Twitter

Why New Changes Are Not As Annoying As They Sound

May 2, 2014 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

Twitter has been making profiles of their users look just like Facebook. On the first day I saw several Twitter profiles with the Facebook look, I was outraged. I could not believe Twitter was going to make this move and turn into Facebook.

However, I was quick to remember another change that took place that people complained about (myself included). Everyone–from classmates to business people to relatives–complained about the iPhone’s new design. In fact, many people complained about the design on Twitter (the complaining even earned the iPhone a spot on Twitter’s trending list). I was complaining just like everyone else when the new design came out, but now I could not imagine an iPhone without the new design. The ability to swipe the entire screen to get to the passcode instead of swiping that tiny arrow at the bottom of the screen all the way to the right saves a lot of time.

In addition, I was not a big fan of Alexa’s new design. I despised the new design because it became harder to type in a URL. Instead of having the option of typing the URL at the center of the screen, that option would be provided at the top right hand corner. It does seem like a complaint on a small change, but customers notice the small changes. Sure enough, after a few weeks of using the new design that I did not like at all, I enjoyed the new design. In fact, I now like the new design better than the old design.

I know I am not the only one who thinks this way about new changes. The reason new changes gradually get accepted is because as the complaining reaches a high point, it becomes obvious that the new design is here to stay. When hundreds of thousands of people complained about the iPhone’s new design, Apple did not go back the old way. Now, the people who complained about the new design love that same design.

New changes can seem annoying. New changes such as putting in more work, adjusting your schedule, or trying a different strategy can seem annoying in the beginning. However, once you stick with the new change and decide not to look or turn back, you will gradually become comfortable with the change.

Why You Need To Be On Twitter

April 30, 2014 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

If you are not on Twitter, then you need to get on right away. Twitter has allowed small business owners, authors, entrepreneurs, and others to interact with customers on a large scale. Twitter’s character limitations make the giant social network simpler to understand than other social networks.

One of Twitter’s big features is the ability to create lists. You can use lists on Twitter to read tweets from desired users. You can put all of your customers on one list, and you can put all of your sources on another list. You have the choice to make your individual lists public or private. Many small business owners, entrepreneurs, and others use this feature to connect with customers at a faster rate and learn more about their niche.

In addition, Twitter will allow you to build connections who you do not know yet. I have been privileged with the ability to make thousands of new connections just from Twitter. The people I connect with on Twitter are eager to join in on conversations and share my content.

Twitter has allowed many people to put the “social” back into their businesses. In a world where there are too many automated telephone messages to count, the customer greatly appreciates it when they have a conversation with another person. Instead of listening to, “If you would like to schedule an appointment, press 1,” your customers will be able to read, “Let’s get a date for that appointment!”

Twitter is a powerful way to build your presence on the web. I have written multiple case studies about how Twitter has helped this blog, and I will write more as well. Most of the people who visit this blog came from Twitter. By sticking with Twitter and growing a strong presence on that social network, it will eventually be able to drive hundreds of daily visitors to your blog (then thousands).

There may be some people reading this blog post who have no interest in using Twitter for business. However, anyone can use Twitter to get real-time news. Twitter’s trending topics allow people to stay up to date with what is happening in the world. In addition, you can see what people in the world think and say about important events.

There are several other reasons to use Twitter as well, but know that if you do not have a Twitter account yet, you should get one as soon as possible.

The Day I Forgot To Schedule Tweets

April 24, 2014 by Marc Guberti 6 Comments

I will never forget the day that I forgot to schedule tweets. It started out as a typical day. Before going to school, I always check my statistics. I look at how many Twitter followers I gain, how many eBook sales I make, and my blog’s statistics as well. I happened to notice on one day that my blog only got 50 views at 7:30 am.

Since my blog tends to have more than 100 views at this time, I looked through my statistics to see if I could identify the problem. The problem was that I was not getting nearly as many visitors from Twitter as I normally got. I decided to look at my tweets thinking that I somehow forgot the link to my blog posts in those tweets or something along those lines. However, I quickly realized that I had not scheduled any tweets for the day. For the first time in several months (or maybe even a year), I had no scheduled tweets on HootSuite.

Here come the lessons. The first thing I took advantage of was HootSuite Pro. As a member, I knew the ropes well enough to schedule 24 tweets in 1 minute. Although I could not schedule any tweets in the morning, I had all of my tweets lined up from the afternoon and on.

This experience allowed me to deeply understand how important Twitter, and social media in general, is for my strategy. On that day, my blog got over 350 views because Twitter was able to kick in and save the day. However, I was able to get an idea of what traffic would look like without my social networks. Search engine traffic also contributed towards my blog’s increase in traffic, but the reason I get a lot of traffic from search engines is because of my social networks in the first place.

The big lesson is to never forget about your social networks. Although there may be some days when you do not feel like scheduling tweets or putting that pin up on Pinterest, continuing to use social networks will ultimately grow your presence in a big and powerful way. I was putting in the same amount of hours on Twitter back when I had 2,000 followers (also because I needed more time to learn and utilize cool tools) as I do now (now I gain more than 2,000 followers every 4 days).

