Building a Twitter Strategy for Business Growth

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© InRev Systems Bangalore Pvt. Ltd 2010 | www.in-rev.com | Email: Contact@in-rev.com
Content
Introduction ......................................................................... 8
What is Social Media?....................................................... 9
Forms of Social Media .................................................... 12
Social News Sites ........................................................ 12
Social Networking Sites............................................... 13
Social Sharing Sites ..................................................... 14
Social Bookmarking Sites ............................................ 15
Wikis .......................................................................... 16
Micro-blogging: a convenient alternative to blogging?.... 17
Why you should be in Twitter? ....................................... 18
Chapter 1 ........................................................................... 23
How can Twitter be used? .................................................. 23
Information .................................................................... 23
Search ........................................................................ 23
News .......................................................................... 24
Getting your questions answered ................................... 24
Networking and daily usage............................................ 25
Make new friends....................................................... 25
Keeping up with friends.............................................. 25

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To-do list and taking notes.......................................... 26
Personal Branding .......................................................... 26
Setting up meetings........................................................ 26
Use in Business............................................................... 27
Promoting your business ............................................ 27
Driving traffic to your website..................................... 27
Collecting Feedback.................................................... 27
Hire employees........................................................... 28
Know your Customers................................................. 28
Finding Prospective Clients ......................................... 28
Know Twitter better ....................................................... 30
Chapter 2 ........................................................................... 35
How Twitter Craze took media by Storm............................. 35
Performance Measure.................................................... 35
Competition with other blogging .................................... 38
Connecting Blogs with Twitter – LIFE STREAM ................ 40
Facebook and Twitter - Battle for social media space...... 40
Search Engine Debate - Will Twitter be the new way to
search for the information.............................................. 42
Executive Tweets, Politicians, Celebrities and Brand media
Tweets............................................................................ 44

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Twitter as your social ID.................................................. 45
Future Innovation in Social Media................................... 46
Chapter 3 ........................................................................... 48
Business and Twitter – Manoj Jasra Sr. Strategist at Shaw
Communications Inc........................................................... 48
Top Characteristics of Twitter Apps ................................ 49
Twitter Applications for Business.................................... 52
Blogging and Twitter....................................................... 61
Chapter 4 ........................................................................... 65
Growing in Twitter – Bhupendra Khanal, CEO InRev............ 65
Bringing Quality to Tweets.............................................. 65
Why un-follow who don’t follow you (for new Tweeters) 70
Benefits of Using Twitter ................................................ 76
Twitter Followers: Quality vs. Quantity in Marketing ...... 80
Merits and Demerits of Twitter BOTs.............................. 86
Reasons to hate BOTs ..................................................... 87
Reasons to Like BOTs...................................................... 89
My Take:......................................................................... 93
Spam Control.................................................................. 93
Types of Spammers ........................................................ 93

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Ways to fight Spam......................................................... 98
Social Media Marketing (SEO and Social Media)............ 100
Content Generation.................................................. 102
Links Building............................................................ 103
SEO and Reputation.................................................. 104
Chapter 5 ......................................................................... 106
Twitter Analytics for Marketers and Analytics................... 106
User Analysis................................................................ 106
Followers Analysis ........................................................ 113
Timeline Analysis (24 hours analysis) ............................ 116
Following Analysis ........................................................ 118
Brand Tracking (Mentions, Competitive Performance).. 122
Demographics / Data.................................................... 127
Chapter 6 ......................................................................... 133
Case Studies..................................................................... 133
All top – Get Latest News for all topic ........................... 133
About Guy Kawasaki ................................................. 133
About Alltop ............................................................. 134
Guy Kawasaki on Twitter........................................... 135
Dell - Use of Twitter...................................................... 140

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How did it start after all? - The ups and downs.......... 144
Speculation............................................................... 144
The Key Reason for Success ...................................... 146
Zappos.com – Online Shopping..................................... 147
About Zappos.com.................................................... 147
Zappos.com in Twitter .............................................. 147
Zappos employees on Twitter................................... 150
Zappos sold to Amazon............................................. 150
Jet Blue - Airways....................................................... 153
About Jet Blue Airways ............................................. 153
Business Model......................................................... 153
Discovery of Twitter.................................................. 154
Learning in Twitter.................................................... 154
Key reasons for Success ............................................ 155
Naked Pizza – Pizza Store.............................................. 156
About Naked Pizza.................................................... 156
Naked Pizza and Twitter............................................ 156
How Naked Pizza achieved Success........................... 156
Targeting Local Community ...................................... 157
Benefit leveraged by Naked Pizza.............................. 157

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Lesson Learnt............................................................ 158
Pepsi – Soft Drink ......................................................... 158
About Pepsi .............................................................. 158
Rebranding with Twitter ........................................... 159
Pepsi and Twitter...................................................... 159
Experimentation....................................................... 160
Learning with Pepsi................................................... 161
Chapter 7 ......................................................................... 162
Interesting events in Twitter............................................. 162
Armstrong and Contador .............................................. 162
Lance Armstrong is looking for his stolen bicycle via
Twitter...................................................................... 163
Fake Id.......................................................................... 164
James Corden ........................................................... 164
Dalai Lama................................................................ 165
Ashton Kutcher and Twitter.......................................... 166
Ashton Kutcher Vs CNN............................................. 167
Hacking of ID ................................................................ 169
Chapter 8 ......................................................................... 170
Pro Twitter’s thought ....................................................... 170

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Twitter: What’s In It for My Business? ....................... 170
What does the future for Twitter hold? .................... 173
Chapter 9 ......................................................................... 175
Build your own Twitter Application- Binit Thapa, CSA, InRev
Systems............................................................................ 175
Twitter API Usage......................................................... 177
HTTP Basic Authentication............................................ 178
Open Authentication (OAuth) ....................................... 180
Rate Limits and White-listing ........................................ 181
Data Compression ........................................................ 181
User Agent Header ....................................................... 182
Interesting Applications on Twitter............................... 183
References: ...................................................................... 189
Authors Panel................................................................... 190

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Introduction
The key to the success of any business lies in getting its
products and services over a large audience and selling
them. A business has to continuously engage with their
customers and cannot succeed if they fail to build a
relationship. In the competitive market that exists
today, the challenge is not just to listen to the consumer
but listen to them before your competitors do.
Social Media has done an excellent job in bringing the
producer and consumer closer. The distance between
the company and the consumer is diminishing by the
day. From positive feedback to negative criticism,
everything talked on the sphere of Web 2.0 today is
closely watched.
When we talk about the contribution of Social Media in
the marketing efforts used by a company, Twitter
emerges as a clear winner. The simple interface and
approach has received an overwhelming response from
startups to huge enterprises alike.

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Twitter is one of the youngest kids on the block and as
with any form of Social Media one needs to be cautious
in optimizing Twitter for business benefits. Like all Social
Media sites, Twitter can be addictive too. Therefore it
becomes necessary to understand the role of Twitter as
a marketing platform before you make a leap.
In this book, we have tried to define what exactly Social
Media is and how effective Twitter is as a marketing
platform. We have used our experience and real time
examples to provide you with ways you can use Twitter
as a marketing tool.
What is Social Media?
Before we jump to know how Twitter can be used as a
tool for business, it’s important to have a brief
understanding of Social Media and why it is called the
next BIG thing.
What is it about Social Media that we all seem to be in
complete awe of? Is it the fact that it has changed

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monologues to dialogues or is it the ease with which we
can connect with people? There is no denying that
Social Media has brought about a revolution in the way
we connect and immortalized the way we
communicate.
According to a Nielsen report “Global Faces and
Networked Places”, Two-thirds of the world’s Internet
population visit social networking sites, accounting for
almost 10% of all internet time and this percentage is
likely to grow as the time spent on the social networking
sites is growing more than three times the rate of
overall Internet growth.
The word social media could be deceiving at times as it
is not really media in the most traditional sense. What
social media actually refers to is an online medium or a
platform through which people can communicate. It is
social without a doubt but not a media in the way we
refer to media.
Social Media is an interactive way of providing
information. It includes all the online medium and tools
that are used by people to share their opinion,
perspective, insights or just random thoughts. It could

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be as simple as giving your vote for a campaign, writing
a comment, sharing pictures online or maintaining a
blog.
Social Media has been around for decades in some form
or another. Its existence and usefulness is subject to
your own understanding of what Social Media means to
you. It could be as old as the newspaper which asks its
readers to write back their comments back to them or
as new as the day your started your blogging site.
A lot has been talked about Social Media lately and how
it influences our lives. Communication has been a part
of our existence and Social Media is adding another
dimension to it. Companies are actively increasing their
participation on the web. The golden rule of marketing
is being rewritten by digital words and the use of social
media as one of the channels of Marketing is
imperative. The companies not embracing social media
are bound to be wiped out by competition.

