This is the first of three videos I’ll be publishing over the next week.

Please share and enjoy!

by mathieuthouvenin

During a recent CharityHowTo webinar about Twitter, folks wanted learn some tactics to increase their Twitter followers.

A simple tactic for newbies is to follow users that are already conversing about topics related to their cause. The theory is that if 50% of Twitter followers auto-follow in return, you would get 50 new followers simply by following 100 users.

Naturally folks were curious about automatically following people, so I told them about two applications that allow you to find new followers and automatically following them based on vetting criteria.

Do you hate me now?

Some of you will say that I’m completely evil for using any type of automation on Twitter, and that’s fine.

My belief is that technology is not inherently evil, and that it is possible to use even the much-hated auto-DM in ways that people actually like.

Again, auto-following will work as long as you understand that you are following real people that like to have real conversations. Keep them formost in your mind, and you’ll make good choices in how you use these tools.

How to auto-follow people on Twitter

Here are two tools that allow you to choose specific criteria for finding new friends on Twitter.

1. EasyTweets – Upside: Very easy to use, extremely intuitive UI. Downside: Criteria to find new users to follow is limited to keyword search and location.
   
2. SocialOomph – Upside: Very feature rich friend finder criteria (including number of followers, friend/following ratio, and number of status updates), Downside: Very difficult to use. UI can cause eyeball headaches or possible aneurysms
   

What are other ways to use automated search and vetting?

I had the opportunity to talk with Geoff Livingston of Zoetica about Twitter’s new nonprofit program and their fundraising partnership with TwitPay.

To learn more about this program, read the deets in Geoff’s Mashable post called “How Does Twitter’s New Social Good Initiative Stack Up?”

On Tuesday, Twitter announced the release of “Promoted Tweets” that will begin to appear at the top of Twitter.com search results. Other than it’s partnership with Google and a few other deals, this is a new way Twitter seeks to monotize the site.

Not like Google or Facebook ads

Promoted Tweets are organic content that Twitter promotes in their search engine results pages (SERPs). So according to Twitter, they are not Google Ads.

Twitter users will have a say

If users don’t reply to or reweet Promoted Tweets, they simply disappear from the ad server. This reliance on user feedback allows allows Twitter to meet the needs of advertisers (who want to display ads) and users (who seek value on Twitter). Jeremiah Owyang put together an excellent matrix on how various parties in Twitters ecosystem might react to Promoted Tweets (pay close attention to what he says about resonance in this post).

During the “first phase” of Promoted Tweets, users will see only one Promoted Tweet at the top of a SERP. Once Twitter gets a handle on how users feel about these promoted Tweets, they may include Promoted Tweets “in your timelines in a way that is useful to you.”

What does this mean for your nonprofit?

Who Owns The Web – Regardless of whether nonprofits care about Promoted Tweets or not, Twitter recognizes the users voice as a critical mix in the overall value proposition of Twitter. Advertizers can’t win if no one reads their ads.

In this same way, your nonprofit can’t win if donors don’t like you or your content. Your donors “own” Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. That’s where they live. When you visit, will they invite you to stay?

Organic and Paid Search Merge – On Facebook and Google, nonprofits can create ads without having to consider user preferences. If you have a credit card, and meet the minimum ad regulations, you’re good to go. Promoted Tweets will be different because only tweets that have resonance will be promoted. This means that nonprofits will need to focus more on creating real content on Twitter that users want to engage with.

How will Promoted Tweets impact your nonprofit?

This is day 20 of the 31 Day Challenge To Optimize Your Blog With Social Media. Yesterday we looked at 13 ways to get retweeted. Today you stop subscribing to my blog and take out a restraining order on my Twitter feed.

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If you can’t see this video, click here: Three Twitter Techniques I Shouldn’t Be Showing You

If you don’t want to miss out on the 31 Day Challenge To Optimize Your Blog With Social Media, please sign up here.

This is day 19 of the 31 Day Challenge To Optimize Your Blog With Social Media. Yesterday we spoke about why you don’t need tons of followers on Twitter. Today, we’ll talk about getting retweeted.

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First of all, what’s the big deal about getting retweeted? If you have a ton of followers who are engaged, and you’re happy, then why should you care if they retweet your junk?

