The Twitter bandwagon continues adding 300,000 new users per day, making the trendy microblogging service a hot commodity in the web world. CEO Ev Williams revealed that the company now boasts an impressive 145 million registered users, up from 105 million just four months ago.

Williams also revealed another interesting numbers tidbit in that sixteen percent of new users join the site via a mobile device rather than the the web. Mobile apps and the recent debut of Twitter for iPad could also help rope in new members accessing the site on the go.

@AndrewHazen

In case you haven’t seen it yet, Digg 4.0 is now live. It’s a LOT different than the original layout and takes some getting used to.  Unlike the original layout, the homepage defaults to stories submitted / Dugg by users you are following, not the top Digg articles. I am curious to see how this has an overall effect on user submissions. We’ll be testing and reporting our findings.

In an attempt to rival the rapidly growing FourSquare, Facebook has launched a new feature called “places” that allows you to check in via your Facebook iphone app or through touch.facebook.com on your browser and share where you are with your Facebook friends. As of now, there are too many limitations for it to rival FourSquare, but Facebook will undoubtedly continue to update Places making it likely to surpass FourSquare in its popularity given Facebook’s 500,000,000+ total users. Below are some key points about the new feature (both good and bad).

• The mobile app is only good for iPhones. Everyone else must check in on a browser. This is a huge turnoff for blackberry and droid users.
• Not all locations are supported through Facebook Places. Where I’m sitting, right now, I am unable to check in on Facebook, but can on FourSquare.
• I can easily tag friends from Facebook when I check in.
• Instead of texting or calling, I can help a Facebook friend easily find my location through Places.  Considering most of my friends are also my Facebook friends, this is a plus.
• Facebook Places has the same limitation with FourSquare where I don’t have to be in the place in order to check in.
• Like FourSquare, you can see other Facebook users who checked into the location you are in. If you think this feature is “creepy” on FourSquare, you will feel the same about Facebook Places.
• There are no “mayor” incentives like there are with FourSquare. This is a huge advantage that FourSquare has over Facebook Places as of right now. I like FourSquare because I know that if I become the mayor (the person with the most check ins at one location) I have the ability to receive discounts from that location. Facebook is not doing anything like this yet, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see businesses rewarding users who check into their location.

Right now I’ll likely use both just to see how Facebook Places progresses. I have a feeling this addition to Facebook will only help FourSquare’s growth as Facebook users starts to discover its existence and the “better” features that accompany the program.   This won’t stop Facebook Places from surpassing FourSquare’s total users given the already 500 million + users Facebook already has.

Every conference I’ve attended over the past year related to Social Media discusses either Twitter, Facebook, blogging, YouTube, FourSquare, mobile, LinkedIn, or a combination of some.  There’s no arguing that these all play an integral role in any Social Media campaign. However, I am surprised by how often Social Bookmarking never makes it’s way into a discussion.  Sites like Digg, Reddit, and StumbleUpon can refer over 100,000 unique visitors to your website in a 24 hour period.  If you have a content-fueled website, Social Bookmarking should represent a decent amount of your Social Media marketing efforts.

What’s important to note, however, is that achieving success on these websites isn’t as simple as submitting content to Digg.  You could create the best piece of content in the world, but chances are if you sign up for Digg and submit it to the website it will not go anywhere.  To really achieve success on Digg, Reddit, and other Social Bookmarking websites you have to work hard at it..EVERY DAY.  It might sound overwhelming, and it can be at times, but if you work your way up to a power user the benefits are well worth the effort.

In fact, we launched a content website last month that received over 15,000 unique visitors in its first week because of Social Bookmarking alone.  Essentially, we were able to take a website that nobody had ever heard of and drive over 15,000 people to it during its first week because of sites like Digg, Reddit, etc.  Some people would pay thousands for that type of exposure.

While Prime Visibility is actively involved in most Social Bookmarking websites, two of the main ones we regularly participate on is Reddit and Digg. Listed below is some advice on how to work your way up to “power user” status on Digg and Reddit and ultimately drive traffic to your website.

