Three Deep Marketing - St. Paul, MN » Twitter

Twitter Follower Flowchart for Businesses

Diane Kulseth — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 20:05:04 +0000

The #1 rule to social media is to be social. For businesses, it can often be a difficult premise to adhere to this simple rule, and we often see businesses criticized for having thousands (or millions) of followers and only following 5 people back.

It’s something we think about from time to time as we manage our @threedeep Twitter account. Someone follows our business on Twitter and we wonder if it’s worth our time to follow them back. Some people will advocate that you automatically “follow back” everyone who follows you, but that’s not always practical and brings your account in some spammy areas.

How does a Businesses decide who to follow on Twitter?

We’ve created this flowchart which may offer some insight into how we evaluate whether or not your business should follow someone on Twitter.

The chart starts with a simple question:

Does this account tweet in English?

Unless you are well versed in that language (as well as everyone else that manages your account), it’s in your best interest to just let them be.

Does your account know this Twitter account professionally?

This should be a simple question if you’re a business. Are you in business with this person or organization? If so, you have just found an additional venue with which to communicate with them and can also help to cross-promote each other.

Does your account know this Twitter account personally?

For example, does your brother blog frequently about photography and his blog feeds into Twitter? Or does your college roommate have a Twitter and posts amusing tweets?

Is that content valuable to your business?

Perhaps you can rationalize your brother’s account, but unless you’re a comedy business, your roommate will have to be reserved for a personal account.

Is this account local?

For us at Three Deep, we may follow businesses that have no relevance to our business, however this business still may be of value to us, such as Barrio, where we often enjoy their tacos. Another option is that the person behind the account may be someone seeking a position with Three Deep, so following them would be helpful for them to message us if they need to follow up on a posting.

Do they tweet regularly? excessively?

These terms are relative to you and the amount of accounts you follow. We say that more than 5 tweets an hour is excessive, but that is something you must determine for your account. Also, if the account tweets less than once a week, it is doubtful that you will glean any knowledge from them unless you can target the exact time that they will post a message.

Is their content original?

At Three Deep, we follow many social media people. However, if their tweets are all filled with the latest Mashable news, then it would make sense to just follow Mashable. It’s certainly fine that accounts want to retweet people, but make sure that there is a healthy balance of original and retweeted content. Again, these are just guidelines that we use to determine who we follow for our organization’s Twitter.

We welcome your thoughts and what parameters you use for those you choose to follow.

Three Deep Attends Minneapolis Tweetup, Meets Mark Cuban

Jeff Sauer — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 14:00:01 +0000

It’s funny how in a country with hundreds of millions of people, the world can seem really small through Social Media. This past Thursday, two members of Three Deep – Brandon Smith (aka @bg3dppc on Twitter) and Jeff Sauer (@jeffsauer) attended a gathering of Twitter users in the Twin Cities at an event called the Minneapolis Tweetup.

The event was held at the Bulldog in NE Minneapolis, which is one of the better restaurant/bars in the Twin Cities, and the promise of free food and cocktails made it an event not to be missed.

We met some great people at the event (@kareemy, @ddn, @swineheart, @paulmalenke to name a few) and called a successful event after about 2 hours – and decided to leave the happy hour around 8 PM. After driving home, I logged on to check my Twitter account and noticed some interesting news about the event:

Yes, all signs pointed to Mark Cuban actually being in attendance at our local area Tweetup! I did some quick reference checking on the Internet to see if the Mavericks were playing the Timberwolves or if there were another reason why Cuban would actually be in town… and it all checked out. Within minutes, I was back in my car on my way to the Bulldog.

Thankfully, I don’t live very far away from the event, so I spent the 10 minute car ride lamenting what I will say to Mark Cuban if he’s actually there in person.

I decided that I was going to simply tell him that one his writings, a blog post called Success and Motivation, has been an instrumental to me in my life as an entrepreneur. In this series of articles, he intimately and publicly lays out the steps that he took to become a successful entrepreneur, and how he developed his extraordinary vision and forward thinking attitude toward the application of technology.

