Today my Twitter account was suspended. I believe it was from being stupid enough to try the free “TwitterOnlineSystem.com”. It’s supposed to help you get more followers, which I’ve decided is not worth trying to do with a system. If I only have 200 followers instead of 5,000 then it’s ok with me.

To be fair I’m not entirely sure it was TwitterOnlineSystem.com but it is the most suspicious thing that’s happened to my account. My friend Jenny from Cheeky & Swank also had a similar experience and she’s still not back on Twitter. It’s been several weeks. It seems that any program that tries to increase your followers could put your account at risk.

This is the worst year I’ve ever seen for spammers. I’ve been online starting in 1996 (for hours a day) and I have done everything online and I’ve never had it this bad. Is it the bad economy? Is it that they suddenly figured out how to spam even the most secure sites? Are they getting smarter? It makes me want to quit my profession. I deal with it every day in my inbox. I’ve spent time and money getting it off this blog and my client’s blogs. It comes back again.

Whatever has happened, Twitter has posted something about how if your account was just suspended they are working on it. I would post the exact comment but Twitter is down.

Here’s my wish for Twitter: I wish Twitter would stop making us go to other sites to find Twitter tools to manage groups, keywords, scheduling tweets, managing multiple accounts and other features we want. Just charge us for it. And have a service that lets you backup your account. And maybe get priority customer service.

So many of us depend on Twitter and we’re practically powerless when it comes to managing our accounts. Here’s hoping it won’t be a long wait.

If this is ever a problem again I’m switching to www.twitter.com/NewspaperGIRL – with an I in GIRL.

UPDATE: My account is back up! It’s not totally normal though. It re-added people I’ve followed for months. I get DMs from different people telling me that TwitterOnlineSystem has gotten me 20 more followers. I’d rather just have my account be stable.

There’s a lot of talk about disclosing about paid links and  getting payment for blogging, tweeting, or otherwise making cash from social media. First, there is no way to disclose all of this.

This issue gets really messy (read this post about conflicts of interest by Penelope Trunk, warning: the post has some overshare that can be offensive to some readers, but otherwise does a good job at illustrating the point).

For example: how do you disclose that your link on twitter is an affiliate link – in 140 characters or less? Does it really matter? Do I care if someone makes money recommending someone if it’s a recommendation from someone I trust? NO. If they’re like me they won’t recommend something just to make money or their reputation will be shot.

However, there are some accounts that the only purpose is to make money and they use affiliate links to do that. I’m surprised again and again just how much MLMers are using Twitter and how much they advertise but people still subscribe.

Same with Guy Kawasaki who I recently called out for marketing a car on his blog. Do you really think he would’ve taken the time to write a post this involved on his own? And how exactly does it change the world? Thankfully he has Prius ads on his blog to redeem himself to environmentalists. He’s quite open about marketing and we still follow him (Alltop is a great resource I recommend to find places to guest post or find bloggers to involve in your social marketing strategy). He just markets well.

I just talked to a group of affiliate marketers yesterday about techniques affiliates are using to make sales from Twitter.

I’m already promoting PRWeb and now that I’m an affiliate I can make money doing it. That’s fair. It motivates me to find time to seek out and answer questions people have about PRWeb which I would do anyway. (disclosure: the PRWeb link is an affiliate link, so is this one for my most coveted gift: an Amazon Kindle – and if you buy one using this link I’ll make $35).

Here’s an excerpt from Jeremiah Owyang who has been posting on this topic.

How to make affiliate links work on Twitter

• Make sure it lines up editorially with your personal brand, promoting a product that people don’t associate you with will raise eyebrows.
• Disclose it’s an affiliate link, perhaps with a hashtag #affilliatelink.
• Be sincere about your recommendation. If you truly love that product you’re promoting, perhaps write a review on a blog first, explaining why.
• Be fully transparent before people follow you: Create a link from your Twitter profile page that is up front about how you use Twitter, and explain your intentions when it comes to product recommendations and affiliate links.

What if you send links directly to the merchant and don’t have room for a long hashtag like #affiliatelink? What if you have no personal brand (like most affiliates I know)?

Twitter is a blog post so it shouldn’t be any different when it comes to disclosure. When I’m flat out paid for a sponsored post – I state that. I obviously got some swag for blogging about a local jeweler. I have affiliate links on my blog and they are the same as my ads.

Jeremiah’s post goes into the legal issues and you should read all of it.

Oh, and the next time you talk to me and I recommend that you attend Smart Media 2009 – remind me to disclose that I have a financial stake in the conference. I’ll be there. I’ll present with my friend Nate Moller about how to use Twitter for marketing. I hope you’ll be there.

