KANSAS CITY, MISSOURI (March 3, 2010) – For the past 3 months, legendary automotive designer Chip Foose has been working with John Deere to produce a customized 1972 John Deere 4020 tractor. Thousands of people have been following the design and build process online through video “webisodes” made available at the http://deere.com/bigbuck website and on You Tube. Interest in the unveiling has reached a fever pitch, leading John Deere to produce the event live online in partnership with social media agency, Fresh ID. Anyone with an internet connection can watch the big reveal online at http://foose4020liveshow.com this Thursday, March 4th at 1:00 p.m. PST/4:00 p.m. EST.

The tractor is part of the unique Big Buck Customized 4020 Tractor Giveaway that customers can enter to win at their local John Deere dealer through June 30, 2010. John Deere chose Chip Foose to completely customize the tractor in a way that has never been done before to highlight sales incentives that run through April 30th 2010. The tractor will be on display at the John Deere booth throughout the 2010 Commodity Classic in Anaheim, California March 4-6 with online replays of the unveiling available at the http://foose4020liveshow.com website.

Following the unveiling, the tractor will tour the country as part of the John Deere Drive Green Tractor Experience where rural property owners, agricultural producers and other interested consumers can take advantage of the opportunity to operate and ask questions about the latest models of utility tractors and other equipment available from John Deere. The tractor, along with three gator utility vehicles, will be given away as part of the promotion. Rules for the giveaway as well as a complete schedule of Drive Green events can be found at http://deere.com/drivegreen.

About:
John Deere (Deere & Company — NYSE: DE) is a world leader in providing advanced products and services for agriculture, forestry, construction, lawn and turf care, landscaping and irrigation. John Deere also provides financial services worldwide and manufactures and markets engines used in heavy equipment. Since it was founded in 1837, the company has extended its heritage of integrity, quality, commitment and innovation around the globe.

Chip Foose is an internationally recognized automotive designer and fabricator best known for his work on custom hot rods. He starred in five seasons of Overhaulin’ on TLC. Foose’s unique style has earned him numerous industry awards, including the Ridler Award and Best of Show at SEMA (Specialty Equipment Market Association), as well as recognition in the Hot Rod Hall of Fame. Foose owns and operates a custom shop in Huntington Beach, California.

Fresh ID, LLC helps businesses around the world expand their business and reach their goals. By understanding companies from the inside out, Fresh ID designs intelligent solutions and products that help clients do business and engage with prospects and customers. Brand identity and monitoring, social media consultation and campaigns, web design, site socialization, interactive design, application development and user experience strategy are a few of the services offered by Fresh ID. More information about the company and the Twitterface application is available at http://freshid.com and at http://twitterface.com.

Those unable to physically attend the popular Like Minds 2010 conference in Exeter, England, are in for a treat. Accessible, inspiring, and empowering, the Like Minds Conference 2010 is a rare opportunity to meet world class experts, local leaders, and like-minded individuals sharing and debating new trends and opportunities in the social media industry. The event will be available live online for those unable make the trip to England but who wish to participate and engage with others. The conference begins at 10am GMT on Friday, February 26, 2010.

Those wishing to view the event online can go to www.twitterface.com/likeminds2010 to watch live video of the conference, read live blog posts and interact with other viewers via Twitter.  This custom site was developed by a Kansas City based design firm, Fresh ID, LLC.

“Those unable to get a seat at the event can take advantage of this custom-branded, aggregated page. Twitterface really shines as a branded community hub that centers on conversations and sharing content. This is a genius little platform for brand-centric companies, event management firms, and digital agencies  looking for a simple way to get their clients involved in Social Media,” states Olivier Blanchard, an internationally known brand strategist from Greenville, SC who is speaking at the event.

The event includes six keynote speakers, 18 panelists and 6 moderators who will focus on taking our eyes off the social media tools and putting them on what matters, The People. Keynote speakers include Mr. Blanchard, New York Times best-selling author Chris Brogan, and John Bell, Managing Director of Ogilvy. There will also be lunch-time breakout sessions at various restaurants around the city in which those attending the event can interact and learn from the experts on a more personal level.

