When we look closely at the TPS (Tweets per second) chart it reveals that about only six months ago the number was less than 10m Tweets Per Day, just half a million per hour.

By anyones count that is massive growth and just goes to demonstrate that you have to be in it to win it.

But of course, there is more to it than that. The TPS (Tweets per second) measurement does not account for Tweet deliveries which are a much much higher number because once created, each Tweet is delivered to multiple followers.

Then there is search, monitoring and so many other ways to measure and understand growth. watch this space folks.

Quix is the latest in a generation of bookmarklet tools. Looking just like a bookmark on your browser, the tool offers integration with your Social Media and favourite bookmark software as well as SEO and Webmaster insights on any site you visit. It even offers a ruler, so you can measure things on screen, should you need…

It is easy to install and if you ever get stuck you just type in help and it takes you to a page that shows you all the commands that you can use.

Even I managed to install it, it costs nothing and has to be a hit! Find out more: Your Bookmarklets, On Steroids

The Video features loads of well known brands from Ford to Dell who have all used Social Media to generate sales and grow their businesses – using lower marketing budgets.

Click here to view the embedded video.

As the author of the video, Erik Qualman asks, “Why are we trying to measure Social Media like a traditional channel anyway? Social media touches ever facet of business and is more an extension of good business ethics”

“You can’t buy attention anymore. Having a huge budget doesn’t mean anything in Social Media. The old media parading was Pay to Play. Now you get back what you authentically put in. You’ve got to be willing to Play to Play.”
Alex Bogusky, Co Chairman, CP&B

“No more Spray and Pray” Gary Jennings, Weboptimiser.

“Think of Twitter as the canary of the coal mine” Morgan Johnston, JetBlue Airways

My favourite quote, apart from Garys is from MacDonalds, “our head of social media is the customer”

Tougher to do business in, but a better place. It all started a few months back with Tweetlater, now known as SocialOomph rejecting the automation of identical tweets and just a few weeks ago the update of user terms and conditions in a mass email sent out to all account holders. It would now seem that this email was a kind of early warning and that failure to follow Twitter ‘Rules’ could result in an account being suspended and in the worst case deleted.

You may wonder why it would matter. It matters if you are a genuine account holder and you have tuned the account for business development – or just enjoy talking to many followers. To lose a long list of followers would be quite a loss, not to mention that the name of the account may be precious and of course, for some, a high number of followers infers bragging rights.

As can be seen by the graph below the more followers you have the more tweets people make.

So now we know the main changes and some of what affects the quality of a twitter account, what can we do? – In a phrase – tweet more often! It seems that not only should your tweets be unique but the majority should be conversational and not include any links.

The acid test to me is that your tweets should ideally be RT’d (re-tweeted: forwarded by others). I am pleased to say that on many occassions our ‘offer’ tweets, those that contain links are RT’d across the Twittersphere.

These are technical considerations but where does that leave the time poor business man who is interested in Tweeting for fun whilst building up their network. Well I am pleased to say, still in the game!

These ‘rules’ are my suggestions based on my opinion and experience. Indeed, as we concluded with SEO and Pay Per Click, we can conclude that there are certain ethics appropriate to Twitter marketing that should be employed for best practice.

Twitter account holders needing to be more inventive and creative is not such a bad thing and in my opinion should help the market place. Twitter account holders need to create more offers and tweet more often.

So to help, we have compiled a database of 2800 ideas, quotes and jokes and set up a twitter account where we will twitter one idea, joke or quote daily. You can follow us at http://www.twitter.com/dailytweetideas or simply check in for some instant inspiration.

For clients we deliver a unique set of 3 jokes, 3 quotes and one idea per day – plus bonus information – only useful to subscribers… It is possible for you to simply retweet the ideas and in the case of quotes and jokes that is all you can do. The objective however is to provide a joke, quote and an idea in order to spark your creative juices in order to lead you to use the quote, joke or idea as a stimulus to create a unique twitter blog post, standard blog post or even as I have discovered, to create video content.

Of course, quotes and jokes by definition are worth repeating and are not unique by and of themselves and simply retweeting is a possible option, but not the best one. The best outcome would be for them to work as a conversation starter that will lead to ongoing relationship building.

The intention is to ensure your twitter account is original and has varying tweets, some with links, the majority – 85% without.

The safest thing to autotweet is a quote. It is harder to autotweet a joke as jokes can have many meanings and often offend as well as entertain as a number of comedians have found out. The joke above, will no doubt offend some of the French, although not intentioned, it serves as an example that could cause some offence.

