Twitter

Twitter Accounts Compromised

in Twitter

If Twitter has emailed you this morning, forcing you to reset your password, you’re not alone. Several of my clients have received this notice, and the Internet is filled with reports of Twitter users having trouble logging into their accounts.

For some of my clients, a few days’ worth of tweets have also been deleted.

So go reset your Twitter password, head over to your account’s permissions and revoke access to all those apps you’re not really using anymore (those could be vulnerable to hackers), and as always use this as an important reminder to keep a separate password for each of your social media accounts, and to never ever use the same password for social media sites and for more critical accounts such as email and financial accounts.

Why Is It So Difficult To Get Followers?

in Twitter

Thanks to my blog statistics, finding topics to discuss here is so easy – all I have to do is glance at the search phrases that have led people to this blog!

A recent one was, “Why is it so hard to get followers?”

I’ll tell you why. People are busy. They are bombarded with a constant stream of information. They have so many demands on their time and attention, their lives are so hectic, that they have very little time and patience left to form a connection with someone who is essentially a stranger and wants to place another demand on their time, add to the noise.

People don’t follow you back because they don’t know who you are and they do not want your updates to appear on their Twitter stream.

Can you blame them?

Now, the real question is not why it’s difficult to get followers. The real question is, assuming people prefer not to follow you, how do you convince them that they should give you a chance? Here are a few ideas:

1. Give them a reason to follow you. If you’re a brand, especially a B2C brand, this should be quite doable. Run a regular promotion where you promise people an incentive such as a coupon or a discount code, if they follow you, and retweet your offer (the retweeting is important – this is the viral component of the offer).

2. Don’t be annoying. Limit your tweets, especially if you’re a brand. No one wants tweets from one person to fill their entire Twitter stream.

3. If possible, be awesome. Funny is good. Interesting is good. Tedious and long winded is bad.

4. Keep offering regular Twitter-only promotions, so that people have a reason to keep following you.

No doubt, getting people to follow you back is hard. But there are ways to gently convince them to give you a chance. :)

But I Hate Twitter!

That’s OK – many people hate Twitter. I do. (Well, maybe “hate” is a strong word. “Dislike” would be more accurate). I usually tell my clients that they should be present wherever their target market hangs out, and for more and more businesses this includes Twitter. But personally, I have to force myself to use [...]

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Twitter is So Difficult

The title of this blog post is courtesy of a search that someone performed, which ended up landing on this blog. When I saw the search in my blog analytics, I smiled. It’s true: Twitter IS difficult. Here’s why, and how to deal with it: 1. You follow people, and they don’t follow back. Even [...]

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How to Create a Viral Tweet

It’s fairly easy to go viral on Twitter. Of course, if you have a large following, it’s REALLY easy. But even if you don’t, the secret is to keep it short and sweet, to post something most people identify with, to ask them to retweet it, and – if budget allows – to give them [...]

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Should You Follow Someone on Twitter if they Never Follow Back?

What’s the point of following someone on Twitter if they decidedly don’t follow back? Not just you – they don’t follow back anyone, as a matter of principal. Would you follow someone like that? Should you? It depends. What are you trying to get out of Twitter? If you’re looking for information about someone that [...]

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Twitter: Noise-to-Value Ratio Remains High

I agree with Laura Ramos. Twitter is one of the noisiest places in social media, and with all that noise, its value is not yet clear.

When clients ask me about Twitter, and whether they should use it, I usually tell them that if their target audience uses Twitter, then yes, they should use it too, but that a clear ROI will be difficult to establish. What CAN be established is that if you sell to moms, then Twitter is a good place to connect with moms and mom bloggers, many of which are on Twitter daily. If you’re a B2B high tech company, Twitter is a good place to connect with, and stay in touch with, tech analysts and tech journalists – many of them use Twitter regularly.

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Add 3000 more Twitter Followers NOW!

“I see that we have 500 Twitter followers,” told me the new Marketing Director. “Great! Now, how do we get to 5000?” To which I responded: “We are a B2B company. I’d rather focus on using Twitter to reach out to, and build relationships with, industry analysts, tech journalists and bloggers, and our rather narrow [...]

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Facebook More Valuable Than Twitter?

“Not only does a Facebook user share almost five times more content than their Tweeting cousins, but sharing a link on Facebook is worth almost six times the value of the same link Tweeted.” Two reports have arrived at the same conclusion: a Facebook fan is more valuable than a Twitter follower. Knowing the nature [...]

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Twitter: Aim For A Good Mix of Professional and Personal

My favorite Twitter accounts are those that have a good mix of professional and personal tweets. Sure, some brands, especially in the B2B space, feel very strongly about keeping their Twitter account “clean” of personal tweets, and that’s a legitimate approach. But the very best Twitter accounts are those that mix personal and professional, links [...]

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