My Twitter Questions

I used to be afraid to admit that I had questions. Now I realize that almost everyone does because social media is so dynamic (which is part of the fun). I remember the first time I asked about retweeting at a tweetup. I got some looks. But who cares. If you don’t ask, you don’t learn. I can guarantee that I’m smarter today than yesterday…partly because of Twitter which I read all the time.

1. How do you find the most popular hash tags relating to your industry or specialty? guess? I know there are trending terms, but…
2. Much like blogging it’s better to focus on a niche and not get too spread out. That leads me to want a few different accounts for the various things I want to write about. One could be for Utah, one for affiliate marketing, another for social media, etc. Right now with the tools I have that would be too much. I already have several accounts including a new one for my online PR book. What have you found to manage them without mixing them up or getting overwhelmed?
3. What is the easiest way to learn about group chats that are going on?

I didn’t build my followers on Twitter on purpose. Twitter wasn’t as crowded almost two years ago when I started. Now if you don’t try and don’t have a strong brand already, you’ll probably get lost in the mix. So my point is if you’re new to Twitter then you will need to put time and effort into it. It’s not going to magically happen that people will find and follow you if you’re unknown.

Don’t go to Twitter and start taking, advertising or promoting yourself. Some people like that but it turns most people off. Share information that is helpful. Answer questions. Respond to people. Be social and interact. Put things in regular terms so a layperson will understand.

My last piece of advice is this: give to the community. They will follow and reward you for it.

Here are my 4 tips for getting followers on Twitter.

Not that I always follow them, but that I’ve noted.

1. Participate in group chats. Tuesday nights are “girls night out” or #GNO. You can go to tweetchat.com and sign in with your Twitter username & password then go to the #GNO room and join in. Participate. This exposes you to new people that you otherwise wouldn’t know. I recently participated in SmallBizTrends group chat about Twitter and it was a lot of fun.
2. Use directories like Twellow or Twitterholic to find people – by keyword or location.
3. Go to search.twitter.com and put in a hash tag relating to what you do. For me it would be #onlinePR or related terms. See who is writing about it. Follow them if you find them useful.
4. Reply to people and retweet about the interesting things you learn. So as not to overwhelm people I have another tab opened in Firefox and I use TweetLater (or you can use SocialToo) to space them out a little.

Problogger recently gave 5 tips to grow your Twitter Presence and it’s a question that has come up a lot this week. I agree with his tip:

Everytime you reply to someone and have them reply to you your Twitter ID appears in the feeds of others which exposes you to potentially thousands upon thousands of other Twitter users.

I also like this point which I’ve also found true and which is why you need to schedule out your tweets (see #4 below).

Warning: Tweet too regularly and about nothing worthwhile and you run the risk of loosing followers. What I’ve found is that on days that I’m more talkative than others that there can come points where I’m talking so much that my followers don’t have room to respond.

I asked my Twitter followers for advice. I got these responses (I typically don’t get a lot but usually they are high quality):

@rickgalan @NewspaperGrl be interesting. (re: how to get new followers) also – engage the followers you already have

@Matt_Siltala @NewspaperGrl #1 be yourself #2 provide something of value (content, resources, help) #3 participate in the conversation/community

What has worked for you? When I was beginning on Twitter coming up on 2 years ago, you didn’t really have to try as hard to get followers. Now you do need to be proactive because like anything else that works, it’s more crowded.

My warning: Don’t go to Twitter and start taking, advertising or promoting yourself. It’s NOT all about you. It turns most people off. Share information that is helpful. Answer questions. Respond to people. Be social and interact. Put things in regular terms so a layperson will understand.

My last piece of advice is this: give to the community. They will follow and reward you for it. What’s Yours?

Some businesses will never blog but they still see the benefits of having one. That’s why one of my favorite blogging jobs goes like this (for a monthly retainer):

1. Someone else set up their WordPress blog with branding for their business.
2. I researched the keywords that pertain to the business.
3. I add plugins and optimize them. This makes the blog more SEO friendly. It adds post to Twitter automatically, etc.
4. I call and interview the owner every month. I record the call and then make 7-15 blog posts from our conversation. The client reviews and approves the posts.
5. I post the blog posts so they go live every few days during the month. I add links, etc. Sometimes I go to an event and take pictures or video with my Flip Mino. I also have Google alerts set so I have potential blog content coming to me directly.
6. If I have time I promote the blog in directories or other ways (link building).

The reason I like it is, I don’t have to learn and be the expert I just interview him. I like the personal interaction. I notice though that people have to remember events and things that happen in their business that would make great blog posts. This would be more effective if it was straight SEO and not as much for branding. Some businesses sell things that people don’t know to look for and that means it takes more time to build traction. Ideally this would be helped with advertising.

