Twitter and update

Hi just an update first, I've decided to follow Russell Brunson's method for organising the getting of the CD from my head into an actual CD product as I watched a free seminar where he covered some of the ideas I've been thinking of myself i.e the "who what why how ( where when) " writer's method of getting the main information needed on to video's - I read the free report that Dan Weaver (3 cash machine) mailed the other day about the lady who started a course on how to set up a preschool "mirco continuity" they call it - so yes I've been using my brain a little bit to get a product started in our niche.

Guess what - I might do a course on coffee (suprise surprise) using that method once I have gathered together the essential elements, so if you are reading this then you are part of the experience already, so I best get on with it.

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Twitter
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Okay today I thought I'd give a little talk of my perception of twitter and how it can help (or hinder)

Now I often have a browse of a UK forum/network called Ecademy, now you get a wide variety of folks in there, some are against the whole idea of twitter seeing it as wasteful where as at the other end of the scale you have a number of Experts - i.e people that have drilled down and focused their time and attention purely on the trends and ways of twitter to see how it works.

Now I'm kind of in the middle of all this, I've tried some of the marketing methods, and I've done a mental review of the whole thing and here's some observations / things I did then stopped and other things I've started.

So firstly I've stopped the auto unfollow (tweetlater) - as rumors abound that twitter is thinking of banning people that use software to auto unfollow - so it's back to manual on that for the time being, my other chosen method was to use 'Twitter Karma' a bit like a twitter defragmenter and ditch all the inactive people (to make room for active tweeters) but I'm wary of using these method now - until I have more reassurance that my accounts aren't in danger from this automating.

Their reasons for doing it
With the rise of popularity of twitter also comes a responsibility to keep the majority happy - with rules - it happened with facebook, twitter is rapidly filering into mainstream society - so if you think it is pointless - think again! - it is a large crowd puller - learning to navigate the crowd is the toughest part - it's why you need mentors (but that's another big topic for another lesson!)

It will be around for a while yet, so pay attention, as your customers might expect you to know about it too.

I notice some of the new old giants are showing signs of distress - myspace is suffering in a way that reminds me of Lycos and more lately Yahoo/aol etc. did - i.e couldn't react/change quick enough to a new form of public communication and they got 'knocked in the knees' by a toddler with a hammer maybe ... now if that is a toy hammer or one out of the garage remains to be seen)

Twitter and facebook are emerging as 'spotty teenagers' at the moment in their development, and the parents are having to lay ground rules, codes of conduct etc. but the teenager isn't moving out of home anytime soon - it is still 'gaining weight' in the minds of people - so as a marketer you have to ajust to the parent/teenager tantrums from both the parents and the kiddies (us lovely consumers! - yes even marketers are consumers - just look up 'facebook click fraud' in google and you'll see what I mean)

Secondly I've stopped the google alerts that I had streaming from google to my twitter account via twitterfeed.com on most of my accounts - including @coffee2u as although the idea was a great one, I personally was unhappy with the content that google was digging up for me.

i.e I personally don't add claims of medicinal value to instant drinks or food products -I read them, but it leads into "quackery" - i.e spammy headlines that make crazy claims - so I ditched the google feeds.

I've opted to complie my own selection of coffee related feeds instead - feeds that don't make claims that miracles with cancer and such like are possible. I have no problems with real health, fitness and supafoods who's aims are to improve the life and wellbeing of people - but the adverts of sites like MSN and facebook currently show pictures of women for example that were probabley pregnant - then lost all the weight after giving birth - but endorse the "miricle" weightloss on a berry or suppliement - now this kind of hard selling is not what social networking is about - so I took the action to stop suspect streams.

While doing this I also empathise with the marketer than is genuinley trying to sell / promote products - as well -as oviously we want to make a revenue stream from selling - we can't make any money if we are banned from promoting, so the alternative is to create our own coffee related networks and tools and offer people into our trading space in a way that doesn't rattle the 'anti sales brigade' and what I mean by that is folk who get irrate about people earning their living trying to sell things (these types also constantly moan about people on welfare I notice)

So again I will have to look at the issue of 'what is spam' in a separent lesson as it's another biggie!

A stream of infromation I am trying out for now is a collection of blogs about coffee - I complied most in Social Median - a news aggrigator that is mainly set up for techy/business/design types but could be used by artists and niche marketers to gather information on topics rather like friendfeed does.