Digg

• Submit other content besides your own.  If the Digg community notices that day in and day out you are submitting content from the same website they will associate you as a spammer and you will lose all credibility. Even worse, Digg can ban your site permanently from ever being submitted by anyone on the site.
• Include a relevant, but enticing title and description. Make users want to click on your link, but do not mislead them into doing so. Remember to also submit your content to the appropriate category.
• Identify power users within your respective category. Does your website mostly discuss business-related content?  View content submitted to this Digg category and locate the users who are frequently getting their content to the front page of Digg.
• Interact with the power users you identified earlier. Digg their stories, comment on their submissions,  and Digg their comments.  Most will reciprocate the favor if they see you doing this frequently.
• Treat Digg like a community NOT a marketing website.  Work on building relationships on Digg by interacting with power users and other users regularly.  Try and have as many two-way discussions as possible.  As with most other Social Media marketing strategies, to achieve success you need to work on building relationships. This is one of the most important parts of being a successful Digg user.
• Friend relevant users.  Don’t go “friend crazy” and start friending random Digg users. Add users as friends who have been digging and commenting on your submissions and are also power users you are trying to target.  Additionally, when a user becomes a “fan” of yours on Digg, you should friend them back.
• Participate on Digg daily.  Look at the top 100 users on Digg and you’ll see that they are on the site daily.  Participating once a week (or even less) will have very little impact.

Reddit

• Work on your comment karma more than your link karma. There are two types of karma on Reddit, “link karma”, and “comment karma”.  When somebody upvotes your comment or submission it will increase your karma and will decrease karma with a downvote.  A high comment karma shows Reddit users that you treat the website like a community, not a marketing portal. This is essential in establishing your credibility.
• Make your comment meaningful. Don’t comment for the sake of commenting.  Read the submission before you comment and make sure what you have to say relates to the story. Writing something bland and generic like “good story” will only decrease your comment karma. Reddit is a very opinionated community so don’t be afraid to be upfront and honest with your comment.
• Submit other content besides your own. This might be even more important on Reddit than it is on Digg. As a general rule, you should mix your submissions between 20% self-promotional and 80% other content (if not less on the self-promotional side).
• Participate regularly. The “power user” effect isn’t nearly as much on Reddit as it is on Digg, but it still is important to regularly participate in order to establish your credibility.
• Submit to the appropriate “Reddit”. On Reddit, categories are called “Reddits”.  Any user can create a “Reddit” which means that you can submit content to thousands of different categories.  It takes a little while to get used to with where you should submit your content, but always make sure you choose a Reddit with at least a few thousand subscribers.
• Comment on new submissions. By the time a submission reaches the front page of Reddit, there are usually hundreds (if not thousands) of comments already. If you just focus on commenting on the front page, your comment will get lost in the clutter. By focusing on new Reddit submissions (located here: http://www.reddit.com/new) you will be one of the first people to comment on a submission. If that submission reaches the front page, it can significantly help with your comment karma.

With any Social Bookmarking website, your account should reflect YOU, the individual, not the company. Communities like to participate with a human, which means your profile should reflect who you are.  Also, it is highly recommended that you carefully observe the conversations / submission on Digg, Reddit, and other Social Bookmarking websites before you jump in.  It will allow you to better understand these communities.

I attended a great conference yesterday hosted by BDI that featured case studies from various businesses using Social Media.  This was my fourth BDI conference, and recommend that anyone who has an interest in Social Media attend future ones.  My only issue with the conference was the overkill of “Social Media and ROI”.  A typical conversation between two people pertaining to this went something like this:

Person 1: “You need to justify Social Media by showing ROI”

Person 2: “Ok, but how do you do that?”

Person 1: “I don’t know, but it’s important”

Remember when direct mailing, television, and radio were the dominant marketing methods? Businesses would typically utilize these media to increase brand awareness and ultimately increase sales.  How was ROI tracked for these businesses? Granted a lot of companies used coupon codes or different phone numbers to track campaigns, but were these effective in seeing full ROI?  Businesses in the past were willing to spend $100,000 on a few television spots without having a clue on what the outcome was.  Sure they might have seen an increase in sales and/or call volume, but could have it been from word of mouth or another marketing effort?

