The Hartsock Agency » Twitter

Kiss Your Publicist GoodBye and Put Your TwitterID in Every Signed Book

Nettie Hartsock — Fri, 14 May 2010 19:56:59 +0000

: Image by luc legay via Flickr

Here are some new ways you can empower your profile, enlarge your community and GET MORE SOCIAL!

1. At every single book signing you do make sure you not only sign your book, but what about putting your @TWITTERID right underneath your signature?

2. Revive and revamp your signature line in your email – make sure you include your TWITTERID, YOUR LINKEDIN profile, your FACEBOOK FAN PAGE and a link to your BLOG. Also make sure that you put your TWITTERID and your LINKEDIN ID on your business cards.

3. Encourage people to tweet during your booksignings. Create a hashtag that is your book title, or topic and give it out at the start of the booksigning.

4. Still think you can’t find media on Twitter? WRONG! Check out this great link for all the public media.

5. Always mention your TWITTERID in media interviews – say you would love for people to connect to you via Twitter.

6. Subscribe to the enewsletters from media, print and online magazines you want to be featured in. Make sure when you get the enewsletter you take time to then go to the site and immediately comment on a story. By doing this authentically you are not only providing more insight, but providing the reporter or freelance journalist another possible expert for a future story. Journalists don’t always want to quote the same sources for every story. Respect their work and they will in turn count on you to add new ideas in future stories.

7. What? You don’t have time to source actionable data on Muckrack.com? That’s crazy! You aren’t seriously thinking your PR person is doing this all day every day to find new journos on twitter? Peeshaw. Start doing it yourself.

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Kiss Your Publicist Goodbye (and still be loved by media online and offline)

Nettie Hartsock — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 23:13:10 +0000

7 Ways to Kiss Your Publicist Goodbye

1. Make your site a mini-magazine issue of thought-leadership. Look at your site as though it’s a real publication for both your peers and the media to source for news. Build an editorial calendar for all your online tools including Twitter, Linkedin.com (status updates), Facebook and make sure you’re congruent in your content and your expertise.

2. Make sure you’re linking outside your blog to other news sources and stories by journalists. As a recovering technology journalist (1996-2004) I can tell you that all journalists love to have their names or links to stories, surface in Google alerts and they really love to show those to their editor as well. You’re also giving them new sources of experts to look at when you write about stories they’ve covered and what your take is on the story.

3. Build a set of Google alerts on topics you’re most interested in and let those Google alerts give you ideas for new pieces of content on your blog, your Twitter and your Facebook pages. Don’t just stop at posting those story links, go and comment on the stories at the sites they’re on and that will help you with building link-love to your site.

4. Don’t purposely be contrarian to the news. Be the person who lends a new angle or insight to a story.

5. Make sure you’re reading the online and offline magazines in your vertical and studying how their stories are created, who they source and where you can contribute bylines.

6. Have a website that encompasses a Web 2.0 press ready page. This includes your TwitterID, Facebook, Linkedin.com, YouTube channel and one pager about your expertise.

7. Put Google alerts on journalists’ names so you can build a clip file of what they’re covering and who they write for. More and more the online media is made up of freelance writers so don’t leave them out of the mix.

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Checking your Grade on Twitter…

Nettie Hartsock — Sun, 06 Dec 2009 03:09:56 +0000

As everyone who reads this blog knows, I’m a giant fan of HubSpot’s free tools like websitegrader.com, pressreleasegrader.com and bloggrader.com .

Guess what?

Just in case you’ve not been monitoring their free tools in the past couple months, they’ve also powered up Twittergrader.com.

Should you try it out? Of course. Should you use it as another way to give you guidance on how you’re reach is on the Web and how to improve it? Absolutely.

My grade is 99 out of 100. And my ranking is 34,000 among 5 million plus Twitter accounts. Remember marathon, not sprint with all things social media. No matter what your grade is at the onset, you can always improve it.

Does ranking size really matter? Hmm. Good question. No grading system should be the only thing you rely on to determine how your efforts are progressing, however it’s good to have some base measurements and definitely when these tools are free you should take advantage of them.

To spur you on in your own quest to rule the Web, at the very least put a couple of your competitive Twitter folks in the grader too and see what comes up.

I’m also positive that HubSpot will continue adding more features to Twittergrader so once every six months you should replug in your TwitterID and see what comes back gradewise.

Each time you do, I have no doubt you’ll find more actionable data you can use to help your social platform expand.

For more information on how the grader works, I also encourage you to check out HubSpot’s reference for it here.

Now go and grade!

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The Sweet Brevity of a Tweet – 5 billion strong

Nettie Hartsock — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 05:59:00 +0000

“I notice that you use plain, simple language, short words and brief sentences. That is the way to write English – it is the modern way and the best way. Stick to it; don’t let fluff and flowers and verbosity creep in. When you catch an adjective, kill it. No, I don’t mean utterly, but kill most of them – then the rest will be valuable. They weaken when they are close together. They give strength when they are wide apart. An adjective habit, or a wordy, diffuse, flowery habit, once fastened upon a person, is as hard to get rid of as any other vice.” (Mark Twain)

Twitter has just passed 5 billion tweets.

In celebration of that, I wanted to post some new tips for Twitter usage.

And if you’re not yet using Twitter, I would urge you to at least register your name because it will continue to drive opportunities for peers, partners and customers to connect and at some point you will have to come to the Twitter-dark side. And hey, it’s not really all that bad!

No one wants to know that you ate oatmeal for breakfast, but there’s alot of amazing people on Twitter that you might not otherwise ever connect with. Guess what? Those folks do want to know your insight and wisdom and who are you to not share it? Why not choose to use every tool you can to get your message out?

Are journalists on Twitter? Yes. Go to Muckrack.com and find them.