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Forms of Social Media
Social Media is defined differently for its various forms.
There is a difference between Social news sites, Social
Networking sites, Social Bookmarking sites, Social Photo
sharing sites even though all of them form a part of this
huge Social Media. They all have different approach and
are targeted to different audience. They need to be
treated differently in terms of user expectations and
preferences.
Below mentioned are the various forms of Social Media:
Social News Sites
These sites are primarily meant as a source of news and
information. Users visit these sites for news and to
exchange useful information. Most of these sites
provide users the facility to vote for the information
which according to them was most useful. The links
appear on the site based on the users rating so that
most popular news is seen by maximum people.
Some of the popular Social News sites are:

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Digg: The largest and most popular social news site. It
covers everything from politics, entertainment, and
technology to general news.
Reddit: Another popular social news site which also
covers specific topics like programming and science.
Propeller: A site that operates similarly to Digg. It covers
a wide range of topics including technology, politics and
entertainment.
Slashdot: Though this site covers topics such as books,
games, politics and entertainment, it is still primarily a
tech news site.
Social Networking Sites
These sites help you stay connected with your friends
and family. They are also a great channel for meeting
new people and building online communities of users
sharing common interests. The major aspect of Social
Networking site is communication. This communication
is mostly in form of posts on a user’s profile, instant
messaging or direct mails.

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Some of the popular Social Networking sites are:
Facebook: This is hands down the most popular social
networking site. It lets you form online communities,
find new friends, connect with old friends and much
more.
Myspace: It became the most popular social networking
site in as early as June 2006. It operates in similar
fashion as Facebook.
Twitter: This micro-blogging site is an equally popular
Social Networking site. It not only helps you know what
your friends are up to but also lets you connect with
new people and follow their posts.
Social Sharing Sites
These sites are basically used as a medium to share all
kinds of information like reviews, photos or videos. The
popularity of these sites is largely contributed by the
huge user generated content.

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Some of the popular Social Sharing sites are:
YouTube: This is one of the most popular Social Media
Sites with one of the highest number of users. This
Video sharing site allows the user to upload and share
videos.
Flickr: This is the largest Photo sharing site which claims
to host more than 3.6 billion images. This site is very
popular for upload and sharing personal pictures.
Social Bookmarking Sites
Social Bookmarking is a way of managing the bookmarks
of the WebPages user saves on the internet. Social
Bookmarking Sites offer a channel for the users to save
the links of the web pages that they want to use in the
future. These bookmarks can be private, public or
shared with a limited number of people.
Some of the popular Social Bookmarking Sites are:
Delicious: This Social Bookmarking site is used for
storing, sharing and finding new bookmarks. Users can
view the most recent as well as most popular

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bookmarks here.
Blinklist: This is one of the oldest social bookmarking
sites and is used for personal and social bookmarking
services.
Wikis
This is a tool for creating and sharing knowledge. A wiki
is a collaborative website that lets the user create and
edit the web pages and the contents. These are
absolutely open since anybody can edit the information
using the simple web browser.
Wikipedia is not only the most famous Wiki but also the
largest and most preferred source of information on the
web. Wikipedia boasts of 13 million articles written by
users around the world.

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Micro-blogging: a convenient alternative to
blogging?
While there are many who think that describing a
moment or an emotion in limited number of words is
not possible, there are a huge number of arguments
that micro-blogging sites have replaced their
conventional blogs.
While Micro-blogging might have started as way of
keeping in constant touch with friends and family, it has
certainly turned into something much bigger. It’s not
only used to keep up with friends and families, it’s also a
channel to share information and reviews. Businesses
use micro-blogging to promote their business and get
feedback from their customer. It can also be used as
medium to announce launch of new products.
Many people are turning to micro-blogging just because
it’s much easier than conventional blogging. It’s the
simplicity and ability to post frequently that the
micro-blogging sites offer which is drawing a large
number of users. It has this real time factor attached
which makes it a favorite for news updates.

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When it comes to micro-blogging sites, Twitter is
certainly the most famous of them all. Other
micro-blogging sites include Jaiku, Tumblr, Mysay. Such
is the popularity of micro-blogging that the biggest
social networking site ‘Facebook’ integrated a Twitter
like status update feature in its site.
Micro-blogging has revolutionized the way people
communicate. It has brought a transformation in the
way people share their thoughts and information.
Micro-blogging sites have significance presence on the
web and are growing at an unimaginable rate. Such is
the impact of micro-blogging that they are forming the
major headlines all over the world.
Why you should be in Twitter?
Twitter is certainly one of the first and most popular
Micro-blogging services which actually evolved from
mobile blogging. “What are you doing?” is what you are
asked when you log into the extremely popular social
media site Twitter. What started as a way to update

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friends what you were doing has caught like a wild fire
and is reckoned as one of the most popular way of
online marketing today. If Social Media has brought a
revolution in the way people connect, Twitter has
certainly given a new dimension to the way people
interact. Who had imagined that conversation limited in
140 characters could actually become one of the most
effective ways of communication and marketing?
Its popularity can also be credited to its simple approach
in connecting two people. Unlike other Social media
tools, you do not need to wait for an approval from the
user you want to follow. You can see all the updates
(tweets) of the user you are following. Your tweet is a
broadcast to all your followers. They can choose to
listen or not listen.

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There has been a lot of discussion on why one should
use Twitter. When I started receiving invitations from
friends to join Twitter; for a very long time I used to
select them all at one go and click on ‘delete’. I didn’t
understand the need to be on Twitter when I was
already connected to my friends on numerous other
social media sites. Half of which I was registered to but
had never used.
It was only when I was completely bugged by people
around me talking about Twitter all the time did I decide
to find out what such a big deal this one was about.
After having used Twitter for a while now, I can easily
say that the usefulness of Twitter is manifold. Not only

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can it help your friends/ family know about the things
that you had never thought you’d mailed them about;
but it can cut down on the cost of your marketing and
PR team.
From getting to know your favorite celebrity better to
finding about the performance of a new mobile
launched in the market, Twitter provides great benefits
to all its users. It completely depends on how you want
to reap the benefit.
I remember the first time I logged into Twitter, I was
completely lost. I could just see random messages all
over and didn’t know what to do with them. Then I was
told by a friend that there was absolutely nothing that I
had to do. I just had to follow people I wanted to and
post updates. I was at the loss of my wits “What was all
this fuss about?” And then it struck to me that we are so
used to complicated systems that sometimes simple
ones are difficult to manoeuvre.
If there was one place you’d want to see diversity, get
yourself a Twitter account. From programmers to
marketing gurus, tenth graders to grandmothers; you
will find them all. My first knowledge of cloud

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computing came from Twitter. Computer is certainly not
a field of interest to me.
One thing that adds greatly to the popularity of Twitter
is the large applications being built over it. The last
couple of months not just witnessed a steep increase in
Twitter user base but also saw hundreds of Twitter
applications mushrooming in every corner of the world.
Some of these applications are really great and can
come handy in helping you manage your Twitter
account.

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Chapter 1
How can Twitter be used?
Twitter has gone beyond personal usage and has got
itself a lot of followers in professional arena as well. I
see many people maintaining two different accounts for
their personal and professional use. I use Twitter
actively and have acquired great fondness for it. Twitter
can easily blend with your daily routine and be a part of
your everyday life. You have to be cautious and not get
addicted to it though.
Here are a few things that Twitter can really help you
with both in your personal and professional life.
Information
Search
This according to me one of the most useful features
Twitter offers. Unlike other search engines, Twitter
provides live results in the form of comment threads.
While most of the search engines take some time to

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update the events, Twitter works at lightning speed to
cover any news. The real time search is becoming very
popular since it adds the human factor to your search.
You can access the search engine at
http://search.twitter.com/
News
One thing Twitter has certainly replaced is my
newspaper. I find it very easy to follow news of my
interest on Twitter than anywhere else. Not only is it
live and fastest way to get the news but it comes very
handy for keeping track of things you are interested in.
Twitter users give live updates from the scene and the
news floats throughout the world in second. You can
follow @CNN and @NYTimes to follow the news
headlines and links. If you are interested in social news,
you can subscribe to Twitter feeds for specific sites.
Getting your questions answered
I find it quite fascinating that a question posed doesn’t
take more than a few seconds to answer. Twitter indeed
is a great source to get the answers to your questions. It
saves you a lot of time that you’d spend searching for

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that answer yourself. You could ask for opinions from
your Twitter followers to get feedback on something.
The question could be anything from “How to get
gridlines removed in Excel?” to “Which is the best
Chinese restaurant in Bangalore?”
Networking and daily usage
Make new friends
Like any social media service, Twitter helps you a great
deal in finding new friends. It helps you connect with
new people. Twitter has an inbuilt facility to track the
messages from your friends and keep track of them. You
can find people with similar interests and benefit in
terms of learning and developing long term friendship.
Keeping up with friends
Twitter is a great way to keep up with friends. I’d never
send a mail to any of my friends telling them how bad
the traffic situation was this morning. A tweet on the
same would let my friends know what I am up to just by
seeing my tweet. It’s up to them if they want to read my

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updates or not.
To-do list and taking notes
Twitter can also help you in keeping track of your to do
list. You could mark the important tweets as favorites
and file them for later use. Alternatively, you could use
an online task manager which can be synced with
Twitter.
Personal Branding
As a social media profile, your Twitter account can work
a long way in building your personal brand. It can help
you get recognized by people and companies as a social
personality and your quality and degree of interaction
can help you create a great rapport.
Setting up meetings
It’s an informal yet an effective way of casual meetings.
You could be in a café and ask fellow users to join you. It
could also be used to organize meet ups and events etc.

