One of the odd things people seem to have a problem with is tracking their buzz on Twitter. So, I figured I will take all the guess work out of it and give you an easy way to do it. When it comes to marketing a brand on Twitter, this is something you must be able to do and its actually very easy. Just keep in mind that regardless of what results you end up with, you need to keep tweeting and building your account before real results are possible.

Lets take a look at this technique. All you need for this is Twitter’s own search engine at search.twitter.com. By using the Boolean search features mixed with a few of Twitter’s search operators we can construct a query to see all the tweets that mention your name, but keep out tweets that where made by you.

The Query: smmguru OR “tyler colwell” -from:smmguru

This will show me all of the tweets containing my username or real name on Twitter. Once you have the query set up to our liking you could even take your monitoring a step further and build some type of widget to aggregate the RSS feed from the Twitter search into… something like your WordPress dashboard. Over all this will just give you a much better idea of all the mentions you are missing in your regular usage.

Another great use for this technique is finding new people to build into your community. A lot of the people you find in your search could be those who are not yet followers. By replying to them and following those that you like they will most likely return the favor as they have already come into contact with your content (at least on Twitter.)

I have already showed you how to own Fark and now it’s time to own Facebook, using Twitter. If you tweet a lot or you have some type of auto-tweeting going on (hello API!) then this will already be an easy task for you. By taking advantage of the Twitter App for Facebook you can easily start to drive traffic that’s generated from your Facebook page.

The way the application works, every time you make a tweet on Twitter your Facebook status is updated. Why is this good? Whenever one of your friends on Facebook logs in they see the people who have most recently updated their status. So if you are constantly tweeting or have a Twitter Bot to do it for you, you will always be at the top of your friends’ Facebook page.

Traffic benefits aside, there are also other aspects to this technique. As more and more people see that you are tweeting away, they may become curious about Twitter and join. Using your account as the catalyst means they are very likely to follow you if they create an account increasing your network and power. And because the new accounts already know you or have some type of relationship with you on Facebook, you have built a stronger social network around yourself.

Go try it and by the end of next week I guarantee you will have an increased followship on Twitter.

For some reason people think Digg is the only website that can send them traffic in their social media campaign. I am here to tell you a secret so devious, so true in nature that it may be shocking: Digg is not the only source of social media traffic. Whether you have been unpleasantly banned from Digg, or you are looking for a new network to establish yourself in, it’s time to start looking.

I am not an SEO and have no formal SEO training (who needs it?) but I do know that relying on Digg alone is pretty much like relying just on organic search rankings. You can’t put all your eggs in one basket, certainly not when it comes to social media marketing.

Digg as a time waster.
Obviously reaching the front page of Digg can bring a lot of goodies but let’s look at something else for once. The time and effort you spend trying to get there. For most Digg users trying to make the front page may seem like luck while for some it seems like every post becomes popular. While there is a small bit of luck involved it’s more Digg itself that has become the problem. The community is full of highly volatile users who love to bury content at even the slightest hint of linkbait.

Which is better in the end?
You can spend countless hours trying to get the immature Digg audience to promote your content, or you can move on. Move on to a variety of new networks that not only drive traffic and backlinks but help build a more targeted audience. For most, if you put the amount of time into other networks that you do at Digg, you will reap much larger rewards.

Design Float [Design]
A network focusing on design across many mediums, Design Float does not send much traffic but gives you access to many bloggers in the niche.

Bazooka Buzz [General News]
This is a Swedish network that sends a few thousands hits per popular story. The great part, stories can be written and submitted in English.

eBaumsWorld eLinks [Offbeat]
eBaums world has been around for a long time and has the power to drive a lot of traffic and links. Funny images and videos are the norm so if that’s your niche you are good to go. On another note the kid who started the site (Eric Bauman) went to my high school and turned the website into a multi-million dollar giant over the course of 2 years. The website started with videos of teachers getting pissed off in class at him for pulling pranks.

Cracked Pipeline [Offbeat]
This is more of a humor based network that you can exploit like Fark. If you are taking an offbeat approach to your linkbait, this is a network you defiantly want to try.

Meneame [General News]
A popular Spanish social media site that can easily send you a few thousand hits per submission, and even more links to go with it.

Lipstick [Celebrity]
Think of Lipstick as the Reddit of celebrity news. It won’t be crashing your server but a decent post can bring targeted traffic and great backlinks.

SugarLoving [General News]
By submitting your content here, you run the chance of having it pushed to other blogs in the Sugar Inc. network.

