I’m going to keep this post short and simple, here are 3 Twitter tips to help you get the most out of Twitter:

1. Keep your tweets less than 120 characters so they can be easily re-tweeted. This is one of my pet peeves, the inability to quickly retweet a great tweet. One of the ways your tweets can get sent around the Twitterverse is to have them re-tweeted by your followers. This is a great way for you to increase your following (& potential new clients), so keep your tweets under 120 characters!

2. Use your tweets to Education, not Sell. I would suggest for most businesses they should be using Twitter to educate their existing and potential clients, not directly selling to them with discounts, etc. I think you can certainly use Twitter to offer discounts and sell to your clients, but in this case make every 10th tweet an offer or special, or setup another Twitter account just to advertise sales (i.e. @JeffsBlueLightSpecials).

3. Use Twitter tools to manage your Twitter experience.  Important tweets can quickly get lost if you are using Twitter’s web client.  I use TweetDeck to keep an eye on all of my Twitter accounts (& groups of people I follow), this gives me a quick overview of what it going on. When I’m sending out Tweets, I typically use HootSuite and their Hootlet browser application. With HootSuite, I can schedule Tweets (which allows me to better schedule my time), and with Hootlet, I can quickly Tweet (sending it now or scheduling it) any website I think would be relevant for my followers.

I hope these 3 tips, give you a better Twitter experience. If you have any, please feel free to post them here!

Jeff Russell

Google still dominates the current search engine world with a 64.6% share of the US Search Engine market. Yahoo is in second place with just 16%, and Bing is moving on up at 10.7% (or a combined 26.7%) according to Nielsen Online’s most recent statistics.

Why should search engine results be top of mind? Because it’s big business! According to eMarketer, they believe search ad spending will be nearly one-half of total US online ad spending in 2009, with spending growth of more than 13% predicted for this year to reach $12 billion. Many businesses rely on PPC advertising for their lead generation, and get found through Google with a combination of organic search results listings and PPC ad campaign.  When is the last time you used your printed Yellow Pages?  Whether you sell refrigerator parts or custom t-shirts, you get found through Google.  We know there are two parts to the Google search engine page, one is the organic search results, the other are the paid results (aka AdWords PPC ads).  You can certainly pay your way to a high AdWords PPC location, but you still have to work with Google’s mysterious search engine algorithms in order to be found on the coveted first page.

Common sense would dictate that having a website that contains great content and gives a great user experience will help you get those elusive first page rankings, but this is often not the case.  The question becomes, do you design a website for a great user experience or search engine spiders? Arguably, if no one can find you in Google, then you just don’t exist, so the later is critical.

We’ve already seen a shift in this strategy by the way press releases are now written. A press release today needs to be written in a search engine friendly manner, with keywords leading the way, not creativity.  No longer do you use a peppy title that gets the readers attention, now you need to have a peppy title along with your keywords strategically placed in both the title and first paragraph.

The fact is that Google is always changing its algorithms on how is crawls the web to find and index content. I happen to think Google search results criteria currently has two fundamental flaws: (1) the results are not timely; and (2) Google appears to be placing less importance on quality than on the number of inbound links (often from low quality, poor content websites designed only to drive traffic to the main website).

First, lets discuss the relevance of Google search results.  I recently wanted to know how many cell phones are in the world, of course I went to Google and did a search, the first result was a Wikipedia definition of a cell phone (not what I was looking for), and the second result was dated 2002, over 7 years old! Well, we all know that 7 year old data on technology is really only good for showing anecdotal comparisons, it doesn’t do anything to help me find out how many cell phone have been sold in the most recent quarter.  Google’s other downfall is it will place a high importance on a blog, and because the out dated blog posting is on a popular blog it shows up on the first page (even though the blog entry is 7 years old!). For me this is almost a daily occurrence, and I’m now training myself to use Google’s advanced search options, but really, how many of your customers are sorting their search results by date through Google’s advanced search options? I bet pretty close to zero.