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Use in Business
Promoting your business
Twitter works great for promoting your products. Of
course this should be done within limits. If you keep on
tweeting about your brand all the time, you are very
likely to be listed as a spam/bot. Keep a good balance
between building personal relation and promoting your
business.
Driving traffic to your website
The visits that I get on my blogs from twitter are never
less than double the visits that I get from search
engines. Twitter has a viral effect and it takes a few
seconds to reach a crowd. Of course the blog or site
should be interesting enough to travel.
Collecting Feedback
A product or service needs constant feedback to
improve. For any successful business, it’s important that
the owner listen to their customers. Twitter is very
useful in getting quick feedback. You can just tweet
asking people to test a certain things and be assured to

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work on a collective feedback.
Hire employees
I was on the lookout for .NET programmers and thought
of giving Twitter a try. Within minutes I got a list of a
few people and a few recommendations as well. This is
a hassle free way to find perspective employees and
word of mouth does help most of the times.
Know your Customers
Twitter can be very effective in building two way
channels between the company and the customer.
Twitter feed can be used for informing customers about
new products or changes in the existing ones. It works
as a great advantage for the company if customers feel
that their brands are listening to them and making an
attempt to keep a personal relation with them.
Finding Prospective Clients
Twitter can work as a platform for finding clients for
your products and services. If I have a service in the field
of Social Media Services, I can just use the keywords
“Social Media Services” and get in touch with people in
need of related services. I could also post relevant

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tweets and let others in need find me.

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Know Twitter better
tweeting: the act of updating your status in Twitter.
tweets: posts on Twitter by Twitter users.
tweetup: Twitter meet up.
twitosphere: community of Twitter users.
twittastic: fantastic, wonderful, superb.
twittduit: If you need to tweet a friend that does not
follow you, post a twittduit asking your followers to pass
a message.
twittectomy: un-following of friends.
twitter stream: a collection of tweets often times in
alphabetical order
twitterati: The list of elite Twitter users.
twittercal mass: a community that has achieved a
critical mass of twitterers.

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twitterer: Twitter user
twittering: sending Twitter message.
twitterish: erratic outbursts.
twitterness: users contribution to the twitosphere.
twitterject: interject your tweet into an existing tweet
stream of conversation.
twitterlinkr: a service collecting the best links posted
through Twitter.
twittermaps: a technology that that helps users find
other users using Google maps.
twitterpated: overwhelmed with Twitter messages.
twitterphoria: the feeling when the person you add
adds you back.
twitterage: rage at a Twitter post.
twitterrhea: sending many Twitter messages
adventuritter: an adventurous twitterer

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beetweet: a buzzing tweet; a “hot” tweet
co-twitterer: a partner that tweets on your Twitter
account.
dweet: tweet sent while intoxicated
mistweet: a tweet in which one later regrets
neweeter: a new tweeter
occasionitter: an occasional tweeter
politweeter: a political tweeter
politweet: a political tweet
qwitter: a tool used to catch Twitter quitters
reportwitters: reporter style twitterers
sweeple: sweet twitter people
twadd: to add/follow someone to your Twitter account
as a friend.
twaffic: Twitter traffic.

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twaiting: twittering while waiting.
twalking: walking while twittering via text.
twapplications: Twitter applications.
twead: to read a tweet from a fellow Twitter user.
tweepish: feeling sheepish or regretful about something
you tweeted.
tweeple: Twitter people, Twitter members, Twitter
users.
tweeps: Twitter people that follow each other from one
social media/network to another.
tweetaholism: the continued use of Twitter as an
addiction.
tweetaholic: someone addicted to Twitter.
tweet-back: bringing a previous tweet conversation or
reference back into the current conversation.
tweet-dropping: eavesdropping on someone else’s
home page in friends mode.

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tweeter: a Twitter user.
tweetin: when a group of twitterers agree to get
together at a set time to Twitter.

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Chapter 2
How Twitter Craze took media by Storm
Performance Measure
The growth of Twitter users was not exponential as it
seems today. It was unpredictable at the beginning
since it was unlike any other kind of social media
around. It had distinct brevity to its design and structure
which made people uncertain of its importance. But
slowly, it was this very simplicity that won the hearts of
many Twitter users.
The graph above shows the volume of news covering

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Twitter in the news channel and other media. By the
end of 2008, Twitter had taken all the spot light. There
are many reasons for this which we will be exploring
soon.
By February 2009, Twitter had an astounding 1,382%
year-over-year growth and total unique visitors grew
from 475,000 in February 2008 to seven million. More
interestingly, ages 35-49 had the largest representation
on Twitter - almost 3 million unique visitors from this
age group which is almost 42% of the entire audience.
Further 735,000 unique visitors accessed Twitter via
their mobile device. This brings us to the effect of rising
mobile application to increasing the popularity of
Twitter. It’s been discovered that the maximum Twitter
users use iPhone to send their status updates.
Even with such rise and the hype, Twitter is still
struggling to gain some credentials among the
corporate users. People are still finding it difficult to
realize the influence of Twitter on the Consumer and
the benefit of having Twitter as their new channel for
communication. Twitter still has to break certain

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barriers to prove its place in the entire market.
The chart shows that the awareness of Twitter among
the consumers is very low. There are only 12% positive
opinions about the future of Twitter. Despite the
coverage of Twitter in mainstream media, Twitter is still
lacking the potential to attract consumers to use it. But
unlike the sentiment of the consumer, marketers on the
other hand are very optimistic about the growth of

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Twitter. This brings us to the strength of Twitter as a
niche marketing medium.
Competition with other blogging
As Twitter was getting it-self attached to major news,
like the update of forest fire news, earthquake in Los
Angles and who can forget the terrifying attack at Taj

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Hotel, Mumbai on 26/11. It seemed certain that Twitter
had the potential to reach out to the mass in a fraction
of a second much before the news got published in the
mainstream media.
This was what caught the attention of the marketers
and potential news publishers. The news didn’t travel
from the main stream to the mass, instead news was
captured as it happened and went pandemic. The flow
of information was controlled not by main-stream
media but by people themselves. This was interesting as
it demonstrated the power of freedom of speech.
This put Twitter into direct competition with Blogs.
Expressing in only 140 characters in Twitter to
expressing via Blogs in more than 100 words in a way
was heavy competition. Twitter became famous as the
micro-blogging portal. The fall of Blogs was much
debated topic among the bloggers. This brings us to the
integration of Twitter as a Life stream in Blogs. This not
only disbanded the competition but instead integrated

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the two technologies.
Connecting Blogs with Twitter – LIFE STREAM
Soon Twitter was the talk among bloggers. Everyone
was writing about the ways to succeed in Twitter. New
web applications were being featured every week on
blogs and were talked about in Twitter itself. New
methods were written to integrate Twitter stream in
blogs. Suddenly, it was compulsory for every blogger to
have a Twitter account.
Among many blogging portals, Mashable.com turned
out to be the leading publisher about every Twitter and
other social media related news. These days, the
presence of Twitter cannot be ignored. It has virtually
made itself a space in the blogging industry.
Facebook and Twitter - Battle for social media
space
As Twitter was getting used to its new fame, it started

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being preyed by big competitors like Facebook.
Facebook is the most popular social networking site
with 250 million active users and highest user
engagement of around 5 billion minutes spent each day
(worldwide).
The features like “Update Your Status” on Facebook and
“What are you doing?” in Twitter were directly
competing with each for consumer space. Both have a
similar goal of allowing users to share their thoughts
and daily work with friend and family.
The news of Facebook buying Twitter was everywhere.
But the deal between the two parties did not happen.
Facebook had offered to purchase micro-blogging
service Twitter for 500 million US dollars in stock but
the talks ended over the price, AllThingsD.com had
reported.
The failure of Facebook to buy Twitter turned into a

