I Follow, You Follow, We Follow

Often people ask how to go about finding other people to follow on Twitter. There really isn’t an exact science to it but for Twitter to be an effective social media marketing tool, it just makes sense to follow (and to be followed by) people who are or might be interested in what you tweet about or in connecting with you. I think those who are new to Twitter will sometime become frustrated in the beginning because they are only following a few people then the Twitter stream can be a fairly quiet place. And then, if you are only being followed by a few folks, the interactions can be few and far between.  Here are some ideas for finding other people to follow on Twitter. Check the different Twitter directories. Use these directories to find people who have listed themselves by industry, subject, interest or location. Here are the top three that I often use: WeFollow.com– Users self-identify themselves in this directory using different “tags.” You can easily do a search by tag and find other people who you might be interested in. I also recommend listing yourself in this directory so others can also find you. WeFollow will list users within a certain tag according to how many followers they have with the higher follower counts first. Twellow.com– The Twitter Yellow pages. Every account on Twitter is automatically listed in Twellow. However, users can also go in and “claim” their profile on Twellow and list themselves in 10 different categories. Twellow also gives you the option to input additional profile information about yourself or what you do...

Art on Twitter, Ballet on YouTube

The Brooklyn Art Museum has a Twitter account and at last check, they had over 21,000 people following them.  The Museum uses the account to tweet about happenings at the Museum such as events, announcements, new blog posts from the Museum blog and to interact with patrons. They also tweet links to their other social media accounts such as Facebook where they have they have a Group with almost 800 members. According to recent Facebook statistics, the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, with over 2,500 fans, is one of the fastest growing Facebook fan pages with a weekly growth rate of over 600%. The Museum of Modern Art in New York is also on Twitter with almost 12,000 people following them. They are tweeting about events such as an Art Hunt, the announcing of their website redesign, to answer questions from people and to tweet about Art in the news. Both museum twitter sites indicate the name of the staff who are doing the tweeting. This is important because even though the accounts represent an entity, people prefer to interact on Twitter with a person. A quick search on Twitter for other arts organizations include the Atlanta Symphony, The Chicago Symphony, the New World Symphony, the Baltimore Symphony, the Houston Ballet, the Pennsylvania Ballet, and the San Francisco ballet, while not actively tweeting, has gone in and “reserved” their twitter name for future use. The Smithsonian has also joined the Twitter world. A blog post of an interview with Marc van Bree, the PR coordinator with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra about their social media and online efforts. In referring...

Add Your Tweets to Your Facebook Status

Within Facebook you have the ability to add an application which will sync with your Twitter feed and supply all of your tweets to your Facebook Status. There are a couple of benefits to using sending your twitter feed to Facebook. The first is that it will often place you on your friend’s home page so they will see it almost every time they log in. This increases your visibility on Facebook. It may also garner you more twitter followers who like what you tweet and will go choose to follow you. There can be a couple of downsides to consider as well. Being constantly on the homepage with updates from your twitter conversation may be annoying to some people who can then choose ask for “less” about you in their home page feed. If you tend to be a prolific tweeter, your tweets will also fill your Personal Profile page as it will be considered a new “status” every time you tweet. So, it’s best to consider the positives and the possible negatives when adding this application. However, if you do add it and decide that it’s just not for you, then you do have the option to remove it as well. Here’s how to add the application: 1) At the bottom of the Facebook window, click on “Applications” and a small box will pop up. At the top of the box, click on “Find More”. 2) After you’ve clicked on “Find More” a new page will come up and in the upper right hand corner, there is a search box where you can enter “Twitter” and hit...

Twitter Tips for Virtual Assistants

Daily you can find me checking out new posts and adding my two cents over at the Virtual Assistant Forums where there is not only a wealth of great information but a great sense of community with all my Virtual Assistant comrades. Recently, an awesome new feature was added which gives all members the opportunity to create their own blog there. So, I decided to try out this new feature and created a blog post titled, “Twitter Tips for Virtual Assistants.” There are many Virtual Assistants who are just getting started on Twitter as well as those who are new to the Virtual Assistant industry. I believe it’s important that Virtual Assistants as an industry help each other out and support one another. With this in mind, I posted what I thought were important tips for my fellow VAs to consider for their tweeting journey. I’m posting the majority of that post here for other Virtual Assistants (and anyone else who needs some good twitter tips) and for other readers of my blog. Many of these tips can easily be applied by any small business entrepreneur who is just getting started on Twitter. I’ve only been using twitter for a couple of months and I will freely admit that I’m thoroughly addicted. When I get up in the morning, I check my email first and then moments later, I log into twitter. All this usually happens before I’ve had coffee or breakfast…(and embarrassingly sometimes even before I’ve made breakfast for my son. Shhh, don’t tell anyone!) In using Twitter I have: 1) received a referral from someone who saw...