Secondly, every other “seo tips” posting for the last year has focused on the importance of link building. If I check my spam folder, I have many requests for irrelevant “link exchanges.” Now I’m beginning to see all that misguided hard work show up in organic Google search results.  The fact is good sites with great content shouldn’t need irrelevant inbound links, they should be able to rely on reputation and content, but Google has a disconnect on what the searching public wants (content).  Most people want relevant results, not the results of someone with poor content, but has manged to manipulate Google’s current search criteria to get higher rankings. For this reason, for the first time in years I no longer use only Google, but find myself switching between, Google, Bing and Twitter Search to find the most relevant results.

So if you have a great site, and you want to show up higher in Google’s rankings, you’re going to need to spend a large amount of time building links back to your website from irrelevant (low usage) websites. For example, I and a competitor both have a YouTube video, mine has over 600 views, his has 80, guess who is in the first page results? Not mine (which one would assume with a higher number of views has better content, which of course it does!). Nope, Google thinks the one with a network of irrelevant websites (with a sole purpose of generating inbound links to the companies primary website) are much more credible than having a few, high-reputation websites with content that is actually being viewed (hence the over 5 times number of views). Now we are scrambling to upload our video’s on Viddler, Vimeo, and other video oriented social media sites to get more inbound (albeit low value) links to our primary websites. Let’s face it, YouTube owns the video market, why would links from low usage sites like Viddler and Vimeo, impact organic SEO?

The fact is you still need to get the user to your page, and to do that you need to design with the Search Engine’s in mind (of course, you also need to meet the users needs by providing great content and user experience or you will not convert).

These are my thoughts of the current state of the SEO nation.

Jeff Russell

As part of my social media marketing strategy, I’m always on the look out for interesting people to follow on twitter. With the huge amount of new Twitter users coming on board every day, you really need to spend time on the look out for new people to follow.   The primary way I find people to follow is by reading tweets, and looking at the twitter accounts of people who have been retweeted by the people I follow.  This usually adds a dozen new people for me to follow each week.

However, every two weeks I’ll use some great Twitter Tools that help me find the content leaders of the subjects in which I am interested in.  This strategy is great for both new people looking for relevant people to follow, and those who are looking at expanding their current tweets.

Top 4 Twitter Tools to Find Followers:

1. Twitters own search (http://search.twitter.com) – Here you can put in any subject and it will find relevant tweets for that subject. Always a good place to start.
2. Twitters’ yellow pages is Twellow (http://www.twellow.com/). This is a great online tool to find subject matter experts and people. It is a combination of a search page as well as a directory that you can search by subject area.
3. I’ve been using the search function in Tweet Deck (http://tweetdeck.com/ ) a lot lately.  Since I use TweeetDeck daily to keep track of my incoming tweets, I’m happy their search option has evolved to a very nice tool.
4. A relatively new tool is TweepSearch (http://tweepsearch.com/)  which is great at searching through Twitter users bio’s and profiles.

I’m sure these Twitter tools will help you quickly expand your Twitter network!

For anyone using social media to connect with friends, coworkers, clients, or industry counterparts I’m sure you’re spending an increasing amount of time keeping up with all your accounts and alerts. It’s not uncommon for someone to have a Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube, Slideshare, MySpace, and Flickr account!

If you have a YouTube account, should you get a Vimeo and Viddler account? After all, we know that Google loves inbound links. So the fact is, if you are concerned about your site’s search engine rankings, you’re going to need to have multiple social media platform accounts linking back to your main site(s).  You just can’t stick with YouTube because it is by far the most popular, you’ll find you also need to publish your content on other video sharing websites as well.

Here is a listing of some Social Media tools that I use to manage the SocialSphere:

Cross social media platform communication: http://ping.fm/
This tool allows me to post a status update on Facebook (or any other account that is connected to ping.fm), and have it automatically sent to my LinkedIn, Twitter, MySpace, Flickr, Friendster, Yammer, IM accounts, etc…. accounts (whichever one’s I choose to link).

To follow the blogosphere to track and find the latest trends: http://blogpulse.com/
This Nielsen company website keeps track of what is being said in over 100 million blogs. This is a great place to find out what people are saying about your company, who is linking to your website, current trends, as well as conversation tracking.