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very interesting event. Facebook announced change in
its interface on March 2009, which un-doubtly matched
with that of Twitter. The feature “Update your Status”
was replaced by “What’s in your mind?”
There was a sudden uproar among users against the
new looks, but beside many criticism Facebook
remained adamant.
These days, besides the rivalry, there is a clear line of
difference between the ways in which both these social
media tools are being used. Twitter network is more
popular among advertisers whereas Facebook among
close friends and families.
Search Engine Debate - Will Twitter be the new
way to search for the information
Till now, no one has been able to properly define what
Twitter exactly is. Is it a social networking site like
Facebook, or is it a news channel, or is it a blogging
portal? Due to this uncertainty, people are still confused
about the nature of Twitter. The most interesting
comparison occurred was when Twitter was called as

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the strongest competitor to Google’s search engine.
The Twitter search allowed anyone to dig into the
content generated by the users in twitter and present
interesting information. This made twitter much more
than just a micro blogging portal. It was the gateway for
Twitter into the consumer market. This also extended
the power of Twitter, now there are numerous third
party applications digging into the content and
providing information for users to make informed
decision in their business.
The information that Twitter search provided was unlike
that of Google which depended upon mathematical
formula to index the content. Instead the content in the
Twitter was indexed by its popularity and recency.
People kept making wrong judgment about the identity
of Twitter and mixed it with every possible technology,
without realizing that Twitter was one of its kinds and
had its own standards. Right now, Google is more
threatened from the collaboration of Bing and Yahoo

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than Twitter. Though it can be said that Twitter may
also play some role in future into the way people search
for information.
Executive Tweets, Politicians, Celebrities and
Brand media Tweets
It was not only the features and the hype that made
Twitter popular. It was the involvement and presence of
top Celebrities and top Executives in Twitter which
made it more interesting and valuable.
The mere presence of Obama in Twitter, brought the
whole world’s eye into it. He has about 1,887,795
followers in Twitter. Obama is known for his immense
involvement in social media during the US presidential
election.
Furthermore, one Microsoft powered site
(http://www.exectweets.com/) brought the tweets
from the top executive which helped to make Twitter
more corporate and friendly to business. Twitter has
become a means for celebrities to publicize themselves

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and make a point of view.
Right now Twitter shelters Celebrities, Top Executives
and Brand media like BBC, CNN and other top news
publishers. Twitter has been the driving factor of traffic
towards the news websites. In this way, the influence of
Twitter among corporate users and brand media is
increasing day by day. At this pace, Twitter is sure to
become one of the most powerful main-stream media
in days to come.
Twitter as your social ID
Undoubtedly Twitter is your new ID in the internet.
Everywhere you go there is a way to connect through
your twitter ID. If you have a twitter account than you
have a pass to enter to any sites without need of
registration and getting new Ids. The trouble has been
taken care by the concept of OpenId, the Id which is
read by any site.
Right now, every blog has a way for you to post
comment through your Twitter Id and other social

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Media Id. This recognition of Twitter as a social ID has
certainly boosted the popularity of Twitter as a way to
communicate in the internet.
Future Innovation in Social Media
How are things going to go ahead with all Twitter and
social networking sites? Many people believe that
twitter is still in its infant state. It’s not only Twitter, the
whole online networking site is in its infant state. There
are more innovations waiting to break the barrier
between being the HOT start-up and established
biggies. There are two ways of looking at the future, one
is from the perspective of Twitter alone and other is
from the perspective of social network as a whole.
In case of Twitter alone, we still need a proper Twitter
management tools to track down spam and unnecessary
tweets which are creating false news and noise into the
stream. In order to deal with such problem, we need to
have a system similar to spam filter present in emails.
This also requires a proper understanding of Twitter
user’s demographic and spam nature.

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There is technological barrier to be broken before social
media hits the new height. We can call it – new Social
Network Framework. What this means is that right now
we have more than enough social networking sites
among us. The reasons for so many networks come
from the fact that people differ in their taste. There is a
need for integrating all the social networks into one
common platform or framework.
This existence of many networks platform pose one
problem – the ability for people from different network
to connect with each other. Now the obvious solution
might be the creation of different Id, but how many
would you go about creating different Ids. There has to
be a limit to the numbers of different unique Ids. Just
like the concept of Open Id and the ability to connect
into any blogs and sites through Twitter Id or Facebook
Id; people having any kind of social media ID should be
able to connect with their friends in any social media.
There are various portals for this, but then again this is
just another network requiring you to create new Id.

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Once a common platform is created and API exposed,
there will be many innovations in social network. This
will allow Twitter and many other networks to have
mutual benefits.
Chapter 3
Business and Twitter – Manoj Jasra Sr. Strategist at
Shaw Communications Inc.
Apart from being an amazing communications vehicle,
the power of Twitter also comes from the openness of
its data. Using Twitter API, hundreds and thousands of
individuals and businesses have developed applications
that manipulate Twitter’s data so that users can interact
with it in unique and exciting ways. Twitter
applications come in all sorts of different flavors, from
desktop clients to services which increase followers to
engaging usability/analytics data.
Twitter API is free however by default there is a limit of
150 requests which can be made per hour. If an
application requires more hourly requests, a developer

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can simply put in a request to be “White listed” which,
upon approval, increases the rate limit to 20,000
requests per hour.
Top Characteristics of Twitter Apps
Thousands of Twitter applications are available to the
public today and some of them are very popular. Below
we have outlined a few of the top characteristics which
make Twitter apps successful:
Speed: Whether it's validating credentials, collecting
information, sending information, or processing a
complex task, the app has to be near instant because
that's what online users expect now.
Accuracy: If you show users information that is
inaccurate, they will not give you a second chance. With
the amount of competition in the app world, they will
probably have another option available quickly.
Uniqueness: Thousands of Twitter applications equals
some overlap, if the majority of your app's functionality

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can be accomplished with something that already exists,
then why would users make the switch to yours? Do
your due diligence on the competitive landscape before
entering the marketplace.
Ease of Use: Also referred to as usability, ease of use
refers to the concept of a user friendly
application. Navigation, form interaction, use of
content/images should all be simple to understand and
interact with.
Price: The apps that are truly remarkable, address
functionality/usability first and making money
second. Very often companies will release simpler and
free versions (in beta) before they release full-featured
production versions.
Geography: If your application is only available to
certain geo-segments then you may be missing out on
millions of potential users.

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Platform: Can your application adapt to web, mobile
and desktop? Furthermore, can it accommodate
Windows and Apple users?
Design: Looks are not everything for Twitter Apps
either but having an appealing design can have a
positive effect in attracting new users. Finding a good
designer who can execute your vision with some flare
will give you an edge over your competitors.
Experience: Assemble a team of highly skilled
developers who have worked with APIs across multiple
platforms.
Testing: The concept is simple, before releasing your
application to the public, apply thorough quality
assurance and testing practices to it.
*Bonus - Marketing: Get your product in front of top
blogs such as TechCrunch, ReadWriteWeb or
GigaOm. Then use Google to research other thought
leaders who have discussed Twitter application in the

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past and get them beta access to your app as
well. You'd better have a website so leverage
traditional internet marketing tactics such as search
engine optimization and paid search - don't forget to
harness Twitter as well.
Twitter Applications for Business
Next we’ll take an in-depth look at a few of our favorite
Twitter applications and their benefits. The apps were
selected partially based on popularity and partially due
to their innovative use of Twitter API. As a best
practice, before jumping head first into developing your
own application it’s very important to understand 2
things:
1) As we mentioned before, ask yourself if there is room
for your application in such a competitive environment -
has your idea already been implemented?
2) What pain does your application solve, is there a
need for it? Addressing a need is why the following 10
applications became popular and on a higher scale it’s

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the same reason that companies such as Google & eBay
have seen such explosive growth.
Twitpic (http://twitpic.com/ )
Twitpic makes photo sharing simpler for Twitter users
by allowing them to upload pictures to their Twitpic
accounts and then automatically post a message to
Twitter with a link to the file. The success of Twitpic
lies in its speed and efficiency. So let’s say you are at a
huge sporting event and you want to share the
experience with your friends, you can click a picture on
your mobile phone, upload to Twitpic and post to
Twitter in less than a minute. TwitPic also allows you
to email your photos to a TwitPic specific email whereby
they are uploaded on your behalf. In this scenario the
email's subject line will be used as your content in the
Tweet.
TwitPic uses keyword tagging to help categorize images
and with your permission your images can be made
public so other can add tags on your
behalf. Additionally, like many other social
applications, TwitPic promotes sharing by allowing you
to embed other users' photos on your own website.

