The barrier for entry into using Twitter to build your brand’s presence online is obscenely low, but actually using it strategically is where we see a lot of people trip up.

Here are some quick tips to optimize your Twitter account and get the most out of all 140 characters.

Clean up your followers list

Pay attention to your ratio of followers to following. It says a lot about the type of account that you are managing. If you are following-heavy, it tends to give the impression that you are new to Twitter and are working hard to build up your presence, but haven’t received acceptance from your audience yet.

If you are follower-heavy (like many celebrities) it tends to give the impression that you are selectively social, won’t necessarily reciprocate to messages from followers, but that the “Twitter-sphere” has give you their seal of approval and see value in your published tweets. In most cases, it is good practice to keep your following to follower ratio relatively balanced.

Here are two quick ways to help keep that ratio in check:

• Unfollow stale accounts that haven’t tweeted in +30 days by using UnTweeps.
• Identify non-mutuals through Twellow. What you do with this list depends on a lot of other factors, but knowing where to start is half the battle. In short you have two options: unfollow any account that doesn’t reciprocate or work to convert that list into becoming new followers.

A great way to work to make those conversions is to export that non-mutual following list from Twellow into a Tweetdeck group. With that list, you can monitor their discussions and specifically target them with public replies that are relevant to the discussions that they are participating in and encouraging them to eventually reciprocate and follow you back.

Use Bit.ly stats to grow your network

If Twitter users are using outside applications, either within their browser, on their desktop or on their mobile devices, Google Analytics won’t always attribute referring traffic to your site back to Twitter and it is hard to measure how often your Twitter links are clicked.

A lot of URL shortening services offer their own stats on click throughs that don’t rely on the clicks originating from Twitter.com, but also provide insight into who is sharing the same shortened URL. These stats are not only a great way to get around this data that Google Analytics misses, but gives you some powerful information to grow your network of followers.

If you are doing it right, you aren’t just promoting yourself constantly, but are sharing outside content that is relevant to your audience through Twitter. Use Bit.ly (the most popular URL shortening tool) to see who else is Tweeting links to the same content. There is a good chance that they would be relevant accounts for you to bring into your network.

For any bit.ly link that you post (or that anyone else tweets for that matter), add a plus sign at the end of the link to see how many tweets linked to that page, through what Twitter accounts, and how many times it was shared through Facebook and FriendFeed.

For example: http://bit.ly/axBFQR turns into http://bit.ly/axBFQR+

Scroll through the list of Twitter accounts linking to the same page. Consider that list to be what Twitter might look like if it suggested new followers for you in the way that Facebook suggests friends for you to connect with.

Plan the timing of your tweets carefully

So you know that your audience is on Twitter, but do you know when they are most active? Are you catching them at work, are they constantly connected or do they only check in when they are at home after dinner? Understand when your audience connects and time your Tweets accordingly. CoTweet is a powerful tool for a lot of reasons, but its scheduling feature is a great way to hit your audience right when they are looking for updates.

If your audience is very broad or constantly connected, it may be a good idea to repost your own Tweets 28 hours apart, so that you can hit the widest audience, no matter when they are connected or what time zone they are in. This can get you into some gray areas of spam territory, so needs to be done carefully and never more than three times for any one link.

Avoid Hashtag Spam

Hashtags are a great way to follow trends and participate in conversations that reach far beyond your follower network. As with a lot of things, many eager marketers wanted to be everywhere at once and started abusing the system. Hashtags streams are only as valuable as the tweets published to them. Abuse the system and you are only taking a sledge hammer to your home’s foundation.

Don’t Unfollow/Refollow

It has become a somewhat secret practice among many accounts to repeatedly unfollow and refollow accounts that do not reciprocate, sending them multiple alerts over time that they have gained you as a new follow. This is spammy, obvious and annoying. Simply stated, don’t do it. It screams that you are desperate to build a network of empty numbers, focusing on quantity, not quality.

Don’t Neglect Your Background

A well thought out Twitter bio and link to your site is essential, but many people don’t take advantage of all of the digital real estate behind your Twitter page’s main navigation. Take the time to create your own custom Twitter background with a design theme that matches your own site’s design for continuity.

While any text you put there won’t be clickable (unless you have installed ClickableNow and your page’s visitor has it as well) the power of strong images and clear messaging cannot be understated. Use the space to the left of your tweets with care to clearly define who you are, and why you are worth a follow.

