Fly Twitter is centers around four major functions: Home, Connect, Discover, and Me.

Home. The new home display of Twitter is designed to unify the look and feel of the site no matter if you are accessing via a PC, Mac, Android, or iPhone. It seems to be fairly similar to the existing lookand fell, but eerily more similar to Facebook.

Connect. This section allows users to keep track of their conversations and to interact with others. We think this has been the biggest improvement to the platform as they have done a good job of making it easier to have direct conversations with other users. It is amazing that Twitter is able to know what other people’s tweets to you are in response to; it even displays your original tweet so you know what is going on.

Discover. This is like hashtag 2.0. It provides multiple ways to access information and topics of interest relevant to you. This can be based on keywords, trending topics, and even location.

Me. The new profile section makes it easier to navigate through your followers, favorites, and lists, plus it gives a little more customization to add information you want others to see. You can craft a bio, add a photo, share your location, ad link to your web site or blog.

Apparently this is only the beginning, as Twitter will be adding new features to the Fly Twitter framework.  So stay tuned…

Everyone is obsessed with the ROI of social media. Rightly so – a business would be crazy to throw good money after bad. Still, much discussion of gauging the return on investing in social media campaigns seems locked in traditional marketing paradigms. A company asks, “What will we get from engaging in social media?” A recent article from the MIT Sloan Management Review suggests a better question: “What will your customers get from your social media efforts?”

Instead of obsessing over where to put social media expenditures in one’s spreadsheet and how to calculate the dollars returned, companies should spend more time thinking about whether their efforts provide any value-added to consumers. If your tweets don’t inform, connect, or entertain your customers, then what is their incentive to consume your content?

Framing investment in social media in terms of content-consumption allows a company to use a little common sense. Customers are not captive audiences on the internet. It’s their world; we just live in it. What customers want, above all else, is reliable information about products and services. They will always visit third-party sites like google and yelp to find out about your business. You should encourage them to do so by providing discounts for reviews – of any kind – on popular ratings sites.  Even negative reviews present an opportunity: you can message the customer in plain sight, respond to her complaint, and improve your service.

A fear I’ve heard before about providing useful information to consumers is that they’ll snipe the information, then go elsewhere for the product. As a customer recently said about the defunct Borders chains, “I’d go to Borders to find a book, and then I’d go to Amazon to buy it.” While this is ubiquitous in the social media environment, your goal isn’t to prevent it. It’s to manage it by adding value to your social media relationship with customers. Provide discounts or price-matching, reduced shipping rates, or other incentives to build customer loyalty and repeat business.

Counterintuitively, once you begin thinking this way about social media, identifying ROI for your social media efforts loses its mystery. Once you use social media analytics to identify the interaction you’re getting from customers, the benefit of platforms like twitter to your revenue stream seems self-evident. The trick for businesses entering the social media environment is to realize that doing so means adding a business on top of the business you already have. If you’re a retailer, tech startup, or supplier, entering twitter means attracting and keeping twitter clients who will consume your content. That’s where TweetsByUs can help you thrive.

Marketing with social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook is no different. You create brand awareness, build a following, and then develop relationships. The entry cost to using these platforms is zero, the tools are FREE! Anybody who knows their own business well and has experience marketing through other traditional channels understands who their customers are, what they want, and how to attract them. Now there are many strategies and techniques using social media that take time to develop, but they can be learned.

The hard part comes in actually putting the plan into practice and keeping it up (remember the healthy weight example). To really get the most out of marketing using social media platforms is that it has to be consistent. It takes perseverance to continue to build a following and effort in maintaining the conversation with the community. You can’t leave it alone and participate when you feel like it. It’s something you have to be constantly involved in, otherwise you are just a passerby that people will begin to lose interest in.

Understanding the need to get involved with social media marketing is a big step, but only the first step. To fully leverage the benefits, you must stay active and continue the course. There are now shortcuts and it takes time and effort. So simple, right?

Social media are different. Because of the nature of the internet, it is relatively easy to assess the impact of each and every tweet. Was there a link in your tweet? We can tell you exactly how many people clicked it. Did you launch a special offer for your followers? We can tell you exactly how many of them visited your site over the course of the first hour, day, or week of the deal. Are people receiving your message and passing it on to friends? Online, there is actually a record of the word-of-mouth buzz that marketers work so hard to cultivate. How many clicks, at what time, and from what communities? Using social media and an evaluation strategy, you can know the answer to these questions.

