Below is live coverage of the Retweet Me: How To Be A Twitter Authority panel from the SMX West 2011 conference. This coverage is provided by Barry Schwartz of RustyBrick and Keri Morgret of Strike Models.
Disclaimer: The coverage is brought to you in real time, using a custom live blogging tool. Feel free to ask questions or leave comments for inclusion into the live coverage. During the live event, live notes will auto-scroll with newest entries at top. After the session is complete the archive version will have the oldest entries at the top. We ask you to please excuse any typos, as these are live notes.
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Barry Schwartz:
1:26:39 pm
Starting in 5 minutes....
Barry Schwartz:
1:27:25 pm
Moderator: Danny Sullivan, Editor-in-Chief, Search Engine Land
Q&A Moderator: Jim Yu, CEO, BrightEdge
Speakers:
Martin Beck, Reader engagement / social media editor, Los Angeles Times
Gabe Gayhart, VP of Marketing, WholeSolar
Jennifer Sable Lopez, Community Manager, SEOmoz
Q&A Moderator: Jim Yu, CEO, BrightEdge
Speakers:
Martin Beck, Reader engagement / social media editor, Los Angeles Times
Gabe Gayhart, VP of Marketing, WholeSolar
Jennifer Sable Lopez, Community Manager, SEOmoz
Avi Wilensky:
1:28:43 pm
test 123
Avi Wilensky:
1:29:10 pm
Barry Schwartz:
1:29:23 pm
Avi, you are in the wrong session screen
Avi Wilensky:
1:29:50 pm
uh oh, ok , i still have time
Barry Schwartz:
1:30:24 pm
No, you are in the right session but blogging in the wrong window. Go back to the live blogging area...
@erezson:
1:30:34 pm
Avi, are you from Israel?
Barry Schwartz:
1:30:35 pm
Avi is from New York
@erezson:
1:31:22 pm
ho, so just a regular jew :)
Barry Schwartz:
1:31:24 pm
Barry Schwartz:
1:31:37 pm
Starting any minute....
Barry Schwartz:
1:32:59 pm
Here we go...
Barry Schwartz:
1:34:08 pm
Gabe Gayhart, VP of Marketing, WholeSolar is up first...
Barry Schwartz:
1:34:54 pm
Barry Schwartz:
1:36:15 pm
Barry Schwartz:
1:36:16 pm
They use Twitter to help their business...
Barry Schwartz:
1:36:48 pm
B2B magazine had some stats on social and search...
Barry Schwartz:
1:36:51 pm
Barry Schwartz:
1:37:46 pm
They look at the whole marketing approach, from reach to conversion to engagement...
Barry Schwartz:
1:37:50 pm
Keri Morgret:
1:38:04 pm
Their integrated approach: reach, conversion, engagement.
Barry Schwartz:
1:38:31 pm
Twitter is their mechanism of influence.
Keri Morgret:
1:39:24 pm
Social influence marketing:
Not about a single tactic or series of tactics, but about how social influence can transform relationships.
Voice must be human, personable, responsible, and authentic.
It's a strong opportunity to differentiate and seize industry leadership in the social world.
Not about a single tactic or series of tactics, but about how social influence can transform relationships.
Voice must be human, personable, responsible, and authentic.
It's a strong opportunity to differentiate and seize industry leadership in the social world.
Barry Schwartz:
1:39:40 pm
Barry Schwartz:
1:40:02 pm
Keri Morgret:
1:40:23 pm
He's talking about different brands and their personalities they have.
Barry Schwartz:
1:40:30 pm
Retweet is a social endorsement of your brand personality
Barry Schwartz:
1:41:19 pm
Barry Schwartz:
1:41:32 pm
They made a personality who was passionate about the business and went with it
Barry Schwartz:
1:42:17 pm
How to you get these retweets?
Keri Morgret:
1:42:20 pm
Share! Be selfless, share things you learn and know.
Keri Morgret:
1:42:33 pm
Engage! Respond to other tweets -- retweet to begin to be retweeted.
Keri Morgret:
1:42:48 pm
Tip: when targeting retweets, your last tweet should be 'retweet bait"
Barry Schwartz:
1:43:35 pm
Keri Morgret:
1:43:50 pm
Identify influencers. Twillow, wefollow, ontolo helped identify influencers in the space.
Barry Schwartz:
1:43:54 pm
Target your audience...
Keri Morgret:
1:44:08 pm
Target tweeple in your influencer lists.
Barry Schwartz:
1:44:30 pm
60 percent of the people they follow, follow back.
Keri Morgret:
1:44:33 pm
Segment your audiences.
Keri Morgret:
1:44:40 pm
Your personality fuels retweets.
