TopRank Online Marketing

Lee Odden

12 Ways to Find Brands & Companies on Twitter

29 Comments | Posted by Lee Odden on Mar 5th in Microblogging, Online Marketing |

A big question for marketers that want to connect with businesses on Twitter is that they often don’t know where to look.  Part of the rub is that Twitter is predominantly a service used by individuals, not companies.   While you can use search.twitter.com advanced features to find individuals using specific criteria, it can be more productive for finding companies or commercial users of Twitter via a managed list.

Here are a few resources for finding Twitter accounts for brands, companies, executives, analysts and journalists via directories and lists. Update: We’ve added the WeFollow Directory recently launched by Kevin Rose:

wefollow
WeFollow - Kevin Rose from Digg started this user powered directory of Twitter users organized into categories with rankings based on the number of users. Inclusion is based purely on users submitting themselves by Tweeting an @wefollow and hashtags describing what 3 categories to associate that user with.

Lee Odden

12 Twitter Stream Aggregators To Make You Smarter

39 Comments | Posted by Lee Odden on Feb 17th in Microblogging, Online Marketing, Social Media |

twitter network

There are so many Tweets and so little time. What’s a “Tweeple” to do? Twitter aggregator and trend websites use a variety of tactics to filter out what’s up and coming and of interest to the Twittersphere in contrast to the mass of mundane Tweets.  Twitter stream aggregators are useful for a variety of reasons ranging from discovery of news to competitive research. (Follow me on Twitter here @leeodden):

As a Twitter user, you can discover what kinds of Tweets are most often passed along (a “retweet” or “RT”) and use that insight for your own Twitter use. The same learning opportunity exists for companies using Twitter.

Lee Odden

Wish List for Twitter

20 Comments | Posted by Lee Odden on Oct 10th in Online Marketing, Social Media |

Microblogging is hot with the shiny new object set and as the practice of Twittering extends beyond early adopters and gets more mainstream media coverage, the crowd will get hungrier for more functionality. I don’t know about you, but I’m hungry for more Twitter functionality now. Check me out onTwitter here.

Whether the enhancements come from all the amazing third party Twitter applications or from Twitter itself, I really hope many of these updates happen soon.  Here are a few items on my Twitter wish list:

  • Ability to categorize and tag people so you can interact with each group individually (read and post) as well as to the entire group of followers
Lee Odden

SES Toronto: Deep Dive into Twitter

5 Comments | Posted by Lee Odden on Jun 19th in Online Marketing, Social Media, Social Networking |

I’m back from SES Toronto and wanted to share the presentation on Twitter with readers that weren’t at the show. Fellow presenters @davesnyder and @chriswinfield did a great job and the audience received a deep drill down into many aspects of Twitter.

In the end, Twitter on it’s own and with it’s uptime issues isn’t anywhere near as productive as it is in combination with third party tools like Twhirl, Summize and Twitturly. Return on effort from using Twitter really depends on how you use it. The mileage will vary based on your goals, how much you give and to what extent you use Twitter in combination with other socnets like Facebook, LinkedIn and offline networking.

Here’s my presentation hosted on Slideshare:

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Lee Odden

Twitter Poll: Ultimate Time Waster, or Great Tool?

28 Comments | Posted by Lee Odden on Jun 2nd in Microblogging, Search Engine Strategies, Social Media |

Twitter Poll

At the upcoming Search Engine Strategies conference in Toronto, I’ll be presenting along with David Snyder and Chris Winfield a hotly anticipated session called “Twitter: Ultimate Time Waster, or Great Tool?”. With the fast growth and uptime growing pains, debates about Twitter are plentiful so let’s settle it once and for all with a Twitter poll:

Twitter Poll: Ultimate Time Waster, or Great Tool?

  • Great Tool (55%, 144 Votes)
  • Ultimate Time Waster (45%, 120 Votes)

Total Voters: 264

Loading ... Loading …

I’ll be sharing the results at SES Tornoto, so be sure to pass along this post and see if we can break our poll response record.

Oh, and you can follow me on Twitter here: @leeodden

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Lee Odden

Top 10 Uses of Twitter

41 Comments | Posted by Lee Odden on May 15th in Online Marketing, Social Media, Social Networking |

The results of our poll on how Online Marketing Blog readers use Twitter are in. We had over 220 responses, which isn’t a bad sample considering this blog is fairly niche with a modest sized (and very smart) audience. Below I’ve listed the poll results and a few comments on each.

Follow Lee Odden on Twitter here.

  • (39%, 87 Votes) Sharing links to items of interest to your network - Not surprising since the speed of reach on Twitter is so fast. As soon as you find something interesting that’s linkable, you can drop it on Twitter and your network knows immediately. With the URL monitoring tools like the Techmeme-like Twitt(url)y and twitbuzz you can track items of interest before they ever hit the blogosphere and long before they hit mainstream media.
Lee Odden

Five New Twitter Tools You Should Know

72 Comments | Posted by Lee Odden on May 5th in Blogging, Microblogging, Online Marketing, Social Media |

Right along with Facebook, YouTube and blogging, Twitter is one of the most often written about social media communication tools. (Follow me @leeodden) We’ve run polls about how people use Twitter as well as aggregated tips from the Twitter community on how to get the most productivity out of it. This post shares a few new Twitter tools you may find useful.

