Rachel Levy: Social Media & Marketing

On Wednesday and Thursday of this week, I attended the Inbound Marketing Summit conference put on by New Marketing Labs at the Gillette Stadium. Attending this conference was an interesting milestone for me, as it is where I really got my start in social media last year.  Day 1 of the conference last year I showed up without a computer and barely any knowledge of Twitter (I was registered but wasn’t using it, and didn’t “get it”) and much of social media.  Day 2, I showed up with my laptop, and started tweeting.  I haven’t stopped since, and have learned so much since that time about other forms of social media, and have put them into practice at work and through consulting projects.  A lot changed for me in that year.

Anyway, the conference was even more incredible than it was last year, so I thought I’d share some of my favorite quotes/learnings. (Not necessarily quoted word for word; and if you know who said some of the unknown quotes or if I made any errors, please let me know!)

Day 1

• How do you engage customers without pissing them off? Just need to listen. And then figure out WHEN in the conversation it’s right to jump in. ~Citrix (name?)
• SM needs to get out of the corporate communications group. It should be spread throughout the company ~Innovative marketing panel
• In terms if marketing, it’s not about the thickness if your wallet, it’s about the thickness of your mind. It’s a great time to be a poor marketer. ~Justin Rasmussen, Coffee House Ideas
• Who will own social media in the future? PR agencies, interactive agencies or ad agencies? Answer: The companies. ~Brian Halligan, Hubspot

• PR is dead. ~Brian Halligan, Hubspot (I couldn’t disagree more.  I do believe PR is changing, but it will never be dead.  The big difference I see is that rather than companies finding press, the press will be finding them.)

• People turn to social media traditionally to solve 3 problems: 1) sales 2) get the word out , 3) need to make a relationship better or change it.” ~Katie Delahaye Paine, KDPaine & Partners
• You need to look at your “share of suckiness” vs. your competitors. “We suck less” ~Katie Delahaye Paine, KDPaine & Partners (it’s important to look at what your detractors are saying, but also keep in mind industry norms for sentiment.)
• PR = helps groups communicate with one another and facilitate discussions. What is PR2.0? A new approach to PR (PR isn’t just media relations) — it’s about building long term relationships, and now we can do it directlly with the customer. ~Katie Delahaye Paine, KDPaine & Partners
• What is a social media press release? Integrating keywords, SEO, interactive content, links to SM sites, enabled for social media. ~”Getting the Word Out” panel
  
• Measure engagement (not impressions), which will then lead to sales. ~”Getting the Word Out” panel
• Marketing = getting people to know, like and trust you. ~Rich Ullman, Ripple6
• What do you say to the people that say they don’t have time to create good content? Tough! ~Valeria Maltoni, Conversation Agent
• If you’re doing SM, and not email, you’re insane. It has a $44 ROI per dollar spent, on an email campaign. ~Email panel
• Using purchased email lists is just spamming. The people didn’t sign up for the email. ~Email panel
• “Rented list” – means using another list to communicate your message (i.e Daily Candy). ~Email panel
• 20% of tweets mention brands (source http://bit.ly/MVSlV). Twitter users are twice as much likely to engage with brands than on other platforms. ~Jesse Engle, CoTweet
• For a company with multiple tweeters, it’s best to have logo as avatar, twitter background with faces/names of tweeters, and use cotags. ~Jesse Engle, CoTweet
• Kodak’s blog is not about the actual product, it’s about HOW we use our products. ~Jennifer Cisney, Kodak
• Cool free listening tool www.socialmention.com ~unknown
• How to get your video to go viral? Story, spectacle, emotion, conflict, questions. ~Tim Street, APE Digital

Day 2

• Listening helps you find ppl who are passionate about what you do, out on the web. That’s how you build a comunity centric way to market. ~Listening and monitoring panel
• Email’s role in the marketing mix is more important than ever. Email is a main DRIVER of social web activity. ~Greg Cangialosi, Blue Sky Factory
• The blog is the ANCHOR of our social media efforts. ~Paula Berg, Southwest Airlines
• Where else can you get immediate and passionate feedback from your customers other than in social media. ~Paula Berg, Southwest Airlines
• Social Media optimization created the findability of social objects – keywords, titles, descriptions, tags, syndication. ~Christopher Carfi, Cerado
• If there are a bunch of kids in a playground, and there are no toys there, they’re going to leave. (referring to making your Facebook and website interactive). ~CC Chapman, Campfire
• Everyone needs a CMS (even if it’s just Wordpress), in order to update site,keywords, tags, etc. ~CMS panel
• Whereever you are finding the most uncomfortable information about you, look there 10 times harder! ~Tim Walker, Hoover’s
  
• What are Social Media Influencers (SIM)? Harnessing social media and social influencers to achieve a goal. ~Shiv Singh, Razorfish
• Market to the community not just the individual. ~Shiv Singh, Razorfish
• Social engagement results in purchases 24 days later on average. ~Shiv Singh, Razorfish
• Focus not just on the platforms, but on the relationsips… focus on WHO is influencing your customer. Research influencers. ~Ken Chow, R2 Integrated
• Great Marketing = Convince people to SELL. ~Dharmesh Shah, Hubspot
• Google’s ranking algorithm = context (does it match what they’re looking for?) + authority (how much does Google trust you?). ~Dharmesh Shah, Hubspot
• Titles are the most important piece of information you’re giving to Google about what the page is about.The MOST important is the one on your home page. Earlier words send a stronger message to Google. So, your title keywords need to be ordered appropriately. Don’t make your Home page titled HOME (even if you sell homes!. ~Dharmesh Shah, Hubspot
• Don’t buy ads on Facebook. Use it to look at the demographic info to find who meets your target profile (brilliant!). (I don’t agree about not buying ads, but the target demos are great!). ~Dharmesh Shah, Hubspot

If you want to see even more highlights from me or others during the Inbound Marketing Summit, check the #IMS09 hashtag on Twitter Search.

Overall, an incredible conference!! A few suggestions for IMS next year. Include people’s Twitter names in the program, on their nametags,  and on the screen while their speaking. Improve the wireless.  Add a case study component… so many great minds together in one room!  We can break into a group of 10 and all work on a different case to put together a social media and marketing strategy and tactics.  Do short presentations so we can all learn from eachother.

(Photo credits: Group, Chris Brogan, iPhone, CC Chapman)

Anything important I missed?  Feel free to add or comment on the above!

If you’re not familiar with BlendTec, they are a company who used videos to market a fairly unexciting product, in a brilliant way that turned into a viral sensation. They pick items that you would never ordinarily put in a blender, such as iPhones, golf balls, glow sticks, and show how powerful the BlendTec blender is, by the fact that it can crush up these items on their “Will It Blend?” show. The shows are hysterical, and have proven to be an amazing tool to market their product.

