Here’s a perfect way to engage your community by providing them with local breaking news resources using Twitter and Twitter Lists. And it only takes ONE HOUR to build… see the slideshow (best seen in full screen)! If you build a local breaking news Twitter site from this slideshow tutorial, let us know @pkitano and we’ll LIST it!  Link to original post ... read more >>
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 C.G Lynch interviewed me about some Twitter tips for job seekers. You can see how I use Twitter in action, by following me @philreCareered. I've highlighted my comments in bold: Though LinkedIn tops the list of professionally-oriented social networks for job seeking, you can also use Twitter to get the word out about your skills and talents to relevant people in your industry.
But you must take some steps to be a good Twitter citizen before you tweet yourself into your next gig. We spoke with some career and social media experts on how to utilize Twitter for the purpose of job seeking, and the ways in which you can promote your own interests while helping others at the same time. (As you'll find, you can't do one without the other).
If you're new to Twitter, we recommend reading our beginners' guide to Twitter, as well as our Twitter etiquette guide, to learn more about what makes this community operate. Overall, it's important to remember that Twitter is about exchanging ideas and letting people know more about you based on the content of your tweets.
Know who to follow
If you want someone to think about you when a job opening arises, you need to get on that person's Twitter radar. ... read more >>
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One powerful use of online communities is to help get new ideas into a business; taking advantage of the fact that many (if not most) of the best ideas for your business are likely to come from outside, from people who don’t work for you. There are some well know examples of businesses working with consumers on co-creation in this way: MyStarbucksIdea and Dell’s Ideastorm being among the most well known. Most of these sites use a similar process: people can join the community and then suggest their own idea, comment on existing ideas or vote for the ideas that they think are best. The best, most commented on or most voted for ideas are then responded to by the brand. They are an effective way for businesses to get ideas into their business and, more importantly perhaps, of showing customers some of their internal decision making and letting people who buy the product understand more about, and even influence, the processes by which it is made. Like any good online community, such ideas sites work best when they work with other social networks – interacting with people on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, in forums and blogs. Going to where ... read more >>
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 I always stress to clients that results on Twitter don’t happen overnight. This isn’t to discourage them from using it to enhance their marketing—but to help them understand the power of consistent, personal interactions and the cumulative effect this can have on their business.
Every time you engage others on Twitter, you are planting seeds that can have potentially big payoffs in the future. Once I explain this concept, the next concern is usually that this will be a major time investment. It’s not—if you leverage your time by applying a few of the select strategies discussed below. Re-tweet Re-posting others’ interesting tweets is one of the easiest and most effective ways to be discovered and gain more followers. For the people that are already following you, it’s a quick way to get on their radar screens. Thought-provoking quote People always seem to love great quotes. You have a good chance of being re-tweeted with these. The quotes you choose can also help you share a bit of your personality. Feedback on someone’s link Take a minute to visit a link someone has posted. They will often preface the link with what it’s about. If it’s of interest to you, check it .. ... read more >>
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Best practices on Twitter are still developing, and everyone seems to have their own preferences and attitudes about right and wrong on the microblogging service. Standards vary widely depending upon whether one is using Twitter just to keep in touch with friends or is tweeting on behalf of their business or employer. Whatever your purpose, you may have some tweeting habits that encourage others to unfollow or semi-follow you.
Before delving into the list of attention-repelling habits, let's first explore the concept of the semi-follow. On Twitter, there are only two possible states for following--a person either follows another or they don't. But while most people still post updates via the Twitter Web site, many use third-party applications that help group and organize followers. People using software such as TweetDeck or sites like HootSuite can follow others with different levels of rigor--some people are followed closely, others are semi-followed, and still others are almost completely ignored.