About Fresh ID
Fresh ID helps businesses around the world expand their business and reach their goals. By understanding companies from the inside out, Fresh ID designs intelligent solutions and products that help clients do business and engage with prospects and customers. Brand identity and monitoring, social media consultation and campaigns, web design, site socialization, interactive design, application development and user experience strategy are a few of the services offered by Fresh ID. More information about the company and the Twitterface application is available at http://freshid.com and at http://twitterface.com.

About Like Minds
Like Minds is about inspiring people through its innovative conferences, all with the aim of ‘challenging thinking’. It is positioned alongside high-level conferences, while retaining an extremely affordable price tag, making it accessible to anyone. Started in August of 2009, Like Minds is a living case study of social media and the acceleration of business through new technologies and the ability to connect with people easier than ever before. More information about Like Minds is available at http://wearelikeminds.com.

Contact: Matt Bartlett
Phone: 877.785.3737
E-mail: matt@freshid.com

How many times have you wanted to tweet while watching a live event, with the other folks paying attention to it? Or have you ever visited a movie page on Yahoo or AOL, but wished you could connect with people on Twitter or Facebook to talk about it? Now you’ll be able to.

The  first version of this page will work like our Twitterface pages do now, and you can click the tweet or retweet icons and tweet from your client of choice… but we are adding a Login capability for Twitter and Facebook users so that people can hang out on the page and talk to new friends they meet who are there. This opens up so many fun possibilities for how you can use Twitterface pages:

Promote a movie… add trailer video, tweet panes, a Facebook pane… even a contest or something interactive – we can build Twitterface pages to your specs!

Vlogging… if you host a regular video blog, use a Twitterface page and uStream to do it live while people watch and tweet, or embed recorded video from any site such as YouTube, Vimeo or Viddler on the page and let people tweet, discuss and connect while watching your video for a smoother, more impactful experience.

Commercials… some commercials are terribly funny, or awe-inspiring, and almost have a cult-like following of their own. Ever seen a Nike commercial that compelled you to go outside and exercise? Share these on a Twitterface page and let the community gather around your brand to share their passions with each other.

Set up Live events… if you are a conference organizer, this is a no-brainer. Right now people likely have multiple windows open for tweeting, chatting on uStream or LiveStream, and maybe even having Facebook open as well if you have a conference presence there. Make it easier on virtual participants and combine all of this on one Twitterface page.

Instruction of any kind… a cooking program, computer tutorial, mechanic instruction, exercise technique, business process information – all of these video education programs could be placed on a Twitterface page and Twitter and Facebook users connected to it, for real-time discussion.

Slideshare presentations… similiar to a page with video, we are creating a page that holds an embedded slideshare presentation so you can share information and have people gather around it to discuss anytime.

We have two companies we are building this for now, with uStream/LiveStream for live events. If you also need a Twitterface page with video, contact us for pricing.

1. Genuine Celebrities (Be They Globally Famous or Merely Geeky)
2. The Rest of Us

We Have Different Expectations of Celebrities
Celebrities, such as Ashton Kutcher, Demi Moore, Diddy, Martha Stewart, and even noted “tech celebrities” such as Robert Scoble and Guy Kawasaki, have a different experience than most of us, due to the number of people that want to follow them for various reasons or admiration. The Law of Reciprocity may or may not be used by celebs, but they attract plenty of attention anyway. You cannot compare yourself to them. When people find out they’re there, they often gain thousands of followers overnight.

The Rest of Us Are In a Popularity Game
People may not like it, but Twitter is as old-fashioned a popularity game as high school is, IF you want to use it to promote your business, products, services or special causes. It doesn’t matter if you have 50 followers, or 50,000, if you are a non-celebrity (remember, they are differently perceived than you), you will need to have some level of popularity amongst your friends and followers because you cannot extend the reach of your message without these people. By “being popular” I mean, you need to be liked and appreciated. This is not like traditional marketing – this is social marketing and being social requires a lot of interaction with other people. (Celebrities should pay attention to the rest of this article if they want their fans and followers to adore them beyond words. Acts of kindness by strangers are doubly appreciated when you admire the person already.)

This isn’t a magic “popularity” ingredient, nor can I ensure you’ll get followers by the droves if you take my advice. This IS however, a philosophical theory that can bring you benefits if you understand it and are able to take advantage of it in your self-promotional efforts.

