From the category archives:

Twitter

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The Value of the ReTweet

by Donna Maria on February 8, 2010

Last year, at my invitation, several members of IBN gathered in our private online networking area to discuss how we could support each other on Twitter. It was decided that on Fridays, each participant would select a person, comment on one of their blog posts and then ReTweet the post on Twitter. The goal was to see if this process served to improve each other’s Twitter influence. We did this for about a month.

One of the most exciting things about doing this was that I began to see many of my members come out of their shells to get an idea of how Twitter could support their business goals. Continue Reading…

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Why Twitter Is Not A Waste Of Time For Small Business Owners, In 29 Words

by Donna Maria on January 9, 2010

Many small business owners conclude that Twitter is a waste of time without devoting a legitimate amount of time to learning how to use it to discover its potential value when applied to their unique situation. I recently read this post at ReadWriteWeb. It summarizes the results of a study (of sorts) on the value of Twitter based on what people are Tweeting about.

Silver Spheres

Among other things, the study shows that, 57% of 1,000 Tweets were posted by people simply talking about themselves and what they were doing at a particular time. Does this mean that Twitter is a useless mental vacuum? I suppose some might think so. But a business owner has to be extremely short-sighted to think that her customers’s conversations about themselves have no value. Here’s my explanation of why Twitter is not a waste of time, in just 29 words. Click For The 29 Words

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Twitter List Widgets Use RSS To Help Small Business Owners Expand Their Reach

by Donna Maria on November 5, 2009

If you enjoyed my article containing 10 ways small business owners can use Twitter Lists to expand their sphere of influence and build trust and credibility, then you’ll be happy to know about this new Twitter widget creator allowing you to quickly and easily aggregate specific List content into a widget that can be displayed anywhere by anyone . Using the IBN Member List I created on Twitter, I created this widget containing the RSS feed of my IBN members.

It is now displayed here of course, but more importantly, it’s displayed at our social network where 4,000+ people have access to it 24/7. This means that, every time an IBN member posts a Tweet, this widget is automatically updated in real time. Anyone viewing the widget as the Tweet is displayed can click through to the Tweeter’s Twitter stream to reply to the Tweet or Retweet it. Users can also click on any link, including hashtags, inside the Tweet itself. This is an amazing indication of how simple (and free) technologies can perform for your business. Continue Reading…

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10 Actions To Increase Your Twitter Influence

by Donna Maria on October 30, 2009

As more people turn to Twitter to learn what people are saying about things that matter to them, small and independent business owners using Twitter must hyper-focus our ideas and how we share them. The fact that more people are using Twitter means that there are more potential customers for us. But reaching out to all of those people is neither desirable nor useful, so we must aim quite specifically at who we are trying to engage.

graphic showing influence

Since there are so many millions of people on Twitter, the people we are trying to reach — our customers — have to work harder to sort through the all the chaff to get to the wheat they seek. The small business owners who help them do that are the ones who will receive the prize of permission to be an influential part of their lives. In the year and a half that I’ve been using Twitter, I have discovered that certain specific actions best support my goal of reaching the people I want to serve. Here are the actions I think are at the top of the list. Continue Reading…

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Twitter, Google, Bing, You and Your Indie Business

by Donna Maria on October 21, 2009

Today, Google and Bing and FaceBook announced deals to include Twitter status updates in their search engine results. Let me say that again, soon, your Tweets and FaceBook status updates will appear real time in Google and Bing search engine results. The magnitude of these new developments cannot be understated. In a nutshell, it means that you will be capable of reaching your target customers 24/7, 365, with live, real-time messages.

Google Announcement

It’s no less than astounding, and while it’s been discussed as a possibility for months, the fact that all of these announcements were made on the same day is surely no accident. Here are just a few of the things this means for Indies. Continue Reading…

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Why I Predict Miley Cyrus Will Return To Twitter

by Donna Maria on October 14, 2009

When I learned that Miley Cyrus had deleted her Twitter account, I was not terribly surprised. Several celebrities have done the same over the months for one reason or another. Here’s Miley’s rap video about why she deleted her Twitter account.

Watching Miley delete her Twitter account made me think about how easy it is for some people (read: celebrities) to ditch a million current and future customers on Twitter without a second thought. Of course they can do this because they have legions of media representatives, fan clubs and product licensing agreements to keep the momentum going, with or without Twitter. Continue Reading…

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