TweetWheel - You may have a 100 or even 1000 followers. Which of your followers know each other? Tweet Wheel helps you find out visually. Note, if you have a LOT of followers, this will take a while.

Lee Odden Twitter Wheel

The account I searched on has around 1,400 followers and it looks like Tweet Wheel limits the display to 100 or so. There’s only so much room on the screen.

Lee Odden

Web 2.0 Expo - Microblogging and Micromedia

9 Comments | Posted by Lee Odden on Apr 23rd in Marketing PR Conferences, Online Marketing, Social Media, Web 2.0 Expo |

Nothing smacks more of ADD in a Web 2.0 world than micro blogging and microcontent. “Flow Apps” as Stowe Boyd calls them. As such, the last session I’m blogging on day two of Web 2.0 Expo is appropriately named: “Short Attention Span Theater: The Birth of Microblogging & Micromedia

The cast of characters in this session includes: Greg Narain of Blue Whale Labs who moderated, Jeremiah Owyang from Forrester Research, Brian Solis from Future Works and PR 2.0 and Stowe Boyd of The /Messengers.

Follow these guys on Twitter and you may learn an awful lot about this space:

@gregarious
@jowyang
@stoweboyd
@briansolis

While you’re at it, feel free to follow me as well: @leeodden Not sure how much you’ll learn there but you may be entertained :)

Lee Odden

Reader Poll: How do you use Twitter?

57 Comments | Posted by Lee Odden on Mar 5th in Online Marketing, Reader Polls, Social Media, Social Networking |

reader poll

UPDATE: Survey Results on Top 10 Uses of Twitter are here.

Without question, the microblogging platform Twitter (follow me here) is a phenomenon many of our readers are exploring or trying to figure out. Whether you’re in search marketing, advertising, interactive marketing, journalism or public relations, there are many ways to use Twitter as a communications, networking and even a socializing tool.

Some people post the most benign information such as the mass fixation on Twittering while in airports. Others produce steady streams of thoughtful goodness, insights and links to content you simply won’t find anywhere else. Twitter can even be a productive marketing tool and if you look, you’ll find an amazing number of resources on it.

Lee Odden

Social Media Smarts - Tips on Marketing with Social Media

23 Comments | Posted by Lee Odden on Jan 30th in Social Bookmarking, Social Media, Social Media Smarts, Social Networking |

lightbulb.jpg

Not too long ago I queried a number of online marketing and public relations peers ranging from Aaron Wall, Matt McGee and Neil Patel to Todd Defren, Triss Hussey and Peter Himler about sharing a few of their social media marketing tips. Out of that informal survey in combination with community specific solicitations came posts about marketing with MyBlogLog and Twitter.

However, there are many more social media communities and channels besides MBL and Twitter that I received tips on and from very reputable sources which you’ll find below. Enjoy!

Todd Defren from SHIFT Communications shared two of his own posts from a series on social media: Tips on using Twitter for finding and developing relationships and another post on using Del.icio.us for PR “edgework” or direct interactions with consumers.

Lee Odden

10,000 Subscribers

5 Comments | Posted by Lee Odden on Dec 4th in Online Marketing, TopRank News |

When I looked at our Feedburner chicklet this morning I noticed what must have been a joke: 9999.

What are the odds of that happening? I jokingly posted to Twitter that someone at Feedburner must have been messing with me and David Petherick of Digital Biographer sent me a direct message on Twitter that he had just subscribed to put it over the edge at 10,000. Thanks David!

BTW, if you’re interested in social networking/social media check out his site. Lots of good info there.

Hopefully what Jolina, Mike and I are posting from SES and Pubcon warrants continued growth of our subscriber numbers. The numbers reported by Feedburner for a variety of reasons fluctuate up and down, so tomorrow we could be back at 9500. Or it could be 10,200. :)

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Lee Odden

Guide to Twitter as a Tool for Marketing and PR

74 Comments | Posted by Lee Odden on Nov 15th in Online Marketing, Social Media |

twitter-bird.gif

In a previous post on MyBlogLog tips, I had mentioned a series of social media marketing posts Online Marketing Blog will be publishing where many of the tips will actually come from the community they’re about. Our next post in that series is about micro blogging phenomenon, Twitter.

At first I balked at the idea of Twittering like many others but eventually signed up (leeodden) and have been tuned in ever since. Like blogging, there are many mis perceptions about the productivity potential for Twitter. Those unfamiliar will often say, What’s up with: “My flight is leaving”. “We landed”. “Getting in cab. Etc?”. Trust me, there is a method to the MicroMedia madness as both an individual and a commercial communications tool.

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