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Tailoring Twitter: The ROI of Curating Content on Twitter

April 25, 2011 by Liz Leave a Comment

What You Share Defines You

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Last year, I started experimenting with curating content on Twitter. I had three good reasons. I realized that

  1. Twitter was no longer an extension of blog, but had become it’s own thing. Like a new summer home where I met a new neighborhood of people, many of them didn’t know my background, my skillset, my expertise, or my interests. A twitter bio doesn’t do much to fill in that.
  2. The weekly link post on my blog “The SOB Business Cafe” wasn’t as useful today as a filter as it once had been. Not every great post is evergreen enough to wait until Friday for sharing. And a single post collect such things needs to be targeted and niched well with a title that brings home their value. Rearranging that slot in that way would be turning it into a totally new thing. I had other ideas about using that space to feature members of the community.
  3. Becoming a blogger had given me a way to keep up the writer’s discipline of writing every day — a habit that had built my skills and served me for decades. The idea of curating great content would give a way to keep up the writer’s discipline of reading great content every day — a habit that would build my skills and keep me current in an ever changing business environment.

To say it paid off would be an understatment. While reading for articles to share, I found new thoughts to consider and new ideas to write about. And like blogging, curating content on Twitter taught me more about relationships, social skills and building a network than I might ever have expected.

Here’s how I did that …

Build a Stronger Network by Curating Content On the Go

Don’t think for a minute that I’m exaggerating about the “minutes a day” part. I curate content during commercials on TV and while I’m waiting for people to meet me in a restaurant. At the risk of sounding like Dr. Seuss …

I curate in the morning.
Breaking out save articles without warning.
I curate on a break.
I curate eating cake.
I curate near the lake.
Sometimes I save an article to read and curate while I wait
for a meeting, a phone call, an appointment, or blogger date.
I curate especially during commercial breaks …

Two Ways to Curate on the Go

Actually, I’m not quite as obsessed as all that. But I do curate in the minutes that I used to just sit. Here are two ways I do that.

  1. When someone shares a great article on Twitter that I don’t have time to read right then, I send the that article to my Instapaper account. When I find I have a few minutes to read a bit, I have a queue of articles that already have my interest waiting to be read. I share the ones I think serve my audience interests and needs.
  2. I also have a list of publications — standard publications in my niche, writers who say thought provoking and useful things, and outliers who connect ideas in interesting ways. I’ve collected them into sets of bookmarks. About once a week I visit their websites to see what they’ve been talking about and share what I find to be the most useful of their content.

Sometimes I tweet what I find at that very moment. Often I schedule the content I curate so that I don’t binge tweet. I also think about when an article might be most useful to folks. So I try to post articles that require more reading time at night, how-to and building articles or on the weekend, and ways to perform better at work during the week. [I use Tweetdeck to schedule these curated tweets and the only tweets I schedule are curated tweets.]

The ROI of Curating Content on Twitter

The discipline of reading regularly and curating what I prized had more ROI than I’d ever have guessed. Naturally I got closer and more up-to-date with great content, but the return was far more than that. Here are the direct benefits that were a result of investing a few minutes whenever I had the time.

  1. The content I curated defined me more clearly and differently to the people who follow my Twitter Stream. This single reason is huge. Don’t just be the “sales guy” be the “sales guy who’s up on the latest news and issues.”
  2. That content began attracting people who want to read the content I curate. I am pre-selecting the Internet for them. Twitter used to be the back door to my blog. Now that new audience sometimes starts at Twitter and then goes to my blog to check out what I’m about.
  3. When I keep what I curate consistent in content and quality, I find people share it often with comments and RTs.
  4. When I credit the Twitter name of the person who wrote the article — rather than the magazine or blog — it often starts a relationship between us that wasn’t there before I tweeted that person’s work. Some of those relationships have now moved offline to collaborations. A couple of nice interviews have resulted and some upcoming coverage for an event is happening because of those relationships.
  5. Offering great content from 8-12 other sources a day also makes it easier to share what’s good on my own blog without seeming a self-promotional jerk.
  6. I’ve become far more familiar with the “personality” of the publications in my niche. I developed a good sense for each publication’s strengths, standards, and content preferences. i’m still surprised to find how infrequently some of the huge publications on the web update their content.
  7. Curating content has kept me from staying stuck in the conversation fishbowl that can happen when we only talk with our friends. I’ve learned new points of view, new tools, new techniques, and new strategies from the articles I’ve read.

The ROI of curating content on twitter is the influence gained from incrementally staying in sync with the tools and the culture while still listening to the mainstream point of view. Those bits and articles that we take in from Twitter bring the latest from the self-sorted group. Those we seek out from traditional media bring the outside view. On the edges of each and in between them is where the new thoughts come through.

