That’s not to say I don’t find revenue in Twitter – I definitely do. However, that’s not its best purpose.

Keeping up with your Twitter feed is difficult. I tried following less people than others (and even though we don’t follow everyone, we do respond to mentions and direct messages when appropriate); but that didn’t help too much as a few people I follow have 35-40,000 tweets; and finding the most interesting or popular content can be overly time consuming.

There are two sites that really help follow my overall twitter stream.

Paper.li and TweetedTimes are aggregators of your twitter feed. They look through your timeline and create a single page of the most important items in your twitter feed.

This is our TweetedTimes page. A simple page of the most popular stories.

Personally, I prefer Paper.li just a bit more as I find the layout more useful, and the fact you can have daily, twice daily, or weekly editions. You can also create a paper from a list or hashtag. If you follow a large variety of people and have created various lists, you can make a different page for each list you wish to follow closely.

You can also subscribe to someone else’s paper.

Each morning when I’m reading through 300 blogs in an hour, I can also visit the Twitter aggregators and quickly check any top stories I might have missed.

With the vast amount of information published each day, you need  organization strategies to assimilate new information yet still accomplish your daily workload. Paper.li and TweetedTimes.com will will you filter through the information published on Twitter every day.

Can’t Keep Up With Your Twitter Feed? Two Sites Come to the Rescue is a post from: Certified Knowledge

I’m sure those very words have been uttered in many conference rooms (or online meetings) throughout the country over the past 2-3 years. Of course, the smart marketer knows that activity does not always equate to revenue.  So where do you start when you are mandated to “get more active”?

At my current company, our primary goal with our social media is to engage our audience and start conversations using various social media tools. With that in mind, we’ve launched a new campaign around the phrase “Join the Conversation”.

The next question is how do you determine what conversation people will be willing to join?  The key to any successful interaction is to start by listening to the people that you are hoping to engage; let them do the talking and you do the listening. Think about your interactions in your day-to-day world: Do you tend to avoid the non-stop talkers in the breakroom who never let you get a word in edgewise? That’s what I thought.

While it’s natural for humans to want to talk about themselves—almost all social media starts with people wanting to share something about themselves— the best communications come from two-way dialogues.

Many Twitter accounts are simply one-way only promotional propaganda blasts that elicit message fatigue when those companies do not listen to their audience.  Yes, it’s true that some retailers can obtain many followers just by blasting sales and coupon information to their lists, but they may be losing out on a larger opportunity by not fostering engagement of their followers. People will probably stick around for the next deal, but that doesn’t translate into loyalty; they can quickly move on to the next ‘cool’ thing.

You can gain a lot of insight into the minds of your customers with social media. Why not use your followers to get feedback on which new features they want to see in your next product?  Or ask them what kind of promotion they would like to see in the next “deal of the day”?  If you give them a voice, you’ll find that your conversion rates will improve even more since they will feel more invested in the relationship they have with your company.

What is the simplest way to do that?  Ask questions about things that interest them. Find out what makes your audience tick, so to speak.  Do they want product information?  Tips on how to get the most of a new feature? Sales discounts?  Or just the chance to interact with something of interest? Much like you would in a sales meeting, find out what the audience is interested in and meet that interest.

Monitor the social media landscape for company mentions or customer feedback using a social media aggregation program such as HootSuite or TweetDeck.  This way you can quickly address any customer questions or comments independent of whether they may be following you.

The whole key is to get followers to “join the conversation”,  and with today’s Internet and social media landscape, that conversation could be happening anywhere.

So, if one of the goals set for you is to “get more active in social media”, there’s no easier way to do that than by listening and interacting.  If you’re providing value to your audience, then your efforts will not go unrewarded in your social media performance.

We’d like to hear from you.  How do you engage your audience with social media?  What are your social media success stories?  Please post in the comments of this blog or tweet us at @InterCall.

Opinions expressed in the article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Certified Knowledge. If you would like to write for Certified Knowledge, please let us know.

Why All Social Media Efforts May Not Be Truly Social is a post from: Certified Knowledge

For instance, how many times has someone sent you an instant message about a simple question, and if you answer the question right away, you get the same question from the same person again?

If instead you missed the message and waited five minutes to respond, and asked them what’s up, and their first response is, “I figured it out”, and then you never receive that same question again.

Should that person have IMed you instead of thinking?

In the early days of cell phones, I was highly resistant to getting one because of this theory (I’ve had it for 20 years). People had to call my office or visit in person to find me. It took some effort; and I rarely received simple questions – my employees did the work and found the answer in most cases. If it was difficult, then they would come and find me.

As soon as I had a cell phone, the number of phone calls I received went up 5x.

When I was on instant messenger, the number of questions I received went up 50x.

Now, I’m a big believer in the maker’s and manager’s schedules.  Essentially, if you are interrupted during a task, it takes about 20-25 minutes to attain your previous level of focus. If you are interrupted every 15 minutes – you will never attain complete focus on a task.