Pretty deep conversation plan for a “tweetup” – but by this point, I didn’t really care. In life, you only get a few chances to talk with a pioneer in your field. Furthermore, they never show up on your doorstep, ready to engage in a conversation about your profession. I had to make the most out of it.

I made my approach, joined a circle of people surrounding Cubes (as he’s known in the movie Step Brothers), and waited for my opportunity… eventually tapping him on the shoulder to say:

“Success and Motivation was really great – thank you for sharing everything”

Cuban: “yeah man, I really enjoyed writing it”

Pretty standard response for him I’m sure, especially from a random person approaching him at a Twitter gathering… but not something that warranted further engagement.

Over the next 30 minutes, I joined a circle of people forming around Cuban discussing all kinds of topics, including:

Dallas Mavericks – players traded, fines accrued, etc.
Entrepreneurship and how Cubes made his mark
Investments he has made/is making in companies
Applications of Twitter in the real world
Athletes who use Twitter, and its implications
Shaq’s use of Twitter, and whether he really uses it (to which I contributed that I hired Larry Johnson to run my Twitter account… brought the house down!)

All in all, the group had some great conversation, and Mark Cuban proved to be about as real as they come. He even let me pose for a picture with him!

Just about every day I talk to someone who asks me the question “what is the point of Twitter anyway?”

Sometimes I have trouble telling them, but my most common response is:

“It’s a form of communication that makes everyone more accessible. There is no other medium that makes it this easy to interact with people. Generally there is a lot of friction in communication. Twitter removes this friction.”

Twitter brought Mark Cuban to a group of social media aficionados in the Minneapolis area. If you ever wonder why you should use Twitter, it’s all about accessibility and frictionless communication. Whether you are an end user or a content publisher, people are talking.

Do you care to join the conversation?

Web Analytics Insights Found Through Twitter

Jeff Sauer — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 02:21:45 +0000

We have alluded several times on this blog as to our company’s continued interest in Twitter as a listening channel. While a lot more informal and lightweight than blogs, the channel is a great way to listen to what’s going on over the web. As part of my continued Autodidacticism (I know it sounds dirty, but look it up… it means self educating), I am constantly perusing the Twitterverse to see if I can learn any interesting tidbit, technique or insights into how I can improve my skillset.

As part of my daily monitoring, I subscribe to searches for Twitter hash tags (basically words with a # before them) for several people, industries, events, etc. One of my favorite hash tags is the Web Analytics channel #measure. In addition, I love the stream provided by the newly minted #ganalytics hash tag (those of you who have been on Twitter for a while know that these are much better than the deprecated #wa and #ga tags, which were polluted by SPAM for Washington and Georgia state related tweets). These two streams keep me up to date with any new developments in these areas, and also allow for some new techniques.

In fact, over the past two days, I used Twitter to gain some incredible insight into Web Analytics through a few definitive Tweets:

Learned About a New Book Being Released from Favorite Author

I learned that Avinash Kaushik, Web Analytics deity, is going to be releasing a new book about Web Analytics. I am EXCITED for it!

Discovered a Useful Regular Expression (regex) for Google Analytics

I am by no means an expert on Regular Expressions, but as I learn their usefulness, I have found that it is really useful to follow the tweets of smart people. One of these smart people/companies is Robbin and LunaMetrics. Three Deep has been following LunaMetrics for years, and I had the honor of talking with Robbin last week. Now I can keep up to date as she tweets some very useful information.

Learned that Adobe is Acquiring Omniture, Hours Before it Went Mainstream

Sure, I would have read about it a few hours later on a blog… but getting “0 second” news off Twitter is pretty awesome! This particular piece of news is a huge development in the Web Analytics industry, as Omniture has a very powerful software that is cheapened by a customer unfriendly approach. With Adobe’s support, they may start to understand that the industry is about much more than squeezing money out of customers.

