QUESTION: New client just asked me for my fave Twitter Aggregator.  I have used:

Tweetmeme
TwitterSearch

But that’s it. Have to admit I don’t use them often.

@LeeOdden did a great post:
http://www.toprankblog.com/2009/02/12-twitter-stream-aggregators/ but wanted to know what you use and like.

ANSWER: TweetMeme is the most popular for looking at what the trending terms are on Twitter.
I use a custom Twitter search on my Firefox browser Toolbar that looks like this (which I learned from Dave Taylor) to see what’s being said about my specific keywords with a click of the toolbar.

“dishymix” OR “susan bratton” OR “@susanbratton” OR “personal life media” OR “talk show tips”  on my toolbar.

For how to do this, listen here as Dave Taylor explains how to set up a customized Twitter search:
http://blogs.personallifemedia.com/dishymix/dave-taylor-and-susan-bratton-community-powered-podcast-sxsw/2009/03/24/

I use SocialOomph for scheduling Tweets to go out over time into four of my Twitter accounts. It also has a Cockpit where you can see all your activity for all your accounts. It’s excellent.  I also use TweetDeck, but keep it on a separate Mac on my desk because it’s a system resource hog. It’s an actual Adobe Air application, not a web ap, so it takes a lot of resources to keep it running on your main computer in my experience.
Here’s my post on how to use SocialOomph.  (note, it used to be called TweetLater, a far superior name in my esteem)

http://blogs.personallifemedia.com/dishymix/be-everywhere-my-secret-stash-of-social-media-meta-tools-for-easily-syndicating-your-work-tg2009/2009/07/15/

Net net – SocialOomph has most or all of the features that any one of these single feature resources offers and would be my recommendation.

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In this excerpt from my DishyMix interview with John James Santangelo, creator of the “Speak Up with Power & Influence System,” he explains how to “get into another’s world” by listening for cues about how they think, learn and comprehend information – like what they can do to support your goals, for example.

See the excerpt below about using “negations,” “hypnotic language,” “NLP copywriting,” and getting what you want by communicating visually, or for auditory or kinesthetic learners.

If you haven’t yet listened to the two-part series and bonus stress reduction guided visualization bonus audio, you can click here now to stream it through your browser, download to your mp3 or go to iTunes to put them on your iPhone/iPod.

DishyMix episode 122: John Santangelo Teaches You How to Speak Up with Power and Influence to Get What You Want Part 2 of 2

DishyMix episode 121: Stress Reduction Guided Visualization and Hypnosis by John Santangelo

DishyMix episode 120: John Santangelo on Getting What You Want Anytime from Anyone Part 1 of 2

John says, when we’re communicating with somebody’s representational systems, whether they’re visual type learner, an auditory type learner or a kinesthetic or feeling type learner, it’s best to understand HOW they process information so you can speak to them in the way that they best comprehend new information.

When I communicate with people, the words I choose are going to match somebody’s representational system, and I’m going to use more visual words like “I see”, “That looks good”, “It appears to me”, or words as auditory person maybe “I hear you”, “That sounds good”, “That resonates with me”, and kinesthetic words, “I feel it”, “I get a grasp on that”, “I get a handle on that.”

The more that I can match somebody’s internal world and build repertoire with them, the better I’m able to then communicate my ideas.

This is the premise of the “L” in NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming) which stands for lingustic or language. And one of the things that I found in working with people is that we come – especially in American society – we come from a perspective of negations. We use a lot of words like “don’t”, “shouldn’t”, “can’t”, “won’t”, and the unconscious mind (the unconscious mind that runs 90 percent of us) does not understand negations; it only understands what’s being said.

So for instance, if I said to you “Don’t, do not, whatever you do, don’t think of a blue tree”, where does your brain have to go?

You’ve got to think of a blue tree. So you can’t think about what you don’t want to think about without thinking about it. Think about it.

So the first things is be cognisant of how we communicate our ideas. One of the things that we say in LP is this: say it the way you want it. Say it the way you want it to have happen. Give you another example; a personal relationship. People say “I don’t want you to treat me like that. Don’t treat me like that.” Now the unconscious mind is registering “Treat me like that” and it asks how or what, “Treat you like that?” So you’re not giving any direction when you’re speaking. The same in copywriting; you can use a negation in copywriting, and I’ll talk about that in a moment, but most people say, you know, “Don’t buy this product”, something that… and they get into this whole world of their map*, they’re communicating is their map.

