Well, as you all know who read this blog, I am Cluetrainian. This means I put more trust in the value and impact of the online influencer long tail than I do in the impact of the couple-dozen top-influencers that most social media consultants and digital PR teams recommend. This is the Internet, an efficient platform allowing easy access to what’s called the network effect: the value of your social network is dependent on the number of others using it. While it may well be important to have the top-100 influencers on any particular topic following you on Twitter or Facebook, it is not essential. You can make up for it by attracting, retaining, and activating everyone else as well. This means I believe that anyone who shares her time, talent, and experience online is an important online influencer and potential brand ambassador for my clients.

How do you get lots and lots of people to follow your brand? Don’t know where to start? Firstly, make sure you share your Twitter and Facebook information everywhere your brand exists in the real world or in cyberia. You could spend months and months developing these lists and groups of followers, encouraging folks to RT your content and so forth.

Of course, you can always buy loads and loads of Twitter followers, popping you from your current 2,500 to 25,000 within a month. Yes, I said it. You can buy tens and hundreds of thousands of followers both on Twitter and on Facebook. But, I will tell you now that the followers are generally spammy, poorly-targeted, and they often bail the moment they decide you’re unworthy.

I know for a fact that there’s a guy in Brazil who will hook you up with thousands of Brazilian tweeters almost immediately for a fee. There are dozens of folks who do it and you just need to do a little searching on Google to find them all. That’s somewhere to start. Once you’ve bought your online friends — lots and lots of them — you have to deliver the je ne sais quois to keep them.

Mind you, just because you’re cheating with the acquisition doesn’t mean you’re out of the woods. There’s still a lot of hard work. If you suck, are salesy, don’t tweet or post very often, are selfish, don’t play games or bait conversation, don’t give til it hurts — all the hard work you should have been doing with your small cadre of top-influencers — even all of these thousands of purchased followers will start unfollowing you almost immediately.

You had them until you lost them.

It is sort of like being the opening act to U2: you might have 30,000 folks who didn’t come to see you who are there to see Bono, so there’s no guarantee that they’ll ever buy your album. There’s every reason they should but you really could make a mess of it — if they don’t, it is your fault as they were your customers to lose. Same thing with buying followers and likes. If the targeting is completely off, if you suck as a host, or if you’re boring or rude, they’re gone — at least the real ones are.

Stated simply, the state of the art in social media is still bespoke, based on old models of public relations where each particular PR agent has a Rolodex and that card represents years and years of personal relationships. Very precious and personal connections, formed and tempered over time, built on trust.

And, this very same framework has been mapped directly into social media where many agencies and companies spend all of their time taking their current 25 mainstream media contacts and 25 social media contacts to dinners at Morton’s. There’s not enough budget or time to prospect much further or deeper than that.

Which is a sincere pity.

How can one take an old PR model that only concerns itself with an easy-to-manage elite core of gate-keeping journalists, publishers, and broadcasters and map that onto a new media model? A model that could potentially include anyone and everyone who should decide to commit to starting blogging. Producing content for online consumption, resulting in becoming an online influencer. It’s the circle of success.

In this theory of everyone, in this theory of long-tail digital PR outreach and engagement, it is essential to find viable ways of 1) discovering everyone — because there are potentially a lot of people that show up in your net when you’re being inclusive and indiscriminate 2) keeping up — because the amount of engagement explodes when you go from a few thousand to tens-of-thousands, be it curating comments, unfollowing and blocking spammers, checking your direct message inbox for relevant and timely requests or queries, and judiciously checking for retweets, @replies, and mentions and engaging them appropriately and in a timely manner.

Finally, don’t forget to thank everyone online who helps you no matter how “small” because if you choose to use a theory of everyone in your social media strategy, you can’t only be polite, kind, generous, and patient to the celebrities, you need to be kind and responsive to everyone, all the time. (Via Biznology and Socialmedia.biz and Marketing Conversation)

Related articles

• Target Twitter audiences of every size with a theory of everyone (biznology.com)
• The Twitter Obsession for Startups (convonix.com)
• Creative Ways To Increase Your Twitter Followers (blazingminds.co.uk)
• Data: Identify Yourself Authoritatively for More Followers (seomoz.org)
• 5 ways on how Social Media can be used to build business connections (waithash.com)
• How Social Media Really Works (cristinsconciergeqa.com)
• Here’s An Incredibly Sly PR Stunt That Morton’s Steakhouse Pulled Off (businessinsider.com)
• Answers to Your Top 3 Social Media Questions (hubspot.com)
• Distributing Value: Why Content Curation Is King Now (pamil-visions.net)
• Should Every Business Invest in Social Media? (communiquepr.com)
• How to unfollow everyone on Twitter? (dailybloggr.com)
• Social Media Site Demographics – The Facebook VS Twitter Infographic Breaks Down Who Uses Each Site (TrendHunter.com) (trendhunter.com)
• Build Twitter followers using the theory of everyone (socialmedia.biz)

Related articles

• Answers to Your Top 3 Social Media Questions (hubspot.com)
• Distributing Value: Why Content Curation Is King Now (pamil-visions.net)
• Should Every Business Invest in Social Media? (communiquepr.com)
• How to unfollow everyone on Twitter? (dailybloggr.com)
• Social Media Site Demographics – The Facebook VS Twitter Infographic Breaks Down Who Uses Each Site (TrendHunter.com) (trendhunter.com)
• Build Twitter followers using the theory of everyone (socialmedia.biz)

If you’re smart and savvy but have not yet been wooed to the world of Twitter, All a Twitter is for you: All a Twitter: A Personal and Professional Guide to Social Networking with Twitter

Author Tee Morris writes this book more to the folks who are not quite wooed by Twitter yet but who are twi-curious. The first half of the book is boring but addresses all of the questions of the what, when, where, and how of Twitter.