I would like to have a few more arrangements like this with local businesses. It’s a win/win. It would be especially fun if it were a local restaurant. I could go there and take pictures. I could try their food and post video (I was once an ad rep for a newspaper and my favorite acconts were restaurants). We could use the pictures again on a Facebook Page and post them on Flickr.

Food and blogging seem to be on my mind today. My husband says I’m a tough customer when it comes to food. He’s made me very picky because he tries to perfect everything he makes and he asks for my opinion. Of course I always have one.

I broke down and bought the new Thesis WordPress theme. It’s a quality wordpress theme but it’s not free. It’s the first time I’ve purchased a theme. I usually pay someone to customize a free theme. I’m still learning it but here’s my preliminary review.

Is Thesis worth it?
I think it is. I like that I can change the width of my columns and number of columns very easily. I like that it’s very easy to change the font face and size (wish that included color). Things that would take a long time are much quicker and site wide rather than having to go into many files. With Thesis I only edit one file instead of widgets or code. They have a design panel and a regular panel that has a large menu of options for making global changes.

I also like how you can choose a template for each page. Just choose from a dropdown and you can choose to show a template that doesn’t have a sidebar. So it makes it much easier to operate the site like pages of a web site rather than a blog.

Technical Skills
I’m still learning but what I don’t like is that you still need some technical skills to make changes to the header image, background image and tweaks like that. I use hooks (a separate download) which help me place ads in the right places but they’re a little complicated because you need to know CSS. There are tutorials but again I wish this was easier to use. It’s even confusing to me than editing code from the files themselves.

Aesthetics
The style is so boxy and plain. Most of the customizations I’ve seen still have that feel. I’m not sure how to round corners or make the site look more aesthetically pleasing. Even adding a new header is a pain. Many bloggers stick with Blogger because they have more designs out of the box. Of course you can pay someone to design your site. There aren’t a lot of designs that appeal to women. I talked to Joseph Scott and his wife about it last week. He works on WordPress (programmer). I’m not sure he’s convinced that it’s as big of an issue as I think it is.

What do you think about Thesis WP theme?

A Bountiful, Utah steak restaurant called Mo’ Bettah Steaks has a simple web page but it has a lot of personality. Their web site is not fancy and it’s not search engine optimized. But front and center they invite you to become their friend on Facebook. And they encourage it at the restaurant too. This has paid off at a time when a lot of restaurants are hurting. They attribute 20-30% of their business to their Facebook presence. They’re planning to expand soon.

They have over 1,300 friends on Facebook which for a local business is great. They held a photo contest and gave away free food to the winners. That gave them a lot of photos to post. They also have two videos.

Another local restaurant Blue Lemon in Alpine made a group (don’t like the look as much) that has over 100 members. Local restaurants are natural fits for social media. Guru’s Cafe is on Twitter and Facebook but they don’t promote either on the home page of their web site. I haven’t been in for a while but it wasn’t mentioned at their restaurant that I could see.

When you do social media you need to integrate it into all of your marketing – and inside your store. The most successful marketing often is blending of many online and offline resources. There are so many tools (email, Twitter, Facebook, web site, blog, events, press releases, etc) to get the word out.

If you want to learn more about this, I’m part of Smart Media 2009 conference June 18-19 in Lindon, Utah. We’re looking for a Utah restaurant who wants to sponsor lunch for about 100 people. In return we’ll weave your restaurant into the training. That means we’ll create a Facebook Page for you (or a Twitter account) and show you how to market it. Contact me at grocerybike@gmail.com or the contact form on this blog if you’re interested.

I found out I was mentioned in this story about bloggers who make money on their blog. Dooce is the queen of blogging in Utah but there are several who make money on their blog and because of their blog. Most bloggers (including me) make more money because of the reputation we’ve built blogging.

Ways my blog makes money:

• More visibility = consulting opportunities. For example, someone Google’s “press release writer” and finds me and hires me.
• More visibility = other types of business opportunities, job offers and partnerships. Note: I got a job from CraigsList and an interview with an amazing organization off LinkedIn but otherwise it’s almost all because of my blog and relationships. I like having a job to go to, unlike a lot of people who love working from home on their own or just consulting.
• I sell more press releases writing and related services. I’m still ironing out the kinks but I’ve gotten more new clients this way now. Until recently it was mostly word of mouth.
• Affiliate ads (some months this is by far the biggest income but its inconsistant).
• By far the biggest is others paying me to blog on their site. I make most of my income blogging for others (including at my day job), which means I blog here less. I also tweet more than I blog now. Twitter has spoiled me.

Interestingly enough, no one has ever paid for an advertisement on my blog. I’ve had a few bites but they were either unethical or they didn’t follow through. I should pursue it more. Affiliate marketing has spoiled me.