Keep in mind that I left out a few that you should already know like Mixx, Sphinn, Shoutwire, and Fark as I have covered them in various posts. Also don’t forget about all of these social networks as well.

There are quite a few uses I could think of for an automated Twitter bot that posts new tweets for you throughout the day. While this sounds like it would be a hard task it’s actually quite easy and a great project for anyone who wants to learn how to use the Twitter API within PHP. Lets get started.

Step 1 – Create your database.

When creating your database there are a number of things you may want to think of ahead of time. For the sake of making things easy I chose to tone down the code I use and show you how it works. We will create a simple table to store all of the random tweets in.

Run that SQL and you should have a new “tweets” table in your chosen database. Notice how we limited the `tweet` field to 140 characters as well so we don’t have tweets that are too long to appear on Twitter.

Step 2 – Create the PHP to send the tweet.

The next step is to create a php script that will randomly select one of your tweets, and then send it to your Twitter account via Twitter’s API. While this sounds complicated, its very easy to do.

Not to bad right? Our custom sendTweet() function pretty much takes care of all the dirty work in sending the message to Twitter. Just make sure you edit the code with your password and username for Twitter, and the MySQL login. Once you have your database populated you are all good to go and test the script to see if it works. Just upload it, run it, and you should see either “fail” or “success” on your screen.

Step 3 – Automate with CRON.

After going to Twitter and checking your account to confirm everything is copacetic, it’s time to let your monster loose. Depending on what host you use, CRON access may or may not be available to you. Luckily for me I am hosted with MediaTemple so this is not a problem.

• Script Location - When using CRON you normally want to upload the file being run into a folder that nobody has access to from the web (root). After you have it in this location, just plug it into CRON with ‘php’ in front of it. Example: php /home/user/root/TwitterBot.php
• Set The Time - I don’t think I have ever used a control panel that required you to manually enter the time format… I’m pretty sure most people use cPanel which also has drop downs to select when you would like the script to run. I like to run my Twitter bot every 25 minuets or so to keep my Twitter account fresh.

That’s it! Not to hard right… If you have any in-depth questions on the code or need help, feel free to leave a comment. Also leave one if you have usage ideas, new features that could make the script better. As you can now see, this is a valuable tool to have in your chest.

UPDATE 5/8/2009

I have released a full blown version of the script packed with features and a complete backend GUI. This has proven to be a great Twitter marketing too! Unlike all the others, I support mine and its not a billion dollars. Check out the site for all the details.

Get Twitterbotscript now!

A lot of making something popular in social media is who you know. Exercising a few of these techniques and learning from your mistakes will allow you to create better content, and network with people who can make it more visible. If you want your content to go popular on social networks, it has to be good. People won’t just promote it because it’s there. They may promote it just because of the headline, but not just because its there.

The headline is not up to par.
Without a kick-ass headline your dead before your pretty much DOA. Headlines are a tip that I seem to stress over and over because even still people do not listen. I have seen great content that fails on social media sites because the writer decided to use a dumb ass title that had little or no bite to it. Take a few minuets to write up a list of other possible titles, and see if you find one that you like.

Who da’ fu©k is you?
One thing I have found that a lot of big bloggers hate, is when their content is submitted by a nobody on a given social network. Why does it bother them? Someone who spams and does not take the time to build an account often does not have the number of friends or likely visitors to promote content and make it popular. If you are not yet in a position to submit your own content, make sure whoever does is up to the task. Don’t waste your good content on nobodies.

Find your target.
Finding your target audience has also been covered about a billion times. Pretty much every type of marketing requires you have some idea of what your target audience is and social media is no different. Even if you are just trying to drive some traffic to a blog you will need to place your content in front of the right eyes. There are many ways to do this and its imperative you take advantage if you want you content to become more popular.

Why do you submit at dinner time?
Timing can be very important, especially on some social networks like Digg, Mixx, and Sphinn. Submitting your content in the evening and late at night seems to do no good so learn from other’s trials. If content performs better earlier in the day then why do you continue to submit your content at 5 PM? The topic can also come into play with the time. For instance business related news probably won’t perform well on the weekends considering most business takes place during the week. Think about what you are doing when you go to submit your content.

How does it look?
Make your content easy to read, easy to navigate, quick, and to the point. Remember you are online and people move fast. Dragging out every bit of information will not get you anywhere, and most likely create more people who don’t like your site than those that do. Make sure some part of the content is above the fold and the font is easy to read. Another fun tactic is to insert an eye catching image or graphic to go along with your content. Also take into account your ad spaces and whether or not there may be to many, if I go to a site and the first thing I notice are three giant AdSense blocks that tab will be closed in seconds.