The second half of the book is not only interesting but has Tee written all over it and offers up the who and the why with quite a dose of subjective opinion, which I find very attractive since too many of these Twitter books don’t come from a place of the personal testimonial.

While the first half may be boring, it is super-useful, taking you by the hand and showing you through all of the steps required to wade into Twitter fully outfitted, including help with my Android G1 phone (something sorely lacking in Twitter for Dummies and I am pissed).
Another thing you might like about this book is that it spends as much time talking about why Twitter sucks and why you should not jump in as it does, convincingly, talking about the why and how, both from the point of view of someone who wants to become part of the Twittersphere and from the point of view of someone who wants to use Twitter as a business or public relations tool.

The chapters on the tools, gear, services, applications, and applets is exhaustive. There is actually no better review of ways to interact with Twitter that I have found in an offline book. One omission that I did find in Twitter For Dummies is a list of how to use Twitter from the “command line:” “d chrisabraham blah” allows you to send a direct message to me. “f chrisabraham” or “follow chrisabraham” follows me without having to click, click, click. There are others shortcuts if you’re using SMS to engage Twitter. This was omitted and I use these every day, especially when I am at a Tweetup and want to follow the person I am talking to — I will drop a “follow teemonster” to add Tee Morris to the folks I follow.

Aside from this arcane omission, which is probably the result of an edit from QUE (“do we really need to include this? I think it will confuse folks!”), the book is comprehensive.

In fact, Tee Morris doesn’t pull any punches. I mean, he tells it like he feels it. He even sacrifices our beloved-but-on-our-shit-lists Guy Kawasaki in a nationally — possibly internationally — published book about Twitter. I mean, I am not only amazed but snap, he really has an opinion not only on Twitter but on how it can and should be used — and his advice is good.

You should listen to him. Everything he says you can take to the bank — at least until you have some time in the cockpit yourself. If you follow what Teen Morris tells you every page of the book, you’ll be golden. You will thrive in twitterville, twitterverse, twittersphere — whatever you call it. I am going to get my assistant on the line and make her bird-dog Tee down and book lunch, maybe beers if I am lucky. I feel like I know him after the 280 pages of the book and I like him.

And because I like Tee so much after reading the book, I accept the fact that he wants this book to be successful! Yes, it is true that Tee Morris did send me a review copy of his book All a Twitter but who told him he could harass me like he’s been doing via email and twitter — talk about entitled! I mean, there’s no guarantee that you’ll get any sort of response from a blogger if you send him a copy of your book.

Tee must have known that I grew up Irish Catholic and that guilt was just the right away to get me to blog about his book. Well, it might have felt that way to him but I actually wasn’t messing with him — I like him (though we have never met, even though he is surely a local Virginia boy — why haven’t we met yet?). What happened is that I only got through half the book before I received a copy of Twitterville: How Businesses Can Thrive in the New Global Neighborhoods, a book by Shel Israel and I book that mentioned me on page 79, I might add — Shel is one smart cookie.

I am sort of psyched that I waited a while between the first and the last half. When I finished the first half of the book I was super-tired of all of the gear, apps, and tech talk. I was tired of the what, when, where, and how. If I had powered through, I might not have given the real book — the juicy book — the time and attention — and awe — it deserved.

In fact, to be honest, Shel did it right. He wrote the who and why part of the book first and added the techie glyphs at the end; however, that’s neither here nor there because I have been tweeting since early Spring 2007 and have over ten-thousand followers and actually have a PR company that offers Twitter services — of course the remedial and basics stuff would lose me. Don’t let that turn you off.

The only reason I mention it is because the Twitter gurus of the world should not give this book a pass just because they’re Twitter rockstar themselves — the second half of this book is pure gold for everyone, especially we “gurus” (he hates that word) who are constantly navel-gazing. Be sure you get your dirty hands on this book and burn through that Twitter 101 stuff, spend some time with the apps, and then power on to the who and the what and the why of it all.

Really, everyone should be all-a-Twitter.

(Via Socialmedia.biz and Marketing Conversation)

Twitter For Dummies should be called Twitter for Everyone. I may be considered a pretty heavy Twitter user and was #herebeforeoprah but even I really enjoyed getting into the heads of Laura @pistachio Fitton, Michael @gruen Gruen, and Leslie @geechee_girl Poston.

If I were to boil Twitter for Dummies down, I would say that you can’t dumb down Laura, Michael, or Leslie — they’re leaders in Twitterville and you really cannot be disappointed if you grab the book.

For me, the entire book only took me the length of a Hollywood movie to read because I am pretty advanced; however, I must say that I they threw in kitchen sink in this book, extending into lesser-used features such as the Public Timeline and really geeky command-line access to Twitter such as “d chrisabraham” or “follow chrisabraham,” etc.

In fact, there’s a whole chapter on rocking Twitter via SMS text-messaging, something that may be less relevant to the Twitterati but is very important to 75% of all cell phone users (and yes, I did make up that nuber, I think it is closer to 90%) who don’t rock smartphones — just be sure to make sure you get the unlimited texts plan if you plan to go with SMS or you’ll be screwed.

Of course, everything is covered and covered again and you really need to be a moron if you can’t sort yourself out with Twitter by the end of Part III — but this is Twitter for Dummies and not Twitter for Morons (and, publishers, I am super interested in writing that book — also, Twitter for Effen Morons) so there you go — it is what it is. (Strangely enough, however, is that there isn’t one mention of my beloved Android G1 phone! There’s mentions of the iPhone, the Blackberry, and even Javascript phones but where the hell’s my G1! OK, I am done.)

Well, at the start of this review, I said this was all about Laura Fitton, Michael Gruen, and Leslie Poston, and it is, but there’s not a whole lot of them in I-III chapters. Part IV is when all the good stuff comes a-pouring through. Who else but the best of the best would engage issues like “Finding Your Tweet Voice,” “Twitter for Business,” “The Social Side of Twitter,” and “Changing the World, One Tweet at a Time.”