What has changed then? The Google Effect.  Google Analytics brought online revenue tracking into the mainstream.  If you installed E-Commerce tracking and a couple of snippets of code, you can effectively see where each of your sales came from online.  This proved extremely effective in analyzing ROI for your SEO and paid search campaigns.  Back when print and television advertising was in its prime, it was impossible to measure ROI like this so advertisers weren’t held accountable for it nearly as much.

Social Media (at least the  phrase anyway) came after SEO and paid search. When Social Media started to blow up in its popularity, marketers were already used to being able to measure ROI for their SEM campaigns.  Because this was possible, it had to be as well for Social Media right? Companies have been trying to show the ROI of Social Media through programs, formulas, custom coupon codes, tracking codes; even by assigning dollar values to Facebook fans and Twitter followers.  Nobody has been successful in fully tracking Social Media’s ROI.  Why? Because it’s impossible. Assuming that you can fully track Social Media’s ROI is like assuming that when you tweet a link to your company’s website that everybody who discovers your website through Twitter will always click on that link when they purchase a product from you.

I’ve listed below a couple of benefits of Social Media that cannot be tracked in terms of ROI. It’s impossible, yet there is no arguing that these are all important parts of any Social Media campaign.

• Resolving Consumer Complaints: Twitter, Facebook, forums, blogs, and countless other Social Media sites make it easy for unsatisfied customers to voice their complaints.  Since these complaints are public, businesses benefit the most from responding to these complaints publicly as well. When a company is successful in satisfying the complainer, it not only helps with their brand image, but might turn that “I’m never buying from you again” consumer to a repeat customer.   Unless you command that person to give you a heads up every time they buy from you again (which is just awkward), you cannot track the ROI of resolving consumer complaints.  Yet there is no arguing that these is a crucial part in any Social Media campaign. Ignoring these individuals is almost a guarantee that they’ll never buy from you again.

• Buying Behavior: Say, for example, that you discovered the clothing store “American Eagle” because you saw a Facebook contest they were launching.  Imagine that after you researched their website you end up becoming a frequent customer of theirs.  Every purchase (online anyway) that comes from you should show in e-commerce tracking as from Facebook right? Well, it doesn’t.   It wouldn’t make sense for you to click on their Facebook link every time you went to purchase product from them. Chances are you either typed in the direct URL or searched for the company name on Google, Bing, or Yahoo.  Facebook doesn’t receive credit for all of these sales even though they were responsible for turning you into a regular customer. The same goes for some first time purchases as well. People, by nature, will research more than one company to find the best price / value for whatever type of product they are looking for.  They might discover your website through Social Media and decide to buy from you after doing additional research, but the purchase might come from typing in the URL directly upon their second visit to your website.  Again, Social Media is responsible for the purchase, but will not receive credit for it (according to e-commerce tracking anyway).

• Brand Image: Social Media can be an effective strategy in shifting the image of your brand.  How you communicate as a brand on Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, forums, etc. will reflect how consumers view perceive your brand (especially if you are reaching individuals on a wide scale).  If you effectively shift people’s perceptions of your brand to reflect that of the company’s goals, it is a definitely Social Media success, albeit one that is not trackable from an ROI standpoint. Remember when Jet Blue had that fiasco in February 0f 2007 at JFK airport when they kept people on planes for hours without taking off anywhere due to weather conditions? People went from associating Jet Blue with being a “cool airline” to one that didn’t know what they were doing by that one incident alone. Thousands of people swore they would never fly Jet Blue again because they apparently didn’t care about their customers. JetBlue used Social Media to create videos, blogs, tweets, etc. to illustrate why the incident occurred, why it won’t happen again, and why you should still remain a customer of theirs. It was effective in counteracting these negative associations with JetBlue’s brand, but if you were to ask JetBlue what the ROI was of this Social Media campaign they would not be able to tell you. However, they would say with 100% certainty that Social Media was crucial in shifting their brand image and keeping (and generating) customers.

