Why you should Retweet your friends on Twitter

 

What’s the deal with the RTs?

Every once in a while on Twitter, you will notice that at the beginning of a tweet, there are the letters “RT” before the actual comment or link. If you followed the advice on my last post about starting and becoming a master on Twitter and have downloaded TweetDeck , you would easily know that RT is short for Retweet.

A Retweet simply indicates that a person values a tweet so much that she tweets it word for word to her followers so that they can benefit from it too. Being Retweeted is a high honor because it means that people are willing to put their own reputation on the line and risk losing followers just to get your message across to more people.

Even Tech Crunch and some Twitter Experts consider Retweets the best indicators of a person’s authority and influence on Twitter (as opposed to follower count). There are also numerous sites that just track Retweeted topics or how many Retweets a person has.

Clearly, Retweets has its place of significance on Twitter, and you should RT often. Why?

1. Creating Value for your Twitter Followers

Twitter is micro-blogging. Just like blogging, people will only read your tweets if it creates value for them. You need to tweet things that are brilliant, hilarious, amazing, ingenious, unique or at least interesting to your followers to make them feel that you are worth the follow. However, you can’t always come up with the best things yourself. Retweeting is a great way to be that provider of great information without doing the work yourself.

2. Get noticed by the people you are Retweeting

Continue reading Why you should Retweet your friends on Twitter

The ROI of Social Media

The ROI of Social Media

A lot people are diving into social media marketing but they don’t know what is the ROI. Are sales increasing?

Social Media is about being Social. It’s about Networking

When you go to an event, you are there to network and build relationships. You aren’t making any sales, but you know that if people like you and they know what you do, one day they will find you when they need you. They will also tell their friends when someone asks about similar services.

If you are at an event just trying to close sales, no one will like you. You might get 1-2 more sales, but you piss off everyone and no one wants to associate with you afterwards.

In Social Media, you are there to build brand and relationships, not to convert immediate sales.

At the end of the day, Social Media is like brand building and networking: no immediate ROI, but indispensable for business.

What’s the ROI of a Bill Board?

Companies can’t measure how much ROI their Bill Boards are generating, but they still do it anyway. You’re not supposed to put up a billboard and take it down after 2 weeks if your extra sales has not been able to cover the billboard costs.

Social Media is about building trust and relationships. And that requires patience.

Market to Win, not to Not Lose

Doing a little bit marketing is useless

If you put out 1 radio ad, 1 tv commercial, 1 tweet, 1 blog post, 1 news paper ad, your campaign will be useless and you would just be wasting money. Repeating the same message over and over again on the same platform is how you truly build your brand and market.

Social Media is about ENGAGEMENT

No money to market heavily? Use Social Media. Don’t just create accounts and leave it there. ENGAGE.

Like any social situation, there are guys who are popular, sociable and cool, and there are guys who are antisocial and awkward. Creating a Twitter Account and a blog is just to SHOW UP. Showing up doesn’t mean you are popular. Showing up and behaving like a loser is even worse than not showing up.

Join Social Media, but be prepared to brand yourself correctly, engage, care about your audiance, and create value for everyone.

Market and brand to win. Don’t market just because you want to keep up. Keeping up means you are never ahead.

Personal Update + Don’t Market to Youth. BE Youth.

Personal Update

I have been crazy busy with the Viralogy.com launch and traveling to LA lately. That explains why I haven’t been able to update my blog as often. That’s why I am starting to Vlog more now. It is not as good for SEO because there is very little text, but at least I keep you guys engaged 🙂

Viralogy has been incredibly successful though. We just launched 4 weeks ago, and we already have unique visitors in the mid five-digits, with 30% of that from direct traffic. That means people are recognizing our brand and going back to our site. I’ve also been meeting people who have heard about us at almost every single event I went to, so that’s a good sign too.

I think at this point we are still very far away from success, but we have already built a small plane, went through the runway, and took off. We’ll need better planes and better pilots to make sure we get to our destination, but we’re at a good start. Right now our company of 10 has been extraordinary, and my job is to make sure it stays that way 🙂

Lesson in the Video

If you want to market to teens, you can’t rely on market data and research. You have to be there where the teens are. Play their games, join their chat rooms, hang out with them. That’s the only way you can understand what they really like.

That’s like trying to buy a present for a kid. If you just have tons of research about the kid’s demograhic, chances are you won’t buy a birthday present for a kid that he loves. BUT if you were his uncle that plays with him often, you have a very good chance to buy that birthday present that he loves.

Be that uncle, not a marketer.

How to Start, Settle in, and Fall in love with Twitter

Twitter takes time to adapt to. Most people who first go on Twitter have no idea why anyone would use it, and that Twitter is something for those who have too much time and nothing to do. Not for me.

Then they would hear about Twitter again from a friend or some media source, and decide to try it out again. They create 2 more tweets, and still feel that life is wasting away. Finally, they hear that a good friend or Obama is using Twitter too, and finally gives it another try. That’s when they become glued.

The fact is that Twitter is actually a very useful and fun (we call this very FD) tool. Its not necessarily for people who have too much time, but it actually is for busy people who need a better way of communicating with people.

Just like the In’N’Out menu, where they keep everything as simple as possible with hidden menu items, Twitter keeps everything as simple as possible. Even Twitter Search is hidden at an non-obvious location. Finally, there are over 400 Twitter Apps out there that make Twitter better that could help with your Twitter experience. You should know a few good ones.

For this reason, here’s a guide for the beginner to “get” Twitter and become a Tweeter.

1. Create a Twitter Account with your real name

Registration is simple. If you don’t know how to create a account once you go to twitter.com, you probably shouldn’t be on Twitter. However, I want to remind you that almost in all instances, you should put in your real name. Twitter is about building relationships with real people for who they are, instead of meeting Surferdude24s.