Twitter Tools:

To make all the Tweets I receive manageable, I use:  http://tweetdeck.com/
I like TweetDecks colum view, it allows me to quickly see the tweets of the people I follow, and it allows me to create groups of the people I follow, so I can better segment them by topic. TweetDeck also allows me to post tweets to my Facebook and MySpace accounts.

To schedule and automate Tweets, I use:  http://hootsuite.com/
HootSuite allows me to efficiently: schedule tweets, link my existing RSS feeds and tweet them out, utilize Ping.fm tweet broadcasting, manage multiple twitter accounts, track tweet statistics, and allow for multiple editors so I can get a break!

I hope these tools help you get more out of your day!

Jeff Russell

You cannot pick up a newspaper, watch a tv show, read a magazine, or attend a conference without seeing “social media, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube” splattered everywhere.  With the current exponential growth of social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter, I think we can all agree that social media is here to stay. What was first considered primarily a non-business tool, has quickly turned traditional marketing upside down.  So what has changed?

I think one catalyst for the popularity of social media platforms is the current economy. Every business is looking for new ways to to communicate with the very frugal and cautious consumer.  The fact is all of the major social networking sites are free, and people are continuing to sign-up! More interestingly, the fastest growing demographic on Facebook and Twitter are people 35 and older, which is quite often the most desired age group for businesses. According to iStrategyLabs, Facebook’s 55+ demographic grew by 24.9% in August alone.

Where should I start?

1. First, you need to incorporate your social media strategy as part of your overall marketing strategy. Remember social media is only a communication tool, its not your actual strategy. You first need to have very clear goals for your company or association (i.e. I want to increase our client base by 25%, or add 1,000 new members by year-end).
2. Determine which social media marketing platforms will help you meet your goals. You are now going to need to have an understanding of the most common social media platforms, including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, MySpace. There are many more, but lets just focus on the fastest growing platforms, which would be Facebook and Twitter. If your main customers are other businesses, you will want to add LinkedIn. I should also mention that LinkedIn is a great tool for you to use to keep track of all your connections, so every business owner, consultant, etc.. should have a LinkedIn account.
3. Determine which other tools will support your social media platform choices. There are many tools out there that can help feed your Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn accounts with great content. If you have photo’s of your product or service in action, you should open a Flickr account, and populate it with your photo’s (you may also want to consider opening a Picasso account as well). If you have any video’s (or plan on making videos), you must open a YouTube account (you may also want to also open a Viddler & Vimeo). You should have a blog, I like WordPress, but Blogger is also another popular one. If you have presentations, get a Slideshare.net account.  The fact is people love multimedia, according to MediaWeek, rich media ads that featured video excelled in most branding categories, including awareness, brand favorability and purchase intent.
4. Set it up first! The first thing you need to do before doing a public launch is to spend sufficient time setting up each platform. This may sound like an quick task, but it’s actually very time consuming.  For each platform and tool you’re going to need to have a consistent user feel (theme), so they know this is the official company (or association) site. You’re going to want your logo in the same place, ensure the “about me” or “bio” sections are completed, along with web links to all of your sites.  By the time you are done, you will have a network of sites that are all linking to one another (this is great for SEO, since Google likes links!). You’ll also need to install and configure all of the platforms applications (i.e. if you are using Facebook and have YouTube video’s, you’ll need to add the Facebook app so they can be published on your Facebook fan page).

Platform Specific Tips:

Facebook: If you have a Twitter account, get the Facebook’s new Twitter app. For linking your YouTube videos try YouTube VideoBox or YouTube Box. If you have Slideshare.net presentations, you can use the Slideshare app. You can link your blogs RSS feeds with the Simply RSS app.

Twitter: I like Tweetdeck to keep an eye on all of my Twitter accounts, and it gives me the ability to segment my followers into groups. I use HootSuite for a variety of reason’s: it lets me schedule tweets, the Hootlet app lets me quickly tweet out webpages I visit, I can link by blogs RSS feeds and tweet them out, multiple people can manage my accounts (great for a business). You can also check out one of my earlier posts for more Twitter Tips.