Don’t Auto DM To Thank Followers

This has been said a million times, but bears repeating. Auto DMs to new followers, especially if you are just trying to bring them back to your site with a link, never put you in a positive light no matter what your intentions. They just make you seem insincere and self-centered.

Whatever minimal spike in site traffic this may bring you is outweighed by the damage caused to your reputation for blindly sending these messages to anyone and everyone. Want to thank them for following you? Reply to their questions. Retweet their links. Send them relevant links. Make them smile.

Note: These tips were written under the assumption that you have verified that the audience you want to reach is actually on Twitter and that you have adequately answered the question of what to actually tweet about. Both of those are an entirely different discussion for another day.

This is also by no means intended to be a comprehensive list, but a snapshot of some of the tactics and strategies that we have used to manage Twitter presences on behalf of many of our clients. We’d love to hear any additional tips in the comments section.

To get more tips on social media marketing, follow us @ccamarketing or subscribe to this blog.

Image Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/matthamm/ / CC BY-NC 2.0

Early in my career, when I first had the responsibility of hiring an employee, I spoke with a colleague who was a longtime HR director. His advice? Look for attitude above all else. Skills are important, he said, but can be acquired or enhanced on the job to some extent. Attitude, on the other hand, is tough to change.

In today’s economic climate, folks are either struggling to maintain their businesses, grateful for the job they have or anxiously looking for work or clients. It’s not an easy environment for a great attitude, I know.

Having a positive outlook is like jet fuel – it provides you with lift and can take those around you up a level as well. A good attitude inspires energy and enthusiasm on the job on the good days, and it keeps you moving toward higher ground when times are tough.

Think back to your first week at a desirable new job – you were excited to be there and eager to contribute and learn, remember? That’s the attitude that we should strive to keep. This is the backbone of working toward a common good with colleagues and clients alike.

What creates a good attitude?

• Enjoy what you do. If you need to revitalize your career, find something new to learn, whether it’s through a book, a webinar or a colleague. If you need a change, look into other options – action steps will improve your view of the current situation.
• Keep the team going. Work diligently and creatively. Be liberal with praise when it’s due. And if someone drops a ball, help them toss it back in the air.
• Find the silver lining. Even the worst situation will bring something positive, even if it’s only a lesson or new insight.
• Maintain a sense of humor. Laughter is a universal bond, and it keeps good energy flowing through the day.
• Balance confidence with humility. It’s important to believe in yourself and your skills, as long you don’t ram your accomplishments down everyone’s throat! Be aware for opportunities to assist the common good.

In the world of marketing, advertising and PR, a good attitude is essential since it transmits to a much wider audience. It eases collaboration in the creative process and keeps you flexible and patient through each round of edits or press pitches. And it’s absolutely mandatory in social media conversations. Remember that your words may be floating on the Web for years! Your thoughts and opinions are important but use diplomacy when sharing them.

So what’s the big deal about attitude? Everything. It’s something you carry with you, from day to day, job to job, person to person.

What do you think makes a good attitude on the job?

Donna had a great post last week about understanding the media’s perspective in order to be a better PR person. I loved her post and it got me thinking that her philosophy can be applied to far more than just media relations.

One of the reasons why CCA is able to be so successful is that we don’t just “talk the talk.”

Working in marketing, communications and social media without having real-life experience consuming the media that you are creating is a disaster waiting to happen. Imagine a reporter for the Boston Globe admitting that they just weren’t “a news person” and could go weeks without picking up a paper or going to the local news Web site. It would be pretty hard to trust their reporting credentials.

To that same point, wouldn’t you have doubts about taking advice on how to manage your company’s presence online from an agency that doesn’t blog, has one Twitter follower, can’t be found anywhere on Google and couldn’t find their way around an RSS feed?

Here at CCA, we are fortunate enough to be in the position where we get to learn on a daily basis from other marketing pros. Not because we are simply sharing war stories from the trenches through various discussion boards or LinkedIn groups, but because they reach out to US on behalf of THEIR clients to tell their stories for them. Trust me, getting a phone call from another PR agency trying to convince you to blog or tweet about their client while you are doing the same for your own client is an out of body experience, and one that isn’t all that rare around these parts.