Last weekend, I decided to conduct an similar experiment of my own. Except that it really wasn’t planned. It just happened by mistake. I put my iPhone through the washing machine. Yes, rinse cycle and all. So, what happened to it? Well, by the keen knowledge of my friend Claudio, my phone was saved, and seems to be in 100% working order. Here’s what Claudio did to save the day:

• He said, no matter what, don’t turn on the phone until we fully dried out the insides.  So, despite my impatience to just turn it on and see if it was working, we kept it turned off
• Then, Claudio instructed me to suck all the water out of every single hole in the iphone.  It tasted like Tide.  (maybe that was just his way of getting me to wash my mouth out with soap!).  Anyway, I literally sucked as hard as I could out of both microphone holes, the volume buttons, the headset hole, the on/off buttons, the charger hole, and the SIM card hole.
• Then, he pointed a hairdryer at the charger hole and blew medium heat air into the iPhone for probably an hour and a half.  Every few minutes, he rotated the iPhone around so the hair dryer blew into different holes.
• Then, we charged the phone.  We’re not sure if my phone had run out of battery before the washing machine incident or if it disengaged the battery during the incident, but it did need to be charged.

So, that’s it!  At first, the sound on my ringers and music was off, but over the next few days, it came back to normal.  There was also some fogginess on the screen, but that went away the same day.  Now, it’s good as new.  Thanks Claudio!

Anyone else have any tips for saving an iPhone from a washing machine, being run over by a car, or being dropped?

uVizz, an innovative application for video sharing, could be the next big video sharing platform. It solves two problems for online advertisers. First, click through rates of advertising on social networks are notoriously low (0.8% on Facebook).  So, while they have a high reach, people very rarely click on them.  The reason for this, is most likely related to the second issue that uVizz solves — that the ads are not relevant to what the consumer is actually doing.  They can certainly be targeted based on content or demographic/geographic information, but the consumer is not necessarily open to seeing them at that time they appear.

Below is my summary and thinking from my demo view of uVizz with the company’s Managing Partner, Matt Johnson.

About uVizz

In a nutshell, uVizz partners with companies who pay consumers to create and share viral videos. It’s a new way to engage users to help promote a company’s products.

How it works… if iPhone started a uVizz campaign, they would decide on an amount they are willing to pay when the video is viewed ($0.15 is the minimum, and I have used $0.20 below).  Hopefully, some passionate consumers, would create a video (or any content, really) about the brand, submit it for approval to the company, and then it’s ready to become viral!  The photo below, explains how this works.

For every unique video view (UVV) (1st view by a new person), the video creator gets 30%, the referral chain (everyone who helped refer the video) gets 20%, and the person (David) who passed the video onto the viewer (Christina) gets 20%.  And, of course, uVizz gets their cut, at 30%. So, if the video gets 10,000 UVV, that all came through David (normally though, not all views would come through one person), iPhone would pay a total of $2,000, and the revenue share would be as follows:

• Video Creator – $600 (10,000 x $0.20 x 30%)
• Referral Chain – $400
• Referral Creator (David) – $400
• Video viewer (Christina) – $0
• uVizz – $600 (30% share)

When uVizz launches on June 15th, it will be available as an application in Facebook, Bebo, and Friendster. (it’s also available with Twitter, but is just link sharing that drives people to Facebook or uVizz.  I’ll explain more about how it will work with Facebook, as that’s the most popular of these three sites.  Basically, uVizz is an application that allows the company to set up the campaign, the video creator to upload their video, and the video to be shared.  Everyone needs to add the uVizz application in order to view or forward on videos. The application tracks all the view information, allows the video creator to upload and manage their video, and allows everyone involved to see the money they have made.  The videos spread virally, not only through people sending it to their friends, but also through optional wall posts.

Even more interesting, is the targeted nature of this.  The company only pays when the video is viewed by someone who fits the demographic profile they have set.  For example, Morningflake, one of uVizz’s first customers, is based in the UK.  So for their campaign, they will only pay for UVV in the UK.  In addition to location, companies can also target by age and gender (more criteria coming at some point). The Facebook application even tells people who of their friends fit the demographic target so they are aware before sending it to a friend.
Consumer perspective

This is a great concept from the consumer perspective.  People who are passionate about brands like getting involved with them, and the fact is, that they are already creating their own content or spreading the word about the brands they love (for example, BzzScapes or BzzAgent).  The benefit is obviously that they can get paid for doing what they are already doing.

I honestly don’t see any downsides for the video creators.  The only potential consumer downside I see, is that it is encouraging people to push the content on others, in order to make money.  It seems similar to some MLM (multi-level-marketing) schemes.  However, what stops this from happening is the people themselves.  If I keep sending annoying videos to my friends, they will eventually ask me to stop, or unfriend me on Facebook.  So, just as with forwarding jokes via email, you have to use discretion, or you will eventually get ignored.

Company perspective

I think this is also a no-brainer for companies.  It’s like PPC (pay-per-click) campaigns, where you only pay when someone clicks on your ad, yet it’s much more targeted.  The biggest question these days with viral content is “what makes something viral?”  Well, with uVizz, the advertiser doesn’t have to know that.  They don’t have to spend tons of money trying to figure that out.  If something takes off and they have a hit on their hands, only then do they pay.

The other benefit, as Matt Johnson told me, is that “it’s a way to engage the company’s consumers in their advertising, and get them to have a stake in the process.”

I also think that since these videos are user generated content, they can often times be so much more effective than ads created by a company.  Believe me, I AM in favor of corporate marketing, given my background in it, but I think there’s something to be said for user-generated content.

My overall thoughts

Overall, I think this is a win-win for everyone involved.  The advertisers get good content, the creators get paid, and people who pass it on get paid as well.  I have a few concerns/questions:

• Although I do think consumers themselves will stop this from becoming spammy, I still think it’s possible.  People are already getting burnt out on the games/quizzes on Facebook, so I worry if this is just one more thing to add to the list.
• uVizz primarily promotes itself for viral videos, but they also mention it can include other content (photos, blog posts, stories). I think creating a video can be overwhelming to some people, so the other forms of content could be more accessible to them.  uVizz should stress this.
• As an advertiser, I would also want to know detailed information about how long people are watching the video for.  As with anything where people can make money, there is always someone out there to scam the system.  Will there be groups formed where people agree to watch each other’s videos so they all make money?  Just click on it for a second, and you’ve “watched” it?  uVizz should be sure they are thinking about these types of scams.
• uVizz is making 30% of the revenue share, which is equivalent to the video creator. That feels like too much to me.  If I were the video creator, I would like to feel like I was making the most from this.

But, as I mentioned, overall, I LOVE this product.

Photo credit: No Spam, Camera

What do you think of this idea?  Any concerns? Good idea?

On Tuesday, I attended the Online Marketing Summit in Boston, which was 1 of 18 stops on their “Whistle Stop Tour”. I attended the same conference last year, at the beginning of my journey learning about online marketing, so it was interesting to see how much I have learned in just one year.  I definitely recommend checking out this conference if there is one in your city.

Below are my notes from the day.  By far, the most interesting and personally useful topic to me, was the talk by Chris Baggott.  You can also see other people’s tweets from the day here.  Feel free to ask any questions or make a comment below.