Curating content gets us to listen too.

The more we listen, the more we know. The more we know, the more we notice. The more we notice the more we can use to figure out what we need to know next.

How can you curate content to tailor Twitter — to make it faster, easier and more meaningful — for the folks who follow you?

Be Irresistible!

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your business!!

Related
Tailoring Twitter: Does Your Twitter Profile Attract the Right People?
Tailoring Twitter: Building a Powerful Network that Fits You Perfectly
Tailoring Twitter: Get Busy Folks to “Get” Twitter in 2 Minutes Flat!

Filed Under: Business Life, Marketing /Sales / Social Media, Successful Blog, Writing Tagged With: bc, curating content, LinkedIn, ROI, small business, Twitter

Tailoring Twitter: Get Busy Folks to “Get” Twitter in 2 Minutes Flat!

April 18, 2011 by Liz Leave a Comment

I’m Too Busy for Twitter

insideout logo

Last I worked the social media station for McGraw-Hill Education at the National Conference of Teachers of Mathematics, a gathering of about 9,000 attendees. As it happens this attendee group is math teachers, school superintendents, math tutors, and people who build products for, consult with, and sell products to the education industry. Every administrator, every teacher, every editor, designer, consultant, sales rep, and presenter I spoke with has a huge job — days filled with helping others gain expertise and find knowledge, breaks and evenings filled with planning how to do that more effectively.

Sounds a lot like every client, customer, web publisher, manager, and business person I know.

I bet you know a few people like that too.

And I bet you’ve heard these words more than once, “I’m too busy for another social network.”

Here’s how I was able to change that view for over 90% of the folks with whom I spoke in less than 2 Minutes Flat!

How to Get Busy Folks to “Get” Twitter in 2 Minutes Flat!

My purpose for being at the event was to show every version of busy people how Twitter can make their jobs easier, faster, and more meaningful. Naturally, I’d start by asking questions and listening. The conversation would go something like this.

“Are you on Twitter?”:

“No. I’m too busy. I don’t have a smartphone. I don’t need another social network.”

“Oh, don’t I get that. Time is so important to all of us. By the way, you do this on your computer, whenever you feel like it. There’s no obligation to show up. Will you give me two minutes to show you how I think Twitter will make your job easier?”

“Okay I’ll listen for two minutes.”

“Let’s start with your job. What is your role in the world of mathematics?”

Then I’d point to a Twitter screen loaded to a hashtag … in the is case it was #mathchat And say, “let me show you what’s happening here.”

mathchat

[click to enlarge image.]

I’d go on …

“All day long people who care about math post resources, questions, answers, ideas, insights, best practices and they tag them with this hashtag #mathchat so that other math folks can see them.”

I’d fire off a few examples and point to some in the stream, such as

  • The teacher who asked “Is anyone at a school that’s giving students iPads, I’m wondering how that works.”
  • Here’s two activities for the classroom.
  • Here’s an article on how a teacher made Calculus the most popular class in the school.
  • Look at that! There’s an event for middle school teachers in your state next month.
  • Yesterday I saw a tweet from a teacher who was looking for a video on nanotechnology for his students.
  • And did you see the Tweet right there, where @mheducation is offering their Math Apps for free during this conference? .
  • When I asked the question on #mathchat, why might a math person want to use Twitter, they said

    • So you don’t feel alone.
    • To get ideas.
    • To ask questions and get answers.
    • To get insights and best practices.
    • To connect with math people all over the world.

“And don’t worry about time. You don’t HAVE TO be there. Twitter is like this conference exhibit, the resources are available when you need them. They don’t come bother you. You go visit them when you can.”

The other things that’s really cool is that every week for one hour math people from all over the world meet at the same time under this #mathchat hashtag to talk math in real time — it’s like a mini math conference every week online — you can just listen in or talk and make friends who do what you do.

That’s when I handed them a sheet with the information from these two blog posts.

Tailoring Twitter: Does Your Twitter Profile Attract the Right People?

and

Tailoring Twitter: Building a Powerful Network that Fits You Perfectly

and some information on how to find a list of the most popular hashtags in their industry.

Now you see how a single hashtag can get right to the deep value of Twitter for almost anyone one.

How can you use this to tailor Twitter — to make it faster, easier and more meaning — for the folks you know?

Be Irresistible!

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your business!!

Related:
Tailoring Twitter: Does Your Twitter Profile Attract the Right People?
Tailoring Twitter: Building a Powerful Network that Fits You Perfectly
Tailoring Twitter: The ROI of Curating Content on Twitter

Filed Under: Business Life, Marketing /Sales / Social Media, Successful Blog Tagged With: bc, hashtags, LinkedIn, teaching twitter, Twitter

Cool Tool Review: Proxlet – Your Rescue for Twitterchats

April 8, 2011 by Guest Author Leave a Comment

A Guest Post by Leo Widrich

cooltext451585442_tools

Last Sunday was my first time to participate in #blogchat a weekly held Twitterchat and boy was it an amazing experience conversing with @lizstrauss and @mackcollier. It boasts great personalities each week helping you to answer any Social Media and blogging related questions.