For example, I follow over 2,000 people, and as my list grew beyond several hundred, I found I was missing tweets from the people I care most about. I could have opted to axe ... read more >>
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Since I’ve had a side gig teaching marketing at various universities for a number of years, I consider myself fairly well versed in the nuances of both plagiarism and copyright infringement. It goes with the territory. Writing on the web for both my personal blogs, as well as several, real life business entities, I’ve learned about the geeky web stuff like Creative Commons Licensing and accurate citations online; when and how to link to outside sources and how much of an article to copy before you are just, well copying the whole thing (and thereby ripping off the original author). This it seems though is a less respected law on the internet. But now comes the latest issue – how does Twitter fit into this mix? I did a little research and found info on copyright infringement issues having to do with background images on the aptly named Plagiarism Today site (nice find). But I didn’t find anything about tweets. Now in general, this isn’t a huge issue. Often, in the interest of getting things down to 140 characters, we all slice and dice headlines, interesting tweets and body copy and include a link back to the original article. But as I ended up paraphrasing a line from an ... read more >>
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Being creative and transparent is only half the story when it comes to social media marketing. In order to develop and execute a truly successful social media campaign, you simply must be able to monitor your results. At the end of the day, your boss (if you work as marketing director at a company for example) will probably be more impressed by cold hard numbers than how cool your Twitter or Facebook profile looks. Here are five must have tools for any social media marketing arsenal - The best tools for your social media monitoring toolbox
1. Social Listening - I'm a huge fan of two products that facilitate social media listening. They are Spiral16 and Radian6. While both tools have their strengths and weaknesses, you really can't go wrong with either of them. 
Caption: Spiral16 Spark Visualization of Connected Conversations
Spiral16 is a tremendous tool for visualizing conversations that are occuring out on the web and on social networks in particular. Whether it is a blog, message board post, picture or even a video, Spiral will help uncover those conversations and rank them by influence and sentiment. Radian6 is another great tool we use for social listening. If ... read more >>
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Even on just a first glance, Twitter 101 A Special Guide is an online resource I’d recommend to anyone thinking of using Twitter to support their business goals. In fact, for anyone already using Twitter in business, it’s worth reading. You’ll learn things. Here you’ll find a well-written and realistically-focused collection of web pages that will help you understand why Twitter isn’t simply another traditional marketing channel. […] Twitter isn’t just about useful immediacy. The conversational nature of the medium lets you build relationships with customers, partners and other people important to your business. Beyond transactions, Twitter gives your constituents direct access to employees and a way to contribute to your company; as marketers say, it shrinks the emotional distance between your company and your customers. Plus, the platform lends itself to integration with your existing communication channels and strategies. In combination, those factors can make Twitter a critical piece of your company’s bigger digital footprint. Notable are the best practices guidelines to help you make the most out of Twitter for business. There’s also case studies where you ... read more >>
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If you’re already using Twitter (and if not, why not?) you may not have come to terms, or even begun to understand, the raft of tools and applications available. Well I felt the same, so I’ve been doing a bit of digging and here are a few I really like. Now, this list isn’t definitive. There are loads more out there, but these work well. If you have any others you’d like to suggest, please feel free to comment. 1. Tweetdeck is great for managing your tweets, groups and searches. It has a much better interaction design than your web based Twitter account. The latest version is cleverly integrated with Facebook and allows you to turn your tweets into ‘what’s on your mind’ on Facebook and vice versa. Handy. 2. For the iphone Twitterfon works well, however if you’re using Tweetdeck you can now transfer all the columns you set up on Tweetdeck onto your iPhone which is much more useful. There are clear instructions for setting this up on Mashable. 3. For searching there are a few tools for searching relevant keywords on Twitter and we’ll mention a few here. Of course if you have Tweetdeck you can search straight through that and keep the column saved on your deck. Others are ... read more >>
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I was at the The “Twitter for Dummies” and Baveo.com Party! tonight and got a peak at the book, which I’ll pick up, and got to talk with one of the authors, Michael Gruen, of Twitter for Dummies. The Twitter for Dummies book was published yesterday, July 7th, 2009 (funny, isn’t that the same date that Chris Anderson’s FREE book came out? - see my recent post on“Free” Problems and Social Media Forensics using Radian6 and Blogpulse for my take on Chris Anderson and the whole “Free” thing - which you can read for “free” here). 
While we didn’t talk about Twitter, or really, much about the book (and that’s the funny thing, but sometimes Tweetups tend to be “unstructured” and there is a role for announcements - and maybe a short talk about the book, as part of a PR event, having some books on hand, would be optimal). Laura Fitton, @Pistachio, wasn’t at the Twitter for Dummies Tweetup, but she’s probably smiling because her new startup got funded last month - and I did see her speak at Jeff Pulver’s 140 Conference around the same time, as well. Laura “Pistachio” Fitton’s TechStars project, OneForty, has received an angel round of funding to the tune of around $250,000 ... read more >>
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