Keynote (Aaron Khalow)

• Online retail up 11%, overall retail down 3%
• 63% of people who go to a website and don’t find why they want will never come
• 92% of people go first to search to find what they are looking for

Integrating Online Into Your Local Marketing Strategy (Internet Advertising Bureau Local committee)

• Weather.com is a great place to advertise because it’s national but local at same time. National news can be Same if register
• Why pay when you can create your own content? Answer – speed
• IAN smart brief is their weekly email
• Technographic – targeting based on a specific technology
• 66% of Internet users would click thru an online ad if it’s well targeted
• Auto, real estate and general merchandise are highest categories.
• 70 percent of Bostonians (city, not Boston area) are online. Higher than national.
• Only 26% of marketers feel that their company is tech savvy
• Local advertising is growing faster than national

Online Video: Secrets to Viral Video and Advertising ROI (eConsultancy, YouTube, BrightCove, Visible Measures, Nabbr)

• Very cool HD18910 Samsung camera phone ad on YouTube – engaged people
• Once you get popular in video it’s easy to stay popular
• Video campaigns that work invite people in and get people to share
• Advertise on YouTube. It’s not a about getting a million views. It’s about getting the right views
• Healthination is good example of video use. Use answers.com.
• Nabbr is about push and YouTube is about pull
• Another way to get involved in video is with sponsorships
• Video knows no limits. May even want to see what ended up on cutting room floor. May have legs
• YouTube is 2nd largest search site after Google
• Kobe Bryant Nike video was watched for 82 seconds although only 1 min. Rewinding and watching again
  • Only 40% of 14million views were on YouTube. Also users engaged with comments and ratings

Improving Search Marketing ROI During a Recession: Top 10 Insider Tips (Ben Hanna, Business.com)

1. Look before you leap

• Know your goals and priorities

2. Don’t try to boil the ocean (take one step at a time)
3. Improve relationships with sales
4. Find where you’re not capturing value

• Marketing Sherpa increased conversion rates by 39% by adding offers to their thank you page

5. Start from a focused base

• Exact match or advanced match
• Advanced match advertises for keywords that are similar to the keywords you’re paying for
• Search implementation vs. content implementation (??)

6. Pick apart the buying process

• You must cover all buying stages

i. Could focus social media on early state of process
ii. Focus SEO on later stages
iii. Early stage – SEO & relevant community participation
iv. Mid-state – directories
v. Late-stage – branded keywords

7. Reduce buyer risk & barriers to conversion

• Office depot boosted paid search revenue 200% by incorporating customer reviews into ad copy

8. Roll out the purchase incentives

• To improve conversion rates, attack conversion barriers
• Clarify target audience & purchase type

i. Blank slate –> free trial (extend it if need to increase?)
ii. Repeat modified
iii. Repeat

• Simplify landing pages

i. Clear call to action
ii. Compelling trial discount or other incentive
iii. Eliminate sensitive form fields
iv. Indicate commitment level – 30 day vs. 90 day vs. autobill

9. Get social

• Search marketing is the glue that holds together all of their activities

10. Target the doer

• 2 basic buying roles

i. Doers – have to get something done
ii. Buyers – attempting to enforce a rational buying process
• Most people focus on doers

11. misc

• Ad copy – what is the person trying to address? What issue are they trying to solve? Benefit not feature.

Advanced Blog Strategies – Chris Baggott, Compendium Blogware

• People who find you because of searching and finding your blog convert more, bounce less, buy more and stay
• Experience is that if you give people the capability to give content, they will
• Search is an acquisition tool; Email isn’t
• Phones and website are changing the way we do business. It’s not the phone or the website itself though. It’s what you can do with it. And it’s not going to be with ads!
• Fastest growing key words are 5+ words. Grew 22% last year
• Benefit to social media and blogging is to win in search! Not to broadcast.
• What is content? Text, pics, video
• Search means nothing of you don’t have good content
• Most of clicks in search happen in organic results; BUT most qualified leads come from PPC – answer to this issue is blogging

i. If you need to target many keywords, best way is PPC, but it’s expensive;
ii. Most clicks in search happen in organic
iii. So blogging is best way to change organic results

• Most people don’t subscribe to blogs – it’s ok because blogging is for search; most are 1st time visitors
• While they say blogs are good for comments, engaging, community dialogue, it’s ok, but much more important as a foot in the door.
• Good for – More inquiries, increased traffic, more qualified leads
• Can’t control referrals or direct navigation, you can only control search — that’s what a blog is for
• Why does blogging work so well?

i. Search works on titles, keywords, recency/frequency, blog volume, relevance, links

• Blogging is not about thought leadership, although it might happen as a benefit
• Why blogs are your #1 search marketing tool; Keys to successful search blogs

1. Title – instead of Chris Baggot as title, use “list building technologies” … you need MULTIPLE blogs for capturing various types of business – need fleet of blogs

2. Use the language of your customers

• Think about what people are going to type and rank on that

3. Keywords

• 4-7% of your post should have to do with the keywords
• Key to writing posts
• Blogging is a volume driven strategy. Not every post has to be a white paper or major thought leadership. Minimum every day or multiple times a day.

4. Recency/frequency

• Need to blog every day
• Employee bloggers are 5 times more credible than C-level bloggers
• All employees who get a business card, should have capability to blog – tough to do, but ideally would be great
• The more you write about a topic, the more traffic you’ll drive

5. Measure both relevance and ROI

• Great thing about effective search is that the customer gets exactly what they wanted. Blogging does that very effectively.
• Need a way on your blog for your customer to convert to a purchase – Best Buy doesn’t have that
• Ok to use same content on your multiple blogs is good if you have a clear path
• Host multiple blogs on same site, with same domain name – still on same website
• Best way to do a link strategy is to have strong content – it will happen

Big Brands, Big Plans Panel

• How handle irrelevant user generated content? Community will automatically vet it
• What’s a proper extension of your brand and what’s not? (bud tv, ESPN phone failed) you have to listen before doing anything
• Is meaty content generated by users or paid? Must be balanced.
• If you’re not authentic, accessible and consistent yours setting yourself up for failure
• Smartphones will really change how we buy; GPS will change things too
• An injection of negativity in content helps the credibility

Any questions about the above? Comments?

Note: The original post with comments is now ineditable, so has been recreated here. Please see the old post if you’re interested in the comments!

There are so many Twitter applications, I can’t keep track! So, I decided to start this list as a comprehensive place to list all the Twitter programs. I plan to keep this updated as I find out about new applications. If you have any to add, please leave a comment below, and I’ll add them. Or, if you feel I have described the applications incorrectly, please let me know as well! (ones in bold italics in the chart have been added since the last update)

Use Regularly	Use Occasionally	Not Currently Using*
BackTweets Backupify Listorious ListWatcher Smub Socialtoo SocialOomph Topify TweepML TweepSearch Tweetdeck Tweetmeme TweetMic [m] Tweetspinner Twellow TwitPic Twittelator Pro [m] Twitter Search	Brizzly HowSociable Klout Nearby Tweets retweetrank Retweet Radar Secretweet SocialMention TBUZZ TinyChat TopFollowFriday Twazzup Tweet Backup TweetBeep TweetConvo Tweetsmarter Tweetstats Tweetworks Twit Truth Twitalyzer Twitcam TwtLong TwitLonger Twitscoop Twitseeker Twitterfall Twitter Buttons Twitter Grader Twitter Karma Twittez TwtBizCard Twtpoll Twtvite UnTweeps We Follow What the Hashtag?	Birdhouse [m] BubbleTweet ChatterBox ClickableNow ConversationList DM Deleter ExecTweets Followformation Followize Freetwitterdesigner Friendfeed Friendorfollow Greasemonkey Grouptweet Lessfriends Mailana Monitter MyCleenr Mr. Tweet My First Follow My Tweeple Newsgetter Peoplebrowsr Qwitter ReTweetability Retweetist Rate My Talk ScoutLabs Seesmic Desktop	Splitweet Tweetstack[m] Tagdef Techrigy Tipjoy Twalala Tweepular Tweet Blocker TweetGrid Tweetie [m] Tweetmanager Tweetmapper TweetMiner Tweetmondo Tweet O’Clock TweetReach Tweetree Tweetsum TweetValue Tweetvisor Twibes Twickie Twidget Twilert Twimailer Twinfluence Twintro Twithority	Twithear Twitoria TWItoSHIRT Twitpay TwitStamp Twitrans Twittas Twittercounter Twitterfeed TwitterFox TwitterFriends TwitterHawk Twitterholic Twitterific [also m] Twittersafe TwitterSheep Twitter Snipe TwitterSnooze Twitter Local Twitter Toolbar TwittLink Twollo Twtcard ViralHeat Visible Tweets YackTrack Who Should I Follow

*Note – See below for a list of even more programs and non-iPhone mobile applications. Any mobile applications are denoted with [m].

