eSpire Marketing

Everyone loves to win free stuff right? Well I think that’s pretty undeniable. Well Wendy Limauge a.k.a TheComputerLady has brought the twitterverse a great new service. Twitter’s Tweeting is a website created by Wendy that exclusively deals with contests that happen through Twitter. I asked Wendy if I could ask her a few questions about her site and her twitter experiences. She was so kind and accepted my invitation for an interview. This is what The Computer Lady had to say.

Why Did you decide to start your Twitter Tweeting contest site?

I started this site because I found that Twitter contests were becoming popular and I wanted a site to post all of the contests I found.

What value do you gain from twitter tweeting? (relationships, networking, etc)

I have met a lot of people on Twitter I would not have otherwise met and I continue to meet new people because of Twitter. I also have found great ideas from people on Twitter for promoting my sites.

I have also learned that if I need help with something that I can’t go to Google or another search engine for the answer that I will put out a request on Twitter and someone will have an answer that will usually solve my problem.

What advice would you give to a person who is interested in becoming a twitter user?

Don’t send too many Tweets out at first. Just site back and watch how it is done. Learn how to shorten your links with Tinyurl.com. Do a search at http://search.twitter.com and put words in for hobbies you like, your business, and other keywords that will help you find people to follow that have common interests.

What is your favorite part of using twitter and having your twitter contest site?

I like using Twitter because I know someone will be online that I can chat with at any time during the day or night. It is night to know there are real people out there on the other side of my computer. It makes the Internet more personal.

END INTERVIEW

If you would like to submit a twitter contest you may do so by clicking on that link. Wendy also runs a regular sweepstakes website known as Sweeties Sweepstakes and also Sweeties Swag where you can also find non-twitter specific contests and sweepstakes. And she also regularly updates her twitter account with all of the contests she has running on her websites. Thanks Wendy!

Till Next time….

The use of twitpics is generally designed to be used for fun purposes. To really emphasize what it is that you are doing at that moment in time and to share a little bit better who you are as a person and what your are involved in during your day to day life. I’ve used twitpics before and have had a great deal of fun using them. They break up content a little bit more along a person’s feed. So, as a marketer how can we use twitpics to our advantage, and what sorts of benefits might we gain from using them in our updates? Well that is what I want to take a look at right now and discuss a little further in depth.
Power Twitter is a cool tool to use for anyone who is a Firefox user and also a twitter user. What it does is it adds a search bar to your main twitter page and also uploads twitpics and video links directly on the person twitter feed. This is a great tool that I believe should be utilized by people who are advertising and attempting to sell through twitter.
Say you have an email blast that you are sending out. To this point you are only able to send this creative work inside the email campaign to the specific set of people on your email list. Now with twitpic you can take this technology to upload this photo and give everyone in your follower base the image that everyone else gets to see along with your promo.
This will do more than just add a pretty picture to your ads:

• It will bring attention more towards your tweet on a page. We all know how important it is to be able to attract the eyes of more people with your ad. That is 80% of the battle in marketing. Take advantage of this.
• Increase Click Through- These two things generally go hand in hand. The more eyes on your ad the higher the click through rate.
• Increase conversions – This isn’t rocket science everyone knows that all three of these things together work together to increase sales and increase conversions and revenue

Thus far it is not possible to take a Twitpic and make it directly clickable to a specific link. But you may add your advertisement information on that page and even a link to the original ads landing page. It is a basic principle but one that I have not seen this in use yet, and I think people are missing out on a great tool to use to their advantage.

Till next time…

Welcome to eSpire Marketing! This post is here to announce the official launch of the Tweetcarnival that I will be hosting bi-weekly. The first edition will be posted on March 9th. Submissions must be submitted by Noon EST on Sunday March 8, 2009. To submit your article to the First Edition of the TweetCarnival go to blog carnival and look for us in the “other” section of the blog carnival categories. I know amazing that they don’t have a section dedicated to the subject yet. I figured it was high time that someone did something about it. ENJOY!