So how can we influence other people by really telling them what to do, in a way that it doesn’t have any resistance in it? We want to bypass the conscious mind and speak to the unconscious mind. So words like “don’t”, “shouldn’t”, you can eliminate those and tell them exactly what to do, especially online, and you’ve probably heard this if you’ve done copy writing or website design and writing for websites is give them information and tell them what to do, tell them exactly what to do. The listener or the follower or the reader of the information needs to know that there’s a process of what to do next, and a lot of people don’t understand that. So with hypnotic language we can say things like “don’t”, “I don’t think that you should buy this product right now.” So the brain is hearing “Buy the product right now.” And what that does is it bypasses the resistance of the conscious mind rather than me saying, “Look, you need to buy this product right now.”

To see negations and other NLP based hypnotic language in use, check out John’s landing page copy at Speak Up with Power. It’s a crash course in copy writing on a single page!

*to learn more about what a “map” is in NLP, listen to John’s interview.

Just post your desire on the DishyMix Fan Page and make sure to email me your physical address.

I’ll mail it out to you.

The Age of Engage    Denise Shiffman
Boom    Mary Brown & Carol Osborn, Ph.D.
Click    Bill Tancer
Connection Generation    Iggy Pintado
Digital Outlook Report    Razorfish
The Dip    Seth Godin
The Element    Ken Robinson, Ph.D.
The Frugal Millionaires    Jeff Lehman
The Gort Cloud    Richard Seireeni
Groundswell    Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff
Here Comes Everybody    Clay Shirky
Honest Seduction    Scott Brinker, Anna Talerico & Justin Talerico
Ignited    Vince Thompson
The Leap    Bob Schmetterer
Open Brand    Kelly Mooney and Nita Rollins, Ph.D.
Peak    Chip Conley
The Perfection of Marketing    James Connor
Satisfied Customers Tell Three Friends    Pete Blackshaw
Search Engine Optimization    Rebecca Lieb
Stopping Identity Theft    Scott Mitic
Trust Agents    Chris Brogan
Who’s Got Your Back    Keith Ferrazzi
Word of Mouth Marketing    Andy Sernovitz

Thanks for listening to the show!

Simon Van Wyk: Host of Hothouse Interactive Podcasts carried these books back to Sydney during his recent trip to SF.

Simon Van Wyk

Brand Digital Allen P. Adamson
Branding Only Works on Cattle Jonathan Salem Baskin
Click Bill Tancer
Revolutionary Wealth Alvin & Heidi Toffler
Rubies in the Orchard Lynda Resnick
Saddle Up Your Own White Horse Saundra Pelletier

DishyMix episode 72: Simon Van Wyk, Australian Media Expert on “Lessons Learned” from DishyMix Guests: Blogs, Search, Social Media, ROI and Marketing as Conversation

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Klaas Wiema and Mathys van Abbe

This is first in a series where I take JD Lasica’s meme “Coolest Power Tools” on a “spin” to see not what our US geeks are using, but what our European Brethren find as their favorite aps.

I’ve queried some of my favorite new friends from Amsterdam, London and Cambridge about the tools they love. Here’s the first response, from Mathys van Abbe, founder of MobyPicture.

MATHYS VAN ABBE

My list:
- playfoursquare; In my opinion the first potential successful Location Based Service. Really like the fact they use playfulness to reach the necessary critical mass.

- soundcloud; Revolutionary collaborative tool for musicians. Not at all that musical myself, but really admire the distruptiveness of the service and the simple interface.

- startpix; Nice intuitive visual startpage which I use over 250 times a day. The fact it is visual and fills over time really makes it the easiest start on the web.

- mobypicture; founder and heaviest user ever since the launch. Not because you have to practise what you preach, but simply because I love to share my adventures!

Mathys’ blog:
http://mathys.vanabbe.com

Here are my favorites:

Susan Bratton

• MobyPicture for syndicating my photos and videos from my iPhone and Mac across all my social nets simultaneously (kicks TwitPic’s booty). I wrote about it here.

• TweetLater Professional for scheduling tweets in advance (I wrote about it in my roundup of social media tools)

• Trackur for online reputation management and social listening. It’s superior to Google Alerts. (See my post on Online Reputation Guidelines.

