Yesterday I wrote about Plurk as an alternative to Twitter. Another microblogging alternative worth checking out is Jaiku. Jaiku was recently bought by Google and only a few days ago Google released the Jaikuengine that is running Jaiku as open source).

In other words you can now, relatively effortless, start your own alternative to Twitter. I guess we are going to see quite a few of them shortly.

But, even if you don’t want to run your own micro-blogging service, Jaiku, is a good alternative to Twitter.

Since Jaiku is now owned by Google it will be interesting to see if posts on Jaiku will be integrated into the Google search-engine especially since Twitter started their own search engine. The Twitter engine is actually the first real threat to Google in a long while and it will be interesting to see how they are going to monetize their service.

So how do Jaiku compare to Twitter?

If you have used IRC at all you know about channels. A channel is like a feed centered on a shared subject. You can join already created channels that you find interesting and you can create your own channels.

Just like twitter, Jaiku, has good mobile support. Jaiku was developed in Finland, the land of Nokia, and I would say their mobile support is even better than Twitter.

I have not been very active on Jaiku myself but its not a bad service and well worth to check out. When I get the time, if ever, I will give it a chance.

I will however make sure to stay updated on what Google is going to do with this one.

PR: wait… I: wait… L: wait… LD: wait… I: wait… wait… Rank: wait… Traffic: wait… Price: wait… C: wait…

Post from: Site-Hype

Own your own Twitter service

Today I’ll continue my coverage of Twitter with two quick random things you should know but that I don’t know how to group.

A twitter message can be 140 characters long and you can send messages either public or directly to specific user but only if that user is following you. What if that user is just a program? Then the twitter message can be thought of as arguments to that program, just like when you type something in the dos prompt (or command line).

This way of thinking opens up for a range of possibilities. You can control the program from any device that is able to send a twitter message. Since you can tweet using normal SMS messages you can basically access the service from any mobile device. You can start to build platform independent web-services today, and probably cheaper than most other solutions. Amazon.com already has a range of services based on twitter and this idea to promote their products.

Not long ago Twitter started a search engine where you can search tweets in real time. http://search.twitter.com/ I think this is a really amazing research tool. You can follow stories as they evolve and get seconds old updates a great complement to Google, no wonder there are rumours about twitter being next on Google buy list,

Follow me on twitter www.twitter.com/sitehype

Post from: Site-Hype

Twitter Search And Services

About two weeks ago I wrote that I never got the idea with Twitter. About a week ago I decided to give it all one more chance, using some ideas and tools I recently discovered. The results so far are very promising, I will continue to Twitter.

Twitter is quite similar to mobile SMS. I really can’t understand how SMS has grown so very successful. I mean, isn’t it just a lot quicker to just call the person and say what’s on your mind. No need to type message on a device that really isn’t made for text input. Just use your voice, its faster and more natural.

I can list a number of drawbacks with SMS over old fashioned talk but SMS has two big advantages: You are forced to be brief and to the point since your message can only be so many characters long. You can read your SMS’s when you have the time.

So Twitter is like SMS for computers, but you can write your tweets with a real keyboard, something at least I value a lot.

So let’s recap

The last week I setup a brand new Twitter account and as I wrote on this blog how to twitter I practiced what I preached on that account.
I have automated post to my twitter feed so it is updated automatically when I post in the blog. I have added plugins to my blog to make it easy for readers to pass on posts they like to their followers and I did some more tricks to get followers. I also use this account for manual tweets when I feel like it and writes about updates on the site-hype software as a service to out members.

Using these techniques have gain on average 10 new followers each day, this is without doing much work at all, no pressure all leverage, and I have parted with no money. To build my email list at this rate I would have to do a lot more work unless I wanted to pay for ads.

I have not yet come to test conversion rate from my twitter followers compared to my email list. I haven’t send out any offers yet to the list. I will post results on that as well when I have something to share.

Post from: Site-Hype

Twitter Results

So, I am already starting to get bored of writing about Twitter. But, I have a few more tips I want to share with you all before I let Twitter be. And today you really don’t want to miss the tip.

Last time I wrote about how you can automate your twittering to send automatic messages at given times and how to automatically unsubscribe to people that you are following but who are not following you.

The next step is to get follower to your Twitter account. If no-one is following you, no-one is listening to your tweets. You are basically like talking to yourself.

I already told you to include your Twitter id in your post and in your emails. That’s one way to build followers, but its kind of slow.

Now let’s get a crowd the fast and easy way.

Please Login or Register to read the rest of this content.

Post from: Site-Hype

Twitter followers are easy!

Welcome to the fourth part in my small series of tips for using Twitter as a marketing tool I will let you in on the secret to automate your twittering and really save time plus one more way to reach out to people.

First here are the links to the other parts of this series:
Are you using Twitter the wrong way
Twitter for seo
Need Twitter Followers

Tweetlater is a tool that among other things will let you auto follow anyone who is following you. And send them a welcome message, one more way to reach people who have expressed an interest in you without having to lift a finger. But more importantly, Tweetlater lets you schedule your twittering in advance.

So point your browser to:
TweetLater

and click the create account to create a new free Tweetlater account. When your account is created you are prompted to signup for their newsletter. If you don’t want to signup to the newsletter you can login directly using the box to the right.

The first thing you want to do is to add a new Twitter account to your Tweetlater account. Click on the +Twitter button to go to the add account page.

Add a twitter account

Check the box to automatically send a message to new followers. This is a Twitter direct message so the 120 character limit applies and only the person who followed you will see it.

In my message I thank the person for following and then add something to get my new follower to click a link included in the message. You might need to use a url shortening service to fit it all into 120 characters. Do make sure you don’t try to sell anything at this point, that will only make people mad and un-follow you.