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You can tell from TwitPic's home page that the service
is very popular - the home page shows live picture
uploads overlayed on a Google map which is one every
second. With Twitpic you don't need to create a
separate account since the application is completely
integrated with Twitter's API.
TweetDeck (http://www.tweetdeck.com )
First started in the summer of 2008, TweetDeck brings
the much needed organization to your Twitter account
through desktop and mobile interfaces. TweetDeck
was developed using Adobe Air which makes its
functionality quite seamless. It has numerous
customizations features, including the ability to create
groups for your followers and saved searches for your
favorite topics. Other features of TweetDeck include:
Sharing photos/videos/links, managing multiple
accounts from one instance, and built-in spam control.
TweetDeck works on various platforms such as iPhone,
Apple, Windows and Linux. As we mentioned before
adapting to multiple platforms is one of the
characteristics of a great application. To add to its
versatility, TweetDeck can manage your Facebook

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status updates too!
In addition to its popular application, the TweetDeck
team has a very engaging blog where they keep users
up to date on the latest happenings of the
company. Most recently we found out that TweetDeck
will be adding multilingual support by translating
TweetDeck into: Chinese (simplified and traditional),
Brazilian Portuguese, French, German, Japanese and
Spanish.
TwitterCounter (http://twittercounter.com/ )
TwitterCounter combines a variety of different services
into one application. The primary service allows users
to see trends in regards to their followers, friends and
updates. Users have the ability to graph the trends as
far back as 3 months and compare data against other
Twitter users. Similar to FeedBurner, TwitterCounter
creates a widget which users can display on their
blogs/websites allowing them to show off the number
of follower they have to the rest of the world. Other
data that TwitterCounter provides includes: the number
of days you've been tracking the stats, the growth of
followers per day, a prediction for the next day's (and

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the next 30 day's) follower count and your Twitter
Rank. TwitterCounter also has an exclusive list of
Global top 100 which ranks the most popular Twitter
Users. Ashton Kutcher still leads the way.
One of the other features of TwitterCounter includes a
MyBlogLog type functionality where you can design a
widget which shows which twitter users recently visited
your blog or website. The widget is customizable in
terms of color, height and width; embedding is
implemented using JavaScript. With 4 million active
users on TwitterCounter, you're very likely to see this
widget while you're surfing the internet.
Finally, if you're interested in being featured on
TwitterCounter's site a "Featured User" they offer a paid
service. For example, they will guarantee you 100,000
views of your profile for $289.00 USD with the claim of
an extra 1000+ followers at the end of it. We haven't
tried this feature ourselves, so we're not entirely sure
how well this works.
Monitter (http://monitter.com/ )

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Monitter does exactly what it sounds like just spelled
differently. It gives users the ability to monitor 3 unique
Twitter conversations in a predefined location. By
predefined location we mean you pick the radius and
the city you want to monitor the conversations
within. Standard search operators such as double
quotes, minus/plus signs, and/or operators can be used
to filter the conversations for unnecessary
noise. Monitter is actually quite a slick application
because conversations automatically roll in without any
refresh of the screen whatsoever. Some additional
features of Monitter include: a setting which allows you
to toggle from dark/light background colors, watching
hot Trends across Twitter; and a useful link which hides
unnecessary information allowing for more screen
space to monitor the conversations.
The major benefit of Monitter is the ability to see
trending topics in your region without having to
perform advanced queries in Twitter search. Monitter
also provides an embeddable widget that users can
customize and enhance their blog/website with.
Buzzom TwitIn (http://buzzom.com/)

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Developed in early 2009, TwitIn focuses on tactical
methods to increase your reach in Twitter. In addition, it
also provides you an insight on your Twitter
usage. TwitIn shows you the basic statistics such as
number of tweets, followers, following etc. It also
provides you with the number of friends (users you are
following and they are following you back), fans (users
who are following you but you are not following them
back), stars (users whom you are following but they are
not following you back).
The 2 most important features of TwitIn are People
Search and Cross Follow. People search allows you to
find people based on the keyword provided. This way
people don’t have to spend time manually searching for
people of similar backgrounds. For example, if you are
interested in programmers or designers. Then simply
type those keywords in the TwitIn search box and find
the list of people matching your result. Cross Follow
allows you to lookup a given Twitter user's list of
following or followers and get connected to them. This
way you can expand your network by connecting with
people of similar taste.

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Tweetie (http://www.tweetie.com/ )
Tweetie is often considered as one of the best Twitter
application for the iPhone and perhaps this is why it was
given the Apple Design Award at the iPhone Developer
Showcase in 2009. All the basic functionality of Twitter
is present as Tweetie makes full use of Twitter
API. Furthermore there are numerous useful features
of Tweetie including: an inline web browser, custom
themes, integration with TwitPic, custom search
queries, Japanese localization, image compression for
uploads, InstaPaper integration (saving web pages to
read later), a public timeline and many more.
StockTwits (http://stocktwits.com/ )
StockTwits has created a Twitter community around the
conversation of investing and the stock market. You
may have seen the use of the '#' sign which is Twitter
lingo that helps users categorize topics. StockTwits uses
a similar methodology to monitor their conversation
and they do it by inserting a '$' before stock ticker
names.
As you land on the StockTwits home page there is a very

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prominent search box which allows you to search for a
stock or company name and see all the conversation
around that query. For example, I typed in Goog (for
Google) and on the left I was presented with Twitter
conversations on the topic of 'Goog,' on the right
StockTwits had passed all the URLs from the
conversations that mentioned 'Goog' and presented
them a snippet from their HTML title tag. For further
insight they added a graph which detailed Google's
stock across the last day, month or year.
Each of the applications we have described above has
the exact same foundation - Twitter API. Each team has
poured in hours of brainstorming, designing, developing
and testing in order to create an entirely unique
experience. Like many online businesses these days,
you no longer have to create an idea from the ground
up, rather you can take someone else's service and
enhance it with your own flavor. All these businesses
and applications have Twitter to thank which has given
them the opportunity to take part in this experience of
Social Marketing.

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Blogging and Twitter
Blogging is still a powerful way for individuals or
businesses to communicate new ideas, converse with
their customers or provide coverage in a given
industry. The difficulty with blogging is being
consistent, it's difficult to produce unique and engaging
content everyday and this is why so many blogging
attempts are abandoned.
With the introduction of Twitter the concept of
micro-blogging was further strengthened. With the
ability to write micro-blog posts consisting of 140
characters or less, anyone can participate and add
insight to any conversation.
Blogging allows users to create search engine friendly
content which is descriptive and contains other
engaging items such as photos and video. Most
blogging platforms automatically convert content into
XML so that owners can syndicate the content to their
subscribers using feed readers.
The connection between blogging and Twitter happens

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in a couple of different ways. The simplest method is
for bloggers to embed a Twitter icon or link after each
post which allows readers to share the post after
clicking on the icon. The other is to simply embed code
you can insert per post a blurb which can help in the
increase of more followers, for example, here's what I
use:
“Want More Internet Marketing Insight? Follow Manoj
on Twitter! (The underlined text is linked to twitter
profile)”.
A few other quick ways include adding a Twitter related
icon beside your RSS Subscription icon OR showing of
your followers using Twitter Counter
(http://twittercounter.com).
Finally, the more complex and affective integrations
take place by leveraging two different Twitter
services. The first is TweetMeme
(http://tweetmeme.com). TweetMeme is a Digg like
service which aggregates all the popular links on twitter
to determine which links are popular. TweetMeme is
able to categorize these links into categories and
subcategories, making it easy to filter out the noise

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allowing you to locate what you are actually interested
in. The functionality of Twitter comes in the form of
TweetMeme's ReTweet button which plugs into every
post on your blog, allowing users to automatically
ReTweet the post to their Twitter
Account. TweetMeme has developed a custom plug-in
for the popular blogging platform, Wordpress, making it
really simply to add the ReTweet Button.
The second is TwitterFeed
(http://twitterfeed.com) which currently powers more
than 400,000 feeds into Twitter. TwitterFeed basically
takes in any RSS Feed URL you input and automatically
posts the contents to Twitter based on the time interval
you configure. TwitterFeed is smart enough not to post
duplicates and offers lot of flexibility by allowing users
to specify the content to include in the post (title and or
description), the URL shortening service to use, and a
custom prefix/suffix. TwitterFeed also comes with
some on-board reporting which displays the amount of
clicks each of the URLs in your Tweet receives.