Content with no audience.
Lets face it, people like what they like and chances are that more popular topics will be easier to create a website around. If you are creating content for crap flavored soda you might have a hard time getting people to read about it. In order to have something become popular, you will need a large amount of people interested in that topic or niche. Even if your niche is not that popular, learn to go outside of it and draw traffic with the use of other niches.

Tag and categorize correctly.
This is very important on sites like Mixx, and more importantly StumbleUpon where your tags and categories will play a heavy role in the content’s visibility on that network. Use big broad keywords that describe your content and appeal to large groups of people. For instance instead of tagging your post about Dog food with the keyword “dog food,” you can use terms such as “pets”, “animals”, “food”, and others. Broad categories receive more traffic which means more possible eyes for your content.

Be prepared for failure as it is inevitbale. Not every piece of content will become viral and bring you all kinds of traffic, comments, and backlinks. That’s why its important to know where you can go wrong, and capitalize on those making the same mistakes. Practice using these tips and I can assure you that your content will get better and better. I find that most of the people who fail are those thinking strictly about monetary gains. There is nothing wrong with this but most of the time people have a tendency to overlook some of the easiest ways to make the content more valuable.

The other day I was going through some of the recent profiles on Twitter who added me as a friend. While picking through them I remember thinking “dam, I wish there was a tool to rank my followers.” So I made one. The FollowBack tool will give you a vary basic but powerful ratio to rank the people following you. Based off the ratio of how many friends/followers a given user has you can draw a lot of information from what they use their account for. FollowBack will give you three different color coded levels that indicate whether or not a person is worth following back. The tool can also help you hunt down spammers and those with suspended/private accounts which do not help you when trying to build a powerful account.

Another nice Twitter tool that has popped up is Qwitter. What it does is it check your followers and notifies you of people who have stopped following you on Twitter. The service checks as often as possible but with a large amount of friends and followers it all depends. You will get an email letter you know whats good, as well as a link in every email to remove yourself from the Qwitter service. All you need to do for sign up is enter your email address, and your Twitter user name. Then your good to go, the service will do everything else for you. Again, just another little tool for anyone trying to build a power account over at Twitter. These two will defiantly help you.

Most likely you know by now that commenting on other blogs can bring you decent traffic to start with. What most don’t know is that you can easily begin to use the tactic against yourself and hurt your blog or brand. Here’s seven ways you may be shooting yourself in the foot:

1. To Much Self Linking - Nobody likes a spammer and your not working with bots here. People can tell your a spammer when they see 3 links to your various blogs in every comment. This includes just dropping links with no comment, or irrelevant links and comments alike. A link here or there pointing to a resource or article related to the post is the way to go when it comes to link dropping. You will find people respond much better to the latter.

2. “That’s Great!” Comments - People can also tell your just baiting when all of your comments are 2-4 words in length. Combine this practice with dropping links and your sure to wreak havoc on your brand or blog. You could be placed on spam lists, blacklists, and people may realize what your doing and publicize it. Make your comments count and don’t go for quantity over quality because sooner or later it will bite you in the ass.

3. First! - Now that people are using comments for traffic, people have begun to post comments just to be first. There’s two ways to look at this one. First off, if you are posting a quality comment its not a big deal and can actually be a useful tactic. When you start to write two word comments just to snipe the first position you will annoy everyone on that blog quickly. Take a break and let someone else get the space for a while as well, people will respond better if it seems more organic than forced.

4. Spammy User Names - With the addition of the Top Commentator widgets on many websites, people did not miss a beat on filling their names with keywords. While this is not really a big deal, you can take it to far. If your name is 4 – 7 words long you are pushing your luck. Not only will it look unnatural but all of the keywords will make it appear spammy. This can again hurt your brand or blog and get you blacklisted on your niche sites.

5. Personal Attacks - There’s a fine line between ball busting, debating, and attacking someone. Aside from walking away with an altered ego, you can really do some damage to your reputation here. Whether a comment was misinterpreted or not be the bigger man. If you disagree with something and respond to it shooting from the hip, expect things to escalate. Unless you want a reputation for poppin’ off at the mount… Don’t do it.

6. Did You Read The Post - Always read the FULL post before submitting a comment. There’s nothing like feeling the impulse to write a comment and then realize you now look like an idiot because your way off base. If you do, it’s going to remain there and you cant do much about it. Developing a reputation for eating your words is sure to damage your brand, and credibility. Take a moment to look things over before getting into comments.