• Testing uberVU, a social media commenting tracking and reply system, in their private beta. (See my post on this.)

• A Twitter Custom Search bookmark on her Firefox browser toolbar (see my post on how to do this).

• Skype with screen sharing (see Are You There? Skype is My Traveling Geeks Lifeline).

• Innovate Ads “video spokesperson” and video banners for my book, Talk Show Tips. See Creating a High Converting Video Spokesperson for Your Landing Page).

• iMovie with YouTube uploader

• Wordpress with Zemanta plug-in (image and article recommendations) for Firefox

• Facebook

• Flickr via iPhoto uploader

• Tweetdeck on her Mac Mini

• iPhone app: Twitterific

Kyra Reed, Markyr

Conversation ranges from Bing to GoogleWave to Hashtags to TweetCrawls. Then we get into social influence marketing strategy and creating a solid, active community site.

Then things get dishy as Suz and Kyra talk about men with presence and why that’s the sexiest attribute a man can have. Don’t you love how the show combines humanity and marketing business advice all in a 30 minute treat?

Kyra Reed, Markyr on Community Development, Integrated Microcosms, Tweet Reach

I got another excellent email in my inbox today. (I reported on this regarding Sephora and the “Insider’s Club” last week.)

This email from Virgin America lets me one click Tweet their low airfares. Good job, VA! What a clever idea. Kudos to whomever is responsible for coming up with that clever addition. Virgin America is a brand that’s proud to believe they have fans willing to promote them via Twitter. Confidence builds on confidence.

Virgin America Email

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His advice in a nutshell? Make sure that when someone joins your email list, they become part of an “insider’s program.” Creating a special group who get access to incremental goodness is the way to keep churn down and sales high. For all Bill’s wisdom, listen below. See this great example of Bill’s advice from Sephora below.

Bill McCloskey

Bill McCloskey on Email Marketing Best Practices, Creating Passion Groups, Jazz Clubs and Dolphins

The panel was entitled: “Energizing your Business through Social Networks” plus Show & Tell How businesses should be using social media/ social influencing marketing
An interactive event led by Omobono and created by East of England
TG Panel:Robert Scoble, Susan Bratton, Renee Blodgett & JD Lasica

Here’s a clip taken by Jim “Sky” Schuyler of me talking about how companies can get involved in social media. Thanks go to @ShivSingh of Razorfish for coining the term Social Influence Marketing and to Lorrie Thomas of Web Marketing Therapy for bringing to my attention the importance of Give to Get in the social sphere. Both are recent DishyMix show guests and the links to their excellent interviews are below.

Here is the clip Sky took and and his blog post about it.

Image of Shiv Singh

Shiv Singh, Razorfish on the Social Influence Marketing, the Portable Social Graph and Friendsters

Image of Lorrie Thomas

Lorrie Thomas, Web Marketing Therapy on Chill Pills, Give to Gain and the Four Agreements

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Web aps and mobile had most significant growth. Social media had largest decline in M&A deals.

John Doyle II, Peachtree Media Advisors

Here is a 2009 Mid Year Digital Media M&A Report summarizing digital media transactions in the first half of 2009.

Click here to download.

According to John:

“Although the first half of the year was lackluster for digital media M&A when compared to the first half of 2008, keep in mind that interactive media deal-making did not fall off the proverbial cliff last year until Google missed their numbers in July 2008 and the infamous Sequoia presentation.  At that point, everyone in the digital media sector felt susceptible to the effects of the economic downturn (previously thinking it was a newspaper/television problem).”

“On a relative basis, we expect the extreme opposite case for deal-making in the 3rd and 4th Quarters of 2009 versus 2008 because of the heavy drop-off in the latter part of 2008.  Expect a significant increase in the next two quarters versus the same two quarters in 2008, which is a good thing.  Only note that the steep gains are due to the drastic fall off in the 3rd and 4th quarters of 2008 when the following headline appears “M&A Increases 400% in Q4 2009 versus Q4 2008!”

Listen to John on DishyMix.

John Doyle, Peachtree Media Advisors on Digital Media M&A, 2008 Capital Raises and Social Media Co’s Out of Biz

Whether I’m keynoting or participating on a panel or even at a party, socializing and talking business, I get the same basic question over and over.

“How do you manage to be everywhere at once?”

