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It seems like any time we talk about Twitter, we focus on the reasons to use it. Conversations are always about the benefits, never about potential drawbacks or reasons not to use Twitter. Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m definitely a firm believer that Twitter can be a powerful tool for increasing brand awareness, driving web traffic, generating leads, building trust with consumers and more, but I don’t think Twitter is right for every business.
Here are 3 reasons NOT to use Twitter for your business.

1. Your target audience doesn’t Tweet—While Twitter attracts a diverse crowd, the average user is somewhere in his early to mid 30s. Older users have been slow to adopt Twitter, instead preferring LinkedIn and even Facebook. What does this mean for you? It means there’s a chance your target audience doesn’t really use Twitter.

It’s time to dig up that business plan you stuffed away in some filing cabinet to look at the info about your target demographic. How old are they? How often do they use the internet and social networking? Are they using smart phones to stay mobile?

And if for some reason you don’t know who your target audience is (shame on you), check out this post for tips on identifying your target market.

2. You don’t have time to Tweet—You might already have quite a bit on your plate as it is. Tweeting takes time. It’s not just dropping an update here or there. Being successful with Twitter requires finding the time to interact with your followers and to respond to @replies and direct messages. Engagement is the key.

So, before you sign up on Twitter, you need to ask yourself:

• Do I really have time to Tweet?
• How much time can I realistically devote to Tweeting each day?
• Should someone else handle the company Twitter account?

On that note, check out these tips for increasing your social media productivity.

3. You don’t have a plan or goals—If you’re using Twitter for marketing purposes, you need to have a plan and clearly defined goals. This means figuring out:
• What do I want to accomplish with Twitter?
• How will I measure my results?
• How long will I give myself to reach certain benchmarks and goals?

If you don’t have any goals, then there might not be any point into creating a Twitter account for your business. You’ll just be blindly Tweeting away without a purpose.

There’s a great post on Mashable about creating a social media plan that I highly recommend checking out.

What are some other reasons businesses shouldn’t use Twitter?

Are you following too many people on Twitter? If you answered “yes”, go ahead and jump down to the second half of this article. If you said “I don’t know”, I can help you answer that question. Here are 5 common signs you’re following too many people on Twitter.

1. You can’t keep up with your Twitter feed—If you’re getting dozens of Tweets every minute, there’s just no way you can keep up with all of them. It’d be a full-time job. As a result, you end up missing out on the important Tweets you really care about. If you’re unable to keep up with the people you’re following, it’s time to trim down the list.
2. You only really pay attention to Tweets from a select group of people—Do you find yourself looking past a lot of Tweets just to find certain followers you’re really interested in? That’s a telling sign that you aren’t really interested in what most of your followers have to say. So, why are you even following them?
3. You haven’t interacted with most of the people you’re following—Isn’t the whole point of Twitter to interact with one another? If you have a bunch of people you’re following that you’ve never once interacted with, that probably means you aren’t interested in what they have to say (and vice versa), so you probably don’t have any real reason to follow them.
4. There are several people you’re following that you know nothing about—I’m following quite a few people, but I can go through that list and tell you something about each one of them. Can you do the same?
5. You follow back everyone who follows you—Just because someone is interested in what you have to say doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll be interested in what they have to say. So, don’t automatically follow back everyone who follows you.

How To Trim Down Your List

So, you’re following too many people. Good news: Trimming down your list is pretty easy. Just follow these simple tips.

• Stop automatically following someone back because they follow you—The first thing you need to do is to make sure you don’t worsen the problem. Immediately stop following people back just because they follow you. Only follow someone if you have a good reason for doing so.
• Get rid of the people who you never interact with—Those people you never talk to or even pay attention to? Cut them. They serve no purpose.
• Unfollow the constant self-promoter—If you’re following someone who only Tweets links back to their blog or sales pages, ditch them. They aren’t adding any value to your Twitter experience.
• Cut inactive users—Sure, they aren’t clogging up your timeline, but there’s no point in following people who never Tweet. I’ve been told that MyCleenr is a great tool for identifying inactive users you’re following, but I’ve never personally used it. Can anyone verify if this tool is truly useful?

How do you keep from following to many people on Twitter? What criteria do you use to decide if you’re going to follow someone? Share your thoughts by leaving a comment.

