twittertise - TheWayoftheWeb

Easier said than done, but in the unavoidable discussion of the current state of the economy, I’ve noticed a few people discussing whether things are as bad as people perceive, and which industry will be best placed to surive etc. And in the grand scheme of things, I’ve decided I’m not an international finance expert or politician – so the best thing I can do is to focus on the things I can to do to improve my position as an individual and just get on with life.

For starters, I’m currently cutting down and quitting cigarettes, with the aid of nicotine lozenges, and some positive thinking inspired by the 7 Habits of Effective People. I haven’t gone cold turkey, but after 13 years of smoking, I’m happy that over the last four days I’ve gone from 20 cigarettes a day to four, and then to two for the last two days. I’m aiming for one or less over the next couple of nights and to be smoke free by the end of the week.(I’ve also had plenty of support on Twitter, which is helping!)

I’ve also seen a reward for some effort in keeping up the content on this blog, and on my microblogging site, www.140char.com. I’ve recently published an interview with the creator of Twitter advertising tool Twittertise, and by the time this is published, there should be a feature on Mobatalk on 140char. Not only is this leading to more traffic to the site, but I’m also getting to chat with some really cool people who are innovating around microblogging. It means I have more useful tools and networks at my disposal – and it’s inspirational.

Plus I appear to have more RSS subscribers here and on 140char.com than ever….thanks everyone – it’s great encouragement to try to constantly improve the content and frequency of both blogs.

I’ve also had a fun conversation with someone today, who explained they got a new job recently due to the fact ‘someone’ persuaded them to join LinkedIn. After a bit of prompting, they remembered the invite came from me! And I’ve gained another practical example of how social networking works. (Funnily enough, Venturebeat has reported the shakey economy has boosted traffic to LinkedIn!)

I’ve also finally taken some steps to make my working life a bit easier, and streamlined some reporting which I’d meant to improve for ages, but hadn’t prioritised – it was in the Important not Urgent section of life which the 7 Habits teaches you to work in. And it’s starting to make a difference and allow me to work on some interesting projects and plans without getting as distracted.

And I’ve even got back into Facebook, after a group was formed for some people I haven’t seen in about 15 years – it’s quite funny to see responsible 30-something adults with similar features and the same names as the nihilistic hooligans with whom I spent much of my formative years.

And putting social media in with a shoehorn, there really are two ways to go at the moment:

Give people more tools for getting through the current hardship
Give people more tools for having fun, doing positive things and escaping the current hardship.

If you’re doing one, or both of those things, you should be on the right lines. The flip side is to stay calm and ensure that you’re measuring the effect and highlighting what this does for the bottom line correctly – the more you can show social media is a cost effective way to help your company/brand survive through any hardships, the better off you are.

One of the things I’ve been meaning to do is to compile the tools available for measurement and reporting, so if you want to recommend any for inclusion, drop me a comment.

Buffer

Twittertise is billed as a method of advertising on Twitter, but personally I see it more as a tool to measure the Return on Investment for corporate Twittering – something which arguably has a lot more value than a basic advertising tool. Owner and creator Jon Steinberg got in touch via Twitter, (@jonsteinberg), but it took me a little while to get some questions to him, and I’m glad it did, because this post now coincides with a new release which answers some of the questions I had about the value of the service.

In it’s simplest terms, Twittertise is a free service which builds on Bit.ly url shortening to offer some statistics on referrals through to your website – but the latest release starts to go further than the Bit.ly tool by offering some useful graphing capabilities for overall referrals and individual messages – and graphs are always useful for corporate reporting!

Jon was kind enough to answer some questions about the thinking behind Twittertise, how brands including Comcast, Nortel and the American Cancer Society are using it, and how you could be using it for your company:

Twittertise and Whalewhisdom are both applications by Thursday LLC – can you tell us a bit more about the company, where it’s based, and how many people are behind the applications?

“Whalewisdom and Twittertise are completely separately. I intermingled a Vimeo account by mistake. I’m an investor in Whalewisdom. Twittertise is wholly owned by me via Thursday LLC. I hired a developer named Gearoid Morley in Canada to build it as a fee for service project.”

