Another week, another diary post. The past week has been fairly low key but with some good results, Tip #3 was to spruce up our profile. I (@LauraJDavis) went so far as to change my pic (somehow a pic of me a little worse for wear wasn’t working, check the new one below) and we both changed our profile bio’s. Whether this had any impact is hard to tell, but from a little snooping into our followers own bio’s we can see that they have similar interests as what we stated so we have came to the conclusion that there is something in it.

Also on the up this week has been the number of times we have been tweeting on a daily basis; we have really thrown ourselves into putting relevant (and on the rare occasion funny) tweets up, as a result we got a few @reply from some of our followers which caused a bit of excitement! (Yes we are sad, we know this already!) We are also starting to realise that talking, sorry twitting, about popular subjects or topics can be beneficial, for example @LauraJDavis and @PammyWeaver had a small(ish) chat about a certain teen vampire book turned box office smash movie (please refer to my earlier statement of us being sad and knowing it) and we both saw a jump in the number of visitors. On another occasion help was asked about a work related subject which reminds us that not only is Twitter a social marketing tool it can be resourceful and an excellent way to expand contacts in the local area.

Which leads us to…

Tip #4

This weeks tip comes from a fellow twitterer, @marcode who very kindly @reply both @PammyWeaver and @LauraJDavis and told us of an iPhone application that puts you in contact with twitterers in the local area. Not having an iPhone we are going to have to find a similar tool online and then find twitterers in our local area the aim being to increase our business contacts in the local area.

When we find said tool I will report back…

@laurajdavis

Followers 66 (+7)

Following 113

@Pammyweaver

Followers 70 (+6)

Following 120

Keep posted guys…

Time for Tip #3, but before we move on though lets have a quick look at Tip #2 and what exciting delights it brought us.

So Tip #2 was to interact with fellow Twitterers; this involved communicating with people following us (including the Smores), seeking out new people to follow using the search facility, and following those people who are following us.

The results were pretty insignificant, it is fair to say that a lot of people started following us but an almost equal amount stopped which meant there was no significant increase in followers.

It is fair to say that we found it hard interacting with our followers & those we were following; we just don’t have that much in common with them, and as for the celebs… well what do you Tweet to Demi Moore?! Effort will have to be made to seek out fellow Twitterers who share similar interests, so we can work on interacting.

The exercise wasn’t completely wasted, however, we did have a few replies from fellow Twitterers, obviously enamored with our fab chat, and on Friday @PammyWeaver got a boost when one of her followers recommended others to follow her. Which led to our discovery of the Follow Friday (they really should issue a handbook when you join), it took us 3 weeks to discover this fact but apparently on a Friday it is the ‘done thing’ to go out of your way to follow someone new.

“Instead of searching for people interested in the same topics as yourself #followfriday gives you the chance to find recommendations from friends who they think deserve your attention.” Makak Media

This has been duly noted and come next Friday we will be following and recommending like mad.

Moving swiftly onto our next tip.

Tip #3

We thought we would continue our ‘ interacting’ and use this weeks tip to look at our profile and what tips there are to spruce it up a bit. This weeks tip comes from Twittin Secrets, so sshh don’t tell anyone.

Optimize your 160 character “One Line Bio” which appears on the upper right of your Twitter profile page. In most cases the goal of the bio line is to get the reader to think you are “follow worthy.” Make it real, make it fun, make it interesting, make it YOU.

Make your personal picture (icon) a good one – in fact, make it great! Twitter is driven by personalities, so use a picture that expresses the “personality message” you want to get across. Logo’s, text, and images without humans or animals are often too business-like and negate the driving social force that propels Twitter.

Already I can see this tip being very helpful, am very much looking forward to scrapping my personal picture and replacing it with something a bit more professional. We will keep you posted on our progress.

See how well we did this week.

@laurajdavis

Followers 59 (+8)

Following 105

@Pammyweaver

Followers 64 (+4)

Following 111

Keep posted guys…

In our last post we said that Tip #1 was an effective way to increase your twitter followers, which is true, but our elation over doubling our followers overnight was dampened slightly when we came back in the office on Monday to see that our numbers were dwindling- fast!

