The Social Media Marketing Network

Does your social networking experience feel as if you’re on a treadmill?

It could be that you’re operating without a goal and purpose in mind. Take Twitter for example – what is your strategy? What are you trying to accomplish on Twitter.

Some people are there strictly for entertainment and conversation. They would be repulsed if you tried to engage them in a business conversation. They strictly want to have fun and operate Twitter as more of an IM service.

If you’re looking to build your brand and gain clients from your Twitter activity, this is not someone you would want to follow and engage in conversation with very much. This is not to say that you can’t have fun on Twitter if you’re there for business purposes.

I’ve found that Twitter works best when you use it as if you were at a networking function. This means you have a diverse conversation, not just business only; because your prospects won’t get to know you as a person.

Thanks for listening in.

Jim Turner
http://unhub.com/e16u
http://twitter.com/jim_turner

I’ve often wanted to post some of my tweets onto my Facebook Fan Page and Profile Walls, but just wasn’t comfortable with all of those conversations showing up on my Walls. A lot of my activities on Twitter are conversations. If most of what I did was post links, I would have been a little more comfortable with the idea.

The other thing to consider is that each time your tweets land in your Status line it travels throughout your Friends’ News Feeds. Imagine what that looks like to them… broken conversations. So, I’ve stayed away from posting my tweets to my Facebook status line.

However, today I came across a solution to my concern… it’s a Facebook app developed by Andy Young. His app is appropriately called the “Selective Twitter.” It allows you to send select tweets to your Facebook Wall by placing “#fb” at the END of your tweet. How neat is that? You can find the app here!

Credits should also go to Nancy Perez. I found this app referenced in a comment by Ian Chapman to her post about Facebook’s new and improved Fan/Brand Pages.

CAUTION: If you’re currently using the regular Facebook Twitter app or some other app to update your Status, remember to remove or disable it so you’re not making double posts of your tweets.

Try out “Selective Twitter” and let me know what you think.

http://facebook.dj/smmnetwork

http://profile.to/jimturner

http://twitter.com/jim_turner

Over the last two weeks there has been a lot of chatter going on around the social media circles concerning whether you should follow everyone who follows you on twitter; or should you just follow a few close friends.

One can argue both ways on this topic. There is a case for following everyone who follows you and likewise, you can only follow a close circle of friends or related people.

In the final analysis the choice is up to you and no one else. It all depends on why you’re using the various social media platforms - in this case it happens to be Twitter.

If Twitter could only be used for one single purpose, then you could argue that there is only one single strategy for using it. But that is far from the truth. There are almost as many uses for Twitter as there are people using it. We all use it a little different than the next person.

If you’re using it for a specific narrow purpose, such as staying with your group of 12 coaching clients, then surely, you don’t want to connect with anyone other than that group of people. In this case, I recommend you set up a separate Twitter account to be used with this group.

But if you’re tweeting with the hopes of attracting and finding new clients, I don’t suggest you be so narrow in your approach. However, you should follow those who appear to be in your target market based upon the content of their profile and what they Tweet about.

With that being said you can still follow everyone who follows you because you’re not sure who those folks are connected to that could become a client. I’ve had that happen to me.

So take a good look at why you’re on Twitter and any other social media site and determine what your follow strategy should be… because it IS your decision.

What is your follow strategy? Please share your comments below.