Also, keep your Twitter username short and easy to remember. This is so that people can Retweet you easier without hitting the limit, and people can type in your name without other references.

Continue reading How to Start, Settle in, and Fall in love with Twitter

Facebook vs Twitter: one for Consolidation, one for Expansion

Facebook Imports Twitter’s Streaming Layout, along with its Fail Whale

I recently noticed that Facebook has had a lot of downtime after they created their new “News Feed”. Even as I write the post, Facebook is down.

I checked out the Twitter Search Stream for Facebook and it seems like hundreds of people are complaining about the same thing.

It looked like Facebook not only copied the Twitter Stream, but also imported the Fail Whale into their system. Maybe they can call it the Face Whale?

Facebook changed its format to combat Twitter

It’s no secret that the reason why Facebook made its switch is because it feels a little bit threatened by Twitter. Not too long ago, Facebook even tried to buy Twitter with their $15 Billion valuation stock”. Unfortunately, Facebook got a cold rejection.

Now the game is on.

Facebook thinks that, “Well, since we have all these users and we already have all the social data of people, lets just copy what makes Twitter popular and People will never find a reason to use Twitter anymore.

This is in one sense logical, because Facebook does have a lot of user data, and I sometimes hear people say “why would I want to use Twitter when I already use Facebook?”

So now your feeds and even your Facebook Wall look like Twitter’s Tweet Stream. Is Facebook the best thing in the world now?

Not really.

Even though Facebook and Twitter try to serve very similar purposes – becoming more connected with people you care about – they are completely different animals. Twitter’s uniqueness still lies in:

  1. It is cleaner and more refined
  2. It is more open and exploratory
  3. It highlights relationships based on merit, not friendship
  4. It is a constantly engaging game of gaining more merit and creating value

1. Twitter strips out a lot of automated junk and presents cleaner information

Compared to Twitter, we all know that there’s a lot more stuff you can pull from the Facebook Stream because of all the activities that are going on in Facebook.

However, nowadays we don’t necessarily lack information. We lack the tools that help us refine information.

The truth is that a lot of the interesting things on the internet does not happen on Facebook. When you look at the Facebook Feeds, there’s a ton of auto-generated stuff that are exclusively about Facebook. You rarely find good articles on Facebook through the Facebook Feeds or some breaking news hours before it is covered by a news source because all you see on the FB Feed is how many pictures your friends uploaded and who changed their profile pictures.

In Twitter, people pull in all kinds of information, sites, news, and resources from all over the internet. These are things they have deemed worthy of their followers to consume. And since people can easily opt-out of your Tweets (will cover later), everyone actually has some sort of quality control pressure, unlike Facebook.

Twitter clears out all the photo uploads, events, Zombie bites, and just tells you what your friends want to tell you in 140 characters.

2. Information on Twitter is more open than Facebook, making it more adventurous

The Twitter platform is way more open than Facebook. On Twitter, you get to know exactly what’s been discussed in the Twittersphere immediately. You can find out what’s on the mind of people in that community at any given moment.

On Facebook, you have to be peoples’ friends to know what’s going on in your circle. Obviously that’s not a bad thing because a lot of people just care about their real life friends.

However, Twitter allows you to explore a whole new world of cool stuff, cool people, and opportunities for you to discover and absorb. Through tons of Twitter Apps, you are able to find interesting people in any particular industry, in your location, celebrities that you care about who won’t friend you on Facebook, and all sorts of fun information.

Being on Twitter is definitely more like an adventure compared to Facebook’s Shire-nature of hanging out with your Hobbit friends.

3. One-Way Followships on Twitter Enhances Experience for both Tweeters and Followers

Another unique advantage Twitter has is the one-way followship. On Facebook, there may be a lot of information that you don’t really care about from friends. However, since most of them are your real friends, its not very socially acceptable to opt out of that by unfriending them.

On Twitter, since people follow each other based on merit more often than existing friendship, you follow people because you enjoy what they tweet, instead of if you are acquaintances in real life.

If someone starts to tweet a lot of junk, its an easy unfollow for everyone. You only see what you want to see.

On the other hand, because people can easily unfollow you if you are tweeting trash, people on Twitter have more pressure to tweet out things that are more interesting…at least according to themselves.

Every time you Tweet, you risk someone clicking the unfollow button. This makes most people tweet seriously.

4. Follower Acquisition makes Twittering a constantly-engaging game

Because of the one-way nature of Twitter, a lot of people begin to treat this as a fun game to “earn” the followship of more followers.

On Facebook, if you invite a lot of people, you will probably get a lot of friends. But on Twitter it doesn’t work this way. You can follow everyone, and no one needs to follow you back.

In that sense, having a follower on Twitter is way more meaningful than having a new friend on Facebook. You “earn” your right to become follow-worthy, and I can guarantee that seeing a new follower on Twitter feels MUCH better than having a random guy request to be your friend on Facebook.

Because of that, there are a lot of people who work very hard to seem interesting, tweet out quality information, and find funny/witty things to say, all just to delight and entertain people so they can become more “follow-worthy”. No one works this hard to get friends on Facebook.

Conclusion: Different Tools for Different Purposes

I actually don’t dislike Facebook. I use it and like it a lot. However, by nature, Facebook will not (and I will argue never) replace Twitter even if it has the same layout and function.

On the other hand, Twitter will not replace Facebook either. They should not even try by adding in more information, a larger profile page, and allowing more pictures. The beauty of Twitter lies in its limitations, instead of how much it encompasses.

Facebook is about maintaining a stronger relationship with existing friends, whereas Twitter is like an engaging game where you are constantly learning new things, exploring new fields and attracting new followers.