Tag Archives: social media

How to use Twitter lists: organize and optimise

how to use twitter listsIf you’ve already been tweeting for some time, or even if you’re new to Twitter you’ve probably worked out that it’s an immensely powerful tool for finding up-to-date information from experts in almost any field, branding yourself or your company and keeping up with all the latest trends in the world of social media.

But while we’re all happy retweeting, mentioning, direct messaging or Follow Fridaying all our followers, we often forget to bother with twitter lists. If you’re anything like me, they have always been something that you know other people use, but something that you’ve never found the time to get to grips with properly. For a long time I thought they were for die hard Twitter fans, who simply wanted to keep all their followers and followees nicely and neatly grouped into different categories, you know, the sort of people who also iron their socks or fold their underwear.

Thankfully, though, after some deliberation and careful research, I’ve found that this is not the case, and that Twitter lists actually can be pretty useful, partly for the sake of neatness, but more importantly in order to position your Twitter profile better in the search engines.

What are Twitter lists?

According to Twitter’s very own dictionary, a Twitter list is:

“a curated group of Twitter users. When you click to view a list, you’ll see a stream of Tweets from only the users included in that group. You don’t need to follow another user to add them to a list; you can follow lists themselves without following the individual users in that list.”

So it’s a list of users grouped together by whatever criteria you choose. As a user we’re only allowed 20 lists, and in any list we’re allowed up to a maximum of 500 people.

How should you use them?

Granted, their use might seem obscure at first. It’s obvious that it benefits the people you add to groups, because you’re making them easy to find by anyone who visits your profile, how do they benefit you?

Well, one benefit of Twitter lists is that they allow you to see at a glance all tweets from people with a common interest. This can be handy if you want to look at tweets about a single topic, away from the hustle and bustle of your timeline. Lists are a way of curating content, so that you can quickly and easily check updates about any given topic. For example, you could have a list for SEO, a list for SEM, a list for travel bloggers, one for a particular event, or one for people who interact a lot…

You can also use them to help you with crisis management, to help you to suss out the haters. After all, lists don’t have to be public; you can create a private one where you put all users who have posted rude complaints about your company, or any other such social media trolls. Nobody likes having nasty things said about their company, so it’s always better to be as prepared as possible.

So how do they help you with SEO?

You most likely know that for your Twitter profile to get a good rank in the search engines you need to have a suitable profile picture, along with all the appropriate keywords in your profile description. But Twitter lists also contribute to the positioning of your site because they break users down into segmented groups, which further helps search engines to pick out the individual groups and interests that you’re targeting.

So this means that to make best use of your twitter lists it’s crucial to name them appropriately, choosing keywords that aren’t too competitive, but that are instead as specific as possible. If you want to make a list of SEO tweeters, for example, check the Google Keyword Tool for some lower competition keyword ideas. You’ll notice some simple alternatives come up, like “SEO Community”, or “SEO Questions”, both of which would be entirely appropriate names, and much more likely to bring you visits to your profile. More importantly, using a long-tail strategy like this, you won’t be competing against big, well-positioned pages for highly competitive keywords.

These techniques have helped me a lot to make use of and understand Twitter lists, which were a mystery to me for a long time. I’m guessing I wasn’t alone in not quite understanding their purpose, so hopefully this short guide will be useful to one or two of you at least :)

If you’ve found any other innovative use for them, let us know; we want to hear your ideas!

Image author: koalazymonkey

Engaging your online community: hard work but it pays off

Social Media MarketingCreating an online community for your brand was never meant to be easy. One look at your Twitter timeline shows you that there’s pretty much a community for everything, so finding a gap to squeeze yourself into can seem like an insurmountable task.

But behind every travel page, every healthy eating page, every tech blog page there’s a dedicated individual or team that spends a lot of time defining who makes up their community, working out what the members will be interested in and planning a strategy to maintain and expand it.

So how exactly do you go about defining your online community?

Well, the first thing you should do is research it. Search for keywords in Twitter that are associated with your brand and find out what people are saying. Find out their opinions, desires and pet hates and then develop a plan of content that will stimulate their conversation.

And whilst using content to stimulate conversation, actively seek out conversation leaders in your topic. These may be industry experts or popular bloggers about the topic. Finding and interacting with these influencers will make your job easier since rather than only having your own voice, your content will then be channelled by other respected voices to a brand new base of users.

But to make effective use of this strategy you really have to be on the ball. It’s no use posting links to old material, or publishing a blog post about a study that came out last month. The key influencers in your area will be unlikely to engage with old content and you’ll have joined the conversation too late. So you need to write and post up-to-date content and make sure that you find out about interesting new advances or research the moment it comes out.

Equally important to staying up-to-date is posting frequently. In fact, the chances are that if you post frequently you will naturally remain up-to-date, since you will immediately recognise material that you saw trending two weeks ago. But frequency really is key. Remember that you community is made up of real people, and just as in a circle of friends, unless you remain active in it and keep showing your face, joining in conversations and contributing to it, you will slowly be excluded, ignored or forgotten. And in the world of community management, the latter is not cool.