This is the kind of stuff that makes me want to rename this book from “Twitter for Dummies” to “Twitter for Everyone: From Total Newbie to Total Rockstar.”

(Via Socialmedia.biz and Marketing Conversation)

Please check out my latest post on Advertising Age Digital Next, Twitter Is What Second Life Wasn’t: Light, Cheap and Open:

Twitter Is What Second Life Wasn’t: Light, Cheap and Open — And That’s Why It’ll Outlive the Hype Cycle

I run into many skeptics who believe that Twitter is rife with the sort of hype associated with the ascent and crash of Second Life. This is not true. Twitter is suffused with hype, for sure, but it is a much different and more sustainable hype than Second Life.

Here’s why: Twitter is light, cheap, open and permanent, whereas Second Life is heavy, expensive, closed and ephemeral. Twitter does things right where Second Life failed.

Second Life is amazingly heavy, requiring lots of computer, lots of bandwidth and a commitment to client software. Second Life is a closed system, a walled city, completely invisible to serendipity and coincidence. Second Life is greedy, pushing avarice and commerce. Second Life is ephemeral and anti-textual, meaning that all of the work and energy one spent on Second Life invariably went away the moment people stopped investing time and money into the platform. While there was a programming language, a scripting language and lots of room for creativity, Second Life was not nearly as agnostic and open a platform as it could have been.

On the other hand, Twitter is open and has a fantastically generous API (an open API as opposed to a closed API, which is why so many developers have created such useful applications on top of the service). Twitter is highly textual, highly contagious and very much real time.

Consider its effect on content discovery. Google, the search king, always wants to know it is up to date, that it is on top of everything. It’s constantly insecure that it will lose the war to upstarts. And when it comes to zeitgeist 2.0 — real-time trend tracking and trend recognition — Twitter moves even faster than breaking news scrawls and updates.

The most famous example is the rapidity with which the Twittersphere responds to tragic events like earthquakes, tornadoes, and terrorist events like the shootings in #mumbai and the #iranelection.

For a second, let’s forget Twitter the website and look at how differently people access and engage with Twitter. Not only can one interface via the web or SMS, but there are also hundreds of desktop clients, iPhone and smart phone apps, and third-party mashups of sites and services.

That’s what’s funny: A large proportion of the API calls to Twitter these days aren’t even made by humans twittering all day long. Rather, they’re made by third-party search engines and services offering sundry services: finding friends, tracking news, graphing conversation, tracking searches, plotting trends, collecting metrics, following people, un-following people.

In many ways, the Twitter platform has become almost a fungible input-output flow of data, like IP, tap water, or the electrical mains — all the creativity and all of the development is happening as a result of this relatively featureless and structure-less raw platform.

Everybody admits that the elegance of Facebook‘s interface does an amazing job of hand-holding the diverse levels of technological prowess that Facebook users possess. However, Facebook shares many things in common with Second Life: It is a walled-garden, cliquey and hard to cross-pollinate. And finally, Facebook works very hard at defining what the user experience is to the best of its ability in a world where openness and open access can often work for you instead of against you.

The biggest mistake that social network services and online virtual communities make is being too invested in the outcome of how the community will grow and develop. To be successful in community development and community creation, one must be committed to the community and meeting their needs versus being committed to giving them what the community producer thinks the community wants and needs — often very different things.

At the end of the day, Twitter has always been more like the cardboard box holding the toy than the toy itself. Twitter seems to have built the perfect box to play in and with until you decide what sort of toy you want to build — and then Twitter makes it possible for everyone and his brother to take a go at building the toy in the box, always just focusing on being the most amusing, easy-to-use, scalable and compelling box possible.

To me, Twitter is a lot like IRC from back in the day. When you install Internet Relay Chat, there are no rooms and there are no members. Only by engaging and by creating rooms and groups does it become truly useful. (Twitter and IRC share the same conventions in terms of using the hash, #, to indicate a self-organizing group that only exists as long as people choose to use it.)

The strange thing is is that Twitter is one of the very few applications — Web 2.0 or not — that gets the benefit of everybody trying to train each other via — believe it or not — morning talk shows, news spots, news specials, local get-togethers. Oprah! Ellen! The View! I mean, how many dot-com/Web 2.0 platforms have the benefit of that? On the flip side, the downside to Twitter’s choosing not to carefully control every aspect of the user experience is that it’s not always intuitive or apparent how to use it. The third-party apps may be more useful, but most newbies begin their experience at Twitter.com.

People who don’t get Twitter really have not spent enough time with it. There are tons of ways people can use Twitter: Many people use Twitter as an alternative to an RSS feed news reader, following Twitter feeds of news organizations and news alerts, including links and so forth. Twitter doesn’t care how you use it: passive reading or active conversation.

In fact, Twitter is such a neutral solution that you might very well forget that you’re a member, which is why there might be a perception that over 60 percent of all of the users who visit the site don’t go back the next month: Twitter doesn’t want to be too much trouble.

~ ~ ~
Chris Abraham, president of the digital-PR firm Abraham Harrison, is a blogger who specializes in social-media marketing with a focus on blogger outreach, blogger engagement and search-reputation management. Chris lives in Berlin and Washington and can be reached via Twitter, Facebook, or email.

Via Advertising Age Digital Next and Marketing Conversation

So many folks are scolding stars like @oprah and @barbarajwalters because they’re not following-back the thousands of fans who are following them. Here is a case-in-point from Lena Claxton and Alison Woo, Don’t Make Oprah’s Twitter Mistakes:

Right now by only following 10 people, she’s using Twitter as a broadcast medium. The power in Twitter is in speaking AND listening. And for someone who already has a huge platform to speak to her audience with her TV show, she might consider using Twitter to LISTEN and engage in conversation.

