Twitter Attempts. Fail.

The elusive fail whale wore its big, ugly self... on me. I tried out a blog contest. I tried to offer valuable content to followers and prospect re-tweeters by perusing Google “social media” News for hours… and I got nothing.

Are you doing things wrong?
A recent article by Jenny Cromie revealed to me a number of things I’ve been doing wrong on Twitter. Are you in the same boat? I won’t steal Jenny’s thunder by going through every example she politely conveyed with hysterical lingo. I will, however, offer you some things to consider:

The best kinds of Tweeple
They are natural. They are not awkward and are certainly not desperate. We who boast less than 300 followers tend to get nervous after a couple minutes of no response because we see other handles with numerous @replies. Are we not popular? Truth hurts—yes. Take it very personal and rethink your strategy.

How to Tweet
Be natural. Find things when they occur up-to-the-minute (because Twitter is all about up-to-the-minute) and tweet about them if you think “your” followers might find it appealing. Some people are better tweeters than others because they know the landscape much better than you do. (Don’t for one second take that personal). If I were a natural at the Internet space, I would know better. I’m not, but I'm learning.

Remember…
Twitter is a communication tool, a very fast one. Choose your Tweets wisely and when you do have the time, tweet. When you don’t, don’t. It’s just that simple.

Have you made mistakes? Tell us about them. Funny, strange, mistakes that turned into something good, etc.

Flame Your Friends

Burger King just announced a new Facebook application called Whopper Sacrifice to help promote their Angry Whopper. This may be one of the most amusing and creative apps that I have ever seen.

Unlike every other app or fan page that rewards you for adding more, Burger King is encouraging the exact opposite. Do you think this will work?

UPDATE (1/14): Facebook has shut down the Whopper Sacrifice application citing that the application "facilitated activity that ran counter to user privacy by notifying people when a user removes a friend." 233,906 friends were removed by 82,771 people in less than a week. Bad move Facebook.

3 Places to Find The Hottest Blog Topics

How do you stay on top of the most-read and hottest internet buzz? Whether you are trying to find a hot blog topic to write about or confirm the status of Steve Jobs' health, we all have different news sources we consult. News aggegators and trend tracking sites are becoming more important for bloggers to tap into channeling search engine traffic to their blogs. In this post I would like to highlight a few of the tools that I often use to find a breaking story that I can write about. If you use these tools you can improve your blog content, capitalize on hot topics, and bring more traffic to your blog.

Here are a few suggestions for you to scope out the latest and most popular articles and discussions:

1. Google Trends - Updated every hour, Google Trends lists the Top 100 most searched terms. A quick scan of Trends will often bring late-breaking news stories to you before most news sources cover them. If I am writing about a hot topic that is listed in Trends, I will make sure to pull related search terms from the list to use as tags for my post. For example, if you wanted to write about the "naked skier," you could also include the blog tags "skier suffers exposure," "vail skier," and "skier upside down" to increase your Google search traffic to your blog.


2. Alltop - Includes top news stories online, most Tweet links, the hottest news stories from major newspapers and publications, and top selling iTunes items. Knowing which blogs, traditional news sources, and bookmarking tools your blog readers use will help a lot. If you knew that your readers liked to bookmark with Digg, you could check which stories Digg users were most saving. Maybe your readers are big YouTube users; by looking at the hottest YouTube videos you might be able to get some ideas of the content your readers are looking for. Popurls is also a good choice. This site tracks a lot of the same things as Alltop, but includes more web sites and blogs. I like the format of Popurls because you can expand lists to see more of the top results.


3. Fark - This site collects ridiculous, strange, and unbelievable news headlines from around the world, marking each with tags such as "amusing," "strange," "stupid," and "obvious." Fark's FAQ says it best: "Fark is what fills space when mass media runs out of news. Fark is supposed to look like news... but it's not news. It's Fark." I can often find tech news (under the "Geek" tab) that can easily be turned into an eye catching blog headline or topic. Number counts next to each headline indicated which are most popular.

Which aggregating news services and tools do you use?

How Many People Actually Use Twitter?

Eric Berlin poses a good question here. The makers of this video make it pretty apparent that, while twitter has grown “exponentially” according to Darren Rowse, this random sample society still doesn’t tweet and they’re letting you know that.



What can you do about it?
The most successful social networking platforms come by hands-on learning. You can talk about it to a person until you’re blue in the face, but the first step to conversion is embracing (take in with the mind) the technology; second step, spend hours of time navigating the device. I’ve been reading Twitter conversion articles lately and the writers themselves say they had to give Twitter a second look after an earlier in the year sign-up kept them from exploring Twitter any further.

I believe Twitter will have a tipping point eventually… much like Facebook. If you were to replace “Facebook” with “Twitter” in this street questionnaire, I guarantee you that everyone would know Facebook because it’s a global phenomenon that has stuck. I’m forever enslaved.

Contest Time
If you’re one of those people enslaved by Twitter, you are eligible to participate in this contest. Count how many people in this video don’t know what Twitter is, report it back to @axiompr and Axiom will send your favorite candy to you. Please tweet “XX from Brazil don’t know Twitter.” Remember, you have to be the first person to do it!

Thanks to the makers of this video and Wii for giving vibrancy to gaming.

Baby Step with Bill Murray

Please do not come into work after a long holiday break and talk about how many days left until the next break. Please do not count the number of hours until the weekend.

I believe we should all be doing something we love, something we can be passionate about. There are a lot of people who should not keep the jobs they have. I understand that we all have bills to pay and duties to not act irresponsibly, but if you don't like your job or where you are at (and are not moving towards any personal goals), there is something wrong. Take action.

Please watch this clip from Bill Murray's What About Bob?


Here are 3 Baby Steps you can take:

1. Don't let false excuses imprison you. I do not buy into many of the excuses that I often hear - the economy is bad, its too hard, I don't have time to look for something else. Poor excuses. And many of them are only in your head. There are many benefits to starting a business during a down time and some of the best businesses were started during recessions. Don't go into a recession yourself.

2. "Set small, reasonable goals, one day at a time." Rome was not built in a day. Spend 1 hour a day after your normal work day to get things done. Reconnect with one old friend/colleague/family member each week and let them know what you are up to (maybe they have some ideas or job leads). Have one meaningful conversation a week on Twitter that builds a strategic relationship. Comment on one new blog. Set up a structured way to learn a new skill that could be added to your resume. Each day holds the opportunity for you to make a small baby step in the right direction.

3. "Don't think about what you have to do to get out of the building, think about what you have to do to get out of the office." I get overwhelmed sometimes when I try to make everything happen at once. I start playing the "what if" game and overwhelming myself with every task all at once. Instead of focusing on each step, I wonder how things will get completed and give up before it even starts. There is no way to predict where our future will take us. All we can do is take the baby steps towards what we think it may be. As we move along, our next step should become apparent when we need to take it.

Please do not do nothing. Baby steps towards the future.