I am not sharing this because I want everyone to think I have some super-sales twitter tactic for big-time business growth & thousands of followers or whatever the new crop of infamous “twitter marketers” are hawking. I follow lots of people, and I have seen (I think) virtually every kind of attempt to get followers and peddle one’s wares that exists. I see great businesses, big and small, that are sending out their info in an attempt to generate some interest in what they have to offer. And time and time again, I see some methods fail, or worse, suffer backlash from vocal users who like to point out shortcomings in others. I want to help those businesses understand how to use Twitter like I do (because after all, it works for me.)

Understanding The Law of Reciprocity
The simple way to describe the Law of Reciprocity is to equate it to The Golden Rule: do unto others as you would have them do unto you. But most of us were taught that in grade school and it still doesn’t help us win friends and influence people on Twitter! The actual, mathematical theorem depicted at Wikipedia is no help at all (except for you super-smart-geeks!) and what I am talking about is not spiritual in nature, though many students of spirituality and “law of attraction” believers consider this an important aspect of the universal condition.

I have some diagrams here to help illustrate my point. Each little spot on the circles is a “topic” of conversation on Twitter.

What I see companies and self-employed people do on Twitter, all the time, is operate like this circle on the left. They tweet, retweet and link to only that information which specifically talks about their company, a company employee, or company news of some type.

They may be friendly, and branch out a little bit over time, but their circles of interest revolve only around their own product, services, company or cause. I don’t think many businesses realize how this is perceived by others – they don’t necessarily intend to be self-serving only, so this is not a criticism but a different point of view to consider.

Popular (non-celebrity) users, on the other hand, tweet, retweet and link to information of all sorts. If a follower announces they’re having a baby, have graduated college or are getting married, they often excitedly tweet congratulations. They share items of interest that they feel others might like, even if they have no use for them. They participate sometimes in fun and silly games like #FollowFriday (where people make suggestions for people they recommend following) or #80sPhotoWeekend (wherein some of us risked ridicule by posting pics of ourselves that should have gone unseen.) They get into conversations that people are having, debating everything from the state of the economy to the controversial social practices to the best way to tweet. They share opinions, spread good and bad news, help new followers get on board and generally have a good time with the people in their Twitter stream.

“BUT @KrisColvin!!!” you might say, “I have no time for this! I am a busy business person who is all about business!” I hear you. I myself am neglecting about 12 other things simply to write this post. We are all busy. But this is NOT broadcast marketing. This is not a radio ad, tv spot, newspaper ad or direct mailer. This is social media marketing, and that takes the one thing we have even less of than we have money… it takes time.

I often refer to “pimping my friends” and have been told I’m an expert schmoozer… much of that is my particular, fairly social personality. I want to share information about the people, company and clients that I care about, but I know some folks don’t understand why they send me direct messages asking me to tweet something, and I ignore it. I do what I can, but can’t really tweet things out I have no relation to, sympathy for, understand or would use without seeming, rightfully so, fake. I try to share what I know about in line with the things people know I am interested in, mostly and just remain true to my character about it.

I recommend using Twitalyzer to find out where you stand in terms of being generous with others. If you enter my name, you’ll see I am not scoring very high on “Generosity” because I don’t retweet things as much as others do. Yet, many of my followers perceive me as generous, because they’ve witnessed me trying to help someone else. We all have our own ways of being helpful, but this information is good for me to know because I do in fact, read more links sent out than I retweet. I should step it up a bit and share those more. Seeing me help someone else, or retweet something for someone, creates the goodwill of the Law of Reciprocity – whether I have helped the person observing this or not. This is good to know, but this is where the Law also gets a bit complex. Coach John Agno explains it well at his site:

The law of reciprocity is not what can best be described as “transactional reciprocity.” Baker says that, “Many people conceive of their business dealings as spot market exchanges–value given for value received, period. Nothing more, nothing less. This tit-for-tat mode of operation can produce success, but it doesn’t invoke the power of reciprocity and so fails to yield extraordinary success.”

Baker explains, ”The lesson is that we cannot pursue the power of reciprocity. When we try to invoke reciprocity directly, we lose sight of the reason for it: helping others. Paradoxically, it is in helping others without expecting reciprocity in return that we invoke the power of reciprocity. The path to reciprocity is indirect: reciprocity ensues from the social capital built by making contributions to others.