Finally, keep your community intrigued. Always surprise them, vary your content don’t lapse into routine. Variety and experimentation creates buzz, whereas routine tweeting or Facebook posting conveys stagnation. So try asking your community questions, run competitions, do surveys. And rather than just posting written content, try posting videos, podcasts or games. A community should be dynamic and interactive, not just a steady stream of mundane content.

So before beginning a social media campaign, have a brainstorming session. Work out who the people are that you’re going to target, find out what their interests are and create a list of different content forms that might engage them. Planning is the first thing you should do. But it’s also a task that will never end. You should also be continuously revising your plan, adapting it, improving it, focusing it and reworking it according to changes in your community, industry or in the platforms you’re active on.

Image author: eldh

Engagement is becoming an increasingly trendy buzzword, these days, along with gamification. If you’d like to know more, check out my gamification blog at gamifeye.com

Eight sure-fire ways to crack the Twitter code of conduct

marketing with twitterJust because Twitter is an online social network doesn’t mean that you still shouldn’t think of it as a genuine community.

After all, a community is exactly what it is, not at all dissimilar from a traditional society of the likes you signed up to in freshers’ week when you started university. Only Twitter is a little bigger, well ok, a lot bigger, and also a lot more open. But the point remains that being a community there is a code of conduct. And to really ‘get’ Twitter it’s important to treat it well. So here’s a little guide to get started

  1. Show appreciation: if someone gives you a retweet or recommends you to someone over twitter, tweet them back to say thank you. Here a little goes a long way and doing this could potentially spark a relationship that could produce a new client.
  2. Resist the urge to tweet unnecessarily. Sure, it’s nice to see your picture and name pop up on your news feed and think of it going out to every single one of your twitter disciples, but before every tweet try and put yourself in your followers’ shoes and ask yourself if you’d be interested. An example where such self-questioning is needed would be “I just opened the fridge and found out we’ve run out of milk #FML”.
  3. Use hashtags appropriately. Hashtags are a great tool for allowing users to find certain information, for instance if you’re following an event or a news story, it’s helpful to be able to access all tweets about it using a hashtag. But when they’re used unnecessarily all they do is clutter your tweet and they lose all their value.
  4. Watch what your language: avoid overly controversial content. Ie: don’t tweet that picture of you staggering back home from your work do or use expletives to express your conviction that Dave from across the road is an utter… Such content isn’t appreciated as a general rule, let alone the face that within seconds it could end up in the wrong hands.
  5. Don’t be overly personal. Now this may sound contradictory, since Twitter is a ‘social’ network. But remember that if you’re using it for business, your aim is to improve your relationship with your customers. And to achieve this it’s much more helpful to be fully human in your interaction, but not to post intimacies or details about your personal life.
  6. Write accurately: don’t make spelling mistakes and watch your grammar. If tweets lack refinement or style this is ultimately a reflection on the person who wrote them, or worse still, a reflection on the brand.
  7. Pay attention to your community. Know who they are, what they’re into, the sort of things they mention or retweet and refine your strategy so that your content is even more targeted.
  8. Be quick! If someone asks your questions on Twitter, respond as quickly as you can. At the end of the day, most of Twitter’s fame is based on its speed to respond to situations and events.

If we consistently make a concerted effort to take all of these points into account we’ll truly begin to build a positive presence on Twitter. But the key word here is consistent, because one slip up, one drunken tweet, one revelation of a sensitive personal detail or one failure to respond to a customer’s complaint can do sometimes irreparable damage to you Twitter campaign.

Goodbye Google Adwords, Hello Content Marketing! [Conference]

Last night I was lucky enough to go to the conference in Madrid called “Goodbye Google Adwords, Hello Content Marketing” which was organized by a well-known business school that specializes in digital innovation. It’s an eye-catching title and one sure to ruffle a few feathers, given that many people’s livelihood is practically based on search engine marketing.

So if it’s to be the new Google Adwords, what exactly is Content Marketing? What does it include? What are its aims? Well, that’s exactly what the speaker, Roman Garcia, went on to explain.

Content Marketing is primarily three things.

  1. Content Marketing is an art, the art of creating great and varied content that people are not only going to want to read, but also to share.
  2. Content Marketing is a skill, the skill of being able to distribute it through a wide variety of channels to different groups of people.
  3. Content Marketing is a science, the science of being able to measure the impact and success of your various campaigns using several highly specialized analytics tools.

What are the objectives of content marketing?
Well one aim of content marketing is to get recognized by the experts of your business area. This means producing quality and reputable content that the experts will consider worthy of a solid retweet or mention. Tied in with this idea is the importance of regularly publishing relevant content that will be valued by the audience and the experts that you target.
Another aim of content marketing is to maintain a relationship with your clients, as well as get new ones; this means responding to your existing customers’ tweets, being personal and going out of your way to make them feel valued, as well as providing relevant and useful information about your business. Hint: if the content you post is good enough, your existing clients will share it with their online communities, meaning that they’ll help you reach your new clients.