Stars don’t need to follow-back. They’re stars.  Their brand is secure and we don’t even need to engage in a conversation with us, necessarily.  And, if Barbara Walters and Oprah Winfrey do a good enough job at nodding, winking, and sharing insights into their lives, their process, and their experience, that’s good enough, because they’re stars, they’re not like us, and they don’t really need our approval.

Additionally, if an A-list celeb is following everyone back and responding to all convos and carefully-reading their Twitter stream to the tune of 300,000+ follow-backs, it will probably end up not being the star or celebrity herself, but a small flock of ghost-twitterers, which is something we the fans don’t want at all.

Case-in-point why Oprah is doing it write is that tonight on Entertainment Tonight, they reported that Oprah had announced that she was cancelling a show today about Columbine — and she did it on Twitter:

Oprah Tweeted Pulling Columbine Show

@oprah I pulled the Columbine show today-After reviewing, thought it focused too much on killers-hold a thought for the families, hard day for them (via Twitter)

This kind of open and generous “broadcasting” with her viewers, fans, and the media — ET and TMZ included — is what this is all about — if, and only if, you’re not only a star but also one of the most powerful women on the planet.

I have been really learning and enjoying all the posts about Twitter today coming through my newsreader, including one from Stephen Collins of AcidLabs, Is it brandjacking if you come in late and don’t ask nicely? While the post is about Brandjacking, which is interesting, I responded to this little excerpt:

With all the attention now surrounding Twitter, it seems that every brand and celebrity under the sun suddenly is or wants to be represented on it and every other social network. It seems as if the business world has finally read Cluetrain and wants to be in the bazaar engaging in the conversation.

But the fact is that while some brands have been engaging in the conversation for quite some time – Zappos, Dell, Comcast and others come to mind – others have only recently realised that this conversation even exists. And worse, they don’t seem to realise that there are a few rules that define how you engage in that conversation.

That was awesome — that is awesome! I have been a fan of The Cluetrain Manifesto and also The Cathedral and the Bazaar for for a decade and I think it is really important to return all of this Twitter hype back to basics.  Here are the first 6 theses of 99 of the Cluetrain Manifesto:

1. Markets are conversations.
2. Markets consist of human beings, not demographic sectors.
3. Conversations among human beings sound human. They are conducted in a human voice.
4. Whether delivering information, opinions, perspectives, dissenting arguments or humorous asides, the human voice is typically open, natural, uncontrived.
5. People recognize each other as such from the sound of this voice.
6. The Internet is enabling conversations among human beings that were simply not possible in the era of mass media.

Adam is an insightful fellow. He put into words what I have been thinking: celebrities are not ruining Twitter because nobody is forced to follow celebs — or anyone — on Twitter. Please read Celebrities Are Not Taking Over Twitter for the rest of the below insightful excerpt:

Celebrities like Ashton Kutcher, Shaquille O’Neal and Britney Spears are not taking over Twitter.  A well publicized event like Oprah tweeting on her show won’t help.  Ashton vs. Larry King, in a contest to see which account, @aplusk (“a plus k”) or @cnnbrk can reach a million followers first is a publicity event that had lots of benefits for both in terms of building large networks, but they are not taking over.  Any way you slice it, their efforts are futile. They can’t take over Twitter because of one simple fact: people choose who they follow.

The Twitterati Version 1 are bitter and jealous but they should be ecstatic because they,  the first Twitterati, were, in fact, ground zero for something that has taken the world by storm.

It is the same for Internet Denizens Version 1 complaining as the unwashed AOL members flooded into USENET.

What Adam might be saying and I am surely stating is that this break out is good and that there is still plenty of room in Twitter to hide in plain site.  Additionally, there is little or no use complaining.

We not only must compete with the Ashton Kutchers and Oprahs of the world but we are also dealing with their media machine, their publicists, their networks and their studios as well — in addition to the obvious equity that they’re happy to cash in from their other media platforms to spend of Twelebrity.

I am amazed that after three years and acruing “merely” 6,347 Followers, I have chosen to spend my time well by investing in 140 characters x 16,210 tweets, resulting in around 2,269,400 characters.

So, heaven forbid I had spent all of that energy in Pownce, which has died, instead of the winner, Twitter — now that would be a waste.

Unlike my blog, which is surely my very own intellectual property that I can maintain forever, my Twitter content is dependent on the health of Twitter. So, I feel blessed, amazed, and triumphant that Twitter has become de rigeur in the world of online media outreach, content-sharing, and community outreach.

I have been seeing lots of articles like Steve Rubel‘s Twitter Is Peaking; Get Ready to Follow The Geeks Onward and Larry Green’s response pot, Dear Twitter: Failure is not an option (for branding). Why am I so accepting of all of these Fail Whale “Twitter is over capacity” pages is because nobody could have anticipated the sudden and overwhelming ubiquity of Twitter in the last 90-days.

I don’t know how much Television you watch, but Twitter is everywhere. The last time Twitter had this sort of challenge, they stood up to the challenge — I didn’t experience one Fail Whale during the Inauguration of Barack Obama, for example.

People were blissed and amazed, if they noticed at all (people never notice success, they only note failure).

I know that new users are going to be turned off by Twitter’s current spate of Fail Whales; however, I am sure that the IT ninjas are in high-alert and maxing out every credit card in sight to acquire more servers and a better long-term architecture.  And, those men and women stepped up to the challenge of the presidential election and the presidential inauguration and

I am sure they are trying to step up to the overwhelming assault.

The real story is that all the morning and daytime TV shows have invested in Twitter: Morning Joe, Good Morning America, Martha Stewart, The View, Today Show, Bonnie Hunt, Live with Regis and Kelly, The Ellen Degeneres Show, and many others.  Now, that’s big news!