The deliberate pursuit of reciprocity fails, just like the pursuit of happiness. Acts of contribution, big and small, build your fund of social capital, creating a vast network of reciprocity. And so those who help you may not be those you help. The help you receive may come from distant corners of your network.”

In reality, understanding how these dynamics work is just the first part of the challenge. We must genuinely like people to benefit from social media, because if you like someone, your intention is naturally more reciprocal and less self-serving. If you have a bit of an introverted or anti-social personality, this may be hard. If you are very intellectual and suffer from an intolerance of small talk, even harder. It might be a good idea to enroll someone to help you and to tweet on behalf of your business if this is the case. Your spouse, best friend or loyal employee might be able to do a better job than you may with this technology and new way of marketing. Empower them not just to “toe the company line” but to BE social… to chit-chat, to talk about random thing, to share the good news, links and informations shared by others, and to show their unique personalities online.

It is not when you are focused on the Law of Reciprocity that it will work for you – it’s when you’re not. I have literally gone on a mini-Facebook rant and moments later received a direct message from a prospective client wanting to know if Fresh ID does social media optimization. I worry about some of the things I tweet because I am highly opinonated, but not too much. Everyday, people both follow me and unfollow me. Focus on getting to know the people who have done you the honor of following you BEFORE talking about your business.

Rather than trying too hard to promote your business, mention it when something appropriate comes up. Talk naturally about your day (a benefit of frequent tweeting) and that will include aspects of your work. Share advice when you see questions. When a need that has to do with your industry is mentioned, you might be the first expert someone thinks of, and you will now be familiar to them so their recommendation will go to you. That’s how it works. It’s not a “tactic”, not a “strategy”, but you, being normal, with strangers in a social space just like you would at a party or public event. But for the Law of Reciprocity to work you have to let go of the controls and rules about how you use this medium.

Scott Stratten, aka @unmarketing on Twitter, has a great mantra that people love to share when they see it, that sum up this advice in less than 140 characters. It is:

The Five Steps of Twitter Success: Follow, Reply, Retweet, Share, Repeat

As per my habit, I want to break these down and go into some detail, because a lot of businesses may feel they are doing this already, and don’t understand why it’s not working.

Follow LOTS of people with varying interests… not just the folks that you think will buy what you’re selling.

Reply to anything you see that you have an answer in your head for (within reason.) People LOVE to be acknowledged, and sometimes we put something out we think is funny or interesting or needed and it just falls flat. Reply to people often – it is the only way to truly get to know them and become friends.

Retweet things that both apply and don’t apply to you and your mission. If it seems beneficial to many folks, or it gave you a hearty laugh, those tweets are great candidates for retweets and have nothing to do with your business (but it promotes lots of goodwill!)

Share all kinds of information. If you pick up some things at lunch at the mall because there is an incredible sale, share that – let people know because it might help them too. I often share job information because I have a client in the industry, but mainly because thousands of people are desperate for jobs! I don’t retweet every single thing I see, or share it, but if there is a hot-button issue like that you can share about that helps others, don’t hesitate because it doesn’t seem “on-topic” for your purpose.

Repeat daily and be consistent. Don’t just login to Twitter to promote something and go away. Find the time to work it into your daily routine if you want to use Twitter as a self-promotional tool. How else do you expect people to find you? Twitter by far sends more people to my sites, blogs and information than any search engine or advertising ever has. That is probably because I talk a lot!

Questions? Comments? I’d love to hear them about this topic! I feel pretty sure that if more businesses did this, they would find Twitter to be a more pleasant and effective business tool, given enough time. What do you think?

Personal: A Stay-in-Contact Tool for Friends & Family
Like Facebook, instant messaging or texting a dear one on the phone, your purpose is to stay in touch with people intimately and you are not really looking to “grow a network” or find more people to follow. Your updates may be protected and this article is probably not of interest to you.