LinkedIn: LinkedIn is behind in the apps game, you can find the limited number of apps they have available in their Apps section. If you have a Slideshare.net account, you can link it to LinkedIn. If you use Wordpress for your blog, you can link it here so people can see it on your LinkedIn home page. LinkedIn also allows you to link your Google Doc’s presentations.

Blogs: Wordpress has many plugin’s that you can use to easily link your tweets, YouTube Video’s, Slideshare presentations, and other multi-media content. In the Wordpress Plugin area, just search for the program to plug-in to your website.

Multi-Platform Tools: You’ll notice that Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn all have “status updates,” well there is a good tool called Ping.fm that will allow you to update all your status’ at once.

I hope you all have a much better understanding on which social media tools you should be incorporating in your marketing strategy!

Cheers,   Jeff Russell

Many times people who are new to Twitter tell me that they are confused about what Twitter is and how it can help them. First, Twitter is a microblogging platform that allows you to send out 140 character long messages (tweets). All the big stars from Oprah to Ashton Kutcher are using Twitter, so why would associations want to use Twitter? Here are 5 reasons:

1. Help members find you! By having a Twitter account with your name, you’re letting Google know you exist! Anytime your associations name on the web, you need to take that opportunity (create GoogleJuice as @JeffJarvis would say). Think about how your association can use Twitter find members or be know as your industries source of the latest information.

2. Helps you build your Brand – Here we see the likes of Dell, Starbucks, Comcast, JetBlue, and Whole Foods using twitter every day. Those are corporate brands, but what about your personal brand? What can you do to stand out! You are the brand, and its independent of your current employer, so make sure your tweets show your expertise which builds trust between you and your current & potential clients.

3. Education & Networking – Here is a great opportunity to learn and network with others in your industry and your association counterparts.  You will also find that most conferences have a special tweeter feed (i.e. #ASAE09). If you are attending as an attendee this is a great way to keep track with what is happening in all of the various conference sessions. If you are attending as an exhibitor, this will allow you follow the conference conversations, giving you inside information on what the “hot topics” are so you will be better prepared when they visit the exhibitor area.

4. Twitter is an additional client communication tool. Find and follow all the key players in your target industry (you can use www.Twellow.com to do this). Use Twitter to promote information from your associations e-newsletter, website, and/or blog. Show value by tweeting information that will help your members make more money and get the latest industry information (i.e. Read 5 ways to increase your revenues here.. or 3 Tips for holding successful open houses/staff meetings…)

5. Direct Marketing tool. I think associations can (and should) be using Twitter to promote their association & industry news (i.e. we use HootSuite to automatically tweet out the news that is published from our associations RSS feeds) and events.  Sending out membership promotions can be done,  but don’t make that the main reason you use Twitter. I think in this day and age associations need to give value first, and Twitter is great tool that can educate prospective members and show them the value you will bring to them.

How did I get started in Twitter?
1. I opened an account (www.Twitter.com).
2. Used Twitter’s search to find people I know (search.twitter.com).
3. Used Twellow.com to find people to follow in my target niche industry.
4. I Decided to open three accounts, one for my speaking and one in my niche (targeted to potential clients), and one for my Foodie alter ego.
5. Read Joel Comm’s (@joelcomm) book Twitter Power on better ways to use Twitter, and how to use it to make money!
6. I Quickly discovered I couldn’t keep up with all the tweeting going on started using TweetDeck to manage my incoming tweets.
7. Didn’t want to spend every minute of the day on Twitter and use Hootsuite to schedule my future Tweets and connect my RSS reader on my blog to automatically tweet out when I have a new blog entry. You can read my review of Hootsuite here: http://www.twitip.com/twitip-reader-review-hootsuite/

Summary
Since Twitter operates on PC’s, Mac’s and mobile phones anyone can get or send a tweet whenever they like. This will allow you make an offer or ask a question and get a response very quickly. It is one of the biggest differentiators over any other marketing modalities.