Till next time…

Networking, or as I will call it in this article “twitworking” is something that is very new to the internet. Email has been around for years, social media sites such as Myspace and Facebook have been around for a little while now, and each of them have their pros and cons.

Email – Is great for communicating with people whom you already know, either they are your friends and family, or a co-worker. Email will always serve its purpose for communicating online with those groups of people.

Myspace/Facebook – Both are great services, but again you generally must know the people and get through the road block of friend requests and other loopholes. They, or derivations of them, will continue to exists as long as they continue to bring people together.

And then there was Twitter. Twitter is a service unlike any other. There is no friend request needed to communicate with a person directly, and you don’t need to know their email address. With twitter you can search other people’s tweets to see what they are talking about. Say you are in the fashion field to contact them all you would have to do is simply search for people talking about fashion, and then send them either an @ reply or a direct message. It’s that simple.

In my time as a twitter user I have come to know dozens of people, in the same or related fields to mine, that are more than willing to discuss issues related to work, and make deals directly through twitter. In the eyes of the SEO world I am somewhere near the bottom of the totem pole. Not many people will know who I am. But I was able to get in contact with some of the people that I see as the leaders in my field and start to build on these relationships with them. On top of that I am able to use twitter to connect with thousands of other people just like me who are looking to learn and discuss the very same issues that I want to discuss.

I’d love to hear what everyone else has to say about this subject and get a discussion open about how twitter has helped you gain strong relationships with people in your industry or hobby that you might not have been able to get through other services. Send me an @ on twitter or leave a comment. I am looking forward to everyone’s thoughts on this subject.

Till next time….

Contests through Twitter. They are something that not everyone takes advantage of but something that I believe everyone should take full advantage of. With times being tough in the financial markets and everyone looking for ways to save, it’s a good thing we have places like Tweetcontest to turn to brighten up our day with free stuff.
Rusty and Ryan the founders of Tweetcontest, started with twitter when they created tweetbomb. A fun thing that happens once a day in the twitterverse in which everyone following tweetbomb sends out an @ reply to the person of their choice at precisely 3:33 PM EST. I have been an avid tweetbomber for a couple of months now and I must say it is a lot of fun to see the reactions people give when they find out they’ve been bombed.
Somewhere along the way they decided to start a new service known as CustomizedGirl and Total Assault, and the prizes range from Gift Cards, to Guitar Hero, to DVD sets.

If you haven’t checked them out yet make sure you do. Follow them @tweetcontest and get in the game. You’ve got nothing to lose. It costs you nothing, and you have the chance to win some really cool prizes and for businesses it could be a great way to drive traffic to your site and generate some strong brand awareness. Thanks Ryan and Rusty for starting tweetcontest and keep up the good work. And for businesses it could be a great way to drive traffic to your site and generate some strong brand awareness.

I’m sure many of you know who Jeremy Shoemaker is. For all intents and purposes he is one of the most widely known and followed affiliate marketers on the web. He uses his outside of the box types of viral marketing to increase his traffic and generate more buzz to his website.

He has run a few “Follow Me for Free Stuff” type contests on his blog for his Twitter Account that have been quite successful. I even tried one similar to his a few months back and was surprised at the success that I had gained from this type of contest. I started out at only 25 followers and got all the way up to 250 in just 2 weeks.

Recently, Jeremy has decided to drop all but 27 of the people he was following on Twitter. I asked Jeremy for an interview about this situation and he graciously accepted. Here is what he had to say.

eSpire: What is your reasoning for dropping all but the 27 people you are currently following on Twitter?

Shoemoney:My account had become unusable to actually follow people.

eSpire:How has Twitter helped you to continue to grow your online presence?

Shoemoney:It hasn’t really helped me grow my presence so much as its helped me reach people inside companies and stuff like that.

eSpire: What are your keys to success in keeping in touch with your following on Twitter?

Shoemoney:I honestly don’t really keep that in touch with my following on twitter. If people find what I say interesting then they will follow. Otherwise they wont.

eSpire:Do you have any plans for what you are going to do next in your effort to continue to grow your online presence through Twitter?