Functional: A Productivity or Utility Tool
You can use Twitter as a tool for doing business, as opposed to building business, in a number of ways:

1. Public Use: Customer Service
2. Public Use: Broadcast Information, such as blog feeds, job openings, PR feeds, news feeds, political information, stock & financial reports, etc. Many users are benefitting from the instant updating and like to follow broadcast-only accounts if the content is relevant to them.
3. Private Use: Inner-office communications, police or medical department communications, etc. (usually this necessitates protected updates and random followers are not sought out or approved)
4. Public or Private Use: Members only updates or business-to-consumer information such as using Twitter pings to look up information in a database (checking to see if the video store has the movie you want to see, placing to-go orders at a local restaurant, etc.)
5. Pulse: Information about real-time breaking news, weather events, global issues and hot topics.

Social: A Promotional & Networking Expansion Tool
Some folks love the companionship and chance to meet folks from around the world, so while they aren’t necessarily limiting themselves only to friends or family members, they really don’t have an agenda for using Twitter other than to meet new people and have a great time. Other meeting local friends, meeting someone to romance (more casual than match.com!) or finding people who share your interests, beliefs or hobbies.

One of the most powerful and popular ways to use Twitter is as a self-promotional vehicle, whether an individual, celebrity or company representative. The price is right, for all – it’s free! The learning curve is not steep, the only real downside seems to be the time it takes to add this into an already busy workday. Though a lot of individuals and companies are hearing about Twitter and setting up accounts (including celebrities of all types, politicians, athletes, news outlets and more), HOW to promote oneself in a way that attracts people rather than repels them, seems not to be understood by many, many people on Twitter.

When it’s not understood, any number of unattractive things can occur that can hurt your efforts:

• You offend people immediately after they follow you, by sending automated direct messages with self-interest-serving links (single easiest way to make a bad impression.)
• You annoy new followers with automated off-the-shelf promo messages created by the software you’re using (Join me on ping.fm, it’s like twitter for music!)
• You’re a celebrity who appears overly self-indulgent and non-friendly because though thousands of fans follow you (some of them more interested or genuinely fond of you than you know) the number of people you follow are in the single or double digits and you rarely @reply to people by name.
• You’re a company who only seems to care about promoting your products, your services, your press, or retweets information in which you are mentioned.
• You’re a company who thinks Twitter should be used as a broadcast tool, but don’t understand the circumstances in which people care about that, and mistakenly expect people on Twitter to jump on and follow you so you can blast them with self-promotion. When they don’t, you think Twitter is not all it’s cracked up to be.
• You actually think that putting up a photo of a hot babe wearing a skimpy outfit, and putting in a few updates of a link to something you are trying to sell is going to work to make you millions of dollars. When you get blocked or banned as a spammer, you don’t get what the problem is.
• You see the thousands upon millions of Twitter users as live targets for your sales pitches, and follow people simply to send them some great link for them to try out, check out or that will bring them great benefits. But because people can see through your self-serving interests, you come off as lame and there are a fair amount of outspoken people that bash you and try to get you thrown off Twitter.

Using Twitter as a promotional tool effectively can be challenging, but very rewarding. In my next post, I’ll show you how the Law of Reciprocity can change the way people perceive you, and help you create more openings to talk about your business with an ever-growing number of followers.

He had a different take and now I have to wonder if this could be something the creators were thinking about. To the electronic, phone-happy, can’t live a minute without some internet access population (the bulk of my friends on Twitter), this gadget seems like a terrible idea. It’s much more limited than a smartphone, doesn’t offer full functions like a Kindle does for a book (meaning, since you can’t see links and pics you are dead in the water except for seeing and responding to tweets) and it looks like an over-sized calculator. Here’s what we came up with as possible uses for this limited device though… I see this gadget from a new perspective after our talk:

Connectivity to your children: For $99 + $8 a month or $199 LIFETIME access, you could get one of these things for your kids far cheaper than a mobile phone, set up a private network of family and known friends only and have some feeling of security if you are on Twitter a lot (which I am) that your kids could reach you with a tweet when needed, and that you could see when they tweet and who they’re talking to. Twitter has a minimum age requirement I think, so you’d need to look into that, but this could come in very handy if you have kids that you don’t quite want to phone-enable yet.

Replacement for phones in dispatch situations: If you’re paying for phones with any kind of access beyond voice calls, you’re going to be paying a lot more per month than you would with this device. Twitter cabbies, delivery services, police departments, medical institutions… there could be a large list of possible buyers if you look at the systems and processes you could put in place with this device rather than using mobile phones. Tremendous cost savings depending on what you’re doing.