Where did it all go wrong we ask?! My theory is that in the process of adding all the Smores (who then added us back- the kind bunch that they are!), we were also tapping into a niche group of Twitterers who were perhaps above our station, their chat was good, ours non existent… further to this we also have been a bit bad by not following those who are following us.

This leads us on to our next tip, which in fact will be an amalgamation of these two factors…

Tip #2

Interact with fellow Twitterers. On reflection this does seem like the most obvious thing for any Twitterer to do and perhaps we should have just incorporated it into our first tip, but we didn’t so we are going to do it now instead.

Interaction will involve communicating with people following us (including the Smores), seeking out new people to follow using the search facility, and following those people who are following us. Wow that’s a lot of following.

In theory by expanding our followers and interacting with active Twitters will expose us to others who are interested in the same areas and thus our followers will flourish once again…

@laurajdavis

Followers 51 (-8)

Following 64

@Pammyweaver

Followers 60 (-6)

Following 96

Ok so one day down and already we are seeing some dramatic action on our Twitter account! Happy Days!

What we’ve done so far…

A fellow Twitterer (@andrew_thomson) very kindly passed on a nice wee resource for Internet Marketing Gurus which we have used for our first task, follow Smores, given that there are like a couple hundred Internet Marketing Gurus out there we just randomly selected 20 different gurus to follow.

What happened…

A lot actually! Two minutes into the Smore bonanza we already had a boost in our follower numbers! Without really doing anything! Here I was, under the impression that to get followers you had to say cool stuff, be Stephen Fry or speak techie talk, apparently not all you got to do is follow the cool kids.

One thing we have noticed, however, is that since following the marketing gurus we have been inundated with Twitter updates and don’t really get the opportunity to catch every Twit coming through- in fact we are finding it quite stressful! In an attempt to try and manage the numbers we have downloaded a nifty wee gadget called a TweetDeck, a jazzy little application that lets you know of every Tweet as they are Tweeted (published?).*

It really is a must for anyone wanting to take this Twitter malark seriously.

Anyway, so just over 24 hours into our experiment and time for a quick update.

@laurajdavis

Followers 59 (+29)

Following 64

@Pammyweaver

Followers 66 (+33)

Following 96

All going swimmingly so far with tip #1 being incredibly useful… lets see how the weekend goes.

Keep tuned Twitters.

*Note to self must look into correct Twitter language and phrases!

Now Twitter is by no means a new thing, many of the more social media savvy guys in the office are well established Tweeters and of course 360innovate has themselves hooked up with an account (Tweet us at @360innovate).

However, the whole concept of what Twitter is and what is does both on a commercial and personal level is a bit of a mystery to a few of us here in 360. With this in mind two Twitter newbies (@PammyWeaver and @laurajdavis) both employees of 360innovate are going to take the plunge and try to become Twitter geniuses.

We want to understand what Twitter is for, what it achieves and how you can become ‘good’ at it… good meaning having lots of followers! We will utilise all the online resources we can get our greedy hands on and use this blog as a channel to document how successful (or not) they are, so that you too can reap the benefits that Twitter has to offer for yourself and for your business.

First and foremost let us introduce ourselves:

* Update: Since publishing this blog the data below has mysteriously disappeared so I am having to repost with estimated figures.

@laurajdavis

Followers 25

Following 50

Twitter rank 438,356

@Pammyweaver

Followers 33

Following 34

Twitter rank 367,853

Secondly lets here the first tip:

Tip 1#

The first tip comes from Guy Kawasaki, we here he is big news in the online scene… good place to start then! On with the tip, follow all the Social Media Whores (Smores), the general definition (I think) of a smore is someone who practically never leaves their computer, Tweets every 2 mins and participate in every social network site going… sounds a bit like half the 360innovate office! Anyways Guy recommends checking out TwitterCounter.

Time to seek and to, well, follow! Watch this space!

stay tuned to see how we get on!