Twittertise is powered by Bit.ly – what’s the relationship between the teams behing Bit.ly and Twittertise?

“I just use the bit.ly API. I am friends with the people behind bit.ly and it is a wonderful team and product. But I have no business relationship with them. “

Twittertise offers scheduled posting to allow Tweets to be written far in advance of being published – how do you see this being used for a medium which often leads to conversation?

“For this question, I’d point to this blog post: http://jonsteinberg.com/post/48188357/why-i-created-twittertise-i-had-twittertise. “

The website mentions Comcast as one of the major brands using Twittertise. Presumably this is in addition to human channels like @ComcastCares? Do you see brands using it for more corporate messaging etc, with human channels supplementing it?

“Yes comcastcares has used it. I envision brands using a single account that they feed with both real time tweets through the web or a client and then supplement them with Twittertise. This will enable them to time and track important messages and notifications that require clickthrough tracking. “
Initially Twittertise combined scheduled posts (possibly based on Twitabit?), with the stats available from Bit.ly. Now the latest release has taken things beyond what was readily available with the graphing tools, have you seen a rise in sign-ups and usage?
“We never used twitabit. The scheduling engine was completely built by Gearoid. Today is the first big push with graphing, so I’m hoping that blogs like 140char can get out the word. But we’ve seen pretty steady upflow throughout. I think graphing was a necessary piece the next step in a cleaner UI.”

With the increased economic pressure to show a Return on Investment from time spent using microblogs (and on social media marketing in general), do you expect to see an increase in people using Twittertise to broadcast offers and events without investing as much time in conversation?

“The beauty is that Twitter requires a counterbalance from its corporate users. Corporate users who simply broadcast without responding and engaging in conversation will find themselves with few followers. The right to use Twittertise while simultaneously maintaining your followers is almost something that is earned by a corporate user. The real time conversation tweeting by a brand is what earns it the right to track important communications where you need to show an ROI on Twittertise.”

Twittertise is free to use at present – are you aiming to monetise by developing the service and offering a subscription-type model?

“At this point, I’m honestly just trying to develop the right product for brands. Once we do that, I think revenue will follow.”

What do you see as the next steps/developments for Twittertise

“Improve the UI and continue to try and onboard major brand users.”

Has there been any examples of a hugely successful message or use of Twittertise so far? Anything that has surprised you, or shown a particularly unusual way of utilising the service? Obviously you’ve highlights some on the Twittertise Blog (http://blog.twittertise.com/)

“I think comcastcare’s use during huricane Gustav is my favorite. Timely messages that needed to be spaced.
http://jonsteinberg.com/post/48213746/comcastcares-using-twittertise-to-send-out-gustav
http://jonsteinberg.com/post/48214167/another-shot-of-comcastcares-using-twittertise
Nortel has also been a consistent and solid user for communicating corporate and product related information and tracking it.
http://twitter.com/nortel
On the non-profit side, I’m proud to see American Cancer Society using:
http://twitter.com/americancancer.”

Thanks to Jon for taking the time to answer a few questions, and I’m definitely planning to follow Twittertise and future releases in detail. One of the biggest problems in social media and social networking is tracking a return on the time invested, and this is one of the tools that will start to make that job easier.

It’s also interesting to note that Jon advises using Twittertise in conjunction with real human tweeting – I’m not a big fan of just plugging in an autofeed and letting it run – it could be really useful to ensure important messages don’t get forgotten or phrased badly in the rush of conversation. And it could also be useful to retweet your most important message when you’ve finished posting for the day to ensure people in different timezones might see your most important messages.

If you liked this post and want to keep up with the latest articles, news, Twitter tools and interviews, why not subscribe to the www.140char.com RSS feed?

And if you missed our earlier interviews why not catch up with them now?

An interview with Blippr founders Jonathan C and Chris Heard.

An interview with Posty creator Cesare Rocchi.

Buffer