Team communicators: Nextel used to be the big thing to have for construction crews and folks that work with each other, but some distance apart from each other (such as when doing road construction or a large building or even in the oil field.) It is VERY costly though… these devices would be cheaper by a significant amount if you are outfitting crews with ways to reach each other. (Yes, the learning curve would be they have to learn to tweet instead of talk, but that is a process change you might want to make to save money.)

I still don’t know that the TwitterPeek will take off. It all depends on the marketing and branding they do – right now most people who see it are techies or at least Twitter-oriented already and the limitations seem so obviously unappealing that they view it negatively. I see it a little differently if used as I described it here now… it remains to be seen if that is how the company will actually promote it or not.

I have to add, right now I am phoneless. My dumbphone (an Alltel LG Scoop) is broken and I am waiting to buy a smartphone this Friday (Motorola Droid or HTC Droid Eris mostly likely.) Now… if I were NOT in this situation, and this Twitter gadget came out that let me get online and talk to my friends any dang time I wanted to, from any city, any place, anywhere, for $200 one-time fee… well, I might be tempted. LOL!! It’s hard to be on the road and be able to read things from my dumbphone and not be able to respond. But probably, that’s just me.

Some of the benefits of Lists are:

• You don’t have to follow people you have on a list, so brands like Starbucks or Verizon or whoever you need to interact with occasionally, don’t have to take up your main tweet stream… a HUGE benefit.
• Though many clients offer Groups, Twitter itself did not, so all the effort to put people into groups in an individual client did not translate to using another client – it was stored at the system level. Having Lists available via Twitter & the api means your sorted groups will always stay intact, regardless of the software you’re using.
• Lists can be shared and followed by others, so if you see a List you like that someone else created, you can follow it rather than recreate it… the disadvantage right now is that Twitter hasn’t made it so that you can add to, copy, consolidate or alter a List, meaning if you follow a great one and find an applicable user to add to it, you can’t (we will attempt to code around this in Twitterface so that you can.)
• There’s already an awesome directory set up where you can find and follow Lists… check it out at Listorious.com (I love Listorious so much, I’m hoping we can work with their team to integrate adding to the directory from Twitterface.)

Suffice it to say, this is one of the most exciting new features Twitter has implemented yet. In fact, The Next Web is reporting that Google searches indicate over 6.5 MILLION Twitter Lists have been created so far… and that’s with a gradual rollout to limited users the last two weeks in beta mode!

Not convinced of the benefit for you yet? Several users asked me to write about how Lists could help them from a business perspective. Here are some things you might do with this cool feature…

