Marketing and Management Thoughts

I recently read the article ‘Managing an Online Reputation‘ by Kermit Pattison in the NYT. It was a great article and we recommend that you check it out online.  The three keys are to Monitor, Manage, and Promote. Below are some of the highlights:

To monitor your online reputation check out some Web tools that do just that. We use Google Alerts here at nineteen05 and simply subscribe in our RSS reader to get updates daily. We have several set up for our business name, staff member names, and some key terms related to our business. Some of the tools in that review are free, others can get quite expensive. For churches I would recommend the free options.

Free Automatic Alert Options

• Google Alerts – Searches blogs and more
• technorati.com – Blog Search Engine
• keotag.com – very simple, but lacked ability to search all sources at once
• monitorthis.info – Blog Search Engine (found out of date entries)

With the rise of twitter (and their 140 character limit) there has been much confusion over what should be considered appropriate and what should be avoided. As I’ve read blog after blog on the subject these are the top 10 ideas the bubble to the top.

1. Define your purpose for this account, and be interesting
   When you clearly understand what your account is for everything will fall in line. People who follow you will understand the content you are posting, and will understand what content is coming in the future. This will attract the followers that you want.
2. Posts that have pass-along value
   When posting something decide if it has value that someone else might pass along. This would exclude comments about what you had for breakfast or what you are doing at this very moment. Unless of course what you are doing would have value to those you are interacting with on twitter.
3. Be a part of the Conversation
   Don’t just simply follow people. Talk to people about what is going on in life. There will be people you don’t know, and people you do. If you begin to interact you’d be surprised to watch some of these relationships make the online to offline jump.
4. Remember it’s Public
   Be smart about what you post. Remember that anyone out there can read your tweets. To avoid subjects that would be seen as culturally taboo, unless there is a purpose for it.
   
5. Not for chatting
   We understand that people want to chat. There are several services out there for chatting online. Remember #4, that that conversation is completely public. People seeing this conversation will likely be turned off by it.
6. Response to someone RT your tweet?
   Its flattering and encouraging when someone retweets something you posted. As a best practice send a private message to those who you can. Otherwise a short reply (@username) saying thanks goes a long way.
7. When you RT from someone else
   Let people know that you are re-tweeting their post. It’s really simple, all you need to do is write ‘RT: @username -’ and then post the tweet. If it is to long when you re-post, see if there aren’t words you can shorten or take out.
8. Keep your content Fresh – NO Repeats!
   Don’t keep posting the same thing. People will stop following you since they believe they already know everything you are going to share with them.
9. Get an Icon, good description, and Custom Background
   There are very few customizable options on twitter, so use the ones you have! Use an icon people will recognize, and same goes for the background. Keep it simple. Make your description a sort of vision statement for your tweets. If you say you’re a Web Developer you should have posts about being a developer. If you say you’re a pastor you should post pastoral tweets.
10. Watch the self promotion!
    If you are posting good and original content then the need to self promote should be minimal. This includes bragging about the number of followers that you’ve gotten to. Keep the content fresh and relevant and people will understand your value.

Thats my top 10 list. There might be something that would be added to the list. Anything you want to add to it? Leave it in the comments or reply to us on twitter @nineteen05.

Related Post: Twitter and 50 Ways to FAIL

Sources: NetworkWorld, Adam Copeland, Brandflakes,

This is what the twitter community would look like if it was only 100 people. It’s a fun play off the ‘if the world was a village‘ concept. Thanks mkandlez, for the graphic.

Twitter is one of the fastest growing social networks on the web. One thing people always seem to say about it is, ‘what is it for?’ To be honest it seems as though everyone has their own answer to that question. The data below does lend some insight as to how people are using the site as of this summer.

In June 2009 a survey was done on twitter by Sysomos to see how people are using twitter. The results include the following.

• 72.5% of all users joining during the first five months of 2009
• 85.3% of all Twitter users post less than one update/day
• 21% of users have never posted a Tweet
• 93.6% of users have less than 100 followers, while 92.4% follow less than 100 people
• 5% of Twitter users account for 75% of all activity
• New York has the most Twitters users, followed by Los Angeles, Toronto, San Francisco and Boston; while Detroit was the fast-growing city over the first five months of 2009
• More than 50% of all updates are published using tools, mobile and Web-based, other than Twitter.com. TweetDeck is the most popular non-Twitter.com tool with 19.7% market share.
• There are more women on Twitter (53%) than men (47%)
• Of the people who identify themselves as marketers, 15% follow more than 2,000 people. This compares with 0.29% of overall Twitter users who follow more than 2,000 people.

How do power users use twitter?

Of those 5% who account for 75% of the activity they discovered that (source):

• Of the most active Twitter users updating more than 150 times/day, nearly all of them are bots operated by sources such as hotels offering deals, regional and national news services, regional weather services, the top news within Digg, games, anim services, tags within del.icio.us and financial aggregators. These very active bots account for one-quarter of all tweets.
• Among the most active Twitter users with more than 50,000 followers, we find singer Tyrese (@tyrese4real), actress Alyssa Milano (@alyssa_milano), celebrity Tila Tequila (@officialtila), tv host Jonathan Ross (@wossy) and evangelist Guy Kawasaki (@guykawasaki).
• 60.6% of the most active Twitter users live in the United States, while 6.9% are located in the U.K, 4.7% in Japan, and 4.3% in Canada.
• The split between genders among the most active Twitter users is fairly balanced with 54% male, 46% female.
• 88% of the most active Twitter users have never missed a day without making at least one update, while another 2.1% have only been inactive for one day.
• 48% have more than 100 followers, compared with 6.3% for overall Twitter users.
• 44% of more than 100 friends, compared with 7.5% overall.
• 33.7% of the most active Twitter users have joined Twitter this year, compared with 72.5% of overall Twitter users who have signed up this year
• The most popular keywords within bios are Internet marketing, music lover, Web designer, video games, and husband/father.