140it – Shrink your tweets directly from Twitter, using this browser button.

BackTweets – This application will search Twitter for links to a certain website, even if they are shortened. I have an RSS feed set up for my website, and have seen many times where people tweeted about my post without me knowing it. It give me the opportunity to

Backupify – A free backup service for Twitter, and many other social media applications, including Facebook, Wordpress, Flickr, Delicious.  You can choose daily or weekly backups.  Very cool application.  (Note that the free account giveaway ends 1/31/10)

Birdhouse [m] – Capture your ideas, save them for later and publish them when you’re ready. Quickly jot down your ideas, just like in Notes. Count down to 140 characters, just like in Twitter. Save as many as you want, revisit them later. Capture your ideas offline, even in Airplane mode. Rate drafts with stars and sort by best or by newest. Manage and publish from multiple Twitter accounts. Unpublish the bad ones just as easily. Back everything up through email. $3.99 on iPhone store.

Brizzly – A web-based Twitter client that has multi-account (including Facebook) and list support.  It also has a “mute” feature where you can mute a particular person if they’re tweeting too much (!), but you need to be using their interface to actually have the mute work.

BubbleTweet – Create a short video that pops up as a “bubble” over your Twitter profile page. Here’s an example. Cool service, but the bubble only shows up if you use the BubbleTweet URL given to you. So, anyone who just goes through Twitter.com won’t see your bubble.

ChatterBox – ChatterBox allows you to monitor Twitter conversations that matter to you. Whether it is a list of interesting keywords or specific user handles, ChatterBox can centralize that information into a common dashboard that individuals and teams can leverage to manage and respond to those conversations. Easily assign workflows, prioritize, tag and assign those interactions to team members ensuring that all tweets are responded to in a timely manner. Looks great for company use.

ClickableNow – Clickable Now is a plugin you’re your browser that allows you to add clickable images to your Twitter background, and allows you to see the clickable backgrounds of other tweeters.

ConversationList – A “conversationlist” is a Twitter list of the people that you talk to (and about) on Twitter. The list is automatically updated daily, so that it always reflects the people that you are paying attention to right now.  Cool application, but I don’t really see a use for it.  Also, if someone uses ListWatcher, it’s constantly telling them they have dropped from or have been added to your list.

Doesfollow – A simple program that does one thing… tells you if one user is following another user. It gives you a “yup” or a “nope” answer. I use it if for some reason I’m curious about if someone is following me (don’t use too often).

DM Deleter – This application will delete all the DM’s in your account. Apparently this saves Twitter money, because you help them conserve server space.

ExecTweets – Helps you find and follow the top business executives on Twitter.

Filttr – A program that allows you to adjust the tweets you see. You can increase or decrease certain people, and increase or decrease what you see from certain keywords. Great idea! They should integrate this into Tweetdeck! But, I can definitely use this as-is.

Followformation – I have not tested this application, because it does not use Oauth. Followformation is a tool for novice Twitter users to get started with following the top people in their categories of interest. It’s like Twitter’s suggested users list, but uses a few sources, such as We Follow, Twitterholic, and GeoFollow. Up to 10% of the auto-followed lists from any category will be paid placements.

Followize – This app’s description is “It’s a powerful, streamlined interface to Twitter which makes following lots of people and conversations quicker and easier.” But, honestly, when I sign in, I have NO idea what it does, or what the benefit is.

Freetwitterdesigner – Allows you to create a customized Twitter background with text, shapes and images.

FriendDeck – Described as “Tweetdeck for Friendfeed“. Seems amazing for those who use Friendfeed.

Friendfeed – “Helps you discover and discuss interesting stuff that your friends and family find on the web.” Basically, it allows you to see what your friends are sharing (and share yours with them) on various websites across the internet, including web pages, videos, photos, and music. It’s used for sharing, idea generation, conversation, marketing, etc. It’s used for much more than just Twitter. Seems great, but it’s just too much information for me right now. I will probably be an addict at some point soon.

Friendorfollow – Shows you who you are following that’s not following you back? Who’s following you that you’re not following back. I don’t use this… too much information for me. Gives you 3 tabs:

• Followers – those you are following who are not following you
• Fans – those who are following you but you’re not following them back
• Friends – Mutual follow

Greasemonkey – See bio text, following & follower count, and most recent Tweet for all friends and followers on the Twitter follow or friends list. Seems great! But, I use Topify to decide who to follow.

Grouptweet – Allows you to create a group to tweet with privately (i.e. bostontweeters). I haven’t found a need for this yet, but see that it could be useful for a work situation.

Hootsuite (formerly Brightkit) – HootSuite allows you to manage multiple Twitter profiles and pre-schedule tweets. Their newest feature allows you to link Hootsuite account with Google Adsense, so you can send links with banner ads. Here’s an example of what it looks like (see top banner). This is the only feature I’m using for now, although I am undecided as to how I feel about sending links with ads. (Thoughts? Let me know below!)

HowSociable – A free tracking/monitoring application that shows you how visible a brand is on the social web. 1,000 is the average brand, so higher or lower indicates something about your brand.  It can also send you a monthly email updating your score.

Klout – Klout allows you to track the impact of your opinions, links and recommendations across your social graph. They collect data about the content you create, how people interact with that content and the size and composition of your network. Then they analyze the data to find indicators of influence and then provide you with innovative tools to interact with and interpret the data. Very cool application!

Lessfriends – Seems to be similar to Friendorfollow, but I can never get it to load… takes too long (waited 10 minutes last time).

Listorious – Listorious makes it easy to find the best lists of Twitter users on any given topic, and for list creator to publicize their lists.  You can also follow lists directly from the application.  This is a great way to find lists in a particular area of interest.

ListWatcher – A great application that works by just following @ListWatcher.  It sends you a DM when any of the following happens:

• Someone adds you to a list
• Someone deletes you from a list
• A list with you is made private or deleted
• A list containing you is renamed

This is a great application so you know what lists you are on.  My only complaint is that it doesn’t filter out the Conversationlist activity, which changes every day, so that makes for a lot of useless DM’s.

Mailana – Cool application that tells you who on Twitter you talk to the most often, and gives you a visual representation of what your social network looks like.

Monitter – Similar to Tweetdeck, it’s a twitter monitor, it lets you “monitter” the twitter world for a set of keywords and watch what people are saying.