For long I was quite reluctant to join in Twitterchats as I felt I would overwhelm my followers for the time the chat was going on with my tweets.

Fortunately I finally found a solution I can offer, since staying away from this massive amount of great insights at #blogchat is definitely not an option.

It is a nifty Twitter App called Proxlet.

proxlet

What does Proxlet do?

Facebook has a very useful “Hide this post” option integrated. Proxlet gives you this exact same thing, only for Twitter.

Using proxlet, you can temporarily hide certain things on Twitter which clutter your timeline or aren’t currently the core thing of your interest.

How to best use it?

Proxlet fortunately takes the “hide this” feature a step further and allows you to explain in a very detailed manner which area of tweets you want to block.

  • You can block Apps you don’t want to show up in your Timeline. For example am using it for both foursquare and paper.li since I feel they don’t add enough value.
  • You can also stop certain individual users temporarily, for example because they are at a conference and you are not really interested in their tweets at that point.
  • Another way to make use of Proxlet is to block certain hashtags from showing up in your timeline.

What is the best part of Proxlet?

The best part of proxlet is that it works not only at twitter.com, but can also be used for your favourite Twitter clients such as Twitter for Iphone, Tweetdeck and others.

Someone approached me that he couldn’t take the load of my #blogchat tweets and Proxlet turned out to be a superb solution for both of us. He could continue following me, yet was freed of those unwanted tweets in a short space of time.

What are your thoughts on Proxlet (http://proxlet.com) ? Have you had a similar problem yourself before too? Please let me know below.

Leo Widrich writes Tips for Twitter on his blog. You can visit his website, Bufferapp, or find him on Twitter as @leowid.

_________

Thanks, Leo, for checking out proxlet for us!

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your business!!

Buy the Insider’s Guide to Online Conversation.

Filed Under: Business Life, Content, Successful Blog, Tools, Trends Tagged With: bc, Leo Widrich, LinkedIn, tools, Twitter

9 Types of Listeners’ Responses – on Twitter and Everywhere Else

January 10, 2011 by Liz 21 Comments

cooltext443794242_influence

I’m a curious observer. I look, listen, connect things and identify patterns. Then I ask questions to test what it is that I think I’m finding. That’s one way that I keep learning new things about how the world works and how the people in it decide to do things.

Recently on Twitter, Calvin Lee @mayhemstudios posted an link to an article on Business Insider revealing data about Twitter users who don’t listen. Derek Overbey @doverbEy read it and retweeted it. As did I.

twitter_users_never_listen

As you can see by the image, four people passed it on again.

What to Do About People Not Listening – on Twitter or Anywhere

Reading the data about people not listening on Twitter got me curious and turned me into an observer. As I looked, listened, connected things, and identified patterns, I asked a question to test the ideas that we’re coming together.

my-listening-question

Asking questions gives me a chance to listen for myself. Question influence people to respond and in their response are hints and clues to how they think. The response I received fell into a pattern I’ve found predictable when I put an open ended question to the group. I’ve named the types of responses to reflect the group they represent.

  1. The observers retweet the question without sharing their response. Obviously, they’re listening. It would seem that they find the question interesting to pass it on. But they’re not sharing their own opinion on the thought. Maybe their objective is to spread the conversation and listen in to what other folks think. Or maybe they just want to raise their retweet count.
  2. The responding retweeters add a word or two to state whether they agree while retweeting the question to include the reference. They add value with their answer, offer it quickly and share with their friends it in a way that invites others to participate.
  3. The conversationalists add a new thought on the question.They extend the thought with an experience or an additional idea. They’ve considered the question and bring their own thinking to it to share with the group.
  4. The clarity checkers ask for further information about the question. They want further explanation to be sure they understand the question before they join with an opinion.
  5. The controversy seekers find what’s wrong in the premise of the question. Their response is not to seek further understanding or explanation, but to call out the the question itself as wrong.
  6. The contrarians find an answer that’s outside the scope of the question. If you ask whether they prefer fruits or vegetables, they’ll answer steak.
  7. The opportunist teachers see the question as their chance to show how smart they are. They start by answering with what they know on the subject, whether it answers the question or not. Then they continue for several tweets asking questions for which they already know the answers.
  8. and of course,

  9. The spammers find a keyword in the question or an answer to drop a highly promotional link in as if they’re commenting on the conversation. They are people who don’t follow anyone in the tweet stream. They use keyword search tools to interupt for their own spammy purposes.
  10. and the

  11. The lurkers who heard you but choose not to respond They hard to differentiate from the ignorers and the folks who just didn’t show up, but don’t make the mistake of assuming they’re the same.