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Blogging and Twitter actually complement each other.
In fact beginning with either strategy can help propel
the other. For instance, if you're an active blogger, by
setting up TwitterFeed you can easily keep up a
relatively dynamic Twitter account. On the other hand
if you swear by Twitter and your followers simply can't
get enough your juicy content, you should consider
expanding your 140 characters posts to something even
more compelling.

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Chapter 4
Growing in Twitter – Bhupendra Khanal, CEO InRev
Bringing Quality to Tweets
Many people ask me about my quick growth on Twitter.
I did have 20 Thousand followers by the end of 4
months. Here are few points which made it happen.
1. Identify Successful Tweeters and analyze them
When I started Tweeting, I chose 10 Tweeters matching
my interest. They were Guykawasaki, Unmarketing,
Mashable and others (didn't choose Obama or Britney
Spears, as I knew I can’t follow their footsteps).
I learned few things from them -- like tweet links, focus
on news, more on social media news and follow people
to get reciprocated.

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2. Follow people and target best possible group
It’s a human factor that most people reciprocate love or
favor. I started following very aggressively and many
times it exhausted the limit set by Twitter.
The simple way to target people is to check out Mass
Follower (anyone having more following than followers
or people following more than 2k people), and follow
his followers.
3. Tweet about Social Media
This is tricky, but just think. Which is the most
interesting subject to all the Tweeters? It’s none other
than Twitter and Social Media. I tweeted on these areas
and received huge response. I got an average of 3 RTs
per Tweet.
4. Make a plan of action and execute it
One great blog article or a wonderful Tweet is easy. But
can you make 2 interesting Tweets everyday for 2
months? Not an easy thing to do.

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I worked few days on this part and came up with a
formula. I do visit Google News, Yahoo News and
Google Blog Search, and search for few keywords like
Social Media, Twitter, Facebook, Economy etc, and
collect materials. I Tweet most of those links found
there.
This ensured two things -- relevance by keyword search
and the fresh updates.
5. Aggressive Tweeting and effective Marketing
If you want to be a successful social media marketer,
first thing you need to do is to hold your nerves from
aggressive marketing. Be calm, choose few ads for your
product or services and keep it ready. Tweet on general
stuffs and make your readers happy. While posting
updates, throw one or two ads in.
I would suggest going for 90-10 or at the maximum
80-20 where majority should go towards social cause of
informing people or discussing issues with them.

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Smaller part can go for Marketing.
Never throw too many ads. It pisses people off and you
may lose your followers.
6. Feeds are fine, but one in an hour
I don’t feed aggressively but have done it few times.
Aggressive feeding from blog or site is the easiest way
to lose followers. People want to talk to people and not
to Robots!
If you ever use, do not post more than 1 Tweet an hour.
Else you give no time posting Tweet and people give no
time reading other’s Tweet!
7. Form a group and help them
Form a group of your interest and continuously follow
them, RT and promote them for follow. They are sure to
reciprocate you and with time grow the horizon.
People in this group of interest are your best owned

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asset. Respect them and continuously talk to them. I
have a group of around 100 people whom I
continuously engage. Twitter Client applications are
best to keep track of your groups.
8. Listen to people and act
The major power of social media is the ability to know
what people think. Ask people and listen to what they
say, and act soon.
I have seen many people having auto-DMs welcoming
the followers. This is a total turn off to most people, and
it is very common in Tweetersphere talks. Still if you
don't turn off the auto-DMs, you are either ignorant or
not social.
9. Use #Topic while you talk on Topics
Never forget to use "#topic" while talking on topic of
public interest. There are people who follow such topics
and there are many applications which use them.
I use this function very often, and it brings in many
followers and RTs for me.

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10. Read and Make People feel that you read
This is the most important action. You should make
people confident that you read their Tweets, and this
can best be done by replying or RTing others' Tweets.
Remember -- If you don’t read others Tweets, they will
not read too!
Why un-follow who don’t follow you (for new
Tweeters)
Twitter being a Micro-Blogging site, has most people
speaking and few people listening. There are people
who neither listen, nor speak. And surprisingly, there
are a lot of computer bots acting like Humans and
fooling the audience.
Twitter has influenced our lives a lot, and for me second
largest contributor of traffic to my blog after Google is
Twitter. And that comes in just 2 months!
I have also plans for using Twitter as a platform to
market InRev Products and Services . Does this mean, I
am going to add junk to it? Well, the answer NO mostly,

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and partly YES. I will however try to make it pleasant for
my followers and not bombard lots of ads or feeds; but
will certainly engage in meaningful communication to
grow my business.
I was constantly thinking for some time, should we
follow people who don’t follow back? My answer is a
clear NO. Here are the reasons WHY! This however
applies only for new entrants. When the number of
followers and following goes above thousand, it
becomes unmanageable to take up huge number of
people with you. Then you might need to get selective.
1. No meaningful conversation
If you are not friend but a follower, you cannot have a
meaning conversation. This will hurt your interest, and
frustrate you of Social Media and Twitter.
2. Why favor someone while you are not reciprocated?
This is another tricky thing. There is a saying, "There are
two qualities of a successful man; 1. His friends are
successful 2. He reads good books". Better push your
friends and they will pull you too. Why push someone
and give him good exposure when he does not care

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about you.
3. Lack of Online Help
Twitter's best use is to ask few what you want to know
and get the answer. This is better than Google as it is
Human Involved search. People who don’t follow you
don't see you question; forget to get answer from them.
4. Stars in real Life do not need to be followed in
Twitter
Well this is personal choice. I have no complaint if you
follow Barack Obama or Britney Spears but I will
certainly not do. They are good at their place and I am
not interested to know when they have lunch and when
they have a shower. If anything important comes, I will
get form the news and my Twitter friends will let me
know. I don't want to make all the real life stars look big
in Social Media too; I would love to see new people
becoming stars like Guykawasaki, Unmarketing,
Mayhemstudios etc.
You may rethink if you want to keep following your
favorite artists.

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5. Don’t ever push the indifferent friends
I have seen many people following their real life friends
even through the friend are not an active Twitter user.
This adds no value; and more so if he does not even
care to follow you back.
6. If you are not following anyone, you won’t lose
anything
Twitter is a network of people. I am sure there are many
people who don’t like me, but I am happy there are also
a bunch of people who like me. I would better be with
the later ones. Why bother about others, Right?
If I don’t follow anyone, I am sure one of my friends
would be following him and I will get any important
Tweet that comes in Twittersphere. It is explained by
the Market Law, "If something is important in the
market, you will know it."
7. Care about your time; but don’t over-run
You can never be faster in knowing anything. It’s just
that, you will know. Zeroth Law of Market says, "Never
invest just because you know something. If you know

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anything, everybody knows it." So following someone,
you won’t beat time.
8. Less the people more the care
If you follow less people and targeted people, you can
share your love among them and increase your
influence. While if you engage yourself in reading and
RTing people who don't follow you, you lose your
relevance in your friends' network too. Love, hate, care
and ignore; all of these are reciprocated by human brain
in most general cases. Do the same, and get highly
connected network and increased bonding.
9. You won’t get dumped in Junk; just manage it better
Worried about auto-follow and too many junks like auto
DMs and feeds? Well, don’t be. Twitter is going to be
much better. You will soon get tools to filter the junk
feeds while not annoying the feeder. One way of doing
it is to maintain group in Twitter Client applications like
TweetDeck, Seismic Desktop and Buzzom Desktop, and
give higher importance to the group members. Better
tools should be coming; will let you know.
Actions rewarded, gets repeated. So if there are people

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who throw too much of junk; don’t just unfollow but
block him altogether!! This is the best return you can
give to them.
10. You aren’t making Twitter monotonous; you are
building relations
A ffew of my friends believe if everyone starts following
others, Twitter becomes too monotonous. I disagree.
There can be many inter-connected groups; it will be
better modeled in a complex network of many
segments where few nodes are common in more than
one segments.
Result: less distance within the segments i.e. similar
minds together; larger distance between different
groups i.e. dissimilar minds away!! This will fuel the
happiness index of Twitter users, and thus make Twitter
a better place to be in.