While all of Steve Rubel’s Geeks and Techies might be ready to jump, the worst that will happen — the very worst — is that Twitter might turn into MySpace, a property that is still very much a powerful platform for hundreds of millions of people to this very day — and still amazingly profitable for both News Corp and it’s advertisers.

And I guarantee you that the following conversation happened during a board meeting:

Evan Willams and Biz Stone: “We need a quadrillion dollars to buy a bazillion new servers and bandwidth because we’re about to tip into the mainstream, including Morning Joe, Good Morning America, Martha Stewart, The View, Today Show, Bonnie Hunt, Live with Regis and Kelly, and The Ellen Degeneres Show, in the next 90-days.”

The Twitter Board and Investors: “You’ve got to be bloody kidding me! There’s no way that the normal folks at Morning Joe, Good Morning America, Martha Stewart, The View, Today Show, Bonnie Hunt, Live with Regis and Kelly, The Ellen Degeneres Show, and many others would spontaneously decide to join and participate in such a geeky and techie thing such as Twitter.”

Well, guess what? Evan Willams and Biz Stone were right, if they really did make that sincerest of pleas.

Sometimes it is hard for me to even explain to my CEO, the Twitter-lame @markharrison why he should Twitter.  It isn’t always the easiest thing for me to convey outside of digital PR and brand promotion.  I am always looking around for people who explain the why of social media and the why of Twitter in a brilliant way. And, lucky me, Katelyn D’Eramo is just the person who did just that, Why the Average Person Should be on Twitter:

• Basically, no matter what your interests are, there are people on Twitter talking about it.
• You probably know at least one person on Twitter, you can be updated on his or her thoughts (I’m  BostonKate feel free to follow me!)
• You can stay up to date with your industry. No matter what your profession, there are people on Twitter talking about it. I follow other PR professionals to see what they are talking about and end up reading blogs/articles that I normally wouldn’t see.
• Sports fans are on Twitter, and you can enjoy constant updates about your favorite teams. BC Eagles have updates via Twitter, as do the Red Sox, Celtics and Patriots.
• You can ask for advice once you have a network. I recently asked where I can find cheap flights and got at least six responses.
• Your hometown is on it. Anything Boston is on Twitter, deals on restaurants, news, events, even Boston PD.
• Twitter is somewhat anonymous and unlike Facebook, not every single person you know in real life is reading your Tweets.
• Any magazine/website/publication is probably is on Twitter by now. If you want your all your news in one spot, Twitter can help to have that happen.
• Your mobile device is already set up to Twitter because the format is almost identical to text messages.
• You can follow celebrities, Mariah Carey, Britney Spears, Ashton Kutcher, just to name a few…
• There are some great shopping deals (clothes, shoes, accessories) on Twitter.
• Organizations that you belong to or are interested in are on Twitter. I found my sorority.

David Mullen popped me a Twitter DM (@dmullen) to let me know that he mentioned me as someone he would recommend to a Twitter newbie as part of his Twitter Starter Pack: 50 People You Should Follow:

You know how some things you buy – gaming systems, golf club sets for kids, etc. – come in starter packs that give you the goods you need to get started right out of the box.

Consider this your Starter Pack for great marketing, advertising, PR and social media people to follow on Twitter. Whether you’re just starting out or you’ve been tweeting for a while, I’d highly recommend making sure each of these folks is on your list.

In completely random order…

Amber Naslund (@ambercadabra) Matt Batt (@storyassistant)
Scott Meis (@scottmeis) Arik Hanson (@arikhanson)
Beth Harte (@bethharte) Shannon Paul (@shannonpaul)
Edward Boches (@edwardboches) Narciso Tovar (@narciso17)
Rachel Kay (@rachelakay) Lauren Fernandez (@cubanaLAF)
Jason Falls (@jasonfalls) Geoff Livingston (@geoffliving)
Jack Wojcicki (@prjack) Danny Brown (@dannybrown)
Ari Herzog (@ariherzog) Adam Needles (@abneedles)
Brad Mays (@bradmays) Chuck Hemann (@chuckhemann)
Dave Fleet (@davefleet) Patrick Evans (@patrickrevans)
Rick Liebling (@eyecube) Heather Huhman (@heatherhuhman)
Justin Levy (@justinlevy) Kelley Crane (@kellyecrane)
Sonny Gill (@sonnygill) Kirk Phillips (@kirkphillips)
Todd Defren (@tdefren) Lisa Hoffmann (@lisahoffmann)
Libby Krah (@libbykrah) Lara Kretler (@larak)
Sarah Evans (@prsarahevans) Mack Collier (@mackcollier)
Ann Handley (@marketingprofs) Terry Morawski (@morate)
Richie Escovedo (@vedo) Linda Jacobson (@quepr)
Amybeth Hale (@researchgoddess) Jen Wilbur (@rockstarjen)
Rohit Bhargava (@rohitbhargava) Scott Hepburn (@scotthepburn)
Susan Isk (@susanisk) Kathleen Moriarty (@trendsaddict)
Scott Stratten (@unmarketing) Lauren Vargas (@vargasl)
Olivier Blanchard (@thebrandbuilder) Chris Brogan (@chrisbrogan)
Mandy Vavrinak (@mvavrinak) Lisa Dilg (@pprlisa)
Christine Perkett (@missusP) Chris Abraham (@chrisabraham)

Rohit Bhargava from the Influential Marketing Blog just posted a very insightful article about how we entrepreneurs can learn from Twitter, 7 Lessons Entrepreneurs Can Learn From Twitter’s Success — basically, make things easier, better, more open (as in API), and more insidious (all of Twitter’s competitors feel compelled to integrate with Twitter — how insidious is that — open API wins again):