7. Comments Have No Value – While its a no-brainer it apparently needs to be reinforced. If you are adding comments to a blog that have no value you will quickly see a chain reaction with the end result being a damaged reputation for your brand. The easiest way to add value is by helping other commentors, posting relevant information or news, or in other words act as an authority. While it’s okay to crack a joke or two at other’s expenses you don’t want to be a bully so take it easy.

Bottom line: Remember that everything you post in a comment will be public and most of the time you cant edit or delete whats said. If you think something has the potential to damage you rep or your brand then don’t post it, its that simple.

There are a lot of ways you can improve traffic on your blog. Some of them are no-brainers but there are also some that you probably haven’t thought of. Here’s seven untapped tips to improve your blog traffic.

1. Save your best posts for the best time.
If you are cranking out content, you should have a lit of posts waiting to be published. You know some of them are better than others so why not submit them on days your blog has higher performance. Take a few minuets to log into your analytics tool and see what days your blog gets more traffic and on those days, publish the best content you have in the line up. The better performance maximizes your chances of sharing, social mentions, bookmarks, backlinks, etc.

2. Answer questions.
If you solve peoples problems chances are they will continue to come back. If you are getting questions in your comments, and in your e-mail then answer them. Chances are it really won’t take that long but the more you increase your reputation, the stronger your blog and brand will become.

3. Get away from your computer.
Go to the mall, go out to eat… Go do something totally unrelated to computers, the internet, and blogging. Look for titles and text in the places around you and think about how they can help you. Use what sticks out on your blog and see what reaction it brings. The importance of titles has been mentioned by everyone, everywhere on the internet so it must carry some kind of weight. To generate hype around a post it will be necessary to create a title that’s just as good as the post itself.

4. Use your competition.
Subscribe to industry news feeds, and feeds of blogs in your niche. Know whats poppin’ in your industry and stay relevant. Your competition can be a great source of content. Not only the feeds can help you though. Why not craft a piece of quality content and submit it to a prominent blog. They get a quality post on the site, and you get some great exposure for your blog, name, and brand once again. This is highly effective and is no harder than if you where creating some content for yourself.

5. Update your posts.
Look at your posts and see how you can improve them. Can you make the details stronger, the title better, include more links? There are a lot of strange factors that go into creating a viral post. While it is just blogging, you can’t have horrible grammar. For the most part people wont mind (myself included) some simple mistakes. But if your post reads like it was written by a ten year old, you may run into some problems. Take the time to read over your posts and you will be thankful, chances are it won’t take long for you find some errors.

6. Interlink your blog posts.
If you post a great resource or a post that’s performing well, go back to other posts and link it. For instance if you write a good post about “linksys routers,” go back to five or ten related posts in insert a link to your “linksys routers” post. Work the link into the post so it looks natural. Another great technique is creating large resource lists and updating them to include your posts as time goes on. While the list becomes increasingly popular, all of your posts will too.

7. Keyword your high traffic posts.
A lot of the time you will notice that people end up at your content for related keywords that you don’t have in the title. Taking some time to work the keywords into your title can increase your search rankings, and the traffic that goes with it. Being on the first page of search results can be extremely beneficial for many reasons.

Before you can use Twitter to brand yourself or your company, you need to create an audience. In order to do that, you have to get some freinds especially if your account is new. In order to seed your account you will need to find some people to follow. These people should be people you would actually like to see tweets from, that are releated to your niche. Heres 6 sites to help you do that.

1. Twits Like Me
One of the better Twitter apps I have seen, Twits Like Me helps you find other users who share your interests. All you have to do is enter your username and it will search for people… “like you”. You can also toggle an option to exclude people who are already your friends. Its also another fast, and accurate tool.

2. Twitter Search
Did you know Twitter has its own search engine that is actually really useful? They don’t really advertise the search feature but it’s there. Twitter Search has some powerfull advanced features to search with and also has options for local Twitter searches.

3. TwitterWho
TwitterWho uses Twitter’s people search form found at http://twitter.com/invitations. This tool lets you enter multiple queries at once so you can find people more efficiently. The service has been lightning fast as far as my tests went and it seems to be acurate too.

4. TwitDir
Once you break into Twitter and get some friends, you should move twoards the leaders in your niche at the time. TwitDir can help you locate some of the top Twitter users in the following categories:
The Top 100 Followed
The Top 100 “Updaters”
The Top 100 “Favoriters”
and The Top 100 Followers
The “TOPs” section can also show you what kind of numbers you would need to make it on one of these lists.