My First Follow – This application will tell you who you first followed on Twitter. I’m not sure what this shows you, but people do seem to use it!

MyCleenr – MyCleenr is a unique way to sort your friends by their last tweets. It allows you to get rid off all the inactive and useless accounts that you are following!

Mr. Tweet – Does 3 things:

1. Suggest good people and followers you are missing out on
2. Recommend you to enthusiastic users relevant to you
3. Regularly update useful stats of your Twitter usage

I prefer to find people to follow myself, so I don’t use this application.

My Tweeple – Shows you who you’re following who is not following you back, and vise versa. It’s similar to Friendorfollow, but the display is more cumbersome.

Nearby Tweets – A geography–centric social tool for networking and a business tool for building customer relationships and monitoring real–time buzz. Creates a geographic layer on top of Twitter.

Newsgetter – Allows you to search for certain terms, and save your searches to return to later.

Peoplebrowsr – Similar to Tweetdeck, but web based. I love Tweetdeck too much to consider anything else!

Qwitter – Emails you when someone stops following you. I use Socialtoo for this purpose.

retweetrank – Retweet rank is a representative of the number of times a user have been retweeted by others recently. The application tells you our Retweet rank, and percentile. I like this service a lot, as I think that how much a person retweets, is a strong indicator of the value they are bringing to Twitter.

Retweet Radar – Finds trends in the mountains of information ‘retweet’ed on Twitter. Shows you top retweeted people and links. Cool program.

Rate My Talk – Rate My Talk (@talkr on Twitter) is a service that allows conference attendees to provide immediate feedback on a conference via Twitter or through our web site. This data is collected and provided on the site in order to provide accurate feedback on valuable (or not) presentations. Seems like a great service… I’ll definitely check it out if I’m ever a speaker!

Repeets – Counts how many retweets a tweet gets, and tweets about the most retweeted ones (wow, that’s a mouthful). Follow @repeets to get updates.

ReTweetability – The ReTweetability Index measures and ranks Twitter users based on the infectious power of their tweets. This number accounts for number of followers and Tweets overall, so it is a true indicator of infectiousness. Users with a high ReTweetability Index have a greater percentage of their content spread by a greater percentage of their followers, implying that when they do tweet, it’s worth reading. I really like this application, as I do believe that a person’s “retweetability” is a strong indicator of their perceived Twitter value.

ReTweetist – Tracks posts that are retweeted to see what the most valued topics are.

ScoutLabs – A paid tracking/monitoring web-based application that tracks social media and finds signals in the noise. The application  costs $250/month. “Scout Labs helps your team find signals in the noise — what to pay attention to, what customers are ranting and raving about, what’s new and emerging.”

Secretweet – SecretTweet was created to allow Twitter users to share secrets anonymously. Basically, you go to their website, and tweet your secret and they tweet it out to their 10,000 followers. People can even comment on it. Some of the tweets are hysterical/scary!

Shorttext – Shorttext allows you very quickly to write a longer tweet or note, and create a URL for it. When I have more to say than 140 characters (especially if I’m copying an email I’ve received or something similar), you paste it in Shorttext, and it instantly gives you a URL for the copy. It’s not just a program for Twitter, but is very useful as a companion application for Twitter.

Seesmic Desktop – Desktop application similar to Tweetdeck, but with multiple account management. I find the application very confusing to use.

Smub – Shortens urls on a handheld and tweets them automatically. (also can be used for Facebook, Delicious, etc.)

SocialOomph (formerly known as Tweet Later)- You can do numerous things with this site. First, you can use it to set up alerts to track keywords you are interested in. You can also schedule tweets at certain scheduled times. And, you can auto follow or auto DM. I use the scheduled tweets feature.  Also newly added, is the ability to block auto-DM’s.

Splitweet – Similar to Tweetdeck, but it allows you to manage multiple accounts. I do need multiple account support, but I am too in love with Tweetdeck, so am waiting for them to come out with this functionality (coming soon).

SocialMention – A free tracking/monitoring application that has a social media search and analysis platform that aggregates user generated content from across the universe into a single stream of information. It allows you to easily track and measure what people are saying about you, your company, a new product, or any topic across the web’s social media landscape in real-time. Social Mention monitors 100+ social media properties directly including: Twitter, Facebook, FriendFeed, YouTube, Digg, Google etc. You can also receive daily alerts, or put a widget on your website.

Socialtoo – This program allows you to do multiple things:

• Received an email telling you who followed you and who unfollowed you the day before, and what you tweeted before that happened
• Autofollow people
• Opt out of auto DM’s (they used to offer an auto-DM service, but no longer do)
• Conduct surveys

The only part of the program I use is the first one… Socialtoo emails me every day with who followed me and unfollowed me yesterday. I usually scan quickly to see if there were tweets that are particularly popular or unpopular, so I can notice a trend. I also look to see who unfollowed me, so I know that they are no longer following.

Tagalus – Allows you to find out the “definition” of a particular hashtag.

Tagdef – Definition of Twitter tags, similar to Tagalus. You can also tweet @tagdef and say “Define #xxx” and it will define it for you.

TBUZZ – Makes it easy to tweet the page you’re on, or follow the buzz around it. Using a toolbar button, you can automatically tweet the shortened link and even copy and paste text easily.

Techrigy – This is a paid tracking/monitoring application that marketers can get a full view of their marketing landscape by listening to their consumers online. It enables organizations to:

• Understand consumers’ reactions to all marketing campaigns irrespective of channel
• Monitor brand reputation
• Identify Influencers
• Undertake proper competitive analysis and market research
• Support loyalty initiatives and programs
• Engage directly with customers online

Tinychat – Create your own chatroom and invite people through one simple link. Not just for Twitter use, but it is a useful tool for Twitter users. It’s pretty basic (no sound alerts, etc), but it does the trick.

Tipjoy – Allows you to pay or receive money from people on Twitter. It’s great to use for collecting money for a cause. You can install a widget on your website to collect the donations.

TopFollowFriday – Shows you who is endorsing who and who is being endorsed on #followfriday. The results don’t look accurate to me.

Topify – This is one of my favorite applications! What this application does, is makes your email work much better for you with Twitter. When you receive an email about a new follower, instead of being without any information about the followee, it will include their bio and basic stats. And, directly from the email you can follow the person! It also allows you to reply to a DM directly from email.

Twalala – Twalala allows you to control what you see and don’t see in your twitterstream. You can filter tweets out of your stream by keywords and phrases or mute individuals who get a bit too chatty. Twitter with a mute button! Great concept, except you have to use their interface for it to work. It would be great, if the selections here, would be active no matter what Twitter client you used.

Twazzup – I really like this application. It’s basically Twitter Search, but groups the results together in a more meaningful way. It shows you real time tweets, real time photos, most popular links, and top trendmakers. Very useful.

TweetpML – One of my favorite applications for Lists.  TweepML is a simple format to make it easy for people to share a list of Twitter users.  You can follow the list right from the application, and you can even automatically follow all members of the list, or just certain members.

Tweepsearch – Similar to Twellow, this program searches bios for a particular keyword. But, it can also search the bios of your followers only, which can be very useful.

Tweepular – Provides insight into who is following you, who is not, and a deep dive into your fellow tweeps. You can see someone’s location, last tweet, bio, follower count and popularity, to help figure out if you want to follow them or not.