These are only three examples, but it clearly shows that holding  a Social Media campaign accountable by its ROI performance doesn’t make much sense.   However, it’s important to show the value that your Social Media efforts have produced.  Value is a must for any marketing campaign even if it’s not ROI-based.  Below I’ve listed some metrics that could help guide you on assessing whether your Social Media campaign has been effective.

Branded Search Volume: Google has a tool online that allows you to measure monthly search volume for any keyword phrase.  An increase in search volume represents an increase in brand awareness.  If this is seeing a regular increase then you can fairly assess that your marketing efforts (Social Media and additional strategies) have been effective in building your brand.

Engagement Levels: I can buy a 100,000 Twitter followers and Facebook likes in a short period of time if I wanted to. I compare the value in this to buying traffic to a website using programs like Monster Pops that produce a 99.9999% bounce rate.  Twitter followers and Facebook likes are important to measure if you are growing your accounts by natural methods, but to truly see the value of these networks you need to look at engagement levels. Engagement refers to any interaction that takes places through your Social Media channels. This could be a retweet, reply, like, comment, etc.  If this metric continues to increase, it shows that people are becoming increasingly engaged with your brand which is extremely valuable from a branding perspective.  When analyzing this metric, it is important to weed out any spam comments or messages as they skew numbers.

Total Website Traffic: Analyzing traffic from Twitter, Facebook, etc. is useful, but doesn’t paint the full picture. Similar to the “buying behavior” bullet point I mentioned earlier, someone might discover a website through Social Media but will likely visit the website in the future via search or directly typing in the URL.  Because of this, site traffic should be analyzed as a whole instead of solely by referring traffic. However, if you are launching a blog it is important to analyze your blog traffic separately each month.

Value Added Benefits: These are benefits from Social Media that you simply can’t put into numbers. Was there a lot of negative complaints online that you resolved successfully through Social Media? Did somebody who is an influencer in the space positively mention your brand? Did you successful get your product listed on a bunch of blog posts via blog outreach? If Social Media has been providing noticeable value in these areas (and in others) it’s difficult to argue the benefit of it.

Impressions: Analyze impressions for all of your video and image content to see how many eyeballs you’ve successfully reached. These numbers will not be reflected in your analytics stats so it is imperative to keep track of these numbers regularly.

Again, as with any marketing campaign, you need to justify its worth, but when it comes to Social Media judging it by ROI will ultimately set you up for failure.

Many “Twitter Experts” have different theories when it comes to following people on Twitter. You have users like Guy Kawasaki who go by the “let’s follow everyone who follows me” rule and then you have other users like Conan O’Brien who followed nobody until he started following a random person (and subsequently changed her life).  There is no arguing that both of these individuals have seen great success on Twitter, but have both incorporated a different mindset when it came to following other users.  The question of which one is right and which one is wrong is difficult to answer since both have a substantial following base.  Granted, they were both well known before Twitter which makes it a lot easier for them  to gain  a high number of followers.  Either way, the question of “how should I go about following other users” doesn’t have a right or wrong answer as different strategies work for different people.  The messages being tweeted out and how you use Twitter to communicate with others is what truly determines your overall success.  That being said, I still follow some personal guidelines when it comes to following other users which I’m sharing below.  This doesn’t necessarily mean that following these guidelines will vastly improve your success on Twitter, but I’ve found this process to work for me the best.

1. Frequent Spammers Never Get Followed – If you want to send me an automated DM that promotes your business, fine.  If you send me ten of them, not fine.  If an account is flooding my Twitter stream with self-promotional garbage or my Direct Messages with the same type of content, they will be unfollowed, blocked, and reported for spam.   They are not contributing anything worthwhile and I could honestly care less whether or not they follow me back.  Plus, there tweets could potentially prevent me from seeing a worthwhile tweet.

2. Interesting Tweets = Follow: Might sound obvious, but if I find an account’s tweets interesting, I will follow that person.  Some users will avoid following these types of accounts if it doesn’t guarantee a follow back.  This kind of mindset misses the point of Twitter altogether. Twitter isn’t about growing followers, it’s about communicating, learning, and in some cases entertaining yourself.

