Tips, Tricks & Tools from 140 | The Twitter Conference

Posted on September 26th, 2009.

I had the great pleasure of speaking at the recent 140 Twitter Conference on a branding experts panel (Growing Your Brand on Twitter: Strategies and Tactics from the Trenches) with @Starbucks @mprasad @msuster @andrewblair, moderated by one of my favorites in the socialmediasphere, @guykawasaki.

The panel was fun and informative! We talked about building community, what to tweet about, how to tweet, whether to auto follow or not, how to measure ROI, how big brands can engage their followers and more.

[Pic: @msuster @marismith & @guykawaski in background. Photo credit: @ErkChristiansen @ParnassusGroup]

I gave a shoutout to some of my fave follows [for content: @mashable @mike_stelzner @techcrunch @rww] as well as:

Twitter tools I use frequently:

• Twhirl - I love the simplicity of this small desktop app for @ & DM management.
• Hootsuite - excellent platform for pre-scheduling, synch with Ping.fm & saved searches/groups just like Tweetdeck only web-based!
• Ping.fm - multi platform broadcaster; I post to LinkedIn, Twitter, my Facebook profile, Plaxo, Plurk & Identica. I stopped posting to my Facebook Fan Page as I use the new Facebook Twitter app.
• SocialToo - one of my longtime faves by @jesse for selective autofollowing. (I was the only one on the panel who autofollows! See this post for further insights: Twitter Autofollow and Auto DM etiquette)
• SocialOomph - formerly known as Tweetlater, I use this site for prescheduling broadcasts to Twitter only. It also does keyword alerts, autofollowing and more.
• TwitPic - though there are several other photo platforms that synch with Twitter (along with Facebook), I find I always get the highest click and interaction rate with TwitPic.
• Utterli - perfect for dialing in an audio tweet from the road!
• 12Seconds.tv - record just 12 seconds of video from your webcam!
• TweetMic - my fave app is actually FaceMic for recording audio messages, attaching a photo and posting to my Facebook profile (or even a specific friend!!) But TweetMic is a decent alternative to Utterli for broadcasting audio tweets.
• Tweetie iPhone app - I’ve tried the rest, Tweetie is the best.
• Facebook Fan Page Twitter app - of course being the Pied Piper of Facebook, I had to get a good plug for the platform even though I was speaking at a Twitter conference (!). What this app does is allow you to write up to 420 characters as your Fan Page status update and then it posts to Twitter with a bit.ly link back to your Fan Page! You can also select to have links, photos, videos and notes tweeted out. I have all but Notes because my blog posts are imported to Notes and also go out on Twitter so I’d end up with duplicate tweets.

Turquoise and bling, that’s my thing!

Of course, I wore my signature brand of blue/turquoise and bling… cuz that’s my thing. Yep, even my iPhone skin is turquoise and bling, a rare find last year! And I love this real orchid blue neckpiece I recently found on Etsy.

When Guy asked us how we measure ROI, it was clear the number of followers was not as important as the amount of engagement, how much traffic gets driven to blogs/sites and new revenue generated.

Part of my measurement is increase in number of Facebook fans. (Yes, I spotted a couple tweets commenting on how I was talking about Facebook at a Twitter conference!!)

In fact, in a side conversation with Brad Nelson of @starbucks, he mentioned they are highly active on their Facebook Fan Page as part of their overall social media strategy. That’s the thing with singling out just one platform. Other than Twitter app developers, I can’t think of any business that would use Twitter exclusively for their marketing. Hmm, wonder if Facebook and Twitter would ever team up to host a conference?! LOL.

Nonetheless, the 140 Twitter Conference was exceptional!! Kudos to @sbroback @jasonp107 & @pcrampton of @parnassusgroup and two thumbs up to @brettschulte.

[Pic: @guykawaski @andrewblair @msuster @marismith @halfnelson / @starbucks. Photo credit: @ErkChristiansen @ParnassusGroup]
Yep, I really am tweeting live while on the panel! Just a couple times. Mostly I was viewing my saved search for #140tc on Tweetie to keep my finger on the sentiment pulse of our panel. Watching the tweetstream, I actually chose to circle back to a comment I made about “ABM: Always Be Marketing” which I’ve written about on my other blog. I definitely stirred some controversy which is not like me at all. Oh well. You can’t please all the people all the time, but you can please some of the peeps some of the time, right?!

Of course, @TonyRobbins was the HIGHLIGHT of the event, pumping the crowd and delivering terrific inspiration to all. (At the peak, the livestream of #140tc had over 1000 people tuned in!)

[Photo credits: (L) Jim Alden @TechFrog: Flickr #140tc slideshow (R) @ErkChristiansen @ParnassusGroup]

PS - can you spot me in the front row, signature turquoise?! “Always Be Marketing” ;)]

Other awesome tools gleaned from the 140 Twitter Conference:

• TidyTweet
• Tweetstats
• TweetOclock
• TwitterSheep
• TweetReach
• TweepSearch
• TweetBeep
• BackTweets
• FeedMyInbox
• Trendistic (great for trends, not complete in tracking/monitoring brands)
• Xefer
• Search.Peoplebrowsr - amazing sentiment tracker by savvy @wingdude, founder of PeopleBrowsr
• twendz
• inView - in private beta just now, awesome tweet stream/search/notification debuted at the #140tc
• Twitturly
• FriendorFollow
• Twitter Groups
• The Archivist - save and export Twitter searches
• Klout - measure your or anyone’s influence factor! I was honored to be high on the influence list for #140tc

Here’s my short wee video interview by @SallyFalkow talking about how PR companies might approach Twitter/social media - see Sally’s full blog post with this video here.

Related posts & photo collections:

• Live Blogging Tony Robbins Keynote 140/Twitter LA: celebrate for no reason
• Twitter for the Enterprise by @tkontzer
• The 140 Twitter Conference.. for the Win! by @davepeck
• Rockfish Presents TidyTweet to 140 Twitter Conference: TidyTweet Named Best New Twitter Application
• Culture and Authenticity: Lessons from 140: The Twitter Conference by @ProfJonathan
• Brands Find Twitter Effective - includes short video interview with me! by @SallyFalkow
• Awesome photo collection by Jim Alden @TechFrog: Flickr #140tc slideshow
• 140|The Twitter Conference: It’s a Wrap - great photos & post by @BrianSolis
• Steve Broback’s Parnassus Group photo collection
• 140tc Flickr photo collection by Eyeficard
• View the #140tc hashtag tweets here.
• View some of my best tweets that got retweeted here.

Hope you enjoyed this collection of goodies! Let me know which tools, tips and tactics you find to be helpful. Feel free to add your own too in the comments below:

Technorati Tags: 140tc, branding, guy kawasaki, Mari Smith, starbucks, Twitter

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