Tweet Backup – Gives you the ability to export all your posts and friends (will be able to restore in a few weeks as well). After a recent issue with my account (my following count doubled overnight), I signed up for this, just for peace of mind.

Tweetbeep – Keep track of conversations that mention you, your products, your company, anything, with hourly updates. You can even keep track of who’s tweeting your website or blog, even if they use a shortened URL (like tinyurl.com). Great for online reputation management, catching all your @replies, finding job/networking opportunities, keeping up on your favorite hobby, and more!

Tweet Blocker – Using highly advanced filtering, they catalog and rank the top spammers on Twitter, allowing users to quickly and easily find spammers. They give each of your followers a Grade (A-F) and a number (0-100) to give you a sense of how “spammy” this user is, based on how long they’ve been on Twitter, how active they are, and their follower/following ratio.

Tweetburner – The program was down when I went to review it, but it looks like it’s a URL shortening and tracking program. It tracks how many clicks your tweet gets, and allows you to analyze which headlines work best, and at what time of day your tweets get the most clicks.

Tweetchat – This program aggregates all tweets for a certain hashtag into a chat room. The benefit of using this vs. Twitter Search for hashtags, is that when you write your tweet, you don’t have to add the hashtag, as it is added automatically — a HUGE timesaver and is so much easier. Also, you can tweet directly from Tweetchat, so there is no need to flip back to twitter to enter a tweet. I use this whenever I’m on a webinar or at an event… amazing!

TweetConvo – TweetConvo is a great application to view twitter conversations. Rather than going through of a tweet’s @replies to get a grasp of the conversation you just enter the tweet’s URL, and it shows you the conversation for that tweet.

Tweetdeck – I can’t say enough about this program. Basically, Tweetdeck shows your Twitter feed in columns of information based on your preferences, rather than one long stream. For example, I use the following columns: All tweets, bostonmarketer, direct messages, friends, thought leaders, companies, twitter stuff, and jobs. This allows me to keep a better eye on things that interest me. You can also see your Facebook friends’ updates right in the application. You can click to see anyone’s profile, and from there add them to a particular column. It has a URL shortener build in, which is invaluable. I find this useful for my job search as I keep columns of job search twitter id’s.

TweetGrid – Create a Twitter Search Dashboard. Looks similar to Tweetdeck, but you can also tweet from multiple accounts. I liked most everything about this program, except that the avatars are very small, so I found it difficult to use.

Tweetie [m] – iPhone application that handles multiple accounts, search, retweet, DM. Very user friendly and clear.  Recently Tweetie launched a new version called Tweetie2. While there is much more functionality, including lists, it has major problems with caching (you need to reload tweets you’ve already seen again), so I’m not using it anymore. Too bad, it used to be an amazing application.

Tweetmanager – Does a variety of things:

• follow and track Twitter users automatically based on certain keywords
• send a message to 1,000 users or less
• autoreply to @replies (can be used like an out of office message)
• auto-post tweets at predetermined times
• auto-tweet when you update your blog

I’m not currently using this application, but think it has some amazing features.

Tweetmapper – Tweetmapper lets you map your tweets… Tell your friends where you are and where you have traveled, places to go and things to enjoy, even the news that’s happening around you – as it’s happening!

Tweetmeme -This app aggregates all the popular links on twitter to determine which links are popular. It even puts the links into categories so you can view it by categories you’re intereseted in or just subscribe to the RSS for each. Popular items get tweeted automatically by the Tweetmeme Twitter account.

TweetMic [m] – Great app that allows you to make high-quality audio recordings and publish them directly to Twitter. There is no limit to the length of audio recording you can make! VERY easy app that allows you to create variety in your Twitter stream.

TweetMiner – Allows you to load RSS feeds into this Twitter Client, tag them to be tweeted, and schedule the time to tweet them. VERY cool application that could be very useful. However, there is no way to import your current RSS subscriptions, so you need to add each one individually.

Tweetmondo – Shows you other Twitter users close to you. Cool visual results.

Tweet O’Clock – Type in a Twitter username to find out when it’s best to tweet them.

TweetReach – Tells you how far a URL, hashtag or tweet reached on Twitter. Shows # tweets, # people, tweet types, impressions and contributors tweeters. Great for analyzing an event.

Tweetspinner – Does a number of things, many of which are GREAT for businesses… overall, great app!

• Create and schedule smart tweets – create tweet templates, and Tweetspinner will rotate what it tweets for you
• Schedule rotation of profiles and designs
• Smart friends and followers – keyword following (find users who tweet certain words and automatically follow them), purge non reciprocal folllowers, mimic following (follow the followers of another user), location filtering (awesome! but you need to upgrade to use)

Tweetstalk – A program that allows you to follow someone without having them know you are following them. Maybe it’s because I’m not a stalker, but I can’t imagine why this would be useful!

Tweetstats -This program graphs your Twitter stats for you, including tweets per hour, tweets per month, tweet timeline, reply statistics and more. Interesting to look at occasionally.

Tweetsum – we show you at a glance who’s following you, give you the tools you need to decide whether you should follow them back or not, and let you quickly add or dismiss your new followers. Similary to Topify, but it doesn’t show you the bio or location, and doesn’t have DM capability. But, the drag and drop feature is nice.

Tweetree – Tweetree puts your Twitter stream in a tree so you can see the posts people are replying to in context. It also pulls in lots of external content like twitpic photos, youtube videos and more, so that you can see them right in your stream without having to click through every link your friends post.

Tweetsmarter – Adds special characters (like a star or an umbrella) or a retweet link to your post.

TweetStack [m] – Best described as Tweetdeck for mobile phones. Stacks are similar to columns in TweetDeck, and can even be imported directly from TweetDeck. You can also search, and use multiple account logins.

TweetValue – Tells you the monetary value of your Twitter account. Just for fun!

Tweetvisor – A web-based Twitter interface, that enables people to better manage multiple Twitter accounts, returns real-time updates about favorite topics, news and tweets, and supports groups, threaded conversations, tagging friends and inline video replies. Similar to Peoplebrowsr

Tweetworks – Does a lot, but the 2 most basic are: Twitter groups (similar to Group Tweet) and threaded discussions, which allow you to see tweets strung together in a conversation. I am a member of one group. But, because I use Tweetdeck, I don’t use the threaded conversation feature much.

Twellow – A search program that also searches bios, names and locations. It also has a graphical interface that enables localized searching. VERY useful, if you are trying to find someone, or target particular people.

Twhirl – Desktop program similar to Tweetdeck, but it allows you to manage multiple accounts. I do need multiple account support, but I am waiting for Tweetdeck to come out with this functionality.

Twibes – Application that allows you to join groups on Twitter

Twickie – Twickie is a free service that fetches Twitter replies for you (and gives you an easy way to view AND export them).

Twidget – A widget for OS X that allows you to update your Twitter status.

Twilert – An application that emails you regular updates of tweets containing your brand, product, service or any other keyword. Great program, but (as expected!), I use Tweetdeck for this.

Twimailer – Rather than receiving the plain emails from Twitter notifying you of a new follower (include just their name), Twimailer sends you their statistics and their last few tweets. Very cool! To me, the major limitation is that you still have to click through to their profile to follow them. Topify solves that issue, which is why I use that application instead.

Twinfluence – Another Twitter grading tool that measures the combined influence of twitterers and their followers.