It’s been said that we can’t talk without talking about ourselves. The words we choose, the metaphors we use, the choices we make of what to respond to and what to leave there all reveal things about our own view of the world and ourselves.

Paying attention to the listens on Twitter is a great way to learn how people think and respond uncovers valuable information that strict data reports cannot – valuable information to any product or marketing person, no matter the conversation or the question at hand.

What might be more important to keep in mind is that we find every one of these types of listeners in every walk of life online and off. If we listen to identify them, we soon some to realize that every kind of listener is looking for a different sort of response and a new question arises …

Some listeners seem to signal by their response that they’re better left to have the final word. What do you think on that?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your business!!

Buy the Insider’s Guide to Online Conversation.

I’m a proud affiliate of

third-tribe-marketing

Filed Under: Marketing /Sales / Social Media, Successful Blog Tagged With: bc, LinledIn, listening, relationships, Twitter

Retweet or Race to the Finish: 3 Steps to Influencing Action

December 27, 2010 by Liz Leave a Comment

Not Just a Call, but Real Action

cooltext443794242_influence

You want people to retweet you?

Whatever the action, a retweet, a call to arms, or a race to the finish, enlisting a folks to move in the same direction to follow our passionate action requires that we follow some simple acts of our own. Consider these three steps and and the following equation the next time you want to influence people move to act on your behalf.

The three steps to influencing action are simple, but also harder than they look:

  1. Give people a big reason — important, urgent, and about teamwork — filled with meaning that is bigger than helping you do what you want..
  2. Show them how fulfilling the mission will benefit them and make them proud to have been a part.

    Request for RT = benefits for Requestor and the requestor’s people.
    RT http://mysite.me because we need 100 fans to help our school.

    Request for RT = benefits the Retweeter and many other people.
    RT http://kidzrd.com/ & Get a thank you from a kid who’s learning to read & a link in Reading Heroes List

    Which request would be more likely to move you to action?

  3. Make it easy to be a part. Whatever the action, hoard the hard labor, and offer the hero parts.

As with any quest in which we want to move people to action …

The rules are fueled by the spirit of leadership — the belief that we can build something important and urgent together that we can’t build alone. It’s our team on a relay race. It’s giving the reason that we want to run the race and are willing invest our best to go for the win.

679px-southern_12_stage-02_1988

The math is simple.
Meaningful reason + proud feeling of sharing = a message that goes wide.

It doesn’t take training in calculus to work through this equation. It takes a true sense of humanity and human relationships. Any caring person can get to that.

What do you find is crucial to moving people to action in what you do ?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your business!!

Buy the Insider’s Guide to Online Conversation.

Successful-Blog is a proud affiliate of

third-tribe-marketing

Filed Under: Marketing /Sales / Social Media, Successful Blog Tagged With: bc, LinkedIn, RT, Strategy/Analysis, Twitter

Steve’s Shorts: Twitter Influence and WC Privacy

September 3, 2010 by Liz Leave a Comment

We Interrupt Regular Blogging for Steve’s Shorts

Take a simple few minutes where a guy who is brilliant makes an observation about the social web that you might have already be thinking. This interruption brought to you by the evil conspiracy that is Steve Plunkett and Liz Strauss.

What is Social Media Influence? (on Twitter it is..)
by Steve Plunkett.

cooltext467743303

I post a link to an article, it gets Retweeted. They don’t ask where the link goes. They don’t ask what the article is about. They just retweet it, because in the past @steveplunkett has sent them to a favorable destination. There is inherent trust that it’s not a malware or virus link and credibility that they can pass the link on to their followers and not look stupid. so how is this influence? I never asked for a retweet, they were “natually influenced” to do so.

A Short Look at … What’s Next?

steve-privacy

Hope you enjoyed these moments with Steve’s Shorts.

steve_plunkett

M/C/C’s Director, Search, Steve Plunkett, is responsible for all aspects of search engine optimization (SEO) and Internet user behavior. Plunkett’s competitive personality makes him a perfect fit in the competitive world of SEO. As a child and a gamer, he worked hard ensuring that it was his initials at the top of every arcade game unit in his neighborhood. Today, he uses SEO to ensure his clients appear at the top of the search engine results –and offers an array of optimization services that are scoring big for those clients.

Buy the Insider’s Guide to Online Conversation.

I’m a proud affiliate of

third-tribe-marketing

Filed Under: Marketing /Sales / Social Media, Successful Blog Tagged With: bc, LinkedIn, Privacy, Twitter

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