If you leave instant messenger open all day –  odds are you will never received enough time to truly focus on a task.

Twitter Is On-Demand Communication

On Twitter you can send someone a direct message (assuming they follow you). You can respond privately to this message. It works just like instant messenger.

However, Twitter does not list a current status. The person sending you a DM (direct message) doesn’t know if your there, away, etc. Therefore, you can respond at your leisure.

If you want to have a quick IM-like conversation, then you can respond immediately, they can respond immediately, and then you’re having an IM conversation.

However, if you need to go to a meeting – ignore Twitter and work – you can leave Twitter and not feel like you’re ignoring someone like you would with a blinking IM.

Hence, you get the best of both worlds. Instant messaging features, but on your time.

Can’t You Set Your IM Status to Away?

There’s actually three considerations.

Most of my Twitter DM/IM conversations have been with people who I’d rarely actually chat with on IM. We’re all busy people who don’t have time to invite all our friends and acquaintances to IM, keep an IM list of hundreds or thousands of people just in case we want to have a conversation.

With Twitter, it’s opt-in. If you follow someone, they can DM you. There is no need for email verification and a clogged IM list.

Is your status always accurate? I often find that many people who only use IM occasionally forget to change their status. Their computer boots, their IM client loads, they are now available for chatting. I can’t count the times I’ve seen status’s that are ‘out to lunch’ for days at a time or ‘in a meeting’ at 3am.

Because status isn’t always accurate, other people (especially bosses), have a tendency to ignore your actual status. You just need to turn off the IM client.

If you turn off the IM client, then no one can chat with you (yes, some do have offline messaging) so you miss those quick conversations or notes.

Just Use Email

If all this is so hard, why not just use email?

First, you have to know someone’s email address. While that might sound silly, I have many really good conversations on Twitter with people where one of us probably does not know the other’s email address. We might know their FaceBook name or LinkedIN data, but looking up someone’s email to send a short message is often too much effort.

Email is on the decline. For the first time that I can remember, email is reportedly dropping in usage.

I strongly believe communication will always be the number one online activity. Email has dominated so far, but projects like Google Wave, IM, Twitter, FaceBook, etc allow for alternate means of communication. Email is simple, but all it does for you is give you an avenue of communication.

I don’t think email is going away any time soon. It’s still one of the flexible communication methods. You can send a message to many at once (that’s saved in an inbox, twitter blasts often flow off of timelines), it is easy to collaborate between multiple people at once, you an add attachments, and keep archived communications on your own server (more privacy).

Twitter is a Communication Tool

Many have harped on Twitter’s functionality and given detailed instructions on how to use it – I don’t want to rehash all of that here.

I prefer to listen on Twitter than write. I think this is where a lot of people miss out on Twitter’s function. Since most Twitter communication is open, it’s an easy way to receive feedback on your brand, favorite topics, other people, etc.

However, if you choose to join in on the conversation (don’t just blast tweets, spend some time responding to others, retweeting, etc), it can open a lot of new possibilities to learn and communicate with those that you never would have even met otherwise, let alone, have a nice private message conversation.

So close your instant messaging client. Send a tweet (or private message). Go to work for a few hours and have uninterrupted productivity. Then, check back on Twitter to see what the world is up to knowing you actually accomplished something because you weren’t interrupted by your nagging instant messages.

Why Twitter Has Become My Favorite Instant Messenger is a post from: Certified Knowledge

This is a hilarious video about engaging a social media expert. Good for a laugh on a Friday afternoon. Please note, there is some language in the video that you might not want to play at your desk in the middle of an office; some might be offended.

If you’d like to see all of Google’s videos; and our favorites such as the above video - subscribe to our YouTube channel.

Before you hire a Social Media Guru – Watch this Video is a post from: Certified Knowledge

Over the past several months, I’ve collected a few links so that I’d have a slight clue when I started Twittering. Below is a list of resources to assist with your Twitter endeavors.

Tools:

• HelloTXT
• 30 Twitter Tools
• TweetDeck
• FriendFeed
• TwitterFeed
• 5 New Twitter Tools
• 7 Gadgets That Are Sure To Enhance the Twitter Experience
• 181 Twitter follow me images
• Official Twitter Badges

Articles:

• Twitter for Business (PDF) Duck Tape Marketing
• Beginners Guide to Twitter – WebGuild
• Twitter As a Traffic Generator : Set Up a TwitterFeed
• Keeping Your Twitter Community Healthy
• A Quick Introduction to Twitter for Bloggers
• 5 Quick Ways To Utilize Twitter in Your Online Marketing Strategies
• Everything You Wanted to Know About Twitter. Now In Podcast Form

Blogs focused on Social Media:

• Chris Brogan
• Twitter Blog
• Let’s Get Social – Search Engine Land
• Top Rank Blog

We’re finally on Twitter – Here’s Our Twitter Resource List is a post from: Certified Knowledge