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Benefits of Using Twitter
I started using Twitter on Dec 2nd 2008, thanks
to @lokeshawasthy and @bibek. These two folks
inspired me to come, and I came to try it. Since then I
have come a long way.
Got a message yesterday from @MrMilestone saying I
reached 10 Thousand Followers!! The five digit number
gave me some happiness and then I looked at the
history. It was on the 82nd day of my joining Twitter.
Don't know, if this is a good feat; but seriously felt
happy and thankful for the love extended by my
followers. Thanks all.
My Twitter Experience has been great. Enjoyed some
good conversation with few folks; learned a lot from the
people whom I follow.
Some of the achievements:
1. Just in Time Update
You will get to know most news as soon as it happened.
Be it political, economic, technical or other; I became

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more up to date on things.
2. Widen Knowledge Base
Being a Business Consultant and an Analyst, I was lost in
my field. I followed people from various backgrounds
and got to know other areas pretty well.
3. Friendship and Networking
You can make friends from all parts of the Globe. Now I
have more friends in US than in India (country of
residence) or Nepal (my hometown). Wow :)
4. Traffic to Website or Blog
You can get a huge number of visitors to your blog.
Surprising but true now Twitter is the biggest source of
traffic surpassing Google by more than 50%.
5. Review of Services and Products
Twitter is very useful for product reviews. I often asked
my followers to review my company products, and they
happily did it.
I am very grateful to those folks who reviewed InRev

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services and products. Special thanks to
@robertnelsoninc, @greybucket, @justinrfrench,
@a_smart_union, @masonronald, @onlinesneh,
@bhuttan, @bibek, @lokeshawasthy and others.
The views and comments helped to better our offerings.
6. Increased Personal Branding
It was virtually impossible to make a brand of my own
after starting the company in a short time. Product
building, serving clients and earning revenue all take
time. But thanks to Twitter, it does not take either. I
could make a space for myself here, and could prove
myself. This has not only given confidence in my
partners, but also helped me build profile to talk to
external parties, clients and partners.
7. Ideas Sharing and Business Enhancement
Twitter rocks in this area. When I was working on
development of an Economic Reporting Portal - F-Cube,
I tweeted few times on what would people like to see in
it. Within ten minutes I got 10 replies. This was
awesome.

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Second, I asked for suggestions on Buzzom, which is
Twitter Account Management Service, and got 21
suggestions in a day. We worked on those lines and
brought the service. It instantly became a hit and
surprised everyone including us.
We have brought Reporting, Analytics Ranking and few
Account Management functions there. Rest functions
are kept for next phase.
8. Own Medium for Marketing and Gained Confidence
Now I have my own medium for Marketing, where I can
reach to thousands of people with a click. And it’s all
free to use. Thanks to Twitter.
I would never have such facility without it. A small
advertisement on a national newspaper costs a lot and
building a reputed blog to market takes hundreds of
days. Twitter has proved to be the blessing for start-ups
like InRev.
9. Increased Efficiency of Talk
Twitter has a limitation of 140 characters for each
Tweet. Earlier I used to get irritated with this limitation,

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and even thought of starting a rival with 500 characters
(...lol). But after using it for more than two months,
have started loving it.
It has increased my efficiency in using words. Talk to the
point and get the work done! It has impacted on other
works too; I have become more to the point now (my
friends say so!! It must be true).
10. Job and Marriage Offer
I started blogging around 3 years back, and it was just
because I wanted to share my views to the World. But
after a year it became source of job offers, and got few
marriage offers too! 82 days in Micro-Blogging through
Twitter has brought two job offers, and who knows
marriage offers might be in waiting: D.
Twitter Followers: Quality vs. Quantity in
Marketing

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If you are a serious Tweeter, you will need a good
follower base. If you are a marketer, you need more
people to follow you. Quality is important but not as
much as quantity.
When I say "Quantity", this does not include Bots and
Spammers. I mean real people. But yes, all sorts of
people irrespective of their Twitter or Web usage
behavior.
Here are few reasons why!
1. Everyone is your potential customer; you need to
convert
If you have been a marketer for long, you must have
known that everyone is your potential target customer.
Some people are direct targets while many more are
indirect. Word of mouth simply cannot be ignored,
especially if you are a Social Marketer.
2. No one is a sure customer; Conversion Rate is low
This is another big truth. If you know someone

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personally and he is following you, he isn't your gain
from Twitter. The gain is to get new followers, and build
good relations. The end goal would be to convert them
into your business partner.
In the unknown world, however fit or good you may
assume, one can never be your sure customer.
Conversion rate is very low. The average of the market
is said to be around 2%.
3. Measuring Quality is Difficult
It is hard to rank customers even when they are with
the business for a long time. The complexity comes
when there are diverse portfolios and diverse
metrics. Low Risk, high profitability, high loyalty, high
life time value, high RFM etc give weight-age to
different set of people. Further, when it comes to the
perspective customers, it’s all the way more difficult.
There can be some predictive methods to target, but
their application is best applied to the interested class
than to the entire market. If few out of these huge
numbers get interested, targeting can be done to serve
those.

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Targeting is important only if you don't have resources
to cater to the mass. If you can cater to all, go for it!
4. Conversion Takes Time; have patience
Any business relation takes time to be established.
There are certain phases that go into it like -- knowing
each other, knowing the company, knowing the
products/services, understanding and finding the usage
in business, getting approval for the purchase etc.
There is no short-cut to bringing revenue. It’s a game of
patience. If you bug anyone too much, you might lose a
potential customer. So just let someone know about
your services and let him take time. Till then you can
best be patient, and create more leads.
5. More people mean more views and comments.
Ideas are best challenged. More people you connect to,
diverse is the angle of thinking. This helps to fine-tune
products and services. Always keep an open mind. It’s
always better to know and not do something, than not
to know at all!

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6. Diverse Thoughts, a way to remain interesting
According to many it’s always good to be focused so
that you establish yourself as an expert in that field and
people come to you for the same reason. Well, nothing
is wrong with this philosophy. But there is a limit on
how much you can talk on the same subject. There is
also a limit on how much your reader reads the same
stuffs. There needs to be a balance and you need to talk
on diverse topics so that your followers don’t get bored.
This solves a greater purpose of catering to various
groups. Have friends or followers from various areas
and enjoy the talk. Talk about general life, music, news,
economy, politics and then business. This gives a more
real human feel. If you just target a section of people
and talk business, you look more like a BOT. And given
time I may build a robot better than you (no offence,
just a joke).
7. Chances to be seen as Twitter Star
Being small helps in better targeting, but do not forget
one thing, till you are small you are the only person who
market you or your services. But once you grow, others

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start marketing you as well. They market for reasons
like -- a) to get a bigger benefit as a return favor b)
when you are big, you are a star and people love talking
about you and want to show his association with you.
8. More People much more second order reach
A large number of followers always has this advantage.
More people mean bigger reach. Even by luck if
someone Retweets an important Tweet, it can do
miracle! So why miss the chance!!
9. High Scores in Graders and Others
This is another important part of the Twittersphere.
Rankers and graders have nothing to rank accounts if
they don't consider followers count and RTs count. So
all of them use it, and to promote their service they
promote the elites (based on their scores). If you are
there, they promote you. Again an additional gain at no
cost!!
10. More Followers equivalent to more Site Visits;
Conversion is an art

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Conversion to business is different from getting in touch
and letting people know. Conversion is an art, and you
might or might not have that. If you have networking
capability, just do it. Seek help from a sales person from
your company to convert the lead.
Just focus on getting greater reach, where Social
Networking like Twitter works best. They give facility
like more traffic to your site.
Once you have someone following you, try to make him
your friend and connect in Facebook and LinkedIn. Next
step would be to exchange company profiles and
projects.
Merits and Demerits of Twitter BOTs
In my school days, there was a favorite topic for debate
competition -- "Is Science Blessing or Curse?” I have
participated few times and had to put points from both
the side. My stand was, and is always is -- there cannot
be black and white in the World. It depends on how we
use and make good out of any function or technology.

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Now Twitter BOT seems the same. I am happy to know
that a Human (Aston Kutcher) won over a BOT (CNN) in
the race to have 1 M followers.
Reasons to hate BOTs
1. Welcome Auto-DMs used as Ads
Auto-DMs are really annoying. When you follow people
they say welcome with an ad -- "please visit our site
xxxx". I take this as an offence. Suppose you come to
our company site and we start telling you about our
service one after the other without knowing why you
came and what your interest is.
Would to you like this? I am sure you won’t. The best
strategy is always to listen first, understand and then
talk. When you talk, it is better to ask questions and
genuine questions. This will ensure good relation
build-up, thus ensuring the successful use of Social
Media.
2. Too Many Automated DMs

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When I follow you, I am subscribing to your Tweets and
not to your DMs. You can DM, but not regularly forcing
me to un-follow or block you. It is a good way of taking
relations private and personal to have successful
professional co-operation. Robotized actions in such
functions can only harm.
3. Frequent Tweets
Twitter is not a Media like Radio, Television or News
Site. You don't need to be there all time. It is simply
because no one is listening only to you.
Twitter is a Media where people follow many others
and share things. Quality of Tweet matters a lot than
Frequency. If the frequency is too high for followers to
follow, you can only lose them; you have a share of
people's time and you better stick to it. Increasing the
share can be a long term strategy with well thought
planning; this needs quality of service and not quantity.
I unfollow any users who use BOTs to Tweet more than
5 Tweets a Min. This is irrespective of the quality of
Tweet.

