How to Change the World

The 19 bloggers Inc. thinks you should read

Inc. named 19 bloggers that you should read. We’ve aggregated them all in one place: Inc19.alltop.

How to Get Found

The reality is that people and technology is getting better and better a blocking out unwanted interruptions—aka, “marketing.” Brian Halligan is the CEO of HubSpot, and he explains in my post on the American Express Open Forum “how to get found.” It’s all about creating great stuff and letting Google et al do what they do: find great stuff.

How I tweet

By popular demand (and some complaints), I’ve done a FAQ with myself about how I tweet. Hope this helps you use Twitter for your business too. I explain how I use ghostwriters and why I repeat my tweets among other “unusual” practices.

Current Twitter Demo Script

This is the set of links that I used to demo Twitter by going down through this list to show why Twitter is such a valuable marketing tool.

Introduction

Home page

Profile page

Monitor

Search

Guy Kawasaki or Alltop

Starbucks VIA introduction

Search for “Prius” or “Civic”

Sell

Dell Outlet

Kogi BBQ

Support

Comcast Cares

Engage

JetBlue

Virgin America

Fandango

Prospect

Camaro

Camaro near Palo Alto

Advanced searches

Surfing or skateboarding (shows how to eliminate extraneous results such as “surfing the web”

How I Tweet

- Find

Alltop

MyAlltop helped me find this.

StumbleUpon, specifically toolbar

SmartBrief

- Write

BBEdit

- Tweet

Objective Marketer

Campaigns

Button and Frames

Automatic, tweets: Holy Kaw campaign

Case Study: Fandango

@Fandango

Monitor Roger Ebert or grab his RSS feed

Monitor Movies.alltop or grab its RSS feed

Stick RSS feeds into Objective Marketer

Tools

One Forty Twitter app store (disclosure: advisor)

Tweetdeck for Mac or PC

Tweetie for iPhone

Adjix for shortening, repeating, and scheduling.

SocialToo for auto-following and spam killing.

Tweetmeme to build traffic (disclosure: advisor)

Twitterfeed to insert RSS feeds

Twitterhawk for automatic tweeting based on keyword searches

CoTweet for a “CRM” approach (disclosure: advisor)

Objective Marketer for tweeting (disclosure: advisor)

Best Practices

Always be linking—“inform.”

Always be responding.

Always be getting retweeted.

Dogmas to Ignore

You should “me-form.” You can but only if you’re Lance Armstrong.

You should not repeat tweets. You shouldn’t if they’re boring, and you have only 100 followers. You can if they’re not, and you have thousands of followers.

You should not automate tweeting with feeds. You shouldn’t if you don’t want to have a life, but you can if you do.

You should not use ghosts. You don’t need ghosts if you’re omniscient, but more smart people looking for good links is always better.

You should make everyone happy. If you’re not pissing someone off on Twitter, you’re not using it right.

How to Avoid Twitter Cluelessness

Over at the American Express Open Forum blog, I explain how to not look clueless on Twitter. The first five ways are:

1. Don’t tell other people how to tweet.

2. Don’t tell the world that you unfollowed someone.

3. Don’t ask people why they unfollowed you.

4. Don’t constantly tweet mundane updates and babble.

5. Don’t use a small picture for an avatar.

To read all ten and why they impugn your intelligence, click here.