I mostly blog because I love to write and share what is happening online and what I’m learning. I remember my boss at Tahitian Noni absolutely hating that I was blogging so much at work. Then I remember thinking, if I can’t stop doing this then someday I’ll get paid well to do it. And that is what happened.

Search engines still reward blogging because tends to be quality, frequently updated and longer. A blog is still my home base for everything I do. It’s also a public record and reference for me.

The community and recognition I get from blogging is great but at the end of the day I still absolutely love internet marketing. From the minute I learned what it was I have pursued it. Thankfully my first job out of college was answering the phones at a high end web site development company. I surfed the Internet a lot and learned it inside and out. I never knew it would make me money or that it would become my career. I learned HTML. I’ve always loved marketing. Eventually I found my niche. It’s been a fun ride and it’s still just beginning.

I haven’t written about Twitter for a long time. I’ve put together a few things to help people new to Twitter, but there are things for you even if you’ve been tweeting for a while.

First Steps to Twitter

1. Set up a profile, add a link to your web site, add a photo, then a bio. Be sure to use keyword phrases you want to rank for in your bio. If you’re tweeting for business, at some point (I still need to do this) you should customize your background to match your branding.
2. Set up alerts and the autofollow & autofollow messages on TweetLater or SocialToo. Autofollow or autounfollow is not for everyone — be sure not to make it to marketing intensive (welcome new followers).
3. Find people or businesses to follow on Twitter (link goes to video about how to find people in a specific geographic location, but there’s more below). Follow them and hopefully they will follow you back. I also like Twitterholic for this. Here’s a list of small businesses on Twitter.
4. Brainstorm and come up with possible tweets and schedule them using TweetLater. Do this especially for events or promotions. Schedule pre-tweets in the days building up to the event. Then a few hours before, then an hour before. Tweet live at the event then wrap it up with more tweets.

You can tweet on the web site, by IM, or by text message. I prefer using the web or Tweetdeck to write new posts. For most, I recommend that you schedule tweets and then check Twitter 2-3 times a day (morning when you get in, before lunch, before you leave). Answer any direct messages or replies. Respond to people who ask about your industry or business (using tracked keywords). Ask people questions or give tips.

Twitter tracking site (track keywords or mentions): http://tweetbeep.com
www.tweetdeck.com is a standalone application that you can write tweets from and more easily track & manage your Twitter account
www.tweetlater.com lets you schedule out tweets, auto follow people, and auto reply to new followers
search.twitter.com lets you find new people to follow & search for phrases

This page is a great summary of ways to use Twitter for business & what to write about: http://www.chrisbrogan.com/50-ideas-on-using-twitter-for-business/

Here’s a URL shortener (I believe it gives stats so you can see how many people clicked on a URL you sent): http://bit.ly or there is one on TweetDeck. I downloaded TinyURL that is a Firefox plugin.

I’m a social media junkie and love how press releases, blogs, and social media can combine to create some amazing PR campaigns and results. This campaign was to help business for a car web web site.

The site is basic – it highlights cars on eBay that go for under $1,000. So he (Chris Hedgecock – is that his real name??) doesn’t have his own product (which I like – I hate dealing with products). You too could start a business like this if you have some online savvy.

I thought it would be a great idea to buy a car for under $1,000 from the site and drive it coast to coast in an attempt to get some news coverage and visitors to the site. We were successful in appearing on a dozen news broadcasts and driving almost half a million visitors to the site in three weeks – all for free.

On the largest day we did over 110,000 uniques – all for free. Not to say it wasn’t a lot of work, but it was also a lot of fun.

You’ve got to read about it on Shoemoney’s blog for the details. While he didn’t hire a PR firm, he did get friends involved (and he has good contacts who had the know-how). I wouldn’t say it was free but it was definately less than he could’ve spent running ads and much more effective.

Notice that he had:

• A personality and attitude – he likes meeting people (being social). He was willing to be creative and then do what it took to accomplish what he was after.
• Time. Notice he drove across the country and planned all of this – lots and lots of time. He wasn’t sitting in his office. He followed up A LOT and kept track of things. He took the time to make the story relevant to the local market he was in.
• Know-how. He learned or knew how to create a YouTube channel, video, blog, etc. If you don’t have this, you learn or you pay someone for consulting.
• Contacts. His real estate friend did a lot of legwork. He had someone write the press release (free?)
• He used News Power (the free trial?) who figured the news value was over $92,000!!!

Here are some posts from Drew Schulte:

Tips for social networking
and another list of niche social media web sites

Many times the trick is tracking results. He had web site analytics see to see how many people were coming to his site. He then used News Power to track how many stories resulted.

Thanks for sharing your experiences – a great example of creating your own news and running a campaign around it. I talk about this in my book. If you don’t have something newsworthy, then create something. These can be some of the best campaigns.