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4. Automated RTs
This is another annoying thing. RTs are done for the
Tweets that you find interesting and worthy for others
to read. People have high expectations while visiting the
links that are RTed. If you use a BOT for that purpose
and wrong Tweets get RTed, you are gone. It can harm a
lot and you may end up losing followers.
More important is the fact that such actions will lower
the value of RTs. Accounts are graded by many Account
graders using this metric, and the automated RTs of the
useless Tweet will affect that badly.
5. Repeated Tweets
There are few BOTs in the Twitter Sphere which Tweet
about certain no. of links or services. They continuously
do the repetition and add no value to the followers. It
only decreases the relevance of the user and is most
likely to be unfollowed.
Reasons to Like BOTs

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1. Automated Followback
This is debatable whether you need to followback all
who follow you or not. I do feel, it is necessary at least
to know what the follower has to say. I unfollow when I
feel the user adds no value.
This follow back takes huge time as I get 200 to 500
followers daily, and it actually pains to follow each of
them. I use Buzzom for this, and I am pretty happy with
what it does for me. It has the facility to choose whom
to follow back and whom not to.
I may even choose to have automated follow back, but
have not done it so far.
2. Find New and Interesting People
Twitter is believed to be having around 25 million users,
and they all differ in their likings and disliking. If I want
to know who are from my domain and who have
interest matching my interest, I need a system to tell
me. I need a BOT!

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3. Grow Regularly and Timely
I want to find and follow people from certain areas like
Analytics and Economy. I also like to follow people who
are likely to follow me back and grow my follower base.
I can do it manually but again it takes times. If I have a
certain behavior that can be automated, why not do it.
I would like to use BOT for some regular stuff, but want
to make sure my action does not annoy anyone. My
experience is that, continuously follow and unfollow
annoys some people. If anyone can give me facility
where these things don’t happen, I will certainly use a
BOT and save my time.
4. Quality Feeds
If you are a blogger or a News Site owner, you will need
a BOT to set-up feed Tweets. I am not a big fan of such
feeds but don't have any problem if they are quality,
genuine and manageable. I would actually love to see
feed Tweets from CNN, BBC, TechCrunch etc., provided
the frequency is manageable. This would mean if I get
100 Tweets in 5 minutes from CNN, no way I am going
to follow them and lose what other folks have to say.

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When done timely and properly, feeds are actually
great. They add huge value to the followers, and you
save your time. It is a win-win situation.
5. SPAM Control
Iron can cut Iron, a bamboo stick cannot. Only a BOT
can find and nullify the SPAMMING BOT, out of 25
million Tweeters, and out of hundreds and thousands of
Tweeters we follow, there are a few thousand such
Spamming BOTs that trouble us. It can be fought back
only in two ways –
1. Having too much control and choosing followings
carefully
2. Go for a mass follow and make huge number of
friends, while having a BOT working to control the SPAM
in your follow list.
If you follow the first approach, you are not using the
strength of Twitter and using it like Orkut or Facebook.
Twitter is about going out and reaching to the maximum
possible people outside of your friend circle. If you

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compromise here, you lose the fun and the opportunity
of this new Social Media Revolution.
Follow the second one and relax.
My Take:
BOTs are not essentially bad, and can be blessing in
disguise. Individuals need to make a Twitter strategy
and get it going. BOT may or may not be suitable to you;
you are the best person to judge.
Spam Control
Types of Spammers
The idea of spam was originally related to junk e-mail in
your mail box. The purpose of spam is different
regarding the nature of it, some are there to push its
marketing campaign, where as some are there to flood
the mail box and bring the system down. In case of
emails, the idea of spam was much easily understood as
it meant email from the people whom you don’t know.
But in case of twitter, the concept of spam needs more

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elaboration.
Spam in case of Twitter can be stated as follows:
Continuously updating tweets of same status directing
to same link.
Many twitter account does nothing but keeps tweeting
the same link and statement over and over. This
irritates followers a lot and they tend to block the
account soon.
Continuously tweeting unnecessary updates which are
not relevant to you at all.
This has got to do lot with the babbling people who
keep updating their daily chores. This is not to be taken
offensive if they are your friends; but it really floods the
tweet stream if you are in Twitter for a business
purpose.
Sending Automated Direct Message with marketing
message.
This is one of the most offensive spam which everyone
in Twitter receives. It has degraded the importance of

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the Direct Messages. If you are a twitter user than you
can see that your Inbox is flooded with irrelevant DM.
Despite many complains in Twitter, people have not
stopped automating their DM.
Flooding your Reply Stream by unnecessary messages.
This has increased a lot in the last few months. In this
case, people send their message by including yours and
others twitter Id.
For example:
“ Try this link xxxx. @bexdeep @leplan @sweta6”
“Marketing Affilates : @bexdeep @leplan
@lkhatiwada “
This not only spams your main twitter stream but also
your reply stream. As you can reply to people beyond
your network in twitter, it’s virtually impossible to stop
this spam.

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Exploiting the Trending Topics and mixing it with
irrelevant updates.
This one is the most popular of all the other spamming.
Twitter has list of trending topic by its side in the main
profile page. As these topics are clicked by most of the
people, they have been exploited by many spammers by
including these keywords in their twitter status.
For example: if “#MJ” is the top trending topic than you
are bound to see messages like:
“make money online. http:xxxxx #MJ”
You can see the irrelevance of the hastag.
Presence of redundant and false followers.
These kinds of spammers do not flood your stream but
they do flood your following and followers list. These
account’s main purpose is to just have as many
followers. These are dummy accounts. Though not
harmful, they surely are redundant accounts in your list.

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High Tweet frequency automated by using Feeder.
This is the most likely candidate for a perfect spammer.
These accounts are mostly linked with an automatic
feed which continuously bombards link into your
stream.
Finding yourself between the long conversations in
which you are not interested.
Though this is not a purposeful spamming, most often
you find people’s long discussion in your twitter stream
over which you are not interested at all. Though you
may do nothing but listen to them, you should at least
have an option to ignore them.
Most of these spam are unavoidable unless you
unfollow or block the user. But most spamming can be
temporary phenomenon which you may want to ignore
instead of blocking the user or unfollowing them.

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Ways to fight Spam
In order to counter these spam there are two things
which can be done, one is from the side of Twitter and
the other is from the side of third party twitter API
applications. Since, we have no control over the working
of Twitter as a whole; this article will be more focused
on how an intelligent twitter API can be designed to
prevent Spam tweets.
In many desktop applications available, we have
features like grouping the people and making more than
one groups to see the tweets, but this really doesn’t
solve the problem of spam, as the spam might be within
the groups. A way to handle the tweets to different
filtering channels is necessary to make sure that people
get to benefit from all the relevant tweets and not get
over shadowed.

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Mashable’s partnering with TweetDeck to have its
dedicated channel was a good strategy from Mashable.
This allowed the tweets from Mashable to reach all the
users of Tweetdeck which is about millions and people
didn’t even have to follow Mashable. This has helped
Mashable to stay away from the regular tweet stream
which prevented from spamming the stream. In twitter,
there are tweets like those of News channel which
cannot be avoided, thus taking them to different
channels and not mixing it to the regular stream would
help the tweet reader a lot.
In order to deal with the tweets flowing in at a high rate
is to have similar tweets hidden and a there must be a
way to open the hidden tweets. This technique has
been effectively used in Facebook to hide the similar
status updates. This will clear the path for other tweets
to appear without affecting the regular stream.
Any tweets being received from the friend’s feed or any
other feed must be given different channel or different

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preference as it’s for sure that these tweets are
automated. In this way we can get rid of almost half the
spam. Hiding certain user is also an important tool
which will allow you to temporarily shutdown certain
tweets. Most of the time, people would be having a
discussion over certain topic which might not interest
you, this way you can clean your tweets stream.
After applying these filtering tools the remaining stream
is the one which is free from the unnecessary tweets
and you can view the genuine tweets. But we need
more than just an automatic running algorithm, we
need a system that continuously take the feedback from
the user’s response and tune the algorithm dynamically.
So we need a system to read the behavior of the user
using the system, as I have mentioned earlier, the
concept of spam is different for each people.
Social Media Marketing (SEO and Social Media)
Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of
improving the volume or quality of traffic to a web site

Building a Twitter Strategy for Business Growth

Building a Twitter Strategy for Business Growth

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