Moderator: Cindy Krum, CEO Rank-Mobile, LLC

Speakers: Mark Evans, Rayanna Langdon, Lianna Evans, Mark Jackson.

Speakers present themselves.  Really friendly and energetic bunch.

Li Evans is up First:  Yes!  She is assuming we know what Twitter is.  Good start! Doh! now she is explaining how it works. :/ snooze off for 2-3 minutes. .. and we’re back!

Images of Oprah and all the celebrities that use twitter.  Does this means everyone needs it?  If your audience is not on twitter then you probably don’t need it: example of a plumber which is very local.

What are your goals?

1. Gain followers?
2. Retweeters for your blog posts?
3. acquire quality audience?

Are your employees twittering?  They could put your organization in peril if they are not doing it according to the company’s voice.

Uses for twitter:

1. Broadcasters…  Guykawasaki for example, doesnt hold conversations.  Just spreads links and news

2. Southwest airlines  and Wholefoods actually converse with their customers.  Communicate and apologize to clients complaining about service etc.  Zappos: also they respond questions etc.

3. Connect with other users: #blogchat on saturday nights is a cool hashtag for bloggers.

4. Using as an alternative to RSS. CNN accounts for example.

5. Promote daily offers and coupon savers etc.

@Quotesnack is shown as an excellent example of how they merge their twitter account well with their site.  They interact with Followers, and even give attribution on their blog.

@pizzahut hired a “twittern” (marketing intern).  The did not seem to understand twitter and Marketing companies called them out on it.  So a month later they follow a lot more people but they are not holding conversations with audience.

@skittles example of how out of hand this campaign got on twitter.

Dont Spam, be real, if many twitterers in one account disclose it, plan a strategy and know if your audience is there.

Mark Evans:

Twitter has done a horrible job of funtionality, but the Twitter API allows developers to do very interesting apps.  Twitter should have done a lot more with their search functionalities.

Cool Twitter Search Tools that add value:

Twingly.com
twazzup.com
topsy.com (search results are based on retweets)

Publishing Tools for Twitter:

Tweetdeck (20% Market Share) but you can only do oine account, no multiple account  functionalities.
seesmic - Good for multiple twitter accounts
Splitweet - Also recommeds for multiple account management.
Easytweets - Good for professional twittering.  Its a paid service but you can manage hundreds of accounts accounts

Publishing tools for mobile

Twitterfon -
Reportage
Twinkle
ubertwitter

Twitterfeed To automaticaly publish your RSS feed on Twitter

Tweetlater.  To time out your tweets.  could be interesting for corporations.

Twubble - Helps you find people to follow.

Mr. Tweet - you get a good idea of who people are before you agree to follow

Tweepler.com - divides you followers into different “buckets”: keepers, people to ignore, and in between.

Twimailer - Enhances email notifications by providing a follower name, how many followers their URL profile etc.  So you can decide if you want to follow.

Twellow - Directory for finding followers.

justtweetit - another directory

Mark Jackson :  Twitter Search

Is Twitter all Hype?  What are some great inventions? : The Wheel, Computers, internet, Tiwtter, Google Wave, toilet paper.  Talks about evolution of search:

1993-1997- Excite days to today.
What is White Hat, What is blackHat SEO?

How does this play out in Twitter?  Well, you can autopost, use scripts to follow people etc.  Its basically the equivalent of blackhat SEO.  The reason Google is successful is because it can avoid WebSpamming, however Twitter doesn’t filter Spam well.    When Searching “SEO” in Twitter brings back a lot of Spammy results.  Basically Twitter is so “gamable” that they will eventually need to do something to filter search results properly.

How fresh should our results be? 15 minutes too late?  What would Twitter do as an algorythm:

date of account registered
% of retweeted tweets
# of tweets per day
Etc.

All these are gameable.  Creating multiple accounts etc.    Currently a lot of these “future algorythm” changes have already been put live.  Ordering by number of followers when searching People in “SEO” is already.

Twitter search sometimes doesn’t find users simply because searched with a space “Mark Jackson”, instead of “MarkJackson.”

For Google Search there are penalties for certain activities, where as Twitter Search its still the wild wild west.

Conclusion:  Twitter is a great Marketing tool, to engage conversations with an audience, learn a lot from people we follow, but in terms of search, even when looking for freshness and relevancy, Google generally offers better results.

Ryanne Langdon (Queen of Hearts at Freshbooks):

Explains how she manages the Twitter accounts for Freshbooks.  Her Title “Queen of Hearts” was suggested by a user.

There are standards they follow, such as no foul language etc. but they are pretty free in what they do.   Too many brands take themselves too seriously on Twitter, but they have fun with it.  They started a contest of “I spy with my little eye”, they offer tshirts, discounts etc.

Pretty cool examples on how they respond to people’s tweets and try to tweet them with encouraging tweets.  They found that a girl was stood up by her boyfriend and sent her flowers! Someone asked for Shwag and they sent him it with personalized note about a new house he was moving into.  It proved that Freshbooks took the time to get to know their potentioal customer in person, and interact with what was going on in their lives.

Conclusion: Be real genuine and show you care.  If you are faking it, don’t tweet.

All four speakers did a greta job!  Im gonna play around with those twitter tools!!

Related posts:

• Highlights & Lowlights from SES Toronto 2009 - Day 1
• Liveblogging SES Toronto: What Relevancy Indicators Are Search Engineers Watching for Today.
• The Real Twitter Guidelines
• SES Toronto 2009 Live Blogging: Social Media - Do Big Companies Get It?
• SMX Day 2 - Social Media Madness Part 1