They are not talking about my physical body, which is mostly planted in my Aeron chair moving Personal Life Media forward. What they are talking about is the level of conversation I keep up online via Twitter, on Facebook, in my LinkedIn page, on my blog, with my weekly podcast. And everyone wants specifics. Exactly what do I use and how do I connect all the disparate services together?

I use a couple of really good meta-tools that lay on top of the various social nets, allowing me to write once-post many with my written content and my photos/videos/images. This syndication is at the core of my work and simplifies and radiates my work to my friends and followers across multiple networks.

My constellation of tools includes:

1. MobyPicture for syndicating my photos from my iPhone and Mac across ALL my socnets simultaneously (kicks TwitPic’s booty) Read my Post Once Appear Everywhere review of MobyPicture here.
2. TweetLater Professional (there’s a free version) for pre-scheduling Tweets to come out over time about my DishyMix podcast episodes, other shows on Personal Life Media and some of my better blog posts, of which I hope this is one
3. Trackur for online reputation management and social listening. It’s superior to Google Alerts
4. I’m also testing uberVU in their private beta as it’s a threaded listening/commenting system, because once you syndicate your content across multiple networks, you get comments coming in from all those places and you need a single UI in which to manage the conversations
5. and a Twitter Custom Search bookmark on my Firefox browser toolbar that @DaveTaylor taught me how to do: “dishymix” OR “susan bratton” OR “@susanbratton” OR “personal life media” OR “talk show tips” (learn how from Dave here)

Note: MobyPicture is a Dutch company, founded by Mathys van Abbe. More about MobyPicture here. TweetLater Professional is a Canadian company, founded by Dewald Pretorius. Trackur is a US company, founded by Andy Beal. uberVu is a Romanian company, founded by Vladimir Oane and Dragos Ilinca. We met an amazing number of social media start ups on our Traveling Geeks tour which you should check out.

This post will focus on how I use Tweetlater Pro to schedule and use “spinnable text” so that I’m promoting my work over time across Twitter. I do link my Tweets to Facebook, so they appear there as well.

This is an excerpt from my elearning system, Talk Show Tips: 72 Secret Master Host Techniques in which I teach you how to prepare for a conduct interviews but also exactly how I use social influence marketing to promote my shows. TweetLater Professional is a mainstay in my strategy.

Using TweetLater Professional to Manage Your Twitter Schedule
I am so glad Dewald Pretorius (love that name!) had the organizational foresight to invent TweetLater Professional. I follow him on Twitter @dewaldp. I want to be in the Twitterverse on a consistent basis, but I have a business to run and a life to lead. TweetLater Professional “TLP,” for which I pay $29.97, a month is completely worth the price for its time-saving features.

I have a lot I want to Twitter about. I blog, I have my podcast, we do 39 other interesting shows on the network, I find other blog posts and articles I want to share, I like to post about where I’m speaking, I want to “crowd source” answers to my questions…I love to interact on Twitter.  I take a proactive approach to much of what I Twitter. I like to write a whole series of Tweets and then schedule them to appear at times when I know my East and West Coast friends are most likely to see them. Then I supplement those pre-planned Twitters with all of the spur of the moment things about which I want to communicate by Twittering on the fly.

I also know that any one follower may not likely be watching their Twitter stream when I’m Twittering about a specific subject. For important things, like my weekly show, I want to be able to Twitter about it more than one time.  I will write 4-8 different versions of a Twitter about a single episode and schedule them to appear over a 1-3 week period. That way, if one post doesn’t catch your attention or your fancy, another one about the same show just might.

Here is what the basic TweetLater data entry screen looks like.

TweetLater Main Entry Screen

Here are examples of four Twitter posts I scheduled through TweetLater Professional (using Spinnable Tweet Text – more below)  to come out in one month about one single episode of DishyMix:

Pivotal Veracity. I don’t know what it is, but I want it. McClosky recommends cool email tools. http://TwitPWR.com/7wt/
The Jazz Club Dolphin on Text Vs. HTML http://TwitPWR.com/7wt/
40,000 Email Marketing Campaigns Later, The #1 Piece of Advice Emerges http://TwitPWR.com/7wt/
Shy? An incredibly convoluted but elegant solution to networking from Bill McClosky. http://TwitPWR.com/7wt/

Notice that they all have the same TwitPWR url?  That way, which ever ones get RT’d, give more power to that single url and reinforce my standing at TwitPWR. I also save draft tweets that include text and a TwitPWR url in it if it’s a really good episode and I’ll want to promote it for weeks afterward.

