Building your brand on Twitter is an important part of whether or not your brand/image will be successful on Twitter.  It is imperative that you not only build a targeted following, but more importantly that you create a conversation with or at a minimum provide your followers with useful information.

In this post, I am not going to go over the basics such as filling out your Twitter profile and uploading an avatar.  You can read about that type of stuff in “Basics of Building Your Twitter Profile.”  Instead I will discuss several items you should focus on should you want your twitter brand to succeed.

Be Proactive

Many tweeps commonly have questions or problems they need help with.  This is your opportunity to step in and come to the rescue by answering their question or atleast referring them to a source that may help them.  By helping them, you not only solve their issue, you help establish credibility and identity among the Twitter community. Read the rest of this entry »

Let’s take a step back to some basics today.  By now, you should be well on your way in building your twitter profile.  I am going to review some basics that you need to be sure you have covered in your twitter account.

Establishing An Identity

First and foremost, I hope you are using your online “brand” as your twitter username.  For example, ploked.com has the twitter username “ploked“.  This helps to establish brand and relationship of a site with a twitter account.  If you are not using a name that can identify with your site, business, or identity, I suggest changing your username to suit this.

Do you still have the a basic or default twitter background for your profile?  If so, you do need to take a few minutes and invest some time in creating Read the rest of this entry »

Social media isn’t just a “place for friends;” it’s a place for business. In fact, solid proof exists that social media campaigns grow more than leads or traffic, but increase sales as well.  (I recently wrote an article documenting increased sales as a direct result of social media campaigns.)

As more success stories are published, companies that haven’t already gravitated toward social media will begin to do so. This will increase the need for social media managers

There’s only one university of which I’m aware that offers a social media degree. The one-year, full-time, $6,500 program will get you a Master’s degree. However, some online sources doubt the program’s depth. A smattering of online colleges offer social media degrees (i.e., University of San Francisco), but I wasn’t able to find any data on the programs’ success (or lack-thereof).

The problem is multi-layered, the first hurdle being a shortage of  social media “masters” capable of teaching social media engagement in-depth; according to Traffickd, there are at least 475 active social media sites (ironically, two sites that I use regularly aren’t on the list…). Complicating matters further, social media is like shifting sand; a course curriculum in February is obsolete as soon as it’s printed.  These are endemic issues with tech companies, and until there’s a standard, companies that wish to increase their social media prowess will struggle to find knowledgeable social media managers who can not only drive results, but also add value to the organization. Read the rest of this entry »