to the last point of sale process we deal with keywords, which must trigger right handles on prospects mind.
Opportunities
Internet is full of opportunities, that is true, but it is only a small fraction of business starters that really make thru all the difficulties, sweat, blood and years to the success. In such global economical situation like we are now, many people spend their last pennies to get involved to any business, that either helps them to jump from debt or just make them financially free and independent. I have seen so many make money and get rich programs on Internet between this year, when I started to investigate Internet business opportunities, that I really had no changes to keep on count. First I was really careful and my first thought was always: Is this a scam? Soon I realized, that I could say everything that makes too good deals to be true, keep promising too much to be reasonable, i could say they are all scams and fraud business. But then I began to see thru difference between scam sites and real advertisers. Email and pyramid scams are mostly those, that are not delivering, what they promise, nothing at all actually! I wouldn’t say those sites scams, that delivers digital or physical products as they promised. I’d like to put a small amount of responsibility to the buyer, which makes a decision to buy something. If you are too busy to check backgrounds, contact vendor and think with your own brains, then you probably will have some bad experiences with business opportunities.
Practical tip
I know there are reasons, why background check is sometimes hard. Some marketers has filled the whole search engine result page with they own stuff. When you search for some product you’ll come up with reviews, blog comments, dozens of ads, some very controversial, but all together, they really are promoting the same product. Please see for example: “maverick money makers.”
One of my favorite method of checking if any product is worth of buying is to write “product name” PLUS “forum” or even better with some category of products I write “product name” PLUS “warrior forum” or “digital point.” With site: page: feature of Google you can make same. There you need to make your own research and separate good from bad. For example: “maverick money makers warriorforum.”
Of course business and people background checks are often necessary, but there is a lot of controversial around Internet based public records too. Some of the services seems to claim they are using government public records, but actually are not. Sites, that openly says they have no relationship to government, are more trusty, but cannot be sure even then. But so far I have done managed to save my skin with Warrior Forum, Digital Point Forum and US Search public records. So far so good.
Syksyn 2006 tilannekatsaus
Pitkän tauon jälkeen ajattelin taas kirjoitta jotain pientä, mitä projektille kuuluu. Kaivaukset ovat jatkuneet pitkälle alkuperäisen suunnitelman mukaan, vaikka painopiste onkin ollut Kuupyramidikukkulalla. Jäljellä on vielä 26 päivää ennenkuin kaivaukset peitetään talvea varten. Sitten alkaa tulosten analysointi ja seuraavan kevään suunnittelu. Olen kuullut, että säätiöllä on ollut rahoitusvaikeuksia eikä varmaan sekään helpoita seuraavan vuoden työtä, että edelleen vakuuttavat ja vedenpitävät todisteet pyramidien olemassaolosta puuttuvat.
Pyramiditeoria on saanut vain harvalta paikanpäällä käyneeltä tutkijalta tuen, useimmat ovat olleet sitä mieltä, että jotain merkittäviä rakennelmia kukkuloilta löytyy, ainakin geologisesti ajatellen monimuotoisuus on opiskelumielessä arvokasta tutkimusmaaperää. Osa kiistää vahvasti pyramidien olemassaolon. Paikalla käyneitä tutkijoita ovat mm. Barakat, Harding, Schoch, Dr. Aly
Tieteellinen kädenvääntö on ollut kovaa, mutta toisaalta antoisaa. Kritiikin kohteiksi ovat joutuneet mm. henkilöiden pätevyydet, Piramida Sunca säätiön yksipuolinen ja puolueellinen tiedottaminen, medianäkyvyys ja asioiden vääristely, tietysti löytöjen / aihetodisteiden tulkinta, säätiön riittämättömät tutkimusmenetelmät sekä Osmanagicin taustat.
Mielenkiintoisimmat löydöt ovat olleet aiemin mainittu rauniio sekä KP:n huipulta löydetty kaivomainen syvä kolo. Huomiotaherättäviä kivitasanteita on myös moneenlähtöön, mutta aukottomasti ei ole voitu vielä näyttää, että ne olisivat ihmisen aiheuttamia. Mm. Paul Heinrich on esittänyt paljon materiaalia ja aineistoa, joka näyttää, että luontokin voi symmetrisoida ja teksturoida erehdyttävän hienoja kivikuvioita.
Samaan aikaan Ukrainasta on kiirinyt myös uutisia pyramidilöydöistä. Valitettavasti näille ei vielä ole vahvistuksia löytynyt. Kannattaa muistaa, että nettiin eksyy helposti pelkkiä valeuutisia, joiden lähteitä ei pääse syvemmin tutkimaan… Tässä yhteydessä en voi olla myös mainitsematta syksyn kirjauutuudesta nimeltä Egypt Code (Robert Bauval), joka käsittelee Gizan pyramideja ja niihin liittyviä näköjään tyhjentymättömiä mysteerejä.
Näyttää siis siltä, että ennen talven tuloa epäilyksille on vielä kiitettävästi tilaa. Aiemmin pohdin sitä, että mitä jos pyramideja ei ole. Ainakin yksi bosnialainen diplomaatti on ottanut vastikään myös tuohon kantaa ja pitää juttua kaikille vaarattomana siinä missä jotkut maanmiehet ja tutkijat uskovat menettäneen maineensa Bosnian pyramidihuuman takia.
