This is going to be a very short post as I’m also currently working on an Introduction to the Hebrew Bible take home final exam at the same time. But in Canada we are going through a bit of political unrest due to the financial crises. If you know nothing about it read here:

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I’m not entirely happy about a government getting forced into another federal election two months after their previous one. However, I am happy about Canada’s response on social media. I thought twitter was just comprised of people from the “Bay Area”, but today some of the largest topics discussed on Twitter are with regards to the Coalition government.

I literally don’t refresh for thirty seconds and there are over (11) new tweets on the subject.

It’s cool to see all the social media hermits come out of their shanties for this. Nice work Canada, @bensir me.

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Whether you are a blogger, a business, an entrepreneur, a politician or the homeless man that scares me outside of 7-11, I can almost guarantee you are trying to leverage yourself via social media. More specifically, Twitter. Twitter’s success is an enigma to all. However, it’s catchy, fun and more importantly has a massive following. I’ve read my fair share of “How to get a larger Twitter following” articles and while some of them offer some redeemable advice, the majority of the articles do not. This is due to people using their own success stories as a means to guarantee success to others. This obviously can’t be true, every business is different, and thus should be treated differently.

I feel I have a fairly firm grasp on social media as I’ve been successful in some of the larger networks. So, allow me, someone who has yet to accumulate a large following on Twitter, offer my advice on how to leverage your personal brand, or business on this anomaly of a social network.

Market via other social networks

To begin just like every other social network, if you are successful on one you are successful on all of them. Start by promoting your Twitter account on the networks you already contribute to. Even if I were to attract 1% of my entire following on MySpace that would mean roughly 130 Twitter followers – and I don’t even use MySpace anymore.

Invite your friends

Twitter is very new and has yet to really hit the mainstream (unless you live in San Francisco). One hundred percent of my friends already belong to social networks. Although, they may be just the mainstream network giants, Twitter was made not just to connect people globally but locally as well.

Make friends

Don’t shamelessly self promote. Give people a reason to follow you and actually offer something redeemable to them. Use Twitter Search to find conversations on topics of expertise to you and contribute to those discussions. For example a lot of people became successful on Twitter as a result of offering customer service help on products.

SEO your posts

Look at Google Search Trends and Twitter Search Trends and write about topics that are popular. This will increase outside network exposure.

Find friends with similar interests & Twitter ratio

I find a lot of the Twitter celebrities don’t even respond to my replies, regardless of how constructive they were. I have found that making friends that have a similar following:follower ratio greatly increases your chance of receiving an @reply. Replies are very key for promoting your name on Twitter.

Update regularly & constructively

Pretty straight forward, don’t spam, reply with information that contributes to the topic of discussion etc. etc.

Use 3^rd party apps and mobile updates

Utilize everything to make your Twitter experience more efficient. Twitter has about two hundred and forty million applications. Here is a really huge list of them: REALLY HUGE LIST OF TWITTER APPLICATIONS. Also, use the mobile features that Twitter offers to update from anywhere. This ensures a consistent stream of updates.

PUT IN THE HOURS!

In actuality, people should treat their Twitter like business. They should act as though there is no easy road to success and they should put in the hours needed to achieve success – and that’s a lot more than you think.

BTW @bensir me!

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Allow me to give you a run through of my usual Friday and Saturday nights. The night normally starts after dinner, at this point in time I will spend two or three hours planning on what my night is going to look like. The majority of this time I spend talking with local friends to gauge where the best place is to end up. I will also often plan during the week as well, to attempt to avoid this issue. I frequently think to myself, it would be fantastic if I were presented with a list of where my friends are and are going to be. In conjunction to that, I would also like to know where the general public is going and who arrives where I am. I probably spend 3-6 hours a week doing this, which roughly means I lose about nine days a year - just because of the planning I spend with regards to being social.

The answer to my problem - BrightKite. BrightKite is a Twitter and Fire.eagle mash up that allows users to know where their friends are, where their friends are going to be and when their friends arrive. Somewhat evasive, I know. However, imagine a situation where you (the user) after a long day at the library and work want to unwind in the quickest way possible with a bunch of your friends. You are then presented with a map, with tags in your immediate area of where your friends are, what they are doing and their thoughts on what they are doing. Or better yet, you are cheating on your girlfriend with her best friend at a local club. You receive an alert from BrightKite explaining that “Your girlfriend just arrived at a location that is 20 meters from you”. Wouldn’t you like that kind of warning? I know I would - haha.

BrightKite is currently in private beta and starting to create an active community. But the problem I have with all of these social startups (cough Twitter cough) is that they aren’t marketing towards the general public. I understand that they may be gauging interest with qualified testers in order to get the most constructive feedback possible. However, why not gauge interest with the people that are most likely going to be using the service? In BrightKite’s case I see this as potentially being a massive roadblock. When they realize that bloggers and other new technology people don’t actually care where their internet friends are because those people are usually half way across the World.

How I would market BrightKite

To begin, I believe marketing to new technology users is only smart in the extreme early going. Normally these people have media involvement and you could see a flux of users just based off of that. However, new tech people use a product for a couple of days to gain knowledge of the product and then they let it lay dormant until they find a use for the service. Case and point - me. I used BrightKite for about three days and stopped. Why? Because none of my friends were on it. It is quite obvious that the most successful services on the web are ones that appeal to everyone - Facebook, Myspace, Ebay, Craigslist etc. Not only do they appeal to everyone, but they embody everyone. Everyone is involved and contributing, and that’s what makes them successful.

So, if I were BrightKite I would market to users that are somewhat intellectual, young, hip and have money. In conjunction to those demographics I would market to large clusters of people. Easy answer - Universities. I’m not going in depth on how to properly market to universities but here’s a couple of ideas:

• Facebook Period. Apps, Groups, Advertising whatever.
• Launch parties where instead of paying a cover to the club, bar or venue the user signups for the service, uses it and provides their username at the door.
• Swag give-a-ways, plant yourself with a box of t-shirts, whiteboards and Nerf balls and start handing them out or even trade for them mobile signups.

University students love technology that applies to their life, but simply don’t know these types of services.

I am very interested to see where BrightKite takes their service. By the way if anyone at BrightKite read this and are looking for marketing services or consultant work, I would have an in depth market strategy report by tomorrow end of day. Haha.

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I currently belong to and am a contributor to 28 social networking websites. However, I really only pay close attention to a small handful of them. Here they are:

Facebook – I use Facebook the most. There’s something so comforting about knowing what everyone is doing at all time. It’s almost like I don’t have to interact with my friends in person at all. I mainly have friends from school – past & present, on Facebook. I refresh it maybe every ten minutes. Ugh.

My Facebook (Click)

Myspace – I used to be a bit of a Myspace slut as such I still have close ties with my former slutty self. I don’t really contribute on Myspace anymore, because I have no idea who is a real person and who is some sort of robot computer script. However, I check my Account for updates like every twenty minutes. It’s a terrible habit. At one point I had about 20,000 Myspace friends, but now have about 12,000 – Popular fella! Plus Myspace has all the indie bands I need…

My Myspace (Click)

Twitter – Twitter, oh how I loathe you. At first, I thought Twitter was the dumbest social updating site I have ever seen. Then I began to tweet. Now whenever I see that Fail Whale, I want to strangle something.

Follow me on Twitter! (Click)

Twine – Twine is still in BETA, however this is really the first semantic social networking site. The program is a creation by internet brainchild Nova Spivack. It’s a fantastic medium to share information. If you want an invite to open BETA, just post a comment with your email.

My Twine Profile (Click)

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