Jokes are not always good for business either. Everyone will have a different opinion on this, but in my opinion, a light hearted approach with serious intent generally works well.

With regard to tweets with links, we need to get more creative. Often I find we are limited to what we can tweet as Clients usually have a limit of ideas and offers we can tweet about.

I have created a mind map dedicated to digital product development that you can download and use as the basis for creating digital proposals to attract enquiries.

It is intended that this mind map is only available to fee paying clients, so I can’t give you all the answers here. You can sign up as a Tweetmaxi client and you will get access to this and a ton of other resource material.

Most of the ideas outlined requires clients to do nothing apart from watch their in-box and let us know how they would like the content delivered.

If you would like us to help you further with idea development please note that this is a chargeable service that we are happy to provide if you want more help.

So, when we read about people who have thousands of accounts, I think we can be wary of them as they may be lining themselves up for deletion. Now in my case I run many twitter accounts but they are ‘owned’ by clients. There is a big degree of seperation here, as in the main the accounts are set up by the clients themselves. To me this is like having multiple web sites with different IP addresses, a technique that I continue to employ for SEO.

If you have not opened a Twitter account yet, I have a video that you can watch to see how I set up one of my accounts that you can watch.

We have been warned by Social Oomph that automated posts are now not acceptable and indeed identical posts are also denied by them. I am yet to fathom whether this is SocialOomph making this stipulation or whether it is Twitter themselves.

Let me know what you think, what changes have you observed recently. I have solutions to some of these problems – you should join me on my next Twitter Webinar.

Leave me a reply or join me on the next Twitter Webinar.

I am reminded of the early days of fax communications, at first it was unacceptable. Then fax became acceptable – by banks and now, just a few short years later though, fax is hardly used. In the ‘electronic world’ seismic shift comes often. We are fast to adapt. In the real world, these things are much slower. But, it seems that sadly, although probably at last we are truly seeing the turning point of a seismic shift that has been facing us for some time. There is a natural order to these things.

It revolves around our Postal Services. It has become conspicuously and now regularly unreliable. It can no longer be regarded as a failsafe method of important document delivery. The loss associated with errant mail is too high. Missed payments, late payments, payments never materialising, both inward and outward makes this the case.

Interestingly, resolution -i.e. when a payment is late/lost/missing is most often resolved in my experience, electronically by email and sometimes fax (we still have one of those machines). Payments are made electronically, copies of documents are scanned and forwarded. An email, like a fax was is now considered a legally acceptable document. Someone was actually served in the UK recently by Twitter…

Wow! This is a seismic shift, this is the reality of where we are now. Not based on what future technology will do, but based on what current technology – and human beings are doing already, today. We have to operate this way, we have no choice when we are let down by the traditional service providors. This is much bigger than simply that the online advertising sector is bigger than television. Although that is big.

Online services are now more effective in real world scenarios than multiple countrywide postal systems and 10s of thousands of people. I think we can forecast that the effect of the postal strike will help companies hasten their transition to online systems and more readily sign up for digital supplier services, whilst consumers will order for christmas early and do so online.

Meanwhile it becomes obvious that less of us will use the post office – how long to the demise of the printed Postcard? It is already online…

For some reason, some people think that Social Media should not be exploited for money. I can understand why some might want to think that way. Search started out the same way, as have many other technologies. Search was known just by the select few and it was something that really helped people find what they want (I remember people telling me that Search would never take off -how wrong they were!). I think if you think in terms of exploitation you are using the wrong words, if you think in terms of how does it work for me, then that is a good way to think.

Unfortunately, most people who consider themselves ’social media experts’ (who for some reason shy away from this term!) fall into two camps: 1) Idealists who believe that social media should remain ‘pure’ and NEVER be exploited for money, and 2) Spammers and Scammers who see social media as another medium that, like TV, direct mail and email marketing, is prime for exploitation, that they can stamp on it to make it work!

The truth is, both camps are just WRONG, indeed the statement is wrong. There is a happy balance to be had. You don’t have to – and you should not ever resort to spam – there is no need anyway, as Social Media is an opt-in system. Without the opt-in element it would not be social. Those that want a technology to stay ‘pure’ is just not realistic. The social media vendors are trying to monetise them. Youtube, Facebook, Linkedin have found ways to monetise their service – wake up guys, it has already happened!

We would agree that social media is not the ideal source of get rich quick schemes. Social Media takes effort – it can be your effort or someone elses. Whatever you do, you need an effort management system. To operate blind in any media is crazy! You need to work out how to triangulate for effect, time management and results – these are the keys to social media – to make sure you get the most out of it.

