Have you ever thought about just how you go about your marketing. Sitting at your computer, it seems very one-on-one. You, the keyboard, your web-site/s and the world out there. Sure you have your contacts, “friends” and colleagues if you’re lucky and maybe a “guru” you can bounce off – but unless you’re in a team as in (shudder) a corporate workplace, it’s just you – or is it?

I would like to bounce an idea around with you – I think you are not alone. Why? – well I like to think of every link, article, post, website and every “footprint” we leave across the web-space is one of your “soldiers” out there working for you. The trick is to have those footprints leading somewhere.

The thing I would like to explore over the next few posts is this – just how well have you set up your “Marketing Army”. Like any army or battle, you have to make sure you not only have the troops, you need to make sure they are provisioned, trained, positioned correctly, given the correct and timely orders, know the strategy and believe in the goal.
Sound familiar – it should be – it’s at the core of any military code and has been around since the caveman and was elucidated by Tsung Su in the “Art of War”.

How many is enough?
Now we all have been told that whether its an affiliate campaign or Twitter marketing – it’s the numbers. But the whole of military history has shown that numbers is not enough and a well position, briefed and dedicated few can overcome huge odds – I say – it’s the same in marketing. Now, Don’t get me wrong, you actually do need that “tipping point” and numbers working for you. BUT – its also about the quality of numbers.
If you place badly positioned, written or targeted links, articles or posts etc, don’t expect a well performing army.

So – the first lesson for your “Marketing Army” is – research your target, focus and design your strategy for maximum effect. To be sure you are on the right track – be prepared to test and compare strategies and adapt to what works.

OK, I’m no Twitter expert. In fact, I’m a relative newbie when compared to the “Twitter Whales”, but I have noticed a few things about how I use and interact with other twitterers.   There is also one thing I know about marketing – and that’s being there for the longhaul by building presence and trust. We all know about how people react to email spam – and while we all know about building an opt in email or contact list – it will always be better if those on your list don’t feel like cannon fodder. The same is happening with Twitter – if you want to lose followers quickly, spam them. For that matter, you can report a user to Twitter directly from their profile page. Look for the “report for spam” link in the Actions section of the user’s right sidebar.

Don’t get me wrong, I have no issue with people making money online and promoting their businesses.  In fact I use Twitter as a means of building a presence as well and to reach people that would not normally see my message/s.  But – here’s the thing – I believe you have to do it in moderation. Why? – Because once your online reputation is damaged – it STAYS damaged.  A blocked Follow is the same as a Spam-list.  As the community matures, users will become more focused and selective.
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Now this is interesting – and I need to follow up on it. You may actually be getting more Twitter traffic than you realise. Most traffic stat prosgrams- rely on Javascript to track hits. But – if the browser has JS disables or doesn’t run it, then it’s not being counted.
Why is that important – well – if a user is on a mobile device – most do not run JS enabled browsers, while that may change – in the meantime – some of your metrics may be out of wack.

The example I saw used a URL shortener to track clicks. Of the 340 clicks tracked, Google Analytics reported that Twitter sent 63 visits. You can read more about that here.
Anyways – it may pay to think about how much real traffic you may get from a Twitter campaign. Interestingly, this has been recognised in a MIT Technology Review which shows that these kinds of metrics issues are being looked at with a view to a solution.

I had never really thought about it until I noticed a post complaining about reply overload and what seems to be misdirected DM’s. Like many I suppose, I have a couple of Twitter accounts for different purposes. Then as I looked at some of my replies – damnit – they were right – you can get posts not meant for you. It’s not Twitters fault though, it most likely the senders fingers on the keyboard. The old – user error between eye and finger.

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Twitter is still one of the hottest, fastest-growing, most attention-grabbing social service, but suddenly it appears that many of its users don’t actually use it fully and its appeal is not so “hot”.   Studies suggest that growth is flat-lining.   According to Hubspot – about half of all people who signed up for an account never posted a tweet (55%), aren’t following anyone (56%) and have no followers themselves (53%).
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Just how much “noise” can one little voice make – well if you talk to an internet marketer, they’d say – ” quite a lot! ..”
It depends a little, or a lot about where you make your noise and how. The internet world is a huge place so if you want to be noticed you need to shout in the right places to be noticed. But – there’s a word or caution here. Make sure what and how you shout is of value or properly considered or the attention may backfire on you.
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As you follow more and more on Twitter – the number of posts that roll down your screen becomes unbelievable.
To make sense of it and keep track of conversations that MATTER – you need some tools to ease your daily twittering experience.  Well, here are a few tips on keeping some sanity inside Twitter :

• Tweetdeck:   This great tool really helps organise your tweets.  Create GROUPS to organise and filter your users and areas of interest.  Also – you can apply a filter.  Look down at the bottom of any column that you have created and click on the icon that looks like a little “in-arrow”.   Click the “Filter This Column” icon and you will be presented with a few choices.  First, make sure that your filter type is set to “Text”. Next, type in the word that you want to remove,  eg. “flu”.  Finally, click the middle idea and make sure you have a minus sign and not a plus sign – Done!  All tweets that use the word “flu” will magically disappear from your stream.
  But – Maybe you want to see only the tweets that are talking about the “Obama”.  This is simple enough to do, change the minus sign to a plus sign, and only references to “Obama” will be included.
  You can filter with other criteria than text words, try “sources”, “+”, “Tweetdeck” to see only those that are posting info via Tweetdeck, or “Name”, “-”, “Wally” to remove all “Wallys”in their user name.

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