When to post on twitter?

It is interesting to note the times of day that are most used on twitter. If you are posting something and hope others to see it is it best to be on the upside of these curves. Which would place it between 10 and noon, and then between 6 and 8pm.

Twitter is quickly becoming one of the easiest social networking platforms out there today. While the membership numbers aren’t as high as Facebook the sheer portability of it, and the nice mobility of it make it worth while to me. Not to mention the ability to integrate our blog, twitter, and Facebook all together (How to is here).

Lee Odden (a man with nearly 14k followers on twitter @leeodden) wrote  a piece about the common mistakes he sees on twitter that dilute your following. Below are his top ten, and check out his blog for another 40 submitted by his followers.

Top Ten Ways to Fail on Twitter

• Don’t auto reply follows with a link to your free piece of crap ebook.
• Don’t provide an obscure description of who you are and what you do
• No photo or an image that only makes sense to you and your imaginary friends
• Don’t mention a great resource with no link
• Not customizing your background
• Don’t post 10 messages in succession (also repeated below)
• Don’t follow over 1000 people in a 2 hour period
• Don’t write about the cat/hamster/potted plant over and over again
• Don’t swear often and expect business people to take you seriously (Unless you work for Outspoken Media)
• Don’t over-abbreviate.

Final Thoughts

I feel like the last one here is most important for churches, and would add to it using insider lingo. If you have a nickname for locations or people, don’t use them in your twitter feed. Doing that will only make people feel unwelcomed and on the outside.

Make sure to check out the full list over at his blog.

Recently I came across the twitter feed of Erwin McManus, pastor of Mosaic Church in LA. He was lucky enough to attend the annual TED conference (Technology, Education, and Design) which I follow closely through their videos (Highly Recommended). TED is a conference of the best and brightest sharing the latest and greatest from their fields. This leads to many inspiring and challenging talks.

Erwin captures that excitement in the first of these two tweets. Which were given in succession to one another.

Sitting at TED So inspiring. So I thought I would invite you into my TED experience. Today has wonderfully reaffirmed my passion to awaken humanity. February 5

Then the following day this he posted this. (more…)

If you have been using Twitter, visited a friends twitter page, or seen Facebook status show up with weird URLs in them you have likely been noticing shortened URLs. (Learn how to update Facebook with twitter)

These shortened URLs have come about because of the limit of characters you can use on twitter (140) so posting a long URL to a blog post (such as this one at nearly 90 characters) would take up nearly your whole message. Instead you can post http://tr.im/2h6l and use that to access the article about Facebook and twitter.

I personally use the tr.im service and have enjoyed it (they keep stats for you so you can know how many people are clicking on your links and from where/when).

Here is a list of the 11 Best URL Shortening Services out there. Check it out if you use twitter. I’d encourage you to pick one and bookmark it for easy access.

Warning!

While these URLs are very convenient for a service like twitter, I would avoid using them in printed material. If you have a web page you want people to go to from your church bulletin, use the full address. It will help them remember your domain name to tell others, and will have less problems with people typing them in wrong.

Example: we used http://tr.im/2h6l above and it links to our blog here at nineteen05. Clicking doesn’t have any issues here but what if you were typing and the L looked like an I… Now we’re at a German Internet sales magazine article… 2n6l leads us to an article about mobile phones and security… 2n6i to a NYT article on a potential role of Chinese savings into the financial crisis.

With that warning given, we encourage you to use these url shortening services online. But when it comes to print you are far safer to write out your full address.

One of the great things about this whole web 2.0 thing is how different websites work together. This is done by them providing access to their system through something called an API. But what it means for us, less work!

So how does it mean less work? As someone in ministry (or even working full time) the prospect of being able to trim time off of our list of to-dos is very exciting. So here is how you can post on your blog, and have that update your twitter account, and Facebook status for free. Follow these 3 simple steps. (more…)

The micro-blogging site twitter could very well be the next generation of blogging (though there are serious limits to such tiny posts and it is a very different experience). We over at nineteen05 just set up our twitter account (@nineteen05).

Our main motivation for doing this is to quickly and breifly communicate product releases, customer service info, new features, user submissions of feature adds, and to keep in better more consistant communication with our customer base.

If you are using twitter, make sure to follow us and we’ll return the favor!
If you haven’t started, get your FREE account and let us be one of your first contacts!

Author, Pastor, and Teacher Eric Bryant

Looking for a way to answer the question ‘What are you doing?’ Enter twitter. It is a blog, but it only allows entries of up to 140 characters.

Its a network that allows you to post short messages and when you are signed in you can see all the messages of those people following you. It’s a very easy and covenant way to keep up to date with friends/organizations/businesses you are interested in.

While it doesn’t make a lot of sense to use for a church as a whole, for individuals or small groups it can be great.

It’s hard to explain exactly how people use it, but it is used by many people in ministry. One example is a man I recently was able to hear speak, Eric Bryant, who gave a fairly impromptu talk to students at Bethel Seminary about the approach Mosaic Church has taken to church.

Checking out his personal website has revealed not only a blog that he up keeps, but also his twitter feed. (more…)