Read an Excellent Article I Normally Wouldn’t have Seen

Scan the updates on a particular hash tag, and you’ll see some excellent articles from authors who seem to come completely out of nowhere. Case in point, I clicked on the link in the tweet below, and was taken to an article that already had 80+ ratings from peers; apparently a well trafficked blog that I may start following as a result.

I copied and pasted this article and sent to several team members so that we can all share in these great insights.

As you can see, there is a lot to learn from following your industry on Twitter… and if you do it right (I use TweetDeck for monitoring), you can do it in a few minutes a day.

What is Social Media? – Excellent Presentation Social Media

Jeff Sauer — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 23:40:52 +0000

Our company President, Dave Woodbeck, sent the above slide deck to several members of our team this weekend, and I found it worthy of sharing on our blog. I made the executive decision to tone down the actual title of the slide show (what the f**k is social media?) to prevent any misunderstandings from those who read the title and get scared away.

The actual content of the presentation is much less harsh than the title would imply. The underlying theme throughout: you need to join the conversation! You can’t simply ignore the social interactions that are happening around your company, brand, clients, friends, family, etc. While the tactics used to deliver messages may change, social interaction will only become more open and candid. Like-minded individuals will be forming groups, talking, interacting, etc… and those that listen will be the ultimate winners in the social media landscape.

A clear sign of the fact that social media has reached a critical mass is the fact that there are literally hundreds of quality presentations about the vastness of the social media universe. In fact, there are far more presentations about how big social media IS than published case studies of social media success stories (hopefully that will change in the upcoming years, as those who are successful with social media start sharing their secrets).

Here is another powerful social media video that I highly recommend viewing:

SEO Q&A – Search Engines Can’t Find My WordPress Site

Jeff Sauer — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 14:15:43 +0000

This SEO question came to me indirectly through Twitter. Three Deep is developing a good relationship with the excellent ladies at the Savvy B2B marketing blog, and in order to keep up with one another, we follow our mutual Twitter updates. When @michellelinn had a question about WordPress (which is my favorite thing in the entire world), I knew I could help. Here’s how it all went down (in true multi-channel fashion):

My website, built on WordPress, is only showing up in Bing (not Google or other search engines). Any ideas on what I can do? Many thanks!

2:18 PM Jul 1st from TweetDeck

My response:
@michelelinn Did you check your privacy settings? Do you have an XML sitemap? When did you first publish content? How old is the domain?
8:18 PM Jul 1st from TweetDeck in reply to michelelinn

To which she directly messaged:
michelelinn: Sadly, I don’t even know how to answer all of your questions! Let me do some research. Mind if I email you directly?

JS (via email): Hey Michelle – Definitely contact me. Several of these settings can be viewed right from your WordPress admin panel.

ML: Hi Jeff – I think we may have figured out the problem. Just like you suggest, there was a security setting checked that was blocking search engines. Google crawls the web every 2 – 3 days, so hopefully it appears soon; I’ll let you know if it doesn’t. If you don’t mind, though, I’ll definitely keep you in mind if I have other questions. You’re a very useful person to know!

JS: Yeah, that’s what I figured it was… the privacy setting will block everyone from knowing about you (as long as the search engines respect nofollow and noindex tags). You should definitely do an XML sitemap and other enhancements to your blog. I don’t mind helping as long as it’s something I can answer quickly!

ML: Thanks for the suggestion on the XML sitemap; I’ll look into that. Are there any other quick things I should look into? Of course, I know how busy you are – only let me know if it’s quick!

JS: Those seem to be the most important things for getting indexed. I have also found success in “pinging” services each time you post something new… you basically use XML to let Google, Yahoo, Technorati, etc. each time you post. By default, you just use one ping service, but you can add 10-15 more to get more exposure.

ML: Just wanted to let you know that, thank to your tip, my website started appearing in Google yesterday. Thank you so much! I’m also going to look into the “pinging” services, especially for Savvy B2B Marketing. I have wondered why some blog posts get picked up in Google News Alerts while others don’t; maybe this is part of the reason.