1. Create a list of your clients. I haven’t done this yet but am going to. We like to keep up with our clients tweets because we like them and want to stay in the loop about what they have going on. This is a super-fast way to do that.
2. Create a list of recommended vendors. A lot of folks have Twitter apps or tools Lists, but I decided to create a List of applications that I trust (including competitors to Twitterface) or that I use and would recommend. I don’t put a tool on this list without firsthand knowledge of the people behind it or interaction with them, so my followers or people who find it at Listorious will know it’s not a random smattering of tools, but one that I personally put thought into (if that matters to them.) Another purpose for do this is to help your own clients… if you’re a designer, you might assemble a list of recommended printers your clients can use to help them compare pricing or find special services.
3. List people from an article or book. Shel Israel has a neat list of people that were mentioned in his Twitterville book. This is a nice way to let people instantly follow all the people you’ve mentioned in a blog article (I’ll be creating a Twitter List of the 40 Amazing Female Role Models for Web Designers article I was recently mentioned in, for example.) This is a super way to extend the value of this type of article. (One caveat: you can only have 20 Lists per Twitter account, so you may need to think through this before planning to do a list for every article.)
4. Share your passions. Robert Scoble makes no apologies for his singular interest in tech geeks of all types – programmers, innovators, financiers, etc. His lists are awesome to follow but also worth studying from a strategic standpoint.
5. Stream topics. One of the ways Lists + Twitterface (when implemented) gets very interesting is that you can stream topics for your audience. Say you love a particular car or you share financial information and you have a Twitterface page on that topic. Instead of being limited to searches in your panes as a way to find tweets, you can now create a list of Twitter users (or bot reporters) that talk about those topics 24/7. The topical content you share with others now just increased in value. One thing I will do as soon as Lists is implemented in our product, is add all the pro Tennis players who tweet (there are many) to the 40 Love page. We will eventually have more than 3 panes, for even more real-time content streaming. This takes Lists out of your own personal Twitter experience (using Tweetdeck or whatever client you prefer) and lets you use it to add to your own site or blog content as a value for your visitors.
6. Stream sales and coupons. I don’t do any direct selling via Twitter, but there is the potential to set up Lists (and Twitterface pages) to stream deals constantly. Let me attempt to give an example, though this may not be the best one since I am not an affiliate marketer. We have a page for tweets on cheese with a domain pointed to it at www.cheesetweets.com. If I had affiliate accounts set up with different cheese sellers (there are many online stores that offer affiliate programs) I could make a list of multiple accounts or use a single account on a Twitterface page to stream these deals in addition to seeing random tweets about cheese eating and recipes. This is a non-intrusive way to advertise (no one has to be followed, because you promote and link to your topical page, so you aren’t bothering them with sales tweets they don’t want.)
7. Combine your own Twitter accounts into one List. Users may not want to follow all of your Twitter accounts personally, but might follow a List they can check when they want to. Depending on the content you deliver, it might make sense to combine many of your Twitter accounts into a single List. I’d love it if Whole Foods did this with all their accounts, for example (just because I’m a brand fan who would check it sometimes.) This could be a powerful internal way for employees to stay in the loop and connected also.
8. Create a List for coworkers, team members or contractors. Life flies by fast on Twitter. I continually check the Twitterface page for We Heart Studios and see things I had no idea my team has said. A List will make it much easier to keep up with the people who are a critical part of my business everyday.
9. Find job opportunities faster. If you’re hunting for a job, there are many sources on Twitter that do nothing but list jobs. Combine all of these into a List and focus your attention on just those postings to save time and prevent missing a great opportunity.
10. Assemble a list of referrals. I am definitely going to do this. When a new client or opportunity presents itself, have a handy list of people that are willing to be contacted for a referral source (ask them first.) This will be super-convenient for folks who do business on Twitter like I do.
11. Create a list of people you’ve met. LightThread CEO Simon Kuo created a neat list for himself of people he’s now met in person. If you’ve attended an awesome conference recently and want to remember all the folks you’ve met, you might create a list like Like Minds did for their Like Minds Alumni. Many lists exist for local friends or people in your area. (I’m on several for the Kansas City area.)
12. Define people by what they love. I will be creating a list of Nutella addicts. Why? Just because I can. And because there are LOTS of them! The trick will be seeing what we can do in Twitterface with the api’s so that I can someday take that list of Nutella freaks and isolate only their Nutella tweets. (Yum, in every way!!)

Now… there are some people who will be petty and complain that they want to be on more lists. Okay, probably that is just me. LOL! But seriously, we should not necessarily view lists as some indicator of influence or popularity or lack thereof… they are meant to be used for your needs as a Twitter user and not the new “Twitter follower scheme” opportunity. Sadly, I have already seen one tweet advertising a pyramid scheme to get you on more lists. This is not the best use of your time. Be interesting – show your unique personality and personal quirks – make lists that truly mean something to you and followers you care about and let the list mania chips fall where they may.

Here are some more articles to help you understand the fine details about Twitter Lists. My #1 request of Twitter would be that they add “consolidation” and allow you to rename a list as your own so you can continue to add people to it that appeal to you. There may be reasons they wouldn’t like that idea, but that’s the main interactivity complaint I have so far.

>> Twitter Lists are Live! (Mashable)

>> Scobleizer on Lists: Limitations, Bugs, Impact & Brilliance

>> Alex’s Footnote to Scobleizer’s Post

>> Twitter Expands Lists Beta. A Great New Feature

Questions, comments or more suggestions about how to use Lists, please leave them in the comments and let’s discuss. I’m loving this new feature – I was on the beta from the beginning, and can’t wait for everyone to catch up and begin creating their own unique lists.