There are some things that you can do, that are immediate. You can build rapid relationships, you can test headlines and you can generate leads. Why is this – the reason quite simply it is that there are just so many millions of people online, getting involved, from every walk of life – and it is a two way street.

People can talk back to you too. In social media, the average person spends 19 miutes a day getting involved, Google is around 2 minutes per day and Ebay is past its heyday.

At this time, the big players in Social Media include Facebook, Twitter, Youtube and Linkedin. Currently the numbers involved in Facebook is nearly 400m people. YouTube has over 75 million videos. Youtube has about as many daily viewers as all of the TV channels combined worldwide. The number of worldwide unique visitors to the Twitter website reached 44.5 million in June, up 15-fold year-over- year, according to comScore data.

So, we would explain that Social media is the newest marketing frontier because of all the people there. If you are in business, the only way you can trade is where there are people. Combined, the business opportunities Social Media present are endless if you know what they’re doing, if you take care. It is possible to blow it, it is also possible to recover from mistakes – but better not to make them – we have made a few, for which we humbly apologise, but we are the kind of people who push boundaries. Of course there are obvious limits and these are down to common sense mostly.

Fundamentally, for Social Media to work for your business ‘you have to be in it to win it’. In search, the way we did it was to have a network of sites, each site being on a different part of the equation, all of them connected together. With social media, you don’t need to make micro-sites, you can if you want, but today, the ‘micro-sites’ are your account pages in the Social Media.

Those were the days when the big thing was Email and Hotmail was owned by Microsoft and search engines ‘would never take off’ – who needed them – everyone knew who the big brands were and they all had websites – or that is what was said then. But it was not true, Search engines did take off and many brands were not online.

Social Media seems to be headed the same way, some notable brands have got involved – Starbucks, Dell are the favourites often quoted taking first mover advantage. But as in search in the early days, still many large brands are missing the party – leaving the door open for nimble, fast movers – some corporates a lot of solo preneurs, as we can see already.

Search engines provided the first real ways for the little guys to open up and sell branded products on the cheap or through innovative bundles, packaged in smart services – and some of the little guys were really successful and acquired great funding – like Amazon and Lastminute.com. So we should see that history could repeat itself.

With the latest news that Microsoft and Yahoo are now finally to join at the hip through thier Search Agreement it seems there may be something more to search than Google. Although the deal does not look like it will complete until 2010, competition is good. Competition will provide both sector promotion that will naturally attract more traffic and for the marketer there remains the availability of lower cost traffic from Bing and Yahoo that many marketers seem to forget about.

You can read more about the Microsoft / Yahoo Search Agreement

So in the short term, at least for the next twelve months or so Microsoft and Yahoo should be able to gain attention and market share. The world will be reminded of their existence and traffic will divert from Google as consumers go and try them out. Great for marketers. Great for Yahoo and Microsoft.

There is talk about Google snapping up Twitter, I for one am not sure that would be a good thing. Although Google have done well in search they may not fare so well with Twitter, like Microsoft and Hotmail. But as we know, the bottom line is, you have to be where the people are – and it is not always about making a profit! Good luck to them all and I would be happy to be wrong on this.

So what does all this mean to Social Media. Nothing if you read the press release, those two words were not mentioned in the speaches either. Not by Steve Ballmer or Carol Bartz. But there was a lot of emphasis on spending more time, energy and cash on future technologies.

I think we can expect more from these two who already put significant effort into Social Media, for them, this has to be another area for them to master, we will see…

Time and again we have seen you have to ‘be in it to win it’ and sometimes that involves upfront investment in time, energy and cash. Of course, with a view and expectation of the upside – but it is not always exactly where you expect it to be when you get there. As quite a lot of people found out in search back in the day, BG! Before Twitter (BT) anyone?

Twitter is also an excellent way to launch a new website – you don’t have to wait to be indexed or pay for Pay Per Click. Word of mouse! I have heard of new websites being created and traffic built and then the twitter account being bundled with the website and then being sold for thousands…

I have asked the question recently on Linked and from about 250 businesses who are involved in social media, there were about 20 answers, 4 of which were positive. Elise Drost suggested that the way to be successful using social media would be to have a strategy – she got the best answer reward!