Ok, it looks like Twitter is the perfect tool, what is the downside? First, you have to remember you only have 140 characters to work with, so your message needs to be well thought out and concise. Sure Twitter is free, and most of the applications you’ll need to manage all those tweets and feeds only require donations. Regardless, it takes a large amount of time to go through the information, and send out tweets a few times a day. Luckily there are some tools that help. I like Tweetdeck as a platform to manage all of my tweets, and I use Hootsuite to schedule my tweets and automatically take my websites RSS feeds and convert them into tweets.

As you can see, Twitter can certainly be part of an associations marketing strategy. Good Luck!

You can follow our associations Twitter account here: http://www.twitter.com/IAPAM

Jeff Russell

Many times people who are new to Twitter tell me that they are confused about what Twitter is and how it can help them. First, Twitter is a microblogging platform that allows you to send out 140 character long messages (tweets).  All the big stars from Oprah to Ashton Kutcher are using Twitter, so why would anyone in sales want to use Twitter? Here are 5 reasons:

1. Help clients find you! By having a Twitter account with your name, you’re letting Google know you exist!  Anytime you can get your name on the web, you need to take that opportunity (create GoogleJuice as @JeffJarvis would say).  Recently, some real estate agents in the Phoenix area have found great success using Twitter (read the full article: http://www.azcentral.com/abgnews/articles/0716abg-re-twitter0716.html). Think about how you can use Twitter in your industry to find clients.

2. Helps you build your Brand – Here we see the likes of Dell, Starbucks, Comcast, JetBlue, and Whole Foods using twitter every day. Those are corporate brands, but what about your personal brand? What can you do to stand out! You are the brand, and its independent of your current employer, so make sure your tweets show your expertise which builds trust between you and your current & potential clients.

3. Education & Networking –  Here is a great opportunity to learn and network with others in your industry and experts in your field.  Many of your probably receive Jeffrey Gitomer’s ezine, you can also follow him on Twitter (@gitomer). You will also find that most conferences have a special tweeter feed. If you are attending as an attendee this is a great way to keep track with what is happening in all of the various conference sessions. If you are attending as an exhibitor, this will allow you follow the conference conversations, giving you inside information on what the “hot topics” are so you will be better prepared when they visit the exhibitor area.

4. Twitter is an additional client communication tool. Find and follow all the key players in your target industry (you can use www.Twellow.com to do this). Use Twitter to promote information from you e-newsletter, website, and/or blog. Show value by tweeting information that will help your clients make money (i.e. Read 5 ways to increase your revenues here…)

5. Direct Marketing tool.   I say use this one with caution, you can send out promotions and offers, but don’t make that the main reason you use Twitter. Make sure you give value first, maybe give an offer after every 5-10 tweets you do. You can also do a series of build up tweets, that end with an offer of a solution (i.e. download a free e-report, white paper, attend a free seminar or webinar, etc..).

How did I get started in Twitter?
1. I opened an account (www.Twitter.com).
2. Used Twitter’s search to find people I know (search.twitter.com).
3. Used Twellow.com to find people to follow in my target niche industry.
4. I Decided to open three accounts, one for my speaking and one in my niche (targeted to potential clients), and one for my Foodie alter ego.
5. Read Joel Comm’s (@joelcomm) book Twitter Power on better ways to use Twitter, and how to use it to make money!
6. I Quickly discovered I couldn’t keep up with all the tweeting going on started using TweetDeck to manage my incoming tweets.
7. Didn’t want to spend every minute of the day on Twitter and use Hootsuite to schedule my future Tweets and connect my RSS reader on my blog to automatically tweet out when I have a new blog entry.  You can read my review of Hootsuite here: http://www.twitip.com/twitip-reader-review-hootsuite/

Summary
Since Twitter operates on PC’s, Mac’s and mobile phones anyone can get or send a tweet whenever they like. This will allow you make an offer or ask a question and get a response very quickly. It is one of the biggest differentiators over any other marketing modalities.

