Announcing a new Meetup for Chicago Online Marketing Group!

2009 has been the Year of Twitter.

Many marketers have tapped Twitter's micro-blogging real-time format to find new prospects and clients. Can Twitter do the same for you or just waste your time?

Join us as Ryan Evans of Rand Media Group shares an exciting presentation on Twitter's marketing potential, stats and tips. Here are a few of the topics Ryan will be covering in this Meetup:

• Twitter trends, statistics & media coverage
  
• What is it and how to use it
  
• Networking with Twitter
  
• Gathering & filtering information
  
• How and why to be a good resource
  
• Real world networking with Twitter
  
• Live examples and alternative uses
  
• Twitter tools & resources
  

If you're curious about using social media to improve your marketing and sales, you won't want to miss this presentation.

Come early and bring your business cards. We'll start the evening with a little networking.

What: Marketing with Twitter: Valuable Tool or Waste of Time?
When: November 17, 2009 7:00 PM
Price: $3.00 per person

Where:
Digital Bootcamp (New)
25 West Hubbard Street
Chicago, IL 60654

Learn more here:
http://www.meetup.com...


See you at the MeetUp


Rey Villar
Co-Organizer
Internet Marketing

...i am BIG believer in twit as biz and soc tool...the main reason iz that the phone iz wher everione lives now n twit iz the best way to be on someonez phone....twit didn't rlly tak off til the iPhone hit....i'll post soe articles az well.....cheerz

Twitter for Business: Your Quick-Start Guide
• Register your name. Beware of squatters, just like domains in the '90s. I registered twitter.com/GapMaternity in less than 30 seconds. If you registered a URL, then register the Twitter username. (If you work at the Gap, contact me. I'll turn it over. Everyone else, don't let this happen to you.) 

• Learn. Monitor how leading companies like Dell, Zappos, and Southwest are using Twitter. 

• Listen to what Tweeters are saying about you. Many third-party Twitter readers, such as TweetDeck, will highlight Tweets that include your Twitter handle (example: @SouthwestAir), but you can also keeping a running search page open at Twitter Search. Refresh it periodically.

• Plan for success. Define your goals and objectives. Dedicate one or more staffers to monitor and participate in conversations. Once customers find you on Twitter, many will use it for questions or comments. Think of staffing the way you do for inbound e-mail, but with an advantage: because questions are mostly public, you answer once for all like a forum. For marketing tweets, set up conversion tracking like you would for e-mail. 

• Create "shareworthy" content. What content could be exclusive to your Twitter channel? Understand what's useful, entertaining, or has perceived value. Make it easy to share or follow. 

• Integrate your Twitter efforts with marketing efforts in other channels, including e-mail. Promote your Twitter URL on your Web site, in e-mail messages, and other marketing materials. Explain the benefits of following you (such as insider info, special deals, advance sale notice, or flight delays). Promote this page just like you would an e-mail signup page. 

• Encourage subscribers to share your e-mail messages with their networks ("Share with your network," or SWYN). Explain what's in it for them. Don't just post links in an e-mail message. Make it easy to tweet and retweet. 

• Use customer tweets in your e-mail program, just as you would use some customer reviews.
• Twitter Can Humanize Your Brand
• When Twitter co-founder Biz Stone was asked about Eric Schmidt's comments, he replied that Twitter has some similarities to e-mail products but is really for discovering and sharing what is happening right now.
• "We think it's important to introduce the power of a real-time network to even the weakest of signals around the world - as Twitter grows, we realize it's not about the triumph of technology, it's about the triumph of humanity," he said.
• Use that insight in your Twitter program, your e-mail program and every other cross-channel program you have. Time to humanize your brand!

oh yea, eziest way to git followers.......jst fllw a buncha ppl urself.....!!

Twitter enters the toolbox as professionals expand their networks
Creating an online forum can better connect attendees at meetings, conventions
By João-Pierre Ruth
11/2/2009

Social media outlets allow group members to network and build contacts before the in-person event takes place.
Firing off “tweets” and looking up profiles through social media is helping professionals get more out of meetings and conventions, which present opportunities to build contacts and leads, but can require some detective work. Knowing more about the scheduled guests and attendees ahead of time can help make an event a more efficient time investment.
Stacy Robin, managing partner of consulting firm The Degania Group, in Montclair, said she sees social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, CrowdVine and Meetup increasingly incorporated with meetings and conventions — but “in some cases, it’s not being used as effectively, aside from providing an attendance list,” she said.

Social media can offer teasers for events, Robin said, and encourage more in-person attendance. She said advance online notice of the attendees at October’s Young Professionals Multi-Group Mixer brought her out to the networking event.

More audience can be drawn to meetings through social media if cultivated properly, Robin said. “A lot of what you currently see in social media comes after the fact, to show people what they missed,” she said. The October event included members of more than 20 organizations, including New Jersey Young Professionals, Middlesex Regional Chamber of Commerce Young Professionals and the New Jersey Society of CPAs, who met in Clifton to exchange business cards and contacts. Promotion of the event included notices on LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter.

Laura Occhipinti, founder of networking group New Jersey Young Professionals, said she uses Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn to promote events and help members build contacts. While social media opens the door for making contacts, Occhipinti said people still expect to make an in-person connection. “It seems social media connects people initially, but most still want that face-to-face follow-up,” she said. “I find that people often use social media to say, ‘We connected online, now let’s meet at this event.’”

As professionals grow comfortable with sharing information online, making connections in advance of an event is becoming more common, said Mary Reynolds Kane, senior manager of marketing with the Professional Convention Management Association, in Chicago. PCMA is a national trade association for meeting and event planners and suppliers. Kane said her organization and members use social sites to build connections.

“A lot of people are using virtual meetings now in conjunction with their face-to-face meetings,” Kane said. Exchanging tweets, for example, can put those not attending in touch with speakers and others at events. Posting short messages on Twitter can help attendees find each other and inform other professionals about the event.

“If I can’t leave my office, I am able to see what a session at a conference can give to me,” Kane said, which may encourage more in-person attendance the next time the conference is held.

Kane said PCMA will use the CrowdVine platform in January for its annual meeting. CrowdVine lets users create and organize profiles of attendees and presenters at events. “You can figure out ahead of time who’s going, see a picture of them, what sessions they’re going to,” Kane said. “You know when you sign up for a session who your classmates are going to be.”

She said PCMA is using CrowdVine to organize attendees as suppliers, planners, members and nonmembers. “You can tell right off the bat who’s who and why you might need to talk to them,” she said. Attendees can also schedule meetings with each other through the platform.

Kane said in years prior, PCMA’s members did not readily respond to sharing information online prior to the organization’s events. However, the spread of social media helped increase adoption. “Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn have made people much more comfortable with posting their pictures and putting up their profiles and starting a discussion,” she said.

While social media creates a platform for discussion, Kane said it is not an absolute substitute for attending in-person. “Nothing can replace face-to-face meetings. You have to be in front of somebody to really get your point across, especially if you are coming from a sales perspective.”