If you’re using Twitter for business reasons, you should care. And here’s why:

1. Measure Engagement

Retweets are an indication of how engaged your followers are. If they aren’t retweeting any of your posts, chances are they don’t find them that interesting.

2. Follower Attrition

Some of the folks who are singing your praises now will be gone in six months. That’s because you can’t be all things to all people all the time (and you shouldn’t being trying to). People grow, they change and have different needs as time goes on. New people who follow you because of a retweet they saw will take their place. It’s not personal, it’s just business.

3. Measure Content

Getting retweeted is partially a function of good content. Or at least good headlines.

How To Get Retweeted

1. Be Relevant - A survey conducted by Dan Zarrella found that people share content because they thought it was relevant for someone they know. In other words, try and stay relevant to topics your followers want to hear about.
2. Write Pithy Headlines – On Twitter all we have is 140 characters. How would someone like Shel Silverstein tweet?
3. Include links – Dan also found that retweets tend to have more links. 56.69% of retweets contain a link versus 18.96% of normal tweets.
4. Add your own thoughts – One big limitation with Twitter’s retweets is that you can’t edit the tweet before retweeting. Tools like Seesmic and Tweetie give users a second option of “quoting” the tweet where you can edit it to your liking.
5. Break News – Be the first to share breaking news on a topic. Know beforehand what might be newsworthy before it trends by creating a Google or Tweetbeep alert.
6. Not About You - Dan also found that talking about the color of your underwear won’t get retweeted as much as talking about the color of Madonna’s underwear.
7. Nurture Community – People that create trust with their community tend to be retweeted more than those who lack any connection to their followers. Don’t forget the really simple mind map I showed you yesterday to frame community development.
8. DM a Retweet request – You can also send a private message asking for a retweet. This has to be used sparingly or you’ll quickly drain your social equity account. Also, make it easy and DM a link to the tweet you’d like retweeted.
9. Use your iPhone – The Retweet app lists the top retweets. Retweeting the valuable posts sparingly will increase your exposure to new users.
10. Embed Retweets – Put a “ClickToTweet” link in your email newsletters and particular blog pages. Read “How To Get More Email Subscribers With Embeded Retweets“ for more info.
11. Timing – Dan also found that 4:00PM is the when the most retweets happen. Especially on a Friday.
12. Say Please – Dan also found that saying please also increased the likelihood that someone would retweet your post.
13. Say Thank You – People like to be acknowledged when they retweet your post. Plus it’s just polite.

Homework:Retweet this post.

If you don’t want to miss out on the 31 Day Challenge To Optimize Your Blog With Social Media, please sign up here.

This is day 18 of the 31 Day Challenge To Optimize Your Blog With Social Media. We talked about using Facebook to promote your blog. Today, we’ll start talking about Twitter.

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Before we dive into Twitter, we need to get one thing straight: Size does not matter!

As I mentioned before, Someone who has 1,000 unengaged followers has the ability to reach 1,000 people – at best. But someone with 100 passionate followers, each with 100 of their own followers can reach 10,000 people – and probably more.

A social media strategy that only consists of mass following – and mass spamming – will not produce any real long-term value for anyone. The only exception to this rule is when Twitter is used as a broadcaster of discounts, promotions or customer support information. Beyond that, it’s about leveraging and nurturing strategic relationships.

That said, there are three types of followers everyone has:

1. Bots – Forget about these followers – they offer no value. Unfollow.
2. Friend- You know these people. They retweet your posts – consistently. They engage in regular conversations with you on a variety of topics.
3. Friends you haven’t met yet – These are possible future fans.

So great… You know the three types of followers. Big deal. Now what?

How To Achieve Your Social Media Marketing Goals On Twitter Without A Large Amount Of Followers

Before, we go any further, I need to be completely honest with you about something: I am not an expert on using Twitter for business. However, I am an expert on the strategies and tactics I’ve used to get real, living, breathing customers from using Twitter. In fact, about 40% of my business comes directly from Twitter.