We blog,  manage Twitter followers by the thousands, build communities on LinkedIn, Ning and share videos to our YouTube subscribers not just for the sake of creation, but as a gigantic and constantly evolving social media experiment. Read all the books you want on effective social media marketing. While you are curled up on the couch reading the latest insights from 2009, we’ll be in the “lab” testing our latest experiments created to help us understand anything from Twitter trending topics to blog syndication strategies. Then we get to turn that all around and bring back all those lessons to the client with the freshest understanding of online behavioral trends.

Now how do YOU experiment and test your ideas online?

PR communications to the press have become instantaneous through e-mail distributions, social media interactions and Web sites. Yes, it’s efficient. But in an effort to hasten the steps that drive publicity, some PR practitioners or self-promoting businesses have gotten sloppy.  They are depersonalizing the recipients/users of the information they are producing.

The reality is that the publishing world is suffering in this economy too.  Editors are taking on more work as their staff of reporters and writers is smaller than ever.  Some are editing multiple publications simultaneously.  And all of them are striving daily to meet deadlines with quality content.

Savvy PR professionals can take advantage of this editorial state of affairs by falling back upon the core methodology of our trade:  content is king.

This means you should:

• Personalize each individual pitch. Spam e-mails inundate writers and editors and can harm the reputation of the sender and the client they represent.
• Make their job easy.  This means that your media contacts should never have to dig for basic information.  A company backgrounder should present the basic facts about a business: including its history, competitive niche, products/services, key executives etc.
• Present story ideas proactively. Sending a pitch with a tenuous tie to an editorial calendar topic for the publication is weak draw for publicity.  Do the research on both competitors and previously published articles to know what’s missing from the publication’s content.  Then present options for the reporter to use your client as a resource OR offer a by-lined article.

It’s a version of the Golden Rule.  Pitch onto others as you would have others pitch unto you.

In the early days of social media, the catch phrase was “join the conversation.” No matter what happened, join the conversation was the catch-all answer. Is it too soon to refer to it as “so last decade”? No?

Your Web site is boring? join the conversation

Your sales team isn’t closing deals? join the conversation

Online review sites are tearing apart your product? join the conversation

Is your competitor eating your lunch? join the conversation!

But the truth is that “joining the conversation” has no direct influence on ROI. All it means is that you are showing up to the party and you are left to yourself thinking, “okay, I’m here… now what?” Just because you show up, doesn’t guarantee that you will be welcomed or that you even have anything valuable to share. Conversation is just one small piece of the puzzle, and sometimes does more harm than good. What is not said enough is that sometimes sitting back and watching the conversation play out without you is the best social media strategy.  Inactivity is a tough pill for social media consultants to swallow, especially when they charge by the hour and not program success.

For example, let’s compare it to SEO. If you have a killer Google Pagerank and are pulling in tons of traffic, but visitors are left confused, disappointed and wondering how they ended up getting to your site and immediately leave, you have accomplished nothing. The truth is that a huge portion of your traffic is junk. There are no conversions, there is no ROI.

Now, I am not saying that social media engagement and online conversations can’t deliver true ROI, but not likely to do so on their own. Is the organic search traffic you get attracting the right audience? Does your sales team really understand what customer prospects are looking for? Does your product fail to deliver on its promises? Are your competitors out innovating you? These are all questions that can be answered by simple listening to social media streams, without conversation.

The next time your social media/PR agency drops the join the conversation bomb, challenge them. Force them to tie the strategy that they are recommending back to ROI and answer the big “and then what?” question.

Image Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/margolove/ / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

Tired of hearing about how the next big killer application is going to turn your business into a gold mine and make life easier for you?

Yes, we all know that mass media habits have changed and that we’re now a wired society, dependent on our computers and iPhones for information. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that something new equates to something better for your business.

As we become mesmerized by and inundated with new technologies, we tend to forget about the one deciding factor when purchasing a service or product from one company over another: human trust.

A stroke on a keyboard, an e-mail or a tweet will never replace the experience of meeting someone, shaking a hand and engaging in a conversation. When that happens, there’s trust and with trust comes customer loyalty. Optimizing for better ranks on Google will help bring people to your website and posting your updates on Facebook and LinkedIN will help connect you with more people, but there’s no replacement for meeting prospects in person!

As the holidays approach, we urge you to try the next big thing in marketing – human trust.