How? Not only can TweetsByUs manage your basic social media needs – developing your social presence, attracting followers and fans, communicating about your products and services – but we can help you with the analyses described above. Some of the basic steps that need to be taken are choosing an analytics platform (like Omniture or Google Analytics), getting smarter about how you tweet (by, for example, using a ‘smart’ link shortener like bit.ly), and developing a strategy for your campaigns that can then be monitored. Wait – you’re right: doing all of this does take significant time and expertise. But it’s worth it.

In a nutshell, because people leave a trail when they use the internet, businesses that market via various social media channels have a great opportunity to analyze both the behavior of their followers and the success of their campaigns. With social media, you can actually tell if you’re getting what you pay for – or, in Wanamaker’s words, which half of your advertising is working. Obviously, this is tremendously valuable because you can then adapt your marketing so that you get the biggest bang for your marketing bucks. Next time you want to know what deal got your customers to buy, or whether your ad is resonating with folks in Seattle, or what time of day you should launch a sale — let us know. By taking advantage of the strengths of social media marketing, TweetsByUs can help you answer these questions.

1. 1. “This whole Twitter craze… I just don’t get it.”

Well, 190 million people do get it, so it’s time to find out.  This is a huge audience of active participants, and you can’t afford to ignore numbers like these.  It’s that simple.

1. 2. “People don’t want to follow my business, they only want to follow other people.”

Untrue – businesses are some of the most popular participants out there.  Whole Foods Market, JetBlue Airlines, and Zappos each have over 1.5 million followers.  People are actually excited to interact with businesses that appeal to them, whether they get access to a huge corporation, or connect with a tiny niche business.  The people who are passionate about your products/services are on Twitter, and you can find them.  Whether your business, and their passion, is fitness, the latest apps, organic cosmetics, or even woodcarving, Twitter can and will connect you.  The conversations are happening, and you can be a part of them.

1. 3. “Twitter – It’s just another fad.”

It’s already been around for 5 years, prominent for 3 years – and it’s still standing.  We don’t have a crystal ball, and we concede that Twitter could possibly become obsolete in a year (or 2 years, or 10 years) – we don’t know how long it will be the prevailing social media.  That being said, technology/communication is only getting faster and more convenient, not the opposite.  At the moment, Twitter is the fastest, most widely used micro-blogging platform.  So join in.  And if someday there is an even faster, more widely-used, “even-more-micro” micro-blogging platform, you will be in a much better position to adapt.

In other words, if you continue to shirk the newest way of communicating, you’ll only get further behind.

1. 4. “There’s a lot of noise on Twitter.”

There are ways to cut through the noise, and new users quickly learn how to do so.  A few examples of the tools are: lists that separate streams, detailed searches, and hashtags.  Don’t worry if these tools sounds like Greek to you, they are easy to learn.

1. 5. “I don’t want to invite negative feedback in a public arena.”

This is an interesting objection.  Positive or negative, it is better for a business to be aware of the popular opinion (or at least that of their customers).  In this case, ignorance is not bliss.

If there are negative opinions circulating about your brand, then they already exist, and they are already public.  You just may not know about them yet.  Once you join the Twitter conversation: (1) you will learn what the complaints & concerns are; (2) you can respond directly to dissatisfied customers in a timely manner; and (3) you can address any internal process/service/quality problems at the root, if they do indeed exist.

If you are fortunate enough that feedback is nearly all positive, it is important to be a part of these conversations too.  Learning what customers value most about your business can help to direct vital business decisions.

Either way, Twitter is an indispensable tool that gives your business easy access to information that would take a Marketing Research firm extensive hours and expense to unearth.  The ability to tap into your customers’ concerns is a powerful one; the ability to respond immediately & directly is even more powerful.

These are the 5 most common and most strongly-voiced objections that I have observed.  While they are understandable concerns, they are not logical justifications to keep you from joining Twitter.  It is time to join the Twitter conversation, contact TweetsByUs for a 30-day free trial of Twitter account management.

Wherever the people are, the Spam Bots will follow. Twitter is not immune and there are plenty spam accounts out there. To give Twitter credit, they have done quite a bit in creating policies that deter spammers and to police the community. Sometimes it is hard to distinguish companies and people that are just trying to push their own products instead of being part of the community by actively engaging. Here are some Do’s and Don’t’s to avoid being a spammer.