Keri Morgret:
1:45:03 pm
People discuss commont topics -- everything you have in c ommon. Sports, movies, etc.
Keri Morgret:
1:45:22 pm
2. No one likes to listen to someone always talk about themselves in a discussion.
Keri Morgret:
1:45:29 pm
Size isn't everything. Topicality of your retweeters ignites backlinks.
Barry Schwartz:
1:45:55 pm
It is not the size of your following that determines your retweets
Keri Morgret:
1:46:26 pm
Keri Morgret:
1:46:30 pm
They stay away from using the retweet button, but use RT instead.
Barry Schwartz:
1:47:01 pm
i.e. old school retweeting vs the new retweet functionality
Keri Morgret:
1:48:13 pm
They had a lot of engagement around the BP oil spill (they're a solar energy company). Tapping the ethos, tapping into what people are passionate about.
Barry Schwartz:
1:48:46 pm
Keri Morgret:
1:49:13 pm
The last tweet of the day is their link/retweet bait.
Keri Morgret:
1:49:16 pm
Barry Schwartz:
1:49:57 pm
Barry Schwartz:
1:49:59 pm
Influence creates perception...
Barry Schwartz:
1:50:20 pm
Keri Morgret:
1:51:45 pm
He's showing examples of tweets they've had retweeted by prominent twitter accounts.
Barry Schwartz:
1:52:50 pm
Barry Schwartz:
1:53:15 pm
Influence extends to search, he shows how he gets links from it
Keri Morgret:
1:53:43 pm
They're getting deep links as well, not just to home pages, but 2-3 levels deep.
Barry Schwartz:
1:54:15 pm
The paper.il profiles retweet stuff and they get links that way
Keri Morgret:
1:54:46 pm
That ends Gabe's presentation.
Keri Morgret:
1:55:02 pm
And now Jennifer Sable Lopez (@jennita) from SEOmoz.
Keri Morgret:
1:55:40 pm
Keri Morgret:
1:55:51 pm
Jen is the voice of the @seomoz account, and is the one who beeps and boops for Roger Mozbot.
Keri Morgret:
1:56:22 pm
She's going to talk about tools, extending things offline, and case studies if she has time.
Barry Schwartz:
1:56:24 pm
Keri Morgret:
1:56:36 pm
First: how to get tweets outside of Twitter.
Barry Schwartz:
1:56:49 pm
Given: Put retweet buttons on your content.
Keri Morgret:
1:56:50 pm
Make sure the content is easily shareable. Make it very easy to retweet.
Barry Schwartz:
1:57:24 pm
Keri Morgret:
1:57:36 pm
The Economist has two different sharing options on their site, highlighted on the slide below.
Keri Morgret:
1:58:00 pm
Next is an example of Quora and how easy it is to share your answer on Twitter and Facebook.
Barry Schwartz:
1:58:02 pm
Barry Schwartz:
1:58:23 pm
Quora does a good job promoting their unanswered questions by asking people to tweet the questions....
Keri Morgret:
1:58:35 pm
This helps Quora get links to interior pages. Jen's also found that lots of tweets help get interior pages indexed.
Barry Schwartz:
1:58:52 pm
Once you answer a question there, it says, "share your answer"
Keri Morgret:
1:59:03 pm
Quora is good in that it lets you change the text of the tweet a bit.
Barry Schwartz:
1:59:23 pm
Keri Morgret:
1:59:31 pm
Now is an example of cubeduel.com
Keri Morgret:
2:00:01 pm
It's a cool website that's addictive, but to see how you rank, you have to go share something on Twitter/Facebook before you can see your rank
Keri Morgret:
2:01:11 pm
Case study of unbounce. Did an ebook. For people who want the pdf, they can "get it for a tweet". They tweet about it via the page, then they can download.
Barry Schwartz:
2:01:21 pm
Barry Schwartz:
2:01:43 pm
You can export your friends and followers to a spreadsheet but you cant do anything until you Tweet about the tool
Keri Morgret:
2:02:13 pm
Another way to get retweeted from your own site is using RSS feeds.
Barry Schwartz:
2:02:37 pm
RSS to Twitter plugins :)
Barry Schwartz:
2:02:58 pm
Their content is indexed in no time...
Keri Morgret:
2:03:24 pm
Contests and promotions.
Keri Morgret:
2:04:05 pm
Not necessarily high quality tweets, but it does get your name out there.
Barry Schwartz:
2:04:17 pm
There are also contests and promotions for retweeting stuff...
Keri Morgret:
2:04:25 pm
SEOmoz did a contest where they gave people a second chance to win by making a tweet.
Barry Schwartz:
2:04:40 pm
Keri Morgret:
2:04:51 pm
Don't forget about email!