What is your website?

Here one thing is clear: your website isn’t just a website. It’s far more:

  • It’s a voice for your product
  • It’s a blog. For example, people might only visit it for the articles, not for the products.
  • It’s a social hub. Thanks to social media plugins your website is not a centre where people can join in discussions from a whole load of social networks. So don’t think you have just one audience. You most probably have several.

So how exactly do you create this killer content?


The first thing to consider here is that content will never be seen as great unless it is actually seen. So make it easy for people to find it by including H1 and H2 tags, metadata and links. Then focus on making it readable. Write in nice, clear paragraphs, use lists, have an introduction and a conclusion and use a font and colour scheme that’s easy on the eye. Lastly, make it shareable by including sharing buttons for all the main sharing platforms (Digg, Del.icio.us, Reddit, StumbleUpon, Twitter, Facebook…)

Now let’s think about what your content should be made up of:

As a guide you should have three main content areas. The largest should be focussed content. This means content that targets your community specifically and deals with the problems that your business seeks to solve. The second big area is competitive content, content that shows everyone exactly what it is that your company provides that the others don’t. Then you have niche content, the smallest of the areas, which deals with very specific issues applicable to cross sections of your community base. The pie chart to the right suggests the exact way these different areas should be distributed.

What will be the results if I follow all these rules?

Well your business will certainly gain recognition from other leaders in your sector, but more importantly it will gain recognition from your users and your clients, which will then inevitably translate into sales.

But to achieve these results it’s crucial that you constantly evaluate and improve your strategy. Here we’re not just talking about the occasional glance at Google Analytics, we’re talking about the numbers of pages visited, number of unique users, downloads of content from your site, page ranks, numbers of fans and followers on social networks, mentions and comments.

Follow all these steps and I assure you your visits will soar and your website will finally be on the stairway to internet heaven.

How to tweet: post 7 great tweets in 7 hours.

There are several reasons why you or your company might not yet have a successful Twitter strategy.

How to tweet

Many people simply don’t know how to tweet. Others are too afraid to tweet unless they do it wrong and say something that will damage their reputation. Then there’s the question of the character limit. How the hell are you meant to squash the entirety of your bulgingly awesome business into a measly 140 characters?

And these are perfectly natural anxieties, and tweeting well was never meant to be easy, but it’s something that, if mastered, can bring you the most bountiful of rewards.

So here’s a practical guide to help you tame this beast and produce 7 kick-ass tweets every day that deeply engage with your community. For best results try and post one roughly every hour. (This post is based on a working day of 9-5 with a one hour lunch break).

  1. Configure Google alerts so that you receive new and up-to-date information every day in your inbox. It’s pretty easy; all you have to do is pick your keywords and sign in using your Gmail account. Then from your daily update of content, choose an interesting article to tweet. Here a Chrome extension called bitly will be really useful as it essentially creates a tweet for you including the title of the article and a shortened link.
  2. Search out the key influencers in your area of business. Go through their tweets and when you find something useful and relevant, give them a retweet.
  3. Throw questions out there. Here you can ask key questions that will give you insights into what customers what from your business and into how it could be improved. To give the question weight you can always include a link to an interesting article in the tweet. Example: “I’ve just found a great way to create a video #CV online! Do you think they’re making the traditional CV obsolete? http://bit.ly/Iy69sN”
  4. Share local information on Twitter. As foursquare has proved, the local has a certain appeal over the global. People like to be able to associate with brands on a geographical level. So if there’s a trade fair, festival, charity event, film showing or concert in your area, let your community know about it, and then ask them if they enjoyed it.
  5. If you have a website or blog, post a tweet daily directing people to it. This works especially well if you’ve just released a new product, announced promotion or published a new article. Keep it subtle. Make people want to visit your site and don’t just hark on about how wonderful your products are.
  6. Get involved with your community. Reply to other people’s tweets, give them your opinion. If someone’s looking for a good place to eat Italian food in town, give them your recommendation, even if you’re butting in on a conversation between two people. After all, Twitter is essentially one big conversation.
  7. Tweet something of general interest. A random fact, a snippet of information, a joke, your latest instagram picture, or a bit of local news. For the truly random you could bookmark @WTFfacts. But at your own risk.

So there you have it, a healthy recipe for success, a one way ticket to becoming the Elvis of Twitter and rocking all of our newsfeeds. In all seriousness, it’s not that hard. The hardest thing is keeping up the effort and not becoming impatient when your follower count doesn’t rise by 100s each day, or when it seems your meticulously planned tweets are just vanishing into thin air. A sobering fact: today I saw a tweeter with 20,000 followers. And he had posted over 30,000 tweets to get there!

What’s your tried and tested Twitter tactic? Give us your thoughts below.

Photo author: Rosaura Ochoa