If you want to read my message I guess yuu have to follow me at www.twitter.com/sitehype

Next check the Auto-follow and auto-unfollow check boxes. You can read the description next to check box what it will do but you want these checked.

Finally there is an option to get an email with a digest of all replies you have gotten. This is a nice feature if you don’t login to your Twitter account every day.

Now, Click “save” and you have connected your Twitter account with your Tweetlater account.

Now to schedule a tweet for later you click on the “new tweet” button. Enter your message and select a date for it to be published.

In Wordpress you might have noticed that you can set a date when a blogg post is to be published (set a date and click on the schedule button). Combine this with Tweetlater and you can automate your blogg posting and add matching updates on Twitter. Do the setup once a week to have your blogg updated daily and save lots of time and worry.

Post from: Site-Hype

Twitter Auto-Pilot

Welcome to the third part of my short series on how to use Twitter for marketing. You can read the two other posts (twitter-for-seo and are-you-using-twitter-the-wrong-way)

To reach out with your message through Twitter you need followers, many followers.

You can add followers and hope the person you follow are going to follow you. This is recommended in a bunch or e-books and by countless gurus. Three are even software that does this for you, each day following a few new users to hope they will follow you.

There are even black-hat internet marketing tools that autocreate twitter accounts and does updates and follows users all automated, but I will not touch on that here. If you are interested in building a long term relations with your customers this is probably a bad idea and I don’t use these techniques.

Another way is to hope people find you and select to follow you by themselves. If you have a blog or web site, add a follow us on Twitter link. People who visit your web site are more likely to be interested in what you do. I have a link in out link list in Wordpress for people to follow me, and I add a link in posts from time to time like here

Yet another service you should be using is wefollow . Wefollow is a user created directory of Twitter users. When you register your Twitter account you get to add three keywords for people to help people find your profile.

Another twitter directory you might want to check out is twitprofiles

And last but not least, don’t forget to add twitter to your site-hype account.

Post from: Site-Hype

Need Twitter Followers?

Yesterday I started to write a short series of post about Twitter and how you can get it working for you (Are you using twitter the right way?).

If you want to use Twitter in your marketing you need followers, people who has clicked to be updated when you write anything. Ideally you want followers that retweets your post to share them with their followers. This is where Twitter and the other microblogg services can really shine.

Today there really is no way to spread a message faster in the world if it catches on, the only problem is that you have to make it interesting in just 140 characters which is really hard. And if you don’t have many followers it will be hard getting the message to take fire, through it is possible.

This is really fine and all but wouldn’t it be great if you could leverage you microblogging to help you SEO? Backlinks are still at the core of SEO for the major search engines. Now there is a new free service that will get you Twitter backlinks to your web pages.

Twittwall lets you get a free web page for your tweets, it’s similar to the wall in Facebook.

Go to the site, http://twitwall.com, and login with your Twitter account. Click “add entry” and start writing on your twitwall. Here is a link to my page just created today:

http://twitwall.com/view/?who=sitehype

Now people can comment on your postings and re-tweet right from the wall, and you get your Twitter followers with you on twitwall. When you write an entry on your twitwall the entry will appear in Twitter as well.

Post from: Site-Hype

Twitter for SEO

I guess you already are testing your web pages with a/b tests and track how users interact with your site with something like a web analytics program, for example Google analytics. If you don’t, just stop reading this and go implement…

But, normal analytic program does not capture how users are actually interacting with your site. You don’t get to see how the scroll around on the page. You don’t get to see what they move their cursor above, where on the web page they spend time.

Now there is a new really useful service that will get exactly that information for you.

Userfly is a service that records how people interact with your site. You install a short snippet of Javascript and every visit to your site is recorded. The service actually records the state of the mouse pointer and the interaction with your site.

When you get your first visitor to your site you see a new item in you dashboard and get to watch the visit as a movie.

This tool is really useful to improve usability on your site but it is also really awesome to help you improve your conversion rate, to sell more from your site or increase the number of opt-in to your email list.

On one of my site I discovered that all users tended to scroll past a part of the web page. I can see where user put the mouse pointer and move it above some text lines, probably because they read the text below. I know which of my testimonials they are actually reading and which they ignore. I think you can imagine how useful this information is.

Userfly is free to test, you get 10 recordings to test it out. If you want to do more recordings you will have to pay them a monthly fee.
http://userfly.com/

Post from: Site-Hype

A new way to improve your conversion rate

How about doing your social postings quicker?

Pixelpipe is a service that allows you to post in one place and get your post distributed to several sites. Pixelpipe currently support more than 50 sites mostly focused on photo sharing sites but it also has a number of blogs and microblogg services. You can also add your own bloggs.

Services like this can save you a huge amount of time. The downside is that you have to give away your login information. If for some reason pixelpipe is hacked or lose this information you have not just lost one account but all of your accounts.

Personally I am prepared to take that risk for the saved time and the increased exposure, though I created new accounts just for the purpose for Pixelpipe..

I have started to use it for all my microblogging, in effect allowing me to write as quickly as I do on Twitter but get my message to accounts on not only twitter but practically all important micro blogging sites.

You can also use one of many free applications to make it even easier to post to PixelPipe or even use your mobile phone to do your updates.

I have yet to use it for blogging but I intend to use that as will starting this week. We will see how it turns out. Services like this will cause duplicate content when you submit, since the same content is posted on all your sites. I would not worry too much about that in the beginning, but if that is something you are worried about, you can select per post which blogging sites your post should appear on.

Get your free pixelpipe account at – http://pixelpipe.com/

Post from: Site-Hype

Pixelpipe – Socialposting one to many