5. Twubble
Another Twitter app called “Twubble” helps you find interesting people to follow by searching your social graph. Simply go to Twubble and click “find some friends.” Twubble is hooked up so as long as you are logged into Twitter, you won’t need any credentials. The friends Twubble finds are by how many of your friends are following them. Another cool feature is the ability to follow people that you find with one click, just like being on Twitter.

6. Twitter Local
Twitter Local is another speedy service that helps you find Twitter users in a given area. You can search by zip, city, or state and select the search radius by miles. The app then gives you options for RSS and XML versions or you can view the lastes tweets in that area live. Twitter Local has an Adobe AIR version for download as well.

Having focus is very important to a successful social media campaign. There is a lot of advice floating around and its easy to take the wrong advice and up wasting a lot of time, and possibly money. Social media is not a shortcut to success like most people want it be, its a marketing tools that requires attention and a plan. Here are seven tips to keep your social media strategy focused:

1. What Are Your Assets - Before you get started know that this type of marketing requires time, knowledge, and ability to really work. It’s not a one-time bang it out deal that you can zip through. If these aspects are a problem you can always go the route of a consultant. Obviously this most likely won’t be free but you need a constant presence in social media to survive and that’s the main plus when using a consultant.

2. Define You Audience - Know what demographic you want to hit before you try to hit. Creating a presence in your niche is more important than marketing to everyone you can. Always put your target demographic first, then worry about the stragglers. There’s no point in wasting your time and energy in an audience that will never convert to business. Most services have search functions, use them! It’s incredibly easy to penetrate your niche with all of the advanced search features you can find around the web.

3. Target Niche Specific Social Media Sites - Major social media sites can bring a lot of visitors. I would say that a good starting point would be 2-3 niche networks, and all the big players like Digg, StumbleUpon, Twitter, etc. Keep in mind that you want to constructively build profiles on these networks. You can branch out to the thousands of social networks but if you only have a picture and a link in your profile you won’t get far. If you like a girl and you never call her what do you expect to happen? See where the focus comes into play? Focus on your key networks and develop a stronger following.

4. You Got Your Niche, Now Target Your Content - Quality will always pay off in the end. Social media users are not looking for content that’s forced on them but instead something they can use, or content that’s easily shared. Even if you have to pay someone to develop content or widgets for you, its worth it. The amount of traffic and buzz that a major response in social media brings is massive. Create your content geared specifically to your audience and try not to stray to far from your niche. People are there for information on your niche, so give it to them.

5. Do You Have A Conversion Plan - Once you get to the point of masses of traffic, you need to start leveraging it. This all depends on your goals but the first and most basic is converting new users to RSS subscribers. Chances are you have some sort of RSS going for your content so make sure to push it on all of your new visitors. Also think about how you can convert large amounts of traffic into product sales, affiliate sales, leads, and content shares to develop backlinks. The possibilities for conversions is endless, once you have an audience you will learn how to shape and mold content that can bring desired results.

6. Stay Hyped - Once you start to achive your sucess and become a part of the community, you have to work extra hard. Stopping after getting a little success is putting water on the fire. Visit your targeted sites daily and stay active. Vote for others, submit content, add friends, leave comments, etc. When people notice you are submitting and voting for only your content, they have an obvious tendency to dislike you. Use your dam noggin, social media users are another bread and most of them are smart enough to tell a spammer from a member of the community. Keep pushing out content and making yourself known.

7. Learn, Rinse, Repeat - After you have substantial information you can start to evaluate what’s working and what isn’t. Get rid of time wasters and try to put a value on each traffic source. Its much easier to see whats working when you have a criteria. This is why it’s important to have a structured goal. Continue to do what works and tweak your proccess for effciantacy. The nice thing about social media is that as your audience grows, the workload becomes much easier. Your following will do much of your marketing and promotion for you through blog posts and other sharing outlets if you can develop the right content for the job. Also remember to keep tabs on what your community is saying about you. Take advice from your readers, and learn to deal with haters because they are an inevitable waste product of success. No matter how well you do and how much people like you, there are always a handful of unhappy people that envy you. I personally like to take it as a compliment when people go out of their way to try and undermine me. Remember: If they’re hatin’, your doin something right.

Now that you can see how focusing in instead of shooting blind can mean the difference between a failed social media campaign and a successful one. Its about staying in it and developing experience. I have had my share of failures but I have learned more from those than anything else. Create a dynamite plan to outline your site, and you can take a lot of work out of being successful.