Ok, it looks like Twitter is the perfect tool, what is the downside?  First, you have to remember you only have 140 characters to work with, so your message needs to be well thought out and concise. Sure Twitter is free, and most of the applications you’ll need to manage all those tweets and feeds only require donations. Regardless, it takes a large amount of time to go through the information, and send out tweets a few times a day.  Luckily there are some tools that help.  I like Tweetdeck as a platform to manage all of my tweets, and I use Hootsuite to schedule my tweets and automatically take my websites RSS feeds and convert them into tweets.  As Tim Ferriss (@tferriss) says in the 4 Hour Work Week, “automate whenever you can!”.

As you can see, Twitter can certainly be part of a sales person’s personal marketing strategy. Good Luck!

Jeff Russell

If you don’t embrace social media and the marketing potential that exists, you are going to be left in the “old economy,” I truly believe in only 5 years you are going to see a shift in the landscape of the Fortune 500. So many of the old dinosaurs just aren’t meeting our needs any more.  Think about it, you need to treat all of your customers like gold, all the time, if you don’t they’ll blog and tweet their experience to their network of followers. The bar is so much higher today!  When I want to go out for for Mexican or Indian food, where do I go? The Yellow Pages? newspaper? monthly community magazine? No, I go to Yelp or UrbanSpoon.  And that is the change many companies just don’t get!  I’ve actually Googled a local restaurant and they didn’t even have a webpage! So the only comments I saw about the restaurant were on Yelp, and they weren’t positive!  Did I go? Absolutely not!  As large and small businesses, how are you being viewed?  You can control your YellowPages ad, but you can’t control your online reputation (without forethought and an internet marketing strategy).

I just read Engagementdb’s “The world’s most valuable brands Who’s most engaged?” report (you can download it for free here), and it was very insightful. LinkedIn and Harris Interactive should probably read that report.

Here are some of the Key Takeaways I think are important:  The report says there is a direct correlation between companies that are deeply engaged and those those who outperform their peers.  They go on to say that companeis that are both deeply and widely engaged in social media surpass their peers in terms of both revenue and profit performance.  In fact, they are showing sustained revenue and margin growth in spite of the current economy.  The report continues with some best practices from Starbucks, Dell, Toyota, and SAP.

How can you engage your customers with Social Media? Get a blog, Facebook page and Twitter account and start engaging them!  Answer their questions, comment on their blog responses; by keeping the dialogue open, you will earn their trust and respect.

Jeff Russell

Interesting poll results came out today from Harris Interactive which was sponsored by LinkedIn saying “Advertisers Much More Likely Than Consumers to Believe in Power of Twitter, Though very few advertisers and consumers say it is a very effective tool for promoting products and ideas.” Hmm, interesting a poll from LinkedIn saying Twitter is ineffective for promoting products and ideas! I guess someone should tell Starbucks that breaking news.  Since their “Free Pastry Day” promotion on July 21 dominated the Tweets and caused lineups at Starbucks around the country.  I really can’t think of a worse time for Harris/LinkedIn to say that Twitter is not very effective at promoting products and ideas when Starbucks just successfully did both: the product was pastries. and the idea was to promote the healthier pastry options available at Starbucks (which honestly I never thought of).

Now I do have to agree that Twitter is in its infancy, but now is when we are going to find out who the most creative people and ad agencies are.  Think about it, anyone who can create a successful advertising campaign with only being able to utilize 140 characters is a genius. These skills should  be taught in marketing classes around the world, not how to create a standard news release and distribute it via fax and email.

We already know there is a place for Twitter in advertising and marketing, just read Joel Comm’s book Twitter Power. How to Dominate Your Market One Tweet at a Time, One thing Joel says is “Your Twitter timeline is not a sales page.” If you use Twitter only to sell, you will be quickly un-followed, and your advertising campaign will become a bust.  For small businesses, the key is to tweet relevant information that will help your followers (advice, tips, retweet other good tweets), remember it’s always better to give rather than receive!  Once your followers trust you, you can send them the occasional offer.

You can download the Press Release of the Harris/LinkedIn Poll here: http://www.harrisinteractive.com/harris_poll/pubs/Harris_Poll_2009_07_23.pdf

I actually can’t believe they pdf’d the release, you would think a company in the marketing of information would understand the importance of having its content searchable (who hasn’t heard of SEO!?!) and being easily tagged with Digg, StumbleUpon, Technorati, Twitter by its readers.  This is so “old school” PR!