JS: Awesome! I highly recommend pinging, as I have seen it do wonders in getting your site indexed immediately. It’s the future of SEO that not many people know about!

Now back to Twitter:
A huge shout out and thanks to @threedeep: Great insights with Google Analytics and SEO. Thanks for the help, Jeff!
7:20 AM Jul 9th from bit.ly

I must say, I really do like the way that Twitter has changed the way I can communicate. I only wish I had more time to answer questions of this nature. However, with client work and business growth, it seems as if Twitter is one of the easiest things to cut out of the equation. Thankfully, there are no expectations that anyone will actually listen to you online, so I am not disappointing anyone when I mark all messages as ‘read’ in TweetDeck. If you do have any questions that you are dying to have answered, chances are that if you leave a comment or contact me through our web form, I will respond with the exact answer you were looking to hear.

Minneapolis Online Marketing Summit – Three Deep Tweet Recap

Jeff Sauer — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 04:05:10 +0000

Yesterday 8 members of Three Deep attended the Online Marketing Summit in Minneapolis, and several team members decided to live “tweet” the event. This was first for many of us, and the results were some great interactions with fellow online marketers, occasionally witty commentary, and a great foray for Three Deep into the Twitterverse. Tweets are included in chronological order for readability.

threedeep: See you all at the Online Marketing Summit in Minneapolis Tomorrow! Let us know if you’d like to meet up with Three Deep.

3DEmailMarCom: #onlinesummit online marketing summit starting!

3DEmailMarCom: #oms ready to get to the breakout sessions

mitchellhislop: @3DEmailMarCom yup

3DEmailMarCom: @BillBruno looking forward to your talk

3DEmailMarCom: @mitchellhislop goodluck with battery life today! #oms

mitchellhislop: @3DEmailMarCom Thankfully, I have been at a conf here already. I got this place figured out case in point: http://twurl.nl/rvdewq

BillBruno: @3DEmailMarCom make sure to say hello.

3DEmailMarCom: Dont reinvent the wheel #oms

3DEmailMarCom: #oms email + crm makes a great pair. a necessity for online strategy

3DEmailMarCom: #oms Home Depot example of email strategy is really interesting. Live image offers, at time of open.

MarcelHomefield: @3DEmailMarCom I see you mentioned online CRM, maybe www.abcrm.eu is also interesting for you?

3DEmailMarCom: lots of great examples from ET’s presentation on combining email with other strategies…but…what are results AFTER implementation?

3DEmailMarCom: eROI is going over best opt in practices. I agree with most of them. Make it as easy as possible to signup for enews #oms

3DEmailMarCom: @MarcelHomefield what is that?

3DEmailMarCom: @MarcelHomefield what is the site you are talking about?

3DEmailMarCom: keep opt in simple, not too many questions #oms

3DEmailMarCom: Nordstrom emails. FAIL. #oms

3DEmailMarCom: make sure you use info you collect on opt in. #oms

darrenselberg: #oms – for every dollar spent on analytics pkg, spend a dollar on staffing – too few companies realize this

moarinternets: RT @darrenselberg: #oms – for every dollar spent on analytics pkg, spend a dollar on staffing – too few companies realize this

threedeep: @dselberg Actually, it should be closer to @avinashkaushik’s 90/10 rule… or 100/0 if you’re using Google Analytics!

threedeep: @darrenselberg Actually, it should be closer to @avinashkaushik’s 90/10 rule… or 100/0 if you’re using Google Analytics!

darrenselberg: #OMS what comes first, the design or the analytics? Determine what you want the visitor to do and design around measuring it.

3DEmailMarCom: You have 3 chances to set relationship before you lose 80% of your list. Agree.

3DEmailMarCom: @darrenselberg don’t put the cart before the horse…I agree.