For all of the remaining 16, my personal experience is completely opposite. I have to agree with the four affirmative and in particular with Elise Drost and indeed I have introduced my particular strategy to over 1000 people who have susbcribed to my site <a href=”http://www.howtotweet.co.uk” target=”_blank”>How to Tweet</a>.

to prove the point, I have used Twitter to promote <a href=”http://www.howtotweet.co.uk” target=”_blank”>How to Tweet</a>. I have also used Twitter to promote http://www.tweetmaxi.com and had just over 2000 page views in four days, achieveing a 10% sign up rate and so far a 10% conversion to clients.

I do now have two quotable client case studies. I am nurturing about 100 clients now and hope to be able to publish at least some of their findings. That will depend on their business, market need and thier ability to close deals.

There is to my certain knowledge at least two actively defined and promoted methodologies that are very advanced in their nature, one of which is proposed by radian6.

So in summary, time will tell. There seems to be a definite lag between the technology and business – and that has been the case for nearly all technologies – and certain a cause for many businesses to worry about.

I remember the days when people said Search Engines, they will never take off. I on the other hand have not looked back since, just forward! But that is my story. I am still interested to know why business in general finds these things difficult to accept. I think it might have to be do with the fact that their focus is their business and as mine is Internet Marketing.

I suppose as my chosen profession is Internet Marketing, I should come up with ‘discoveries’ from time to time. I am not certain that I am necessarily the first or the last, simply that I have a developed a process that I have developed, it works for me and happily, I have found a way of sharing it with others so that it works for them.

New potatoto anyone? A root! you must be joking…

Amongst other things, it was said that the deliberate contraction of time caused you to complete tasks in the time allotted and all you needed was the time and space to not be interrupted in order not to be distracted, so that during that time, nothing else can get in. I liken it giving up smoking. In my case I was clearing an addiction and I cleared it by deciding to smoke at given times and then having smoked telling myself that I could smoke again, but at an alloted time. It worked for me… So it does with Social Media.

It all revolves around having a plan, even if you don’t have a plan for Social Media, you can still plan time to investigate with the objective of determining your plan. So where to start with so many ‘Social Media’ opportunities?

You have to start with planning your time. You are in business to do business, you must do whatever you do to stay doing business, of course. But your time is yours, you own it, you control it, what you do with it is yours. We know you will be more productive if you plan your time, so your first plan must be to plan in some learning time.

Now, in the case of Social Media, you cannot do much until you have set up accounts, accounts require you to complete a profile, and that is the first thing you must do. You also need to think about your personality and your voice – what you want to say. These should be easy to work out in the beginning – act naturally, and focus on what you already do! there is no need to suddenly become an extrovert party goer, and we er, don’t really want to hear about bowel movements… So this is as simple, at least in the early days as keeping congruent, say who you are and be who you are.

So the first thing you must do in terms of time is look at the media you fancy – twitter? facebook? linkedin? they tend to be the top three. Open an account with each.

By doing nothing, you will get followers and this may be odd, but it means that people have found you as a result of your profile and they want to hear what is going on… You perhaps do not want to tell them everything… You would not have time for that, but you may have a thought for the day. Start there, start with ease, start gently, but only in the time you have allotted.

You could easily allot no more than 10 minutes at first. However, you now have followers and those followers were interested in you purely because of your profile – look at them, they may be clients or even, prospective clients. You now have the opportunity to talk… You would like to talk to prospective clients…

Major social media applications have millions of users and are still growing fast, but everyone needs to start somewhere – you have to be in it to win it as they say. Social Media is closely tied to e-mail, which has already presented major challenges to professionals in time management. Like email, the skills required for Social Media are about keeping an appropriate focus in their work and life.

Meetings can wasteful if not managed correctly and we know that random web surfing or Facebook socializing can be productive, if you are achieving something you want.

The strange and ‘new’ thing for many about social media is its immediacy and to some this is a bit scary. I can take a photo in Finland as I did last week, upload directly to FaceBook and Flickr and someone in London has commented it before I have had time to look at it myself – now that is scary – but nice. It is great to get instant feedback. Online we are more real, more  transparent, connected, with both immediacy and intimacy. Key attributes of quality relationships—something humans crave at a basic level – and totally necessary in business.

I was talking to Dr Ruth Renkie at Kingston University recently she  asserted that as time progresses the Internet is becoming more human.  When we look at the key factors of influence – key to selling and business we can prove that on line is the very best place to be in order to get your message across.

So is Social Media a waste of time – I think not – it is the most compelling thing to do. You must engage, failure to engage will end up in failure, others will pick up the baton. It is why Social Media is growing like topsy. We have no choice but to engage, it is where the people are and none of us can endure failure.