By any measure, the growth and popularity of Twitter has been phenomenal. To say that Twitter has hit mainstream isn’t really the right metric to use. It’s more powerful to note that for a large group of Twitter enthusiasts, to spend even a day without using it would be as bad (or perhaps even worse) than not having email. It has become just that necessary. How did the site get to this point? And what are the lessons that any entrepreneur might be able to learn from how it got there? Here are a few thoughts on the real secrets behind Twitter’s success:

1. Focus on real time. For the socially connected online, there is little use for yet another place to talk to your friends. If anything, we all have too many of those to start with. But a site dedicated to RIGHT NOW stands out. It’s useful in a way that none of the other sites we use are.
2. Skip the extra step. Approving every friend request can be a lot of work – even if you’re not the most popular of people. It does make sense on most social networks, but when it comes to posting updates on Twitter, if you do it publicly, anyone can follow you without approval. The result is that any user’s audience on Twitter can grow exponentially without barriers.
   
3. Force your customers to do less. If you have ever heard the saying that “less is more” – Twitter is the ultimate proof of that. The forced 140 character messages have made us all refocus on brevity, and as a result of this volume decrease, those of us that are constantly overcommunicated look to the site as the one place where we can still feel that we are on top of the flood of communication that rules our lives.
4. Build enough evangelists to compensate when things go wrong. One of the most well known facts about Twitter is that the service has been notoriously unreliable and crashed frequently. Though it is much improved from those days, the site still goes down or loses functionality relatively regularly. Yet it has managed to build up enough power users and evangelists, that people forgive their down times and keep coming back.
5. Integrate with the most popular competition. The single most useful feature I personally uncovered from Twitter was the ability to integrate it into my Facebook page so that may Twitter updates also become my status on Facebook. This demonstrates a fact that many entrepreneurs already know – by integrating with your competition where your “customers” currently are, you make it easier for them to migrate over to your site.
6. Launch where your influencers are. A big reason for the early success of Twitter was their launch at the SXSW Interactive festival two years ago. It was a place where all the influencers that matters for Twitter were already going to be and putting the site in front of them there allowed them to become word of mouth ambassadors for the site following the event.
7. Offer a public ranking or authority. The final element that has helped Twitter to succeed is that it has a built in authority ranking with the number of followers you have. This is located right beneath your username on the site and it’s high visibility means that it is easily the ultimate metric for anyone using the site. And you can’t help but want that number to go higher. 

• Shashi Bellamkonda @shashib http://www.shashi.name
• Lisa Throckmorton @lkthrock http://www.speakerboxpr.com/plugged-in
• Kim Oser @putitaway http://www.putitaway.net
• Allison Lee @dallisonlee  http://www.dallisonlee.com
• ThursdayB with Chris @thursdayb  http://www.thursdaybram.com
• Joe Loong @joelogon  http://www.joelogon.com/blog
• Steven Fisher @stevenfisher   http://blog.networksolutions.com
• Jill Foster @jillfoster http://www.womengrowbusiness.com
• Andrew Somyak @asomyak
• Kevin @kasrael  http://kl.yelp.com
• Allyson Kapin @womenwhotech   http://www.womenwhotech.com
• Chantelle Karl  @cckarl Yelp.com’s Communication manager for the East coast (That includes Canada and UK !- figure that out)
• Nakeva @nakeva http://www.meeid.com/nakeva
• Gaurav Sharma @gauravonomics  http://www.gauravonomics.com

Here is Jeremiah Owyang’s definition of a Tweetup

What’s Tweetup? A few years ago, we called them blogger dinners, and it’s where folks got to come together, meet each other face to face (scary huh?) and actually talk in real life. Despite the affection many have for these social tools, there is nothing like seeing people in real life and meeting them.

A few guidelines for social events that I mentioned on twitter: Unlike Fight Club, talk about Tweetups, before, during, and after. Come to meet folks, be social. Don’t “poke” anyone unless you’ve brought protection. The act of “throwing sheep” at anyone other than your spouse is not encouraged. If you’re going to mention people “you’re following them” be sure to give them context whether that’s on Twitter or in real life –hopefully the former.

Kidding aside, just come to network with others, buy someone you’re connected to online a drink, exchange real world information, and most importantly, be merry

Abraham Harrison has been at the forefront of the Twitter phenomenon since its public offering, successfully leveraging the power of micro-blogging for many of its clients. (Via Abraham Harrison LLC)

Services include:

• Twitter Consultation: Abraham & Harrison often works with clients to help them understand what micro-blogging means, the impact it can have within their industry, and the ways in which it can be utilized to implement customer service, improve customer loyalty, promote the brand, and protect a company’s reputation.