3. Users Who Follow Me First (Varies from User to User): I follow users who follow me first generally 50% of the time.  If someone is following me because they seem like they are generally interested in what I have to tweet about, aren’t a spammer,  and are communicating (not just self promoting) I will almost always follow that person back.  If, however, their motives seem entirely selfish and have a tweet stream flooded with spam, I will usually not follow back.

4. Friends, Family, and “Real Life” Connections: Just like Facebook and LinkedIn, Twitter can be an effective tool to connect with people you already know or have recently met.  If you met somebody at a networking event, I recommend finding them on Twitter, following them, and then sending them a quick hello.  In my opinion, this is the most effective (and simplest) way to grow your total number of quality followers.

5. Industry Experts: This can fall under guideline 2 (interesting tweets), but I follow a select few individuals I few as “industry experts” pertaining to Internet Marketing (especially Social Media and SEO).  This approach has helped to keep me abreast of the latest news and information pertaining to my industry and has proven Twitter’s value as an educational tool. What works even better is categorizing these users via Twitter lists or custom lists on TweetDeck.

6. Brand Ambassadors: If a user tweets positively about a business whose Twitter account I’m managing, I will not only reach out to that user, but will follow them as well.   This allows me to easily see any future brand mentions by this particular user.  There are many Twitter alert tools that exist that will automatically e-mail you every time your brand is mentioned via Twitter.  If someone misspells your brand, however, this will generally go undetected in a Twitter Alert service. I implement the same strategy for individuals negatively tweeting about a brand I’m managing as well.

As mentioned, there is no right or wrong when it comes to following other users on Twitter.  As long as you are effectively communicating and informing on Twitter, your followers will grow naturally.

This will likely be a quick post (every time I say that it ends up turning into one of my longer posts), but experienced something today that I wanted to share.  I was cleaning out the spam comments that the spam filter didn’t automatically delete and I stumbled across someone who spammed this blog about 10 times in 20 minutes.  Now, one spam comment I’ll let slide, but excessive spamming like that really gets to me.  The spammer left his name and Twitter handle in each of his comments so I reached out to the guy via Twitter and tweeted this out to him:

Simple, but to the point.  What happened next is what really blew my mind (in a negative way). Immediately after I posted the tweet, I received this reply from another Twitter user:

I JUST complained about being spammed so you immediately send me a spam tweet? Her profile baffled me even further:

This person says they are a “communications expert” who inspires others to “effectively communicate their message.”, but they send out automated tweets to spam people (look at her Twitter stream..it’s all spam)? I don’t think I ever experienced more Twitter irony (Twirony, I’m coining the phrase right now) in my life.

I normally don’t like revealing people’s Twitter or Facebook accounts if I am using them for example purposes, but given the circumstances I felt no need to conceal their identity.

Here’s the point. Promoting your business is a full time job especially given the rise in Social Media channels.  However, if you use automated devices to spam blogs or Twitter you will never succeed.  If you want to comment on a blog and leave a link to your business actually READ through the blog, make an INSIGHTFUL comment, and leave your website link in the “website” data field.  Automated spam comments will just piss people off and nobody will ever buy your product. Twitter is a communication vehicle which means you need to interact with other individuals to see the value in using it.  Using an  automated tweeting service implies that you think other users don’t have the intelligence to decipher between an automated message and actual communication.

Think of it this way, ROI = Return on Investment but “investment” doesn’t always have to mean money especially in the age of Social Media.  If you invest no time in your Social Media campaign you won’t see any return.  Sure there are tools that expedite some of the grunt work (which I definitely recommend using), but the real benefit of using these tools is to allocate that extra time you save towards bettering your Social Media campaign.

Communication, listening, and putting forth time / energy is the real key to Social Media success.  It amazes me that so many people still don’t know this.

In case you’ve been too busy enjoying the long weekend, a lot has happened in the Social Media world over the past week.  Below is a recap of some of these recent events.