I have seen an increase in sites using floating footer toolbars. I decided to do some homework and figure out how I could add a floating footer toolbar to some of my sites too. A floating footer toolbar is a program with a user interface that allows visitors to bookmark, save, or share information discovered on your site. One of the best floating footer toolbars I have found is Wibiya.

Using Wibiya you can boost your blog or website by adding rich and interactive features. It works on all the popular blogging platforms and also includes a universal javascript code that will work on any type of website. Using the toolbar can help you create a grow a community of returning readers or visitors.

Wibiya gives owners the option of creating a community using FaceBook Connect. It can also help you increase page views. You can gain traffic from FaceBook through your members news feeds and engage readers and raise pageviews with applications such as post navigator and blog search. Wibiya also has their own traffic growth and analytic tools so that you can track your traffic growth.

Communicating with readers and visitors is simple. With Wibiya, readers and visitors can share content using Twitter. Tweets can also be shared among other readers and visitors in real time. Short messages can be sent to members alerting them of new contents or posts on your blog or website. FaceBook fan pages can be created and members can join and communicate via a direct channel connection.

In Wibiya, these features are called applications and you’re able to custom build your toolbar to fit the needs of your blog or site. Available applications are simply dragged, dropped and installed onto your toolbar.

The available applications are:

• Blog Search, which can help you increase pageviews and reader engagement.
• Translations, which provides for easy content translation into one of twenty available languages.
• Post Navigator, which offers readers and site visitors easy navigation tools.
• Live Notifications, which broadcast alerts, messages, news, and more to all your visitors.
• Twitter Gadget, which will show your visitors live notifications of your latest twitter messages.
• Community (via Facebook), which gives you your own blog community with facebook connect, and allows users to join your community through their facebook account.
• Sharing Tool, which enables your visitors to share, save and distribute to your content through the AddToAny application.
• Register to RSS Feed, which gives your visitors the ability to subscribe to your blog through an RSS reader.

All in all, if you’re looking to add a floating footer toolbar to your blog or website, I recommend using Wibiya. At the time of writing this post, the toolbar is available via invite only; however, I received an invite less than 24 hours after registering. To get your Wibiya toolbar, simply register on Wibiya.com for an invite and wait for it to arrive in email.

So you would like to know how to learn more about Twitter? Technically speaking, Twitter is a free micro blogging service or social network that allows users to post short messages across their network of followers to read. As boring as this description may seem, Twitter has been fast to grow, attracting even famous people such as the President of The United States. Twitter is ranked as one of the 50 most popular websites online. So isn’t time that you stop fooling around and learn more about the site, and most importantly, what you can get out of it?

Fortunately, for you, and others who want to make the best of Twitter, there is a blog I just stumbled on while doing some article research that can help you learn everything about Twitter. The blog, ironically, is called TwitterFools.com. I found them the other day while searching the WordPress Plugins Directory. I happen to come across a newly released plugin created by the TwitterFools.com staff called, TwitterFools WordPress Trending Topics Plugin. Now, this plugin is pretty cool. What is does is displays Twitter’s most trending topics on your sidebar and allows your readers easy access to view these topics from your blog. Thus, making your blog more useful than your competitors. (more…)

Image credit: scottwesterfeld.com

Tell me if this sounds familiar. You have hundreds—maybe even thousands—of followers on Twitter, yet every time you send out a Tweet, you get no response. It’s as if you’re Tweets are on mute. It seems like no one is seeing them; or worse yet, they’re seeing them but they just don’t care about what you’re saying.

So, what gives? What can you do to make people start noticing your Tweets?

Here are some tips to get you noticed on Twitter.

1. Focus on building relationships—I follow quite a large number of people on Twitter, and honestly, I don’t fully pay attention to each and every Tweet that pops up. You know which ones I do pay attention to almost every time? It’s the ones that come from people I know (whether I know them in real-life or just online). See, if you focus on building relationships with your followers, they’ll start to pay more attention to what you have to say. If there isn’t a meaningful connection between you and your followers, you’ll just blend in with all the other Tweets.
2. Connect with like-minded people—Remember earlier when I said it could just be that no one cares about what you’re Tweeting? One cause of this is connecting with the wrong people on Twitter. See, some people approach Twitter with an attitude of the-more-followers-the-better. Depending on your goals, that might be okay. But for me, I’d rather focus on getting quality followers than just quantity. By connecting with people who are truly interested in your niche, your followers will actually pay attention to your Tweets. (more…)