Twintro – “Twitter Introductions” – Helps you discover the most interesting Twitter users. You follow @twintro, and every day, Twintro retweets a different user’s tweets to you. If you like that user, follow them!

TwitLonger – Twitlonger is a way to let you post to Twitter when 140 characters just isn’t enough. You can write what you need and a link to what you said will automatically be posted to your Twitter account. It’s similar to TwtLong. It’s like TwitPic for text.

TwtLong – Twitlonger is a way to let you post to Twitter when 140 characters just isn’t enough. You can write what you need and a link to what you said will automatically be posted to your Twitter account. It’s similar to TwitLonger.

Twit Truth – I LOVE this app! Shows you great analytics on your twitter account, for top Twitter users, and anyone else you want to look up. It shows you the stats below, and also characterizes your tweeting with a descriptor (i.e. I’m an “Engager”), average tweets per day, average response time and breaks down your tweets by type.

Twitalyzer – Analyzes your Twitter performance based on 5 factors: impact, engagement, generosity, velocity and clout.That’s great for analyzing your performance over time.  In addition, Twitalyzer shows clickthrough rate, gives you recommendations to improve your scores, shows a sentiment analysis of your account, and many more features!  There’s also a Premium application that you can pay for.

Twitcam -Allows you to stream live on Twitter VERY easily. Just logon (no OAuth yet unfortunately) and start broadcasting. It tweets a message immediately on Twitter letting your followers know, so they can come watch you, and use text chat to talk to you or eachother. And, it archives your video for viewing later on (cool!)

Twithear – Lets you add your voice on twitter. Call a phone number or use your computer to record a message.

Twithority – Similar to Twitter Search, but it allows you to see the results by user “authority” (the more followers, the more “authority”).

Twitoria – Twitoria finds your friends that haven’t tweeted in a long time so you can give them the boot! Great application, but I just don’t have the time nor see the need to go through and clean out my followers (especially if they’re not tweeting).

TWItoSHIRT – Get a T-shirt made with your tweets!

TwitPic – Allows you to easily post a photo on Twitter. Just browse to the photo, and it creates a link. It’s built directly into Tweetdeck, so it’s easy to use from there!

Twitscoop – Through an automated algorithm, twitscoop crawls hundreds of tweets every minute and extracts the words which are mentionned more often than usual. The result is displayed in a Tag Cloud, using the following rule: the hotter, the bigger. This is also integrated with Tweetdeck, so is easy to check.

Twittas – As they say, “A new useless app every week.” Includes, when you’ll hit 1 million tweets, what your first tweet was, your first follower was, etc.

Twittelator Pro [m] – A paid Twitter application for the iPhone (cost is $3.99). Great application that has list support, auto-hashtags, multi-accounts, etc.  This is the application I’ve seen that has the most customization available.  It’s only downside is it’s long load time.

TwitterSheep – See a tag cloud from the ‘bios’ of your twitter flock.

Twitter Snipe – Helsp you find people to follow based on certain criteria. Paid application $77.

TwitterSnooze – Allows you to temporarily stop seeing someone’s tweets (i.e. if they are at a conference you just need a break). The downside is that it actually unfollows and then refollows that person. Note: This application has been out of service for a while now, but I keep hoping it will come back!

Twitrans – Translates your tweets into any language.

TwitStamp – TwitStamp allows you to use your current Twitter status anywhere – in the form of an image so you can post it on blogs, forums, websites, etc.

Twitter Buttons – Create a button for your website that says “Follow Me”!

Twitter Grader – Tells you what your Twitter grade is — it’s based on the #of followers, #you follow, etc. You can also find out who the Twitter elite are in a certain area.

Twitter Karma – An application that fetches your friends and followers from Twitter when you click the “Whack!” button, then displays them for you, letting you paginate through them. By default, the list contains all your friends and followers and is sorted by last update, showing those who most recently updated first. You can sort and filter the list. Similar to Friendorfollow, but with better interface.

Twitter Local – Allows you to filter tweets by location. I’m not currently using this, but can definitely see a use for it, particularly if you travel a lot.

Twitter Safe – Backs up your followers, following and replies. I’m not using this… maybe I’m just too trusting that I will not lose everything.

Twitter Search (formerly Summize) – A mandatory for Twitter users. Type in any search term (including AND, OR, quotes) and see what’s happening on Twitter for that search. Also shows you trending topics. Clicking on “Advanced” lets you get more detailed in your search, including tweets from one person to another, date, attitude and place.

Twitter Toolbar – This short cut/quicklinks toolbar brings Twitter closer to you, so you can: visit Twitter, update your Twitter status directly, search Google, Twitter Search, Twellow, Twictionary, optimize your Twitter experience and research the world of Twitter.

Twittercounter – Give you TONS of stats about your profile, including a graph of your follower numbers, growth, rank, etc.

Twitterfall – Allows you to search on a particular term, and have the resuts fall in a real update. Cook when twets are moving quicly!

Twitterfeed – Automatically posts your blog RSS feed and post to Twitter for you. You can also use this with services other than Twitter.

Twitterfriends – With TwitterFriends you can …

• find out the hidden network of Twitter contacts that are really relevant for you.
• visualize the network of your relevant contacts and their contacts
• see who of your Twitter friends are online this very moment
• read some stats about your Twitter account
• take a look at the most conversational Twitterers or those who are posting the most links

Wow, there’s a lot of great information here, but I found it to be too much!

TwitterHawk – Very interesting program, but a bit controversial. This program will automatically send pre-written tweets (that you have written) to people who tweet certain keywords. For example, if you have a coffee shop, the program can send tweets to everyone who mentions coffee. Controversial because it may seem like spam.

Twitterholic – Allows you to see rankings by #followers, #friends, #updates and date joined. You can also see these stats for a particular user over time. Good program, I just don’t have a need for it.

TwitterFox – A Firefox extension that notifies you of your friends’ tweets on Twitter. This extension adds a tiny icon on the status bar which notifies you when your friends update their tweets. Also it has a small text input field to update your tweets.

Twitterific [also m] – Similar to Twhirl in that it allows you to manage multiple accounts, but it doesn’t have multiple columns of information. (MAC only)

Twittez – Twittez is a simple Twitter application that lets you get your answers from fellow Twitters, all you have to do is tweet with “does anyone know?” with your question and they try to find your answer.

Twitpay – Allows you to send and receive money from someone else on Twitter. Very cool program, I just haven’t needed it yet.

Twitseeker – Finds people on Twitter based on what they’re talking about. Cool! I searched for Marketing, and it came up with a list of 20 people who have been tweeting about Marketing. Very useful, especially for my job search.

TwittLink – They monitor almost every post on Twitter and extract all tweeted links. Using a statistical approach they figure out which subjects (based on extracted links) are most discussed on twitter. They use semantic analysis to group links that talk about the same subject. Similar to Twitscoop.

Twollo – This program finds people for you to follow based on your interests. Twollo will find them and automatically follow them for you.

Twtpoll – A very simple, easy to use program that helps you set up a poll. Type in your question and answers, and go!

TwtBizCard – Send a business card to someone by just adding #twtbizcard to any tweet! It’s great to use when meeting people at a Tweetup.

Twtcard – Send a greeting card, a surprise message, or an invitation on Twitter or via email.