1. Yahoo! Mail Turns Social – Yahoo! has decided to pretty much copy what Google has done (with Google Buzz) by implementing a platform that will allow e-mail users to share content and comments with others in their address book.  There will likely be more negative than positive with these changes as you are automatically opted into this service instead of indicating whether or not you want your address book to be able to share content with you.  Given the backlash Facebook has received with it’s privacy issues, this is really bad timing on Yahoo’s part (although they do plan on giving users a week’s “heads up” so they can opt out pre-roll out).  I can’t see how this will differ from Google Buzz, but it’s at least worth exploring to see if there are any benefits in utilizing this new feature.

2. Pennsylvania Uses FourSquare to Spark Tourism: FourSquare has partnered with VisitPA (Pennsylvania’s official tourism website) to entice FourSquare users to visit the state and its attractions.  With the partnership, FourSquare has rolled out some new Pennsylvania-specific badges and has included a number of travel tips to educate and inform Pennsylvania FourSquare users.  This partnership shows the continued growth of FourSquare and how it remains the top mobile location service. It will be interesting to see how other states (and even countries) respond to this partnership.

3. Facebook Launches U.S. Politics Page – Remember when Barack Obama and Ron Paul were considered innovators as politicians due to their usage  of Social Media? As expected, Social Media usage among politicians will likely soon become the norm. Facebook has rolled out a U.S. Politics Page that will track how officials are utilizing Facebook to connect with citizens.  George W. Bush has also recently joined Facebook and has acquired over 79,000 likes in a short period of time.

4.  Mock BP Twitter Account Donates $10,000 to GRN - It started out as a joke, but BPGlobalPR quickly evolved into a force to be reckoned with after quickly acquiring over 100,000 followers.  One of the “jokes” implemented by the account were the constant push of “free $25 BP Cares t-shirts”.  The account was apparently extremely successful in selling these shirts as it was able to donate $10,000, strictly from t-shirt sales, yesterday to GRN.  What’s fascinating about this whole ordeal is that somebody (the person remains anonymous) took an extremely troubling situation (BP oil spill), was able to successfully mock it and provide comfort in the form of humor, and made $10,000 in a short period of time that was donated to better the situation.  This is one of the more fascinating usages of Twitter in recent memory.  The real BP account has less than 10,000 followers by the way.

5. TwitPic Incorporates “Events” Feature: I’ve always been a fan of TwitPic over TweetPhoto and other Twitter image services due to its overall simplicity.  TwitPic has added a small feature to it’s site that could impact the way users organize their photos.  The website rolled out an “Events” feature that lets you list photos in a particular “event” (category). This makes organizing photos a lot easier as it basically allows users to create their individual albums on TwitPic.  It also might entice people to look at photos through an entire album as opposed to checking out photos individually, therefore increasing view count on image content.

6. LinkedIn Sharing – LinkedIn has rolled out a new feature that makes distributing news articles, job offers, and other content a lot easier.  By adding a button to your toolbar, you can share content to your status, individual connections, or groups.  While this will serve as an effective time saver, I think this will flood LinkedIn with a lot more useless content.  LinkedIn has always seemed a lot more professional and personal than other Social Networks.  I have some concerns that there could be an overwhelming amount of spam distributed as a result of the new feature which would really compromise LinkedIn’s value.

7. Twitter Testing New Feature – Twitter has been testing a new feature that allows you to see followers you have in common with someone else.  The feature is called “you both follow”  and is very similar to Facebook’’s mutual friend feature.  I know many people personally who feel more comfortable connecting with someone on Facebook and LinkedIn  if they have at least one mutual friend.  It would be interesting to see if the acceptance rate of Twitter connections increase because of this.

For those of you who do not know, Twitter lists are a feature of Twitter that allows users to create lists (i.e. marketing, technology, sports, etc.) and add other users  onto that list.   Every time you are added to a “list” it adds to your “listed total” which is located next to your followers (see screenshot below of my Twitter account):

Members often use this feature to add people to a specific list that they feel best represent that category.  I have an Internet Marketing list, for example, that lists about 16 members who I feel provide great Internet Marketing advice. Seems like a simplistic feature, and it is, but Twitter Lists can be of great use beyond this.  Below I’ve listed 5 ways to use Twitter lists.