Shoemoney: I’ve actually seen the green light after talking with GaryV @garyvee about twitter. The days of regular guys like myself or Gary being in the top 100 people on twitter are over. Now you have Ashton Kutcher, Shaq, CBS NEWS, coming in and I think within the next year big brands and name will completely dominate twitter.

I will continue to use twitter as a communication tool but my days as being a leader in the space are numbered, if not already passed.

END INTERVIEW

I also asked Jeremy what his keys to success for in gaining as many followers as he had thus far on Twitter. He replied, “Write interesting stuff people want to read.” That is the main “Twitter Gem” that the very popular Jeremy Shoemaker had to offer. Which leads me to believe that he is a strong proponent of the idea that Twitter is a very basic tool used for basic reasons, and that anyone can reach his level of success on Twitter, as long as they are talking about what others want to talk about. Again, I just wanted to thank Shoemoney® for the interview if you would like to follow him on twitter you can do so @shoemoney.

There are many different Twitter Applications with which you can tweet your heart out and keep up with your followers and people you are following. This week I am going to go through a few of them and determine which is the absolute best program for your twitter account management needs. Today we are going to take a look at TwitterFox.

Twitterfox is an optional add-on to those of you who are using the ever so popular web browser Mozilla Firefox. Mozilla has become somewhat of the all-in-one browser that attempts at allowing you to control as much of your online life directly from their browser.

Click on this link if you would like to install Twitterfox to your browser. Installation instructions will follow after the install. After you have installed Twitterfox click on the “tools” drop down menu and then go to “add-ons”. Click on the extensions tab and then this Box should pop up for you.

Click enable and then restart Firefox. Upon Restart the Twitterfox icon will show up in the bottom right hand corner.

Right click and then choose preferences to set up Twitterfox to your Twitter account. This is the preferences box.

Add in your account information and then you are ready to start. Click on the Twitterfox icon to pull up your Twitterfox Application.

Now you will notice 5 Key areas. The text bar is used to type in your update. Twitterfox does count down the amount of characters you have left in your update before you get past the 140 character limit set by Twitter. To send a tweet simply type and press enter to send it.

By clicking on the Recent Tab it will bring up the latest updates from both the people you are following and your personal updates. If you haven’t visited that tab in awhile it will put a number on the tab to let you know how many of your friends updates have been submitted since the last time you checked it out. If you want to check out one of your friends profiles simply click on their image icon and it will take you directly to their Twitter page.

By Clicking on the Replies tab it will show you how many people have sent you an @reply since the last time you checked you @replies. It will also show you the number of @replies you’ve had since the last time you clicked on that tab.

By Clicking on the Messages tab it will show you how many direct messages have been sent to your Twitter account. Just like the other two tabs it also counts the number of direct messages you have received.

Perhaps the coolest feature that Twitterfox has to offer is the option to click on the link button which is located directly to the left of the Recent Tab. If you are reading a blog article that you would like to tweet about simply click on that links tab and it will paste the link to that article directly into your update bar.

Limitations of Twitterfox

• No ability to search through Twitterfox. One of my personal favorite things to do is to use search.twitter.com and search for what people are saying about the topics I care about i.e. google, twitter, or (my favorite sports team) the Cleveland Cavaliers. There are other Twitter applications out there that allow you to use Twitter Search and it is very helpful such as Tweetdeck
• It is difficult to find new friends to follow. The only real way to add friends to your Twitterfox account is to visit a friends page on Twitter and find people that you would like to add directly from there. To really be able to use a Twitter application I think that is a necessity and Twitterfox does not have it.
• There is no way to shorten a URL when you are trying to tweet about one. Again I think that is a MUST for a twitter application, and unfortunately Twitterfox does not have that either.

All in all I would have to say that Twitterfox as a twitter application ranks right around the middle. There is a lot of room for improvement but it is a good first effort by Mozilla to come up with an application for its users to use Twitter directly from their browser.

Until next time…Happy Tweeting!