Spinnable Tweet Text

My very favorite feature of TweetLater Professional is not just scheduling tweets that will be published every X number of hours, days, or weeks. The “Spinnable Text” feature is BRILLIANT. To avoid having the tweet say exactly the same thing every time it is published, you can provide alternate tweet text options (multi-level spinnable tweet text) from which the final tweet text is compiled every time a recur is published.

My Spinnable Text post for the above four Tweets about Bill McClosky’s interview on DishyMix looked like this in the entry box:

{Pivotal Veracity. I don’t know what it is, but I want it. McClosky recommends cool email tools. http://TwitPWR.com/7wt/|The Jazz Club Dolphin on Text Vs. HTML http://TwitPWR.com/7wt/|40,000 Email Marketing Campaigns Later, The #1 Piece of Advice Emerges http://TwitPWR.com/7wt/|Shy? An incredibly convoluted but elegant solution to networking from Bill McClosky. http://TwitPWR.com/7wt/}

Note: You can always cancel or pause these kinds of recurring Tweets if they become noxious or are no longer viable. Also, the directions for how to do Spinnable Text are very well done on the TweetLater console.

In addition to the advanced scheduling, another feature I like in TLP is the ability to schedule for multiple accounts. I manage my own Twitter account @SusanBratton, I also manage the Twitter stream for @PersonalLIfe and I contribute to the Association for Downloadable Media’s Twitter feed, @ADMTweets. I can write any Twitter and decide to post it to one, two or all three of my accounts using TLP.

TweetLater Pro Accounts

Note: I also own @TalkShowTips and @DishyMix and send potential followers to @SusanBratton to follow me there.

Track Your Keywords on Twitter with TweetLater Professional
I have set up alerts and track a list of keywords using TweetLater Professional too. I use it like I do with Trackur, which I view about once a week. I like getting the Twitter digest every day in email so I can discover new people to follow or who I can tell about TalkShowTips. You can also use this feature to track your @replies, though I keep up with them through TweetDeck when I’m at my desk and Twitterific on my iPhone. It feels more timely to me to get them at those places, than TweetLater Professional.

I am actively looking for Twitterers who are posting about their latest show, so I can ping them about this book or respond to them in general. Here are my current list of keywords and phrases I track:

“latest podcast”, “my podcast”, “my show”, “new episode” ,”new podcast”, “new show”, “personal life media”, @susanbratton, #adtech, #TG2009, dishymix, podcast advertising, show host, susan bratton, susanbratton, talk show, talk show host, talkshow, talk show tips, talkshowtips, plm

This is how the email digest of results from your Keyword Tracking in Tweetlater Professional looks. These are a few Twitters, mostly from others, about DishyMix:

TweetLaterPro Keyword Digest

The Big Brouhaha About Twitter Automation
I must warn you. There are some features of TweetLater Professional that are unpopular with the “Twitterati*.”

You can set Tweetlater Professional to automatically follow anyone who follows you, even with a 72 hour window to manually review your new followers before you confirm them. Turn about is fair play. You can also autmatically unfollow anyone who unfollows you. Fair enough. You can also automatically send a message to anyone who follows you. I like to thank my new followers, but a LOT of big name Twitters do not agree with me. They feel it’s spammy. They hate what are callled “Auto DM’s.” It’s a personal choice. If someone is really going to unfollow me because I thanked them for following me, then OK. I can live with that.

I am a mannerly woman and I like to say thanks. You should choose what feels best to you. Here’s a post I did on a dozen things to know about managing your online reputation. Always go with your gut. Here’s my SXSW interview with Guy Kawasaki where he says if he’s not pissing somone off, then he’s doing something wrong. With 150,000 followers, he can afford a few unfollows.

Twitter is a big social experiment and you have to have the confidence to feel your way through, apologize for mistakes and try new things! I find an apology is all it takes if you cross someone’s boundary.

Now you know the set of tools I use to “be everywhere” and a bit more detail about how I leverage TweetLater Professsional. Let me know what additional questions you have and tools you like for managing across social nets.

* Twitterati means the celebrity people on Twitter who have a large share of voice. Like the Glitterati or the Digerati… They can wield a big stick with their opinions.

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