1. Assess Brand Perception: This applies to both your personal brand and your company.  Look at all the lists you’ve been added to and assess if there is a common theme.  You might be surprised which lists you fall under.  This is extremely helpful in determining peoples’ perceptions  towards your company and your Twitter account.  If you sell health food, for example, and you see that half of the lists you’ve been added to are called “junk food”,  it is important to analyze why.  Are your tweets sending the wrong message? Are people just not aware that your items are actually healthy? Are there random tweets pertaining to your company that are branding you as “junk food”.  It is okay to reach out to the person who started the list and ask them why they felt your brand was appropriate to add to that list. Take the opportunity to use your Twitter lists as valuable market research and make any necessary revisions to future tweets if applicable.

2. Organize Your Followers: I find Twitter Lists useful because instead of going through every single person I’m following, I can organize them by individual categories.  One of the better ways to organize your Twitter lists is to separate your followers by “business” (industry experts, clients, employees, etc.) along with “personal” (friends, family, etc.).  TweetDeck is great at taking Twitter Lists and organizing them even further. If there was a popular news item that occurred within your industry, for example, you can look through your industry experts lists on TweetDeck and actually search for a specific keyword within that list.  It’s a way to find the information you are looking for as quickly and easily as possible.

3. Educate Yourself – You can follow other Twitter lists that you didn’t necessarily create.  If you want to learn more about a certain topic or industry, there will likely be a list created for it already.  Find the one(s) that has a lot of followers (not necessarily users who were added to the list, but people following that list) and observe the conversations taking place.

4.  Keep Your Company Tweeters in One Place – This applies to individuals who have more than one person tweeting on behalf of a brand.  If you have multiple company tweeters, organize them in a Twitter list and encourage users to follow that list.  You might only be able to tweet x times / day, but combine that with your other company tweeters and it can add up to a branded tweet every few seconds all under one central location.  The nightclub industry can greatly benefit from implementing this strategy. Most have a company Twitter account, but also have dozens (if not more) club promoters and employees tweeting on behalf of the club.  Organizing these people onto one branded Twitter list is effective in keeping people “in the know” on all things related to that club.

5.  RSS Feed Syndication – Ever find a Twitter list with a great stream of information? Why not take the list and aggregate it as an RSS feed onto your website.  If you find it useful so might your website visitors.  Twitter lists to do not have an RSS feed, but you can create one by visiting this site.  My Internet Marketing list, for example, changes from this: http://twitter.com/dave0911/internet-marketing to http://twiterlist2rss.appspot.com/dave0911/lists/internet-marketing/statuses.rss.

I read an article earlier today via Social Media Examiner (you can read the full article here) that provides some valuable insights on using Twitter events to grow your network.  They stressed a very important point that most people tend to neglect.  To truly grow your networks (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.) you not only have to focus on your online presence, but your offline presence as well.

We are spending more and more time online that we sometimes forget how valuable a face to face conversation can be.  Every time I attend a Social Media (or other marketing) event and spend time networking with other individuals, I see an instant growth in my Twitter followers.  Not because I’m necessarily communicating with more people there than I would on Twitter, but because the personal connection that stems off of an in person conversation is extremely difficult to replicate.

Now I’m not recommending that you shift focus away from Social Networking.  In fact, I recommend the exact opposite.  Meeting people at events, seminars, etc. will help establish that initial connection, but utilizing your Social Networking profiles frequently and properly will help you to keep these people connected.  Once a personal connection becomes a Social Network connection, keep interacting with that person. Retweet their posts, comment on their Facebook statuses, recommend them on LinkedIn; it is difficult to lose somebody as a connection if you are actively communicating with them.

Keep using your Social Networks daily to build and grow relationships with clients (potential, future, past) as well as other valuable contacts.  Just remember that on site networking events have tremendous value and serve as a great way to help build your Social Network profiles.