Jeff Russell

I’m having blast at the 2009 National Speakers Association conference in Phoenix, and I wanted to do a quick brain dump and created this “5 Reasons for Speakers to Use Twitter” quick guide (along with how I did it).

Why would you want to even start using Twitter?  Here are 5 reasons:

1. Help clients find you! By having a Twitter account with your name, you’re letting Google know you exist!  Anytime you can get your name on the web, you need to take that opportunity (create GoogleJuice as Jeff Jarvis would say). If you don’t have a Twitter account, go an open one now!  You may also want to get a Twitter account in the name of any books you have written, like speaker Keith Ferrazzi (@keithferrazzi) did for his book “Who’s Got your Back” (@whosgotyourback). If you have a common name (like mine), you may need to try for a Twitter account in the name of JaneSmithSpeaks or JaneSmithSpeaker (try and match your websites name, just to keep it consistent).

2. Helps you build your Brand – Here we see the likes of Dell, Starbucks, Comcast, JetBlue, and Whole Foods using twitter every day. Fairmont Hotels created quite a buzz when they were offering a twitter contest for a 3 free nights at any of their hotels, anywhere in the world! What can you do to stand out?

3. Education & Networking –  Here is a great opportunity to learn and network with fellow speakers and experts in your field. If you are in the social media marketing field like I am, you will find a jackpot of information.  There are some great tweeters out there like: @TrendTracker, @GuyKawasaki, @chrisbrogan, @mashable, @TechCrunch and @problogger. You will also find that most conferences have a special tweeter feed (i.e. #NSA09)

4. Twitter is an additional client communication tool. Find and follow all the key players in your target industry (you can use www.Twellow.com to do this). Use Twitter to promote information from you e-newsletter, website, and/or blog. Show value by tweeting information that will help you clients make money (i.e. Read 5 ways to increase your associations revenue here…)

5. Direct Marketing tool.   I say use this one with caution, you can send out promotions and offers, but don’t make that the main reason you use Twitter. Make sure you give value first, maybe give an offer after every 5-10 tweets you do. You can also do a series of build up tweets, that end with an offer of a solution (i.e. buy your book, download a free e-book, get this cd, etc..).

How did I get started in Twitter?

1. I opened an account.

2. Used Twitter’s search to find people I know (search.twitter.com).

3. Used Twellow.com to find people to follow in my target niche industry.

4. Decided to open three accounts, one for my speaking and one in my niche (targeted to potential clients), and one for my Foodie alterego.

5. Read Joel Comm’s (@joelcomm) book Twitter Power on better ways to use Twitter, and how to use it to make money! (I see Joel will be speaking at the conference on Tuesday @ 2:15)

6. Quickly discovered I couldn’t keep up with all the tweeting going on started using TweetDeck to manage my incoming tweets.

7. Didn’t want to spend every minute of the day on Twitter and use Hootsuite to schedule my future Tweets and connect my RSS reader on my blog to automatically tweet out when I have a new blog entry.  You can read my review of Hootsuite here: http://www.twitip.com/twitip-reader-review-hootsuite/

Summary

Since Twitter operates on PC’s, Mac’s and mobile phones anyone can get or send a tweet whenever they like. This will allow you make an offer or ask a question and get a response very quickly. It is one of the biggest differentiators over any other marketing modalities.

Ok, it looks like Twitter is the perfect tool, what is the downside?  First, you have to remember you only have 140 characters to work with, so your message needs to be well thought out and concise. Sure Twitter is free, and most of the applications you’ll need to manage all those tweets and feeds only require donations. Regardless, it takes a large amount of time to go through the information, and send out tweets a few times a day.  Luckily there are some tools that help.  I like Tweetdeck as a platform to manage all of my tweets, and I use Hootsuite to schedule my tweets and automatically take my websites RSS feeds and convert them into tweets.  As Tim Ferriss (tferriss) says in the 4 Hour Work Week, “automate whenever you can!”.

As you can see, Twitter can certainly be part of a speaker’s new media marketing strategy. Good Luck!

Jeff Russell