MarcelHomefield: @3DEmailMarCom I was talking about www.abcrm.eu

jakedietrich: Dropping my first Tweet from the Online Marketing Summit conference’s PPC seminar

darrenselberg: #OMS – If seasoned skewers aren’t coming up in a searc for skewers, they need a better SEO consultant

moarinternets: RT @darrenselberg: #OMS – If seasoned skewers aren’t coming up in a search for skewers, they need a better SEO consultant

jeffsauer: #OMS – Can’t wait to hear the ROI part… waiting… waiting…

mitchellhislop: @jeffsauer I am waiting too.

jakedietrich: @jpwest I was thinking the same thing!

darrenselberg: #OMS Posting coupons via Twitter – wrong way to market? I disagree, can be a successful way to impact short term sales when used correctly.

jeffsauer: #OMS – Sorry, but this isn’t 2002 and Alexa isn’t really cool/accurate anymore. Try the link:www dot yoursite dot command in Yahoo or GWT

betweenstations: @darrenselberg especially for local bricks n mortar businesses. Lots of restaurants are using Twitter specials effectively. #oms

betweenstations: @jeffsauer Alexa was NEVER accurate! #oms

mitchellhislop: RT @jeffsauer: #OMS – Sorry, but this isn’t 2002 and Alexa isn’t really cool/accurate anymore. Try the link:www dot yoursite dot comman …

jeffsauer: @betweenstations Truth… well, when I told everyone I knew with the IE toolbar to visit my site, I pretended it was accurate

darrenselberg: @betweenstations do you follow Punch Pizza? That’s one I was specifically thinking of

jakedietrich: Heard mention of Web 3.0 today: Somebody fill me in! #OMS

jeffsauer: @jakedietrich Web 3.0 involves telepathic thought collection, neural networks and Flash v15. Sadly, we’re still stuck w/Flash intros #OMS

3DEmailMarCom: $43.52 ROI for email. but not a given. You must do it right in order to see those numbers. #oms

3DEmailMarCom: pillars of email marketing – permission, segmentation, timing/frequency, bridging/integration with other online marketing channels

threedeep: SEO = web analytics. You are right catfish! #OMS

darrenselberg: RT @shawkins Steve Rubel mindmaps the future of Twitter: http://is.gd/Mmih

40% of consumers say email comes too often. I agree, the way most email campaigns are setup is just too old fashioned. #oms

jakedietrich: #OMS – Reverse breadcrumbs as page titles…genius.

craigsanatomy: RT @jakedietrich: Reverse breadcrumbs as page titles…genius. #OMS

jeffsauer: I feel like @seocatfish is listening to my thoughts and presenting them on screen. Way cooler facial hair though. #OMS
threedeep: #OMS – 302 redirects and cookies serving content = BAD! Agree 1001%.

threedeep: @betweenstations in house or agency?

threedeep: LOVE THIS @SEOCatfish “Link Exchanges should be business relationships. If you cant call them, dont exchange it” rt @mitchellhislop

3DEmailMarCom: Skittles putting twittersearch directly on site…FAIL. What about negative comments? not good. #oms

3DEmailMarCom: Social media presentation by @leeoden is good. Good comments on social media and uses. #oms

threedeep: RT @coltsfan18: do you list your social sites or twitter handle alongside your web address, if not you should from @leeodden #oms

jeffsauer: Trying to update two Twitters at one time is draining… @jeffsauer and @threedeep are both suffering as a result. Knibb High football rules

threedeep: #OMS @leeodden is the Real Deal… thanks for making this event worthwhile!

jeffsauer: #OMS Where the happy hour at? First drink is on me!

vbpickett: RT @threedeep: #OMS @leeodden is the Real Deal… thanks for making this event worthwhile!

3DEmailMarCom: Oms is over. Hopefully everyone can take away info that helps their business #oms

threedeep: Enjoyed the #OMS dinner… thanks to all for the conversation, and great meeting everyone involved with the event!

Kdieruf: @threedeep good meeting you #OMS. Remember to drop me a line later in the week and we’ll get you squared away. Cheers.