I have two approaches that I manage simultaneously:

Nurture my existing friendbase

Again, I’m no Harvard MBA, but here’s what’s been working for me:

• I keep several private Twitter Lists of folks depending upon how “intimate” our business relationship is (you can use this method for donors and volunteers). For example, I have a list called “prospects” for people who have gone from casual conversations on Twitter to email conversations. I also have a list called “potential partners”, “partners” and one called “clients”. All these are private for obvious reasons.
• I wrack my brain to the edge of aneurysm thinking one thought: How can I help my friends achieve their goals? My personal belief that’s been tested and proven is this: People want to help someone who helps others succeed. I shared some of these tactics over at @Problogger’s TwiTip blog: “How To Be Useful On Twitter Without Going Crazy”.
• Once I enter into a business relationship with a friend, I record the details and deals in Highrise, by 37 signals (Non-profits should check out DonorTools). Highrise has Twitter integration too. For other friends that have gone beyond Tweets and DMs, I use excel and my iPhone contact app to keep in touch.

Expand my reach into the “friends I haven’t met yet”

• Again, People who automatically follow you do not count as interested followers. The easiest way to see who’s interested is by looking at folks who’ve replied to you. As I mentioned in my post on Twitter lists, this is one of the first places I go when looking to see who’s part of my friendbase.
• I have a Twitter list called “Testing” where I put folks who may share similar interests and goals.
• When I have the time, I focus on diverse conversations. I’ll look up trending hashtags on Twitter or scan through my home feed on Twitter to see if there are conversations I might be interested in. I’ve found that broadening out my conversation strategy has created a number of new opportunities (and clients) that I wouldn’t have found otherwise.

To help make sense of all this, I create a Super Simple Mind Map On How To Manage Twitter Relationships

Homework: Go through your replies on Twitter and create a few lists to manage these relationships better. Add a section to your marketing plan that outlines your strategy on managing your friendbase and future friends.

If you don’t want to miss out on the 31 Day Challenge To Optimize Your Blog With Social Media, please sign up here.

You’re using Twitter to connect with your community – and you’ve got that down. More and more people are retweeting your posts and recommending you to their followers.

You’re also using email marketing to build the community on your blog. And you’ve got that down too. You’ve even embeded your Twitter ID in your emails, so almost every Twitter user on your email list is following you.

But wouldn’t it be great if it was easier for folks on Twitter to promote and retweet your email list to their followers? What if, with one mouse click,  they could promote your email list on Twitter?

How To Get More Email Subscribers With Embeded Retweets

In this short video, I’ll cover a 4-step process:

1. Ask your email subscribers to tweet about your email list.
2. Create a custom URL for the landing page where Twitter folks can subscribe.
3. Create an embeded retweet using ClickToTweet.Com
4. Embed the retweet into the request mentioned above in step 1.

How else could you use embeded retweets?

During yesterday’s Philanthropy.com chat on using Twitter for building community, Tim Hite asked “This week Google will start searching Twitter for real-time search results. How will that impact the way nonprofits should use Twitter?”

For those who don’t know, the live search means when you now search Google, you’ll see scrolling updates from blogs, Twitter and FriendFeed published just seconds before.

This this will impact your non-profit in three ways:

1. Conversations happening on Twitter will get much more attention.
2. Search culture will come to expect real time results.
3. Stakeholders will expect your non-profit to be in conversations on relevant trending news topics.

Google’s Real Time Search And Your Non-Profit (video)

More on Google Live Search over at the Google blog.

What do you think?

Next Tuesday I’ll be leading an online session for Philanthopy.com about building communities on Twitter (follow @Philanthropy for details).

Communities do not just happen. And they certainly don’t happen over night. You have to have something important to talk about. And you have to be prepared to consistently connect people together over a period of months.

What the hash?!

But Twitter is a big mess isn’t it? With thousands of tweets going off every hour, about hundreds of different topics, how do you build a cohesive group of fans?

The answer is hashtags.

Most people know that hashtags are ways to filter out the noise around specific discussions, like tuning into specific radio frequencies on Twitter. But not everyone knows how to create successful chat sessions.

In this video, I outline the basics of managing a hashtag chat on Twitter:

• How to use TweetGrid.com (one tool among many valuable tools)
• How to create a hashtag
• How to avoid missing replies to you within a chat
• How to find and invite others to your chat
• The importance of a landing page for your chat

Kudos to @ShareStrength for their excellent example!

How have you used hashtags successfully?