• Twitter Profile Creation: Abraham & Harrison has successfully created and populated Twitter profiles for a number of clients. Profile creation includes:
  • Twitter Brainstorming: An initial consultation with the client that outlines the goals, challenges and Twitter strategy prior to profile creation
  • Profile Creation: Abraham & Harrison will create a Twitter profile that mirrors the branding, marketing, and messaging currently utilized by the client. All messaging “tweeted” through Twitter will mimic that of the company’s branding.
  • Constant Population: Once the profile is created, Abraham & Harrison will either train or populate the Twitter profile with valuable information that connects with fellow users on Twitter. Population will include daily “tweets” throughout the work week to boost followers and community engagement.
  • Valuable Team “Retweeting”: Not only will a skilled team member help with the population of the Twitter profile, but the entire Abraham & Harrison team will be behind the client, “retweeting” their content which in turn means an exponentially larger audience seeing the company’s message. For instance, Chris Abraham, Abraham & Harrison’s President and COO, who is known as one of the top Twitterers of Social Media news (having over 2,700 followers) will “retreet” every client messaging. What does this mean? A Twitter veteran will be promoting your company, brand, and message…and people will listen. At least three Abraham & Harrison team members with high profile Twitter profiles will be able to retweet each client “tweet” at a time.
  • Continual Re-Evaluation: Abraham & Harrison will continually connect with each client to ensure the messages disseminated on Twitter stay fresh, valuable, and relevant.
• Abraham & Harrison Twitter Case Study: A fantastic example of Abraham & Harrison’s knowledge of Twitter is illustrated by our work with the client, The Fresh Air Fund, a non-profit agency providing free summer vacations in the country to more than 1.7 million New York City children from disadvantaged communities.
  • Twitterers Who Will Change The World: With Abraham & Harrison’s help, The Fresh Air Fund created a Twitter profile to communicate with other NPOs, current volunteers, potential families interested in The Fresh Air Fund, and donors. In just three months of tweeting, The Fresh Air Fund Twitter profile has over 600 followers and has reached thousands of individuals who they otherwise would never have been in contact with. Not only does Abraham & Harrison help guide The Fresh Air Fund on how to best utilize Twitter in a respectful and value-driven way, Chris Abraham is also eager to help “retweet” The Fresh Air Fund’s Twitter content, meaning that over 3,000 users are seeing this non-profit’s messaging, creating a critical relationship with The Fresh Air Fund that results in support of the NPO. Even more impressive, The Fresh Air Fund was recently nominated to be a part of the “Top Ten List of Twitterers Who Will Change The World” — a fantastic feat for an NPO who has only been a part of the Twittosphere for three months.

(By Lauren Cook) Never has the power of Twitter been more evident than in the last few weeks and months. Once known only by “techies” and early adopters, this micro-blogging site is now slowly infiltrating into the mainstream and more importantly, affecting the way many of us communicate, listen, and learn.

For those not familiar with Twitter, here’s a quick introduction: Twitter is a free social networking service that allows users to send and read each other’s updates (known as “tweets”) that are limited to 140 characters in length (think two sentences at most). At its inception in 2006, Twitter (then known as “Obvious”) was originally created as a tool to be used internally by the podcasting company, Odeo. Two years later, over 3 million individuals worldwide have Twitter accounts and the rate in which news spreads has shortened to, well, 140 characters.

Initially, the goal of Twitter was to allow users to share with their “followers” exactly what they were doing at that moment (ie: “It’s Monday morning and I’m having Cheerios for breakfast”). A common misconception among those who aren’t familiar with Twitter believe this is still the case with the micro-blogging site. In fact, Twitter has grown and expanded and its capabilities have far surpassed solely communicating the mundane details of everyday life.

For instance, take the recent Mumbai attacks in November, 2008. During the three-day battle that left more than 100 dead, social-networking services such as Twitter and Flickr were flooded with news, rumors and pictures of the tragedy by what is now termed as “citizen journalists” — users on Twitter that were tweeting breaking news faster than mainstream media could pick up the same information on the news wires. Many people now describe the situation in Mumbai as “Twitter’s moment.” As a result, major media outlets now uses Twitter to help communicate the real-time public sentiment on various issues, such as Presidential elections, natural disasters, and current events.

Abraham & Harrison has been at the forefront of the Twitter phenomenon since its public offering, sucessfully leveraging the power of micro-blogging for many of its clients. One only has to take a quick look at Abraham & Harrison’s President and COO, Chris Abraham, who is known as one of the top Twitterers of Social Media news, having over 2,700 followers, to understand Abraham & Harrison’s extensive knowledge of cutting edge social media tools.

A fantastic example of Abraham & Harrison’s knowledge of Twitter is illustrated by our work with the client, The Fresh Air Fund, a non-profit agency providing free summer vacations in the country to more than 1.7 million New York City children from disadvantaged communities.

With Abraham & Harrison’s help, The Fresh Air Fund created a Twitter profile to communicate with other NPOs, current volunteers, potential families interested in The Fresh Air Fund, and donors. In just three months of tweeting, The Fresh Air Fund Twitter profile has over 600 followers and has reached thousands of individuals who they otherwise would never have been in contact with. Not only does Abraham & Harrison help guide

The Fresh Air Fund on how to best utilize Twitter in a respectful and value-driven way, Chris Abraham is also eager to help “retweet” The Fresh Air Fund’s Twitter content, meaning that over 3,000 users are seeing this non-profit’s messaging, creating a critical relationship with The Fresh Air Fund that results in support of the NPO. Even more impressive, The Fresh Air Fund was recently nominated to be a part of the “Top Ten List of Twitterers Who Will Change The World” — a fantastic feat for an NPO who has only been a part of the Twittosphere for three months.

Are you thinking about joining Twitter? One word of warning: You can’t become a Twitter sensation overnight. As Chris Abraham says, “Growing a social media profile is like growing a coral reef: after seeding the reef, there are so many things that need to happen before a reef blooms ‘in its own.’” With Twitter, time and commitment are key in order to position yourself as a valuable addition to the community. “You need to be generous — give more than you take — and you need to be committed to the long term,” Chris advises. And it’s not all about your follower numbers.

For instance, once could argue that Lance Armstrong isn’t a valuable member of the Twitter community given that he has over 23,000 followers, but is only following approximately 40 other Twitterers (an improvement since the last time I checked, when he was following a mere 2 users: his Livestrong organization, and one other member of the Livestrong Executive Team).

Twitter isn’t about just talking about yourself, accepting every follower, and never engaging in actual dialogue. Like every other social networking tool, it’s about forming relationships, providing valuable content, listening and (like Chris said), giving more than taking.