Twtvite – Simple event manager twitter application… like Evite for people on Twitter. The application also gives you code to embed the invitation into your website.

UnTweeps – List and unfollow Tweeps you are following who have not updated their status in 7, 30, 60 or 90 days. Useful application to clean out spam and inactive people.

ViralHeat – A paid social media monitoring/tracking and analytics application (starts at $9.99/mo for individuals and goes up to $139/mo for large corporations. Provides location based tracking, real-time monitoring and daily alerts. Looks like a great application.

We Follow – A user powered Twitter directory that categorizes people into groups, such as social media, marketing, celebrity, politics, etc.

What the Hashtag? – A wiki that tracks hashtags on Twitter. Great idea, as I so often see hashtags that I don’t know what they are being used for.

Who Should I Follow – Similar to Mr. Tweet, this program recommends people you should follow based on popularity and location. What I like about this program is that you can control those 2 features, if they are more or less important to you. The one problem I see is that it recommends people I’m already following.

Visible Tweets – A great application for events, to display the tweets relevant to that event based on a hashtag or a search. You can choose to display the tweets in letter by letter, tag cloud, or rotation.

YackTrack – I think this is a tracking/monitoring application, but there’s really no good explanation on their site, so I have no idea!

 

Applications no longer in service – TweetVolume

Even more applications – Here are even more applications that I haven’t detailed above, or looked into: BeTwittered, TweepML, TweetMyBlog, Tweetwhatyoueat, Twtpwr

Mobile applications not for iPhone – I use Twitter on an iPhone, but I thought I’d list a few of the applications I’ve heard of for non-iPhone mobile phones: Blackbird (and more to come… suggestions?)

Security note – I am not claiming any responsibility for the security of these programs. Please do your own due diligence to be sure you’re comfortable, especially when providing your Twitter password.

Anything to add or change? Please leave a comment below!

Have you ever heard of charity:water?  How about Twestival? I hadn’t until a couple of months ago.  But, the formation of Twestival raised $250 million dollars for charity:water, an organization bringing clean drinking water to people in developing nations.

Amanda Rose, the founder of Twestival, created the event in under 2 weeks.  I interviewed her for another project I did, and she told me that after she attended a small charity:water event, “I just couldn’t stop thinking about the power of Twitter and how if this was magnified in other cities the amount of awareness and donations it could bring to a cause.  I knew the cause had to be one with a clear message and something everyone could identify with.”

So, she founded Twestival, which was an event on February 12, 2009 in over 200 cities around the world where people in the Twitter community hosted events to raise money for charity:water.  Over 10,000 people contributed to the cause, and raised enough money for 50 villages and 12,500 to have clean water.  How inspiring!

The event in Boston was run by Justin Whitaker, was held at the Om Lounge in Cambridge, and raised $4,000 for charity:water.  There were over 100 people at our event, which included raffles from sponsors, and a slideshow to educate us about the cause.

What is so incredible to me about this event is that Twestival was created and promoted entirely using Twitter and a simple website, and raised so much money,  primarily from donors who had never heard of charity:water. The costs of the event were also low, and the only costs were covered by a sponsor, so 100% of the proceeds went to the charity itself.  Also, Twestival was founded by Amanda, who does not work for charity:water, she was just incredible moved by the cause.

This event was also successful in my mind because it utilized social media’s incredible power of relationships and conversation to get buzz going. With no other traditional marketing could you get so much support for one event, with new donors, in such a short time, with no spending.  This is why I am such a supporter of social media… it’s a great way to get things moving, and allow the power of relationships and viral word or mouth to take over.

So why am I writing this post 2 months after the event?  Well, drilling in Ethiopia began today!  Below is the video from the first day of drilling.

(If you can’t see the video, click here)

Why do YOU think Twestival was such a success?  What other charities do you think could benefit from a similar strategy?

A bestselling author of thrillers contacted me today about working with him on social media to launch his book series. Exciting!  I thought I’d put together a few ideas before talking to him, recognizing the limitation that I don’t know too much about his current reader base.  Ari Herzog’s advice to me was to stay high level, and I agree, but I would also like to have some specific ideas going into the meeting.  Here are a few ideas I have, and I would love to hear if you have any more!

• Start a blog about the process of writing the books
  • Also incorporate the writing tips that are currently in the email newsletter
  • Comment on other blogs talking about the same genre of books, the author and the current books
• Start a Facebook fan page
  • Find fans by posting information to other groups and fan pages
  • Run a raffle every couple of weeks for a free book
  • Give a discount to fans
• Record 10 minute sections of the books and make into short recordings to be posted on YouTube and his website
  • Post links on Twitter
  • Email to current mailing list
  • Post on Facebook fan page
• Be active on Twitter, and talk about the build up the launch
  • Find book enthusiasts and communicate with them
• Add a rating system to the current website where readers can share their opinions
• Start a community based around the book genre for readers to talk about the genre and his books
  • need an opportunity for open Q&A with the author
  • also participate in existing book communities
• Email to current mailing list, including dates of book signings
• Start a LinkedIn profile and group to post status updates to and network

Any other ideas come to the top of your head? Please share them below! Don’t worry, I will NOT take credit for them!

A couple of months ago, I had a second round interview for a job I was really interested in.  In this economy, I am seeing that companies are hiring, there are just a lot of candidates applying for each open position. So, I started thinking about a way that I could stand out from the other candidates applying for this job.

Part of the job description had to do with internet marketing, so I decided it would be a great idea to make a video thank you note, which would be a great way to stand out from other candidates, to market myself, and to utilize an online technique to show my comfort level with using technology.

Here’s the result of my first video:

This first one took me a long time to record, compress and upload, but I’ve now done three, and they’re a snap! Here’s how I do it:

• Make notes on what you would like to say in the thank you note. It’s best to not read every line (like I did in this video… my subsequent ones are better, but the job searches are still active so I’m not ready to share), but to just look at brief notes
• Put your notes as close to the webcam viewer as possible, so your eyes will be looking close to the camera
• The video above is close to 4 minutes, but I would recommend keeping it under 2 minutes
• Compress the video file in Windows Movie Maker (import the file, right click on the file to publish it, select compress)
• Upload the video to YouTube
• Email the link to your contacts

I have received positive feedback on the videos I’ve recorded.  I’m still looking for a job, but I do believe it has helped to get me to stand out from the other candidates.

What do you think?  Do you like this idea?  Have you ever heard of anyone doing this before?

I have an interview tomorrow with a restaurant group in Boston.  There was no job description posted online for the job, so I don’t know much about what they are looking for.  But, you better believe I’m going to bring up social media as a way to market their restaurants. (of course I would need to outline the objectives of using social media first!) Here are a few quick ideas I have:

• Create half hour cooking segments by the chefs and post on YouTube and other video sites.
• Start a blog about hot new trends in food, restaurants, drinks, etc. There’s so much to write about in this industry!
• Post the restaurant’s menu on their website and allow customers to rate the dishes, and make comments. They can also make suggestions for a dish they would like to see added to the menu (that could turn into a huge program where you select one recipe each quarter to be the featured customer… party? PR? named recipe?)
• Open a Twitter account and a Facebook Fan page to communicate with customers and potential customers

Any other ideas come to the top of your head? Please share them below! Don’t worry, I will NOT take credit for them, as I will definitely be passing my blog address on to them!