Is Twitter gaining over Facebook? Yes. Go here and read about it.

Here are 7 new tips for using Twitter:

1. Make sure you have a savvy bio line and that you include a clickable URL link in the bio itself.

2. Make sure you have your tweets connected to your Facebook account.

3. Make sure you do Friday Follows every Friday. #FF Use those to follow new people and champion people you follow.

4. Use your Twitter account to canvas your followers. Ask questions in your tweets and encourage people to answer them.

5. Always tweet a link out to your best blog posts. Don’t tweet something like, “Yet another brilliant blog post,” instead tweet out a strong excerpt from the blog post.

6. Don’t use RT (retweet) as the lazy person’s way to seem like you’re tweeting often. Use RTs sparingly and take special care to tweet out actionable insight from others you follow.

7. Tweet others as you would have them Tweet you. (Thanks Michael Murphy for that one.)

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Ten Free Tools To Kick Your Social Media Cynicism to the Ground

Nettie Hartsock — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 22:42:46 +0000

“If we listened to our intellect, we’d never have a love affair. We’d never have a friendship. We’d never go into business, because we’d be cynical. Well, that’s nonsense. You’ve got to jump off cliffs all the time and build your wings on the way down. ” (Ray Bradbury)

If you’re still feeling hesitation about the importance of social media and all that it can do for you, here are 10 free tools to aid you out of your cynicism.

1. Use Google Alerts for your company name, book or brand and see how many other folks are already talking about your brand without you. Join the playground.

2. Use Technorati.com to register your blog and track other like-minded – link-minded blogs. Revel in link-love and cross-promote one another with glee.

3. See what the absolutely free tool HowSociable reveals about your brand’s Web 2.0 visibility with its 22 metrics.

4. Want to track trend buzz in real time for free? (And who wouldn’t?) Use Trendpedia and see what’s happening.

5. Get TweetBeep to track in real-time mentions of you on Twitter. (It’s just like Google Alerts but for Twitter instead!)

6. Let’s not leave out MessageBoards and metrics for those – try BoardReader which can track several boards at once and forums too.

7. Google Groups – lets you search usenet groups.

8. Use Bit.ly to track free all your links and where they resurface in link-love-land.

9. Use SocialMention to see how social your presence is.

10. Use BlogPulse Trends to check the pulse keywords and phrases for optimal SEO on your site or your blog.

Bonus Tool: Use Facebook’s free Lexicon to track buzz on Wall posts!

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Twitter and publishing

Nettie Hartsock — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 18:38:34 +0000

Very interesting story of how one author got a book deal and now a published book through her use of Twitter. Check it out and keep in mind – no matter what Web 2.0 tools you are using – each one of them raises your visibility and brings new opportunities!

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Journalists Twittering – Great Resource! Use it for Good not Evil!

Nettie Hartsock — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 23:48:12 +0000

Hit the MuckRack.com and enjoy the TwitterIDs and tweets of thousands of journalists. Wow!

And just a tip, don’t add all those TwitterIDs to your PRspam email lists that go out to journalists. Be respectful of them, but you can still use this as a resource certainly for reaching out to some and also being aware of what they are covering! Just do it wisely.

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Good Tools for Organizing Twitter

Nettie Hartsock — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 16:33:47 +0000

Ten superb tools you can use to track your Twitter efficiency.

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Twitter Elves Busy…Add More Tools To Twitter-User Stockings!

Nettie Hartsock — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 23:16:15 +0000

: Image via CrunchBase

Great post on Mashable.com today about the Twitter tech elves and what they’ve added in terms of functionality to the platform.

“For example, on the page listing your followers, Twitter now shows a check mark of the people you follow back. There’s also a pull-down menu that includes options for direct messaging them, sending them an @ mention, or following them (if you’re not already doing so).”

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Alice Hoffman, Twitter, Yikes

Nettie Hartsock — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 23:12:11 +0000

Ok, I’m pasting this for now and a link to the story about Alice Hoffman and the Twitterboxing and then I’ll be back. Talk amongst yourselves. I will say in reference to the above image, you can take down a Twitter page (which has now been done with AliceHof) but the cached page is still available!

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Twitterature Coming Soon

Nettie Hartsock — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 18:21:53 +0000

: Image by Josh Russell via Flickr

Check out this WSJ story on Twitterature, oh and can I say again, “Twitter is not going away!”

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100 Plus Authors Tweeting!

Nettie Hartsock — Tue, 19 May 2009 01:10:24 +0000

Wonderful post by Cameron Chapman at Mashable that lists 100 authors that are using Twitter. And I love what she wrote in regard to how she picked the folks to list, “One very apparent trend is that some authors only plug their books or related products in their tweets and never provide any other information. These authors were culled from the list in favor of those writers who are trying to carry on a conversation with their followers and present information they might find valuable, whether it directly benefits them or not. After all, why would I want to follow someone who only tries to sell me something?”

EXACTLY! If you’re being told by social media “experts” on webinars, in their e-newsletters or even in their tweets that Twitter is a viral marketing tool, that you can sell thousands of books by overtweeting and overfollowing folks etc., then please re-read Cameron’s quote above. And also read the tweets those authors on her list are putting out.

I challenge you today to disconnect for one month from all webinars focused at social media and how they are going to teach you how to do it, espescially if you have to pay for the webinar or online EVENT.

Think of social media like you would riding a bicycle. You’re the rider and the shiny red bicycle will take you anywhere you want, but it has to be YOU (the real you – not a ghost you, not a marketing assistant you, the REAL you) riding the bike!!! Now get pedaling!

Start slow – pick out one social media site or tool to tackle and you’ll be surprised how quickly you drop your training wheels and are speeding down the road!

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