Never forget your social networks. They have the power to put you on the map and get people to talk about you.

Why Posting Your Tweets To Facebook Is A Bad Idea

April 21, 2014 by Marc Guberti 8 Comments

There are too many people who connect Twitter and Facebook together so all of their tweets are automatically posted on their Facebook accounts. Some people who connect their Twitter and Facebook accounts do so just to make sure something appears on their Facebook account every day while others think they are effectively systematizing their Facebook accounts.

However, if your Facebook and Twitter accounts are connected, all of your tweets will get posted on your Facebook account. If you are having a conversation with one of your friends or business partners on Twitter, all of the tweets you send during that conversation will also get posted to your Facebook account. The two problems that occur is that some people will not care for the conversation, but the bigger problem is that the people viewing your posts only get to see your part of the conversation. They do not get to see how your friend or business partner is responding to your tweets.

While it is possible to schedule posts, it is not possible to run a successful, systematized social network. It is possible to run a successful social network, but attempting to systematize that social network results in you sacrificing the most important thing about social media: being social. Instead of trying to systematize Facebook by posting your tweets to Facebook, you should create quality posts on Facebook (scheduled or at the moment) and respond to the people who respond to your Facebook posts.

Social media was created to dramatically increase the ability for people to communicate with others in the same town, city, state, country, continent, and world. In order to be successful on social media, we need to use social media for the reason it was created in the first place. Connecting Facebook and Twitter in an attempt to systematize your Facebook account is not the right way to get the job done.

One Big Reason To Use HootSuite Pro

April 11, 2014 by Marc Guberti 2 Comments

Many people have praised HootSuite as the #1 free Twitter tool. I have used HootSuite for over a year now, but I decided that now was the time to go pro. The 30 day free trial got me interested, but I was also able to take an advantage of a 30 day free coupon, so I ended up getting a 2 month free trial. While there are many features for HootSuite Pro members, I recently became a HootSuite Pro member. In the future, I will write a longer blog post about multiple reasons to use HootSuite Pro, but for now, I am going to share with you the big feature.

The big feature is the Bulk Scheduler. Since I send out 48 tweets every day with links to my blog posts, I tweet the same blog posts twice (actually more than that, but identical tweets get separated by a week). I found a way to make the process faster by having all of my tweets in a document on my computer, and then I would copy and paste them all one by one. This took a large amount of time.

Then came HootSuite Pro and the Bulk Scheduler. All I do now is put all of my tweets in multiple CSV files, I send them to HootSuite, and they do the rest. Although it took me a day to get used to how the CSV files work, they now save me an enormous amount of time. Within 10 clicks, my tweets are scheduled for an entire day. With the free version of HootSuite, it would take much more than 10 clicks to schedule half of a day’s worth of tweets.

If you tweet links to your blog posts and bring your old blog posts back from the dead, the Bulk Scheduler alone is the reason why you should get HootSuite Pro. If you like the Bulk Scheduler, there are several other features that HootSuite Pro users get, and when I get more time to take a look, I will write another lengthy blog post about it.

What are your thoughts about HootSuite Pro? Are you thinking about HootSuite Pro, do you have HootSuite Pro, or did you discover that HootSuite Pro is not for you? Please share what you think about HootSuite Pro below.

4 Ways To Find People To Talk To On Twitter

April 5, 2014 by Marc Guberti 10 Comments

Many people use Twitter to build strong connections with like-minded people. These connections tend to lead to more business opportunities, traffic, and sales. Ironically, a big challenge on Twitter is trying to find people to talk to. Even though there are hundreds of millions of people on Twitter, some people do not know how to talk to and find like-minded people on Twitter. In this blog post, I am going to show you four ways to find the people that you need to talk to on Twitter.

Use Twitter’s search engine to find individuals. If you want to find entrepreneurs, search the word entrepreneur. After the big guys and magazines come up, there will be other entrepreneurs on the list who will commonly talk with their followers. Those are the people you need to talk with.
Use Twitter’s search engine to find individual tweets. If you want to see tweets in real time for a certain word or phrase, you can search for tweets with that word or phrase using Twitter’s search engine. Before interacting with a tweet, be sure to look at the person’s profile and determine if this is someone you want to build a strong connection with. Then, reply to that tweet and wait for the person to respond.
Follow the followers of someone else. If you find someone you want to talk to, and that person has over 100,000 followers, follow that person’s followers. Some of those people will be entrepreneurs who will follow you back. When these people follow you back, start a conversation with those people.
Talk with like minded followers. Every Twitter user has a list of people who they can talk to, and that is their followers. No matter how big or small that list is, there are going to be like minded followers on that list. By building strong connections with these followers, you will learn how to develop strong connections with others as well.

Those are the four ways to find people to talk to on Twitter. What are your thoughts about the list? Are there any other tips you would like to add? Please share your thoughts below.