Keskiviikko, 4. Lokakuuta, 2006
Petruksen matka Visokoon 07/2006
Viikon Visokon reissu tuli sitten tehdyksi heinäkuun lomilla. Oletetulla pyramidilla käytiin, mutta käynti osui sunnuntaille ja meno kaivauspaikoilla oli hiljaista. Uumoiltu osallistuminen kaivaustöihin jäi siis tällä kertaa, osin myös siksi, että retki osui reissun kuumimmalle päivälle.
Pyramidiaiheisia teemoja näkyi runsaasti katukuvassa, Pyramid-pizzoista alkaen. Onneksi varsinaista turistihumua asian ympärillä oli minimaalisen vähän. Mahdollisille muille Visokon kävijöille tiedoksi, että Motel Piramidasuncan sivujen puhelintiedot ovat väärät, numero kuuluu ulkomaan numeropalvelun mukaan jollekin insinööritoimistolle. Aivan vieressä on kuitenkin pieni, ei ihan huippukuosissa oleva San Remo -motelli. Ystävällistä palvelua repsottavien pistorasioiden ja muine meille skandinaaveille vieraiden ratkaisujen kustannuksella. Mutta periaatteessa ihan jees, tingitty hinta viikolle 20 e/vrk, käytössä 3 hengen seurueella 2 huonetta. Tässä kontaktitiedot mahdollisille Visoko-vierailijoille: Motel San Remo 71300 Visoko, katu: Donja mahala 9, puh: 032 738 651 032 738 651.
Vaikka pyramidipuuhastelun osuus reissusta jäi vähäisemmäksi kuin alun perin luulin, matkasta jäi erinomainen maku. Visoko paikkana oli mitä mainioin! Upeita maisemia, pyramidivuoren juureen kutoutunut punatiilikattojen meri, välittömiä ja mukavia immeisiä – turisteja ei käytännössä ollenkaan (rantalomaahan toki siellä on vaikeaa viettääkin, kaupungin läpi kun virtaa vain matalahko joki). Hinnat (ehkä majoitusta lukuun ottamatta) halpoja, olutindeksillä mitattuna 1 pl. ravintolassa pöytään tuotuna 1 e.
Huolimatta siitä, että turisteja ei ollut, iltaisin pääkadulla oli paikallisia tungokseen asti. Osaksi varmaan myös siksi, että matkamme ajoittui päällekkäin Visokossa vietettävän vuotuisen Kulttuuri ja Urheilu -viikkojen kanssa – toisena iltana kansanmusiikkiorkestereita, seuraavana raskaansarjan nyrkkeilyottelu keskellä katua!
Pyramidia en tonkinut, mutta ensimmäisenä iltana törmäsin pääkadulla mieheen, joka myi ohikulkijoille erilaisia pähkinöitä – ja sieniä! Itse sieniin hurahtaneena jäin juttusille, ja saman tien sovimme seuraavan aamun sieniretkestä metsään – vaikka olin itselleni ja kanssamatkustajille vannottanut, ettei metsään sitten oteta askeltakaan miinavaaran vuoksi. Ko herra osoittautui sodassa haavoittuneeksi entiseksi poliisiksi, joten houkutuksen ja hänen asiantuntevien vannottelujen ja aiempien alueelle tehtyjen retkien ansiosta 4 tunnin sienireissu bosnialaismetsään tuli tehtyä. EN KUITENKAAN SUOSITTELE KENELLEKääN BOSNIAAN MAHDOLLISESTI MATKUSTAVALLE METSääN MENOA, KELTAISIN NAUHOIN ERISTETTYJä MIINA-ALUEITA NäKYI MUUTAMA. Jos joku tämän lukenut käväisee Visokossa, kertokaa sienikaverilta Suomesta terveisiä tälle katumyyjälle, Sejolle (löytyy pääkadun alusta, läheltä motelleja).
Vielä matkareitistä siltä varalta, jos joku sinne päin on menossa:
Lento löytyi kätevimmin Supersaver.fi:stä, Wienin kautta Sarajevoon. Sarajevossa lentokentältä kympin eurokyydillä bussiasemalle ja kuten Marko edellä on kertonut bussi laiturista 5 (Peron 5) vie Visokoon, huom. ”Peron5” –laitureita on kaksin kappalein, mutta asia selviää lippuluukulla. Matkan hinta 2.5 e ja kesto täysin ruuhkasta riippuen 30 – yli 60 min. Visokossa kaikki onkin sitten kävelyetäisyydellä, bussiasemalta motellille matkaa n. 200-300 m.
Motellin bookkaus suoran em. numeroon, ja vaikka vaatimattomasta englannista jää ehkä vaikutelma ”tokkopa tuo pelaa”, varaus ja kaikki muukin sujui lupausten mukaisesti. Valuuttana kalpaa eurot. Luulenpa, että tulee käytyä toistekin, pyramidilla tai ilman!
- petrus
Torstai, 11. Elokuuta, 2006