There’s an unspoken code of ethics followed by well-respected Twitterers, and a strategy that can help you reach your customers and supporters on Twitter while not opening yourself up to criticism and in extreme cases, retaliation (ever heard of the Motrin Mommies ?). The power of Twitter is increasing daily — do you know how to harness it? Let Abraham & Harrison show you how. (Via Marketing Conversation)

My buddy David Gelles is now a Technology reporter and blogger for the Financial Times and I was so happy to see David writing about Twitter PR, something very dear to my heart, Companies use Twitter to pack PR punch, including Scott Monty of Ford as well as the gang from PepsiCo’s Pepsi Max controversy:

Companies use Twitter to pack PR punch 
By David Gelles in San Francisco

Published: December 30 2008 19:16 | Last updated: December 30 2008 19:16

Twitter, a booming micro-blogging service, is inspiring business to manage its message in 140 characters or less.

Its streams of short text messages, publicly broadcast over the web, are being treated as the new frontline of internet conversation. Companies including Ford and PepsiCo have been dousing public relations fires with pithy communication bursts to the Twitter community.

“There’s a rapid-fire element to Twitter that causes conversations to go viral when something bad happens with a company,” says Jackie Huba, co-founder of the Society for Word of Mouth, an organisation that monitors social media. “Companies that have a Twitter account are prepared. If something goes wrong they can respond.”

PepsiCo turned to Twitter this month after users began posting criticisms of a Pepsi Max advertisement, which depicted a cartoon calorie committing suicide.

Huw Gilbert, communications manager for PepsiCo International, “tweeted”, or posted a public message, in reply. “Huw from Pepsi here,” he wrote. “We agree this creative is totally inappropriate; we apologise and please know it won’t run again.”

Critics saw Mr Gilbert’s post, with one “tweeting” back: “Thank you?.?.?.?for having the guts to get on Twitter on behalf of Pepsi and give us an update on the suicide ad.”

Such personal interaction from a company representative helps defuse a crisis, says Ms Huba. “People like feeling like they’re being heard,” she says.

Scott Monty, head of social media for Ford Motors, used Twitter to deflect criticism away from the carmaker after it filed suit against an enthusiast website that was selling unauthorised Ford decals. Fans of the site posted angry messages but Mr Monty used Twitter to explain the company’s position.

“Part of my job is to humanise the company – you want to interact,” Mr Monty says.

Starbucks, Comcast, JetBlue and Home Depot are among companies using Twitter accounts to promote products and provide customer service.

Bob Pearson, head of communities and conversation for Dell, said his company had generated $1m in computer-related sales through alerts posted to Twitter.

San Francisco-based Twitter is also becoming a platform for a range of media and social networking start-ups using its tools to develop communities and content rapidly, and at low cost.

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008

The answer, of course, is “it takes about ten years of suffering hard work to become an overnight sensation.” In the case of new media and Web2.0, you can so that in a lot less time. Being an early — the earliest — adopter doesn’t hurt, but it isn’t necessary, really. However, any way you slice it, with a few exceptions, becoming an overnight sensation on Twitter, YouTube, Plurk, QIK, Utterli, LinkedIn, Facebook, or MySpace is going to require a lot of your resources (time and/or money) and more time than you probably planned out for your boss or your client — or yourself!

I am pretty interested in seeing how my Twitter profile has gone from nothing to 2,511+ followers. Twitterholic has allowed me to figure that out in an easy-to-read format, which I appreciate. I joined Twitter on January 6th, 2007. By October 30th, I had 441 followers. It took until May 5th, 2008, to break 1,000 followers. It only took until September 11th for me to break 2,000 followers, and now, as of December 7th (a day that lives in infamy), I have 2,511 followers. I find that interesting to study but I don’t know what it means.

I think I will venture to explain its meaning: social media requires investment and time. Growing a social media profile is like growing a coral reef: after seeding the reef, there are so many things that need to happen before a reef blooms “in its own.” There are many things that can aid the reef: safety, cleanliness, warmth, nutrients, oxygenation, etc… however, one of the most important thing is time and commitment.

Social media cultivation makes most PR and marketing professionals cringe at the thought of trying to sell these solutions to their clients. A client generally wants metrics now and right away. Clients oftentimes spend tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars to create a social network platform, a blog, or a spate of social media profiles that are world class and amazingly turned; however, when the six-month mark comes around and the community is not yet bustling, most clients get severe cold feet and oftentimes abandon all of the work-in (and money out) as a failed campaign — right before the reef blooms!

It kills me to see the number of corporate blogs, home-grown social networks, message boards, and social network profiles that are like those bare and barren rocks and wrecks that never in fact ever blossomed into an emergent community manifest in a coral reef. An ecosystem as delicate and hardy as any social media space, from Twitter to Facebook, from MySpace to your corporate blog.

I forgot to also add to the resources plus time equation: commitment, consistency, calmness, dedication, generosity, and compassion. When you invest in online community as much as I do (2,511 on Twitter with 11,200 tweets, 2,734 on Facebook, 1,496 on LinkedIn, and 5,321 posts on my blog, an online presence I have had since 1999, for example) then you need to be generous — give more than you take — and you need to be committed to the long term. You will need to learn what each community will allow, suffer, enjoy, or penalize. You will learn where the borders are and you will learn what works (and draws people in) and what doesn’t (making them flee).

Well, with no further ado, here’s a lot of work, time, creativity, hours, minutes, wit, mistake, missteps, business, play, Washington, Berlin, Slovakia, San Diego, and a hundred other places. If you want to have 2,500 followers and you’re not already famous, you’ll have to put in the work. If you can achieve tens of thousands of followers, you’re probably already somebody; in that case, it wasn’t just overnight: you just put in your licks elsewhere. Otherwise, put on those work-gloves and start working!

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• Chris Abraham was the 608,473rd person to sign up for twitter!
• Chris Abraham is ranked 843rd on twitterholic! (by followers)
• Chris Abraham is ranked 1st in their location on twitterholic!

Bio: Web strategist and new media guru and president of Abraham Harrison LLC, http://chrisabraham.com
Joined Twitter on 2007-01-06 14:51:39