For $20 you can order a full report, which will contain all mentions of your search term over the past 7 days or maximum 1500 results (limits imposed by Twitter.) I find the cost of the report a bit high – using TweetReach for something like a marketing campaign is a very appealing way to see the effectiveness and what people are saying about it, but $20 on just that every week (or however long the campaign runs) might be more than people want to pay. 

Still… this is a GREAT concept and I love the way the information is presented. I did a search on a recent article I know many of us passed around, which had a somewhat unique title “Becoming P2P”. Here are the results of that search.  Another dear friend named Scott Gould wrote about this too, so his article results are combined in this search, which is great (for my purposes) because the topic is the same.

You can see the “Total Exposure” which shows that over 31,000 people saw something about this article 4-7 times! That’s awesome… I am not sure of the social media conversion rates on something like this, but in advertising (say, for a print ad or television spot) the numbers are something like 7x exposure needed before one takes action. Psychologically, seeing repeated exposures builds familiarity and confidence, which is why many companies don’t realize to place on print ad in a trade magazine is not the most effective way to spend marketing dollars – it’s not enough exposure. I just read yesterday, that consumers who are exposed to a brand’s social media efforts and paid search programs are 2.8x more likely to search for that brand’s products. For example, if you do paid Google searches, using social media in addition is almost 3x more effective. So you can begin to see where this sort of Total Exposure information can come in handy.

A lot of traditional marketing pro’s want to see who the “influencers” are. TweetReach shows the impressions broken down by Twitterer. I don’t know how accurate that is – I guess it seems unreal to me that my mentions of this particular article would be so high – nearly 124,000 impressions! That just seems crazy. But this list shows who is talking about you, who believes in what you’re doing, and who is helping to spread your particular message.

So, if you like this tool, there are some things you can do in advance to help you later search for it effectively. All of these can be changed by users when they retweet or share it somewhere, so you probably want to search using all these methods to discover the real results.

1. Use a unique URL. Bit.ly and many other URL shorteners let you add a “custom” addition to the url and you should do that – make it short as possible and as UNIQUE as possible (in case others have used those same words. In this search example, the URL could have been something like http://bit.ly/bep2p  Of course, the boring old numbers and letters url’s will work just fine also.
2. Use a unique hashtag. The author of this article is @thebrandbuilder on Twitter (he happens to be a Twitterface advisor also) and we often refer to him as #TBB. Unfortunately others use that hashtag also for 2 or 3 other things. He could promote his articles distinctly and then search on them later by altering the hashtag to something like #TBB-P2P. That way, if people consistently retweeted that hashtag it would easily distinguish all of these searches in TweetReach.
3. Use a unique title or phrase in your tweet. I happened to think of the words “Becoming P2P” because it was short and we’ve all been talking about it the past two days. Those words are fairly unique, but if you want to use TweetReach a lot you probably need to think about how you are going to find these results in advance.

Go play with TweetReach! We will be looking into integrating or pointing over to it from Twitterface in the future – it’s that good a tool.

And read Becoming P2P: Principle Characteristics of the New Social Business if you want to see how business is already shifting and shaping – this is such an exciting time to be part of this movement.

ADDENDUM
Last night on Twitter Olivier Blanchard and Don Bart, my social media ROI experts, reminded me that Impressions only mean “opportunities to see”. A tweet sent, is not a guaranteed tweet read. The same could be said about direct mail – some of it gets thrown in the trash, but the difference is the reader has to mentally process it before deciding to do that. An advertisement may or may not be noticed in a magazine (with lots of other content around it.) But a tweet may never have been seen at all… that’s why TweetReach’s graph of the number of times a tweet was sent to a number of people (what they call impressions) is so helpful. Having exposure to the information more than once, if it’s important to you, can make a difference in the reality of how many people clickthru to read more information, visit your site, interact with you on Twitter, or do a search for your products or services.

ADDENDUM 2
It’s important to search for your entry several ways to see all the results. For example, if I search for this article at TweetReach using the shortened bit.ly link I originally posted, I get much smaller results than I did using the title of the post. People’s links get changed or re-shortened, or they deliberately do it to track via some other program, so url’s are highly inconsistent (which is why bit.ly aggregates results based on the long url.) Contrast those results with the search on the full post title and you’ll see many more people retweeted this than I knew about, because my name was not in the retweets. Sweet!