Do Tweet Useful Info

The best way to be a contributing part of the Twitter community is to provide useful and interesting information. You will find that people who share the same interests will find you and that you will get a better response to what you have to offer.

Do Respond To Others

Nobody likes someone that only has things to say, but nothing to say back. If you expect people to listen to what you have to say, then make sure that you reciprocate by listening too. Especially thank those that retweet you or mention you, and of course those that are kind enough to #followfriday you.

Do Retweet

Nothing says that you are listening and supporting your followers like a Retweet. It is not only an effective way to show are actively engaged, it can also be the source of the most useful information. Who better to provide you with interesting info than those that share your interests.

Don’t Auto-Respond

If someone follows you, they know who you are and why they decided to follow them. There is no reason to hit them with a direct message that tells them to check out your blog or where they can buy your stuff. Auto-responses are the surefire way to distinguish the robots from the real users, and it will get you unfollowed before people actually listen to what you might have to say.

Don’t Mass Reply and Always Self-Promote

With all the noise on Twitter, it can sometimes be hard to find a voice on Twitter. But resist the urge to reply directly to people just to get their attention. First, it is a total one-way communication, which is against the attractiveness of Twitter as a communication tool. Second, everyone can see your tweets and mass replying can instantly be sniffed out as spam. Don’t just self promote, use Twitter for what is was meant to be used for: a way to share useful/interesting information with each other.

Don’t Rapidly Follow and Unfollow

Rapidly following and unfollowing isn’t just inconsiderate, it can get you banned by Twitter. They are watching you and will not hesitate to suspend your account if you employ these methods of gaining new followers. Be selective in your following and look for people that share common interests. You will find that the quality of your followers is much more important than the quantity.

Use Twitter To Find Customers

A great feature of Twitter as that it is an open directory of prospects. Companies have the ability to find customers based on their interests, demographics, and location. They can also filter through the noise employing various methods that make use of the search function in order to find those that are interested relevant topics.

A Way To Provide Information

Twitter gives companies a way to broadcast up to date information about their products and services. This can range from new releases, changes/updates in service, special promotions, and useful industry information. Since Twitter is an opt-in format where users have to follow a company, they are more open to this communication and do not see it as invasive as traditional advertisements.

21^st Century Customer Service

Twitter is not a one-way communication tool, but provides the ability to have a real-time discourse with prospects and existing customers. Customers can use Twitter to ask questions and provide feedback on existing services and products. This is attractive to everyone following your company because you may be answering questions that other people have. In addition, companies can understand thier customer’s needs better based on the chatter in the Twitterverse.

List Basics

- You can create a new list in one of two ways. 1) Your lists are located in the profile bar on the right-hand side of your page (below the Search field) and click the” New List” link. 2) If you are on someone else Twitter profile page, you can click the Lists icon (a pop-down menu will appear) and click “New list”.

- To setup a new list you must first name it, then optionally add a description, then choose a privacy setting of either public or private list. A public list can be seen by anyone and others are able to follow the list you have created. Private lists are for your own use and cannot be seen by anyone else.

- The easiest way to add Twitter accounts to your list you simply go to the Twitter account you want to add, and click the Lists icon. A drop-down menu will appear that will display all the lists that you have created. Just click to list (or lists) that you want to add them to.

DemoGirl.com has created an easy to understand Screencast.

More About Lists

There are many ways to use lists, but some of the most popular are creating lists of friends and family, coworkers, celebrities, news, sports, deals/coupons, hashtags and other interests. You can also follow lists that other people have already created, saving you the time of finding all the interesting accounts to follow.

You can easily edit lists and create new ones. You can even see what lists you belong to; under “Listed” at the top of your profile bar, you will see the number of lists that you are on. Many people think that this Is the new way to measure how popular an account is rather than the number of followers.

Businesses are now realizing the potential of creating brand awareness on Twitter as people continue to shift their attention away from traditional forms of media. If managed effectively, companies can use Twitter to reach a large, targeted audience regardless of industry. A presence on Twitter allows companies to be found by users searching for their products and services because they can actively attract potential customers by providing useful content and information.

Twitter provides a platform that allows businesses to find targeted prospects, then engage them by providing relevant information and through direct, real-time conversation. Twitter makes it easy for us to help our clients manage relationships with new prospects and existing customers. This is much more powerful than one way marketing of yesterday. This new interactive marketing allows a dialogue that can help match the needs of the consumer and the benefits being offered by businesses.