Seems like all our clients are asking the same question these days. They pay us to give them helpful answers, but hey, it’s a Saturday and I have a little free time (because I don’t have Tweetdeck turned on!). My apologies to the Bard:

To tweet or not to tweet, that is the question;
Whether ’tis nobler to spend your work hours on Twitter
Following news of outrageous behavior and misfortune,
Or to take to your keyboard and get back to work,
And by un-following, end them. To work, or to tweet
No more; and by an unsubscription to say we end
The dull conceit and the thousand unnatural shocks
The web is heir to — ’tis a mental nirvana
Devoutly to be wish’d. To die to Twitter;
To sleep, perchance to work. Ay, there’s the rub,
For in that sleep or work, to what purpose our time,
When we have logged off this persistent stranger,
Freedom must give us pause. There’s the disrespect
That makes calamity of online life,
For who would bear the whips and scorns of bloggers,
The anonymous poster, the proud arrogant insult,
The pain of willful misunderstanding, manners’ decay,
The insolence of contempt and the spurning
Of patient merit and reasoned conversation,
When we ourselves can our own quiet make
With a blank monitor? who would follow the chatter,
To linkshrink and retweet instead of work,
But that the dread of being laid off,
The unpaid, inactive state from which
No coworker returns, strengthens the will,
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of…

I just listened to a recording of John Jantsch with Duct Tape Marketing, interviewing Seth Godin, bestselling author, entrepreneur and agent of change. They covered a LOT of interesting topics related to small businesses and our current economic environment, including why Godin doesn’t Twitter! Godin is a believer in being the best in the world at a few things, rather than being average at a bunch of things. I was multitasking while listening (being average at a bunch of things), and I still got a great deal out of the interview. Seth’s final request of the audience was to “just start” — so, I am hereby just starting by blogging about it! Tell me what YOU are going to start.

Ran an interesting little experiment last week, testing the marketing effectiveness of promoting a new free SEO Web Design Tips PDF. Patrick’s blog post was too good not to use as link bait, but as you probably know, you can’t track the downloads of a PDF with on-page analytics tracking code.

However, link shrinking software CAN give you these metrics. Using a $4 account at BudURL, I created two shortened URLs, /SEOWebDesign and /SEOWebDesignTips. Then, I used LinkedIn’s News feature in all the groups I belong to, and sent out an announcement with a link to the new freebie. At the same time, I tweeted the news, using the shorter of the two URLs…at 140 characters, it’s not exactly a press release. I have about 100 followers, and I expected it would get retweeted, hopefully by some of the more popular Twitizens. However, in retrospect, I realized I should have specifically asked that people retweet.

The results? In a week, 271 page visits via LinkedIn, 2 via Twitter. Our site traffic was up 17% for the week, so all-in-all, a decent promotion. I’ll try retweeting the tweet this week with a specific retweet request, and see what we get.

I don’t think I’m any more well-known on the marketing groups on LinkedIn than among my Twitter peeps, but it’s certainly true that the audience self-selected in LinkedIn groups is better targeted. When you think about social media, don’t forget that you still need affinity, interest and motivation to see results…and, that if you measure your results, you can learn a lot about where you should be spending your time.

See this TechCrunch article for more detail on Google and Twitter …If you stop and think about this, it just makes sense to some degree. Google dominates in the area of search. But they don’t do ‘real-time’ search of conversations and that’s where Twitter is strong. If you haven’t used the http://search.twitter.com — do so and you’ll see the power of this new era. Type a few keywords in and watch as it updates for you in real-time, listing the Twitter conversations going on with those keywords.

We’ll see… rumors are rumors.  But just because it makes sense to a bunch of bloggers doesn’t mean it will happen.  Personally, I’d like to see it occur provided Google doesn’t sit on Twitter like it did Blogger and slow the development of the platform.  But I have my doubts Google will make the leap because there is so much in flux right now. New developments in social media and social networking tools are happening almost weekly from startups and the majors.

For example, where does FriendFeed fit into the picture with their announcements this coming Monday (April 6th) for major changes?  I’m personally more interested in these developments because it’s a more powerful communication tool then Twitter.  And what will Facebook do?  My goodness; there are so many changes occurring in the social tools space that 2009 is an exciting year of unpredictable change for most of us. Hardly a new concept though considering the last few years, but that’s another more philosophic topic.

Robert Scoble seems to be leaning away from the idea that Google would buy Twitter. As you know, opinions are like noses, everyone has one. What do you think?  Kara Swisher is reporting that there is no Google deal under discussion to buy Twitter.

Tom
Reposted with permission from MarketsofConversation.com ©2009

Got to go to Nashville last week to meet with some clients, and with time to kill before my flight, had a chance to drop by Print Design Mecca, aka the Hatch Show Print office. This is a famous letterpress shop, specializing in concert posters. However, they had this great new post card on the rack, which I thought I’d share:

Rand Fishkin of SEOmoz had a tweet recently where he was wondering how the heck do you follow hundreds of people on Twitter? He had decided to quit following his brother because he posted too frequently…kept Rand from seeing too many people. I had the same problem with Guy Kawasaki, finally deciding that he has 10 people posting to his Twitter account. BTW, in 1993, when Rand started playing with the internet, he was in high school. I had already helped build my first commercial B2B site, for Schlumberger. Glad that we can share the pain of too much too fast too soon.

How about you? How are you managing to follow all the interesting people on Twitter?

Here is a question I get fairly often:

I notice in your Twitter posts/tweets that you have a “tiny url” for the website postings you want the reader to see. What is TinyURL? How is this different from a regular URL?

GOOD question, Bob. Here is the answer: Twitter allows only 140 characters and that include any URL you may insert into the text. The problem with URLs is many of them are very long and hairy, as you’ve probably noticed. So … thanks to TinyURL freeware, here’s what you do to solve that problem:

1. Go to http://www.tinyurl.com
2. Scroll down a bit and you’ll see a box titled: Enter a long URL to make tiny:
3. Do what it says and click on the Make TinyURL button.

OR, if you want to add TinyURL to your toolbar:
1. Click and drag the following link to your links toolbar: TinyURL!
2. Once this is on your toolbar, you’ll be able to make a TinyURL at the click of a button. By clicking on the toolbar button, a TinyURL will be created for the page you are currently on. 
3. Next time you’re composing a note in Twitter and want to include a page’s URL, open another window (or tab up) so you can see the content there. Grab the URL and click on the TinyURL thing on your Toolbar, and it will give you the short version you can copy and paste into your tweet.

Try it out. You can always delete your test twitter.

BONUS:
This question also comes up about Twitter: Why should a business bother with Twitter? Well, what you have to keep in mind is there are two parts to the Twitter opportunity, and you don’t see the second one unless you know about it. I’ve had all sorts of businesses contact me when I twitter about something because these businesses are constant running SEARCHES against all Twitters for keywords. When they find something, they send that person an email (or Twitter). It’s the ultimate one-on-one marketing.

Go to Google and type Twitter Search and you’ll see all kinds of search engines. In fact, Twitter actually purchased a specialized Twitter Search software company that has been integrated into Twitter – see http://search.twitter.com/. 

The business leverage here is getting more intimate with people who are exposing so much about their daily lives (business and personal) that you can hook into this and engage with them. Answer questions, help them out, solve a problem for them, sell them a product they are looking for, fix something broken they are complaining about.

I tell you, when someone pops up in your email box telling you they saw a Twitter you posted and they are offering some help, it just about blows you away. This is true for B-to-B and B-to-C.

Another feature is the list of hot topics that are shown at http://search.twitter.com/, so go exploring and see what’s possible for you and your business on Twitter.

Tom