Barry Schwartz:
2:05:18 pm
Keri Morgret:
2:05:53 pm
They have a webinar reminder email. This email has a link where people can tweet and say they're attending the webinar.
Keri Morgret:
2:06:14 pm
Time for tools.
Keri Morgret:
2:06:36 pm
She's starting out with the tools that she uses, and mentions there are a ton of tools out there.
Barry Schwartz:
2:06:44 pm
Keri Morgret:
2:07:17 pm
First is cotweet. Features that help them is a translate option, since they have international followers.
You can assign things to a user, schedule tweets, etc.
You can assign things to a user, schedule tweets, etc.
Barry Schwartz:
2:07:35 pm
Keri Morgret:
2:07:42 pm
Next is PostRank. Connect to your RSS feed and analytics. You can see page views, engagement events, and engagement points.
Barry Schwartz:
2:08:31 pm
Keri Morgret:
2:08:32 pm
RowFeeder is what they used for their contest for monitoring hashtags. creates google spreadsheet and connects it to your account.
Keri Morgret:
2:09:05 pm
Export.ly is the next tool.
Barry Schwartz:
2:09:17 pm
Keri Morgret:
2:09:43 pm
Shows top time zones, users by # of followers, all kinds of information. For free up to about 10,000 followers.
Barry Schwartz:
2:10:00 pm
Keri Morgret:
2:10:33 pm
She's now showing us Danny Sullivan's Klout score, and mentioning that he's influenced by Matt Cutts and an influencer of Bing.
Barry Schwartz:
2:10:43 pm
Keri Morgret:
2:11:45 pm
Followerwonk. Search twitter bios, including bios of people who love Nutella just like Jen does. If you come up to her and give her some Nutella, you might even get a hug or a beep from Roger I bet.
Barry Schwartz:
2:11:54 pm
Keri Morgret:
2:11:59 pm
SEOmoz is adding Social Explorer to their web app, and shows a brief screenshot of what it will look like.
Barry Schwartz:
2:12:08 pm
Tweets impact rankings....
Keri Morgret:
2:12:48 pm
Case study of twitter links via natural links or tweeted links.
Keri Morgret:
2:13:09 pm
Their blog post about this is at http://www.seomoz.org/blog/how-do-tweets-influence-search-rankings-an-experiment-for-a-cause
Barry Schwartz:
2:13:19 pm
Barry Schwartz:
2:14:00 pm
Barry Schwartz:
2:15:10 pm
Martin Beck, Reader engagement / social media editor, Los Angeles Times is now up
Keri Morgret:
2:15:22 pm
Martin is now speaking.
Keri Morgret:
2:15:37 pm
He's the reader engagement editor for the LA times.
Keri Morgret:
2:16:11 pm
The first slide is a picture of LA and why I'm glad I don't live there.
Keri Morgret:
2:18:05 pm
For Twitter, they're trying to write something that gets noticed and read.
Barry Schwartz:
2:18:39 pm
Keri Morgret:
2:19:12 pm
Twitter: trading in your megaphone for a walkie-talkie.
Keri Morgret:
2:19:45 pm
He manages 40 some facebook pages and 70+ twitter pages.
Barry Schwartz:
2:20:46 pm
LA Times has their advantages, obviously
Keri Morgret:
2:21:25 pm
Brief history of their efforts in social media. 3.5 years ago took plunge and created accounts on any social network out there.
Barry Schwartz:
2:22:27 pm
He is talking about how LA Times jumped in, created profiles on all the social media sites out there...
Keri Morgret:
2:22:43 pm
What they've learned:
Keri Morgret:
2:23:01 pm
Top three followed twitter accounts: @latimes, @latimesbooks, @latimesfood
Barry Schwartz:
2:23:33 pm
He says @latimes, @latimesbooks and @latimesfood are the top 3 Twitter accounts they have... the books account is a pure news feed, there is no engagement....
Keri Morgret:
2:24:04 pm
But the main account is staffed by copyeditors that decide what to tweet; not automated.
Keri Morgret:
2:24:57 pm
They feel that they should talk back more from their account instead of just tweeting out.
Barry Schwartz:
2:25:04 pm
The retweet level is about the same, a 1 to 2 tweet to retweet ratio
Keri Morgret:
2:25:28 pm
Food: one person runs it, engages, personal-style updates.
Keri Morgret:
2:26:29 pm
She has fewer retweets than other accounts. He doesn't have any direct conclusions as to what it means.
Barry Schwartz:
2:26:52 pm
Analytics...
Barry Schwartz:
2:27:06 pm
LA Times is working with pretty bad analytics...
Keri Morgret:
2:27:12 pm
crwodbooster, socialflow, timely.is
Keri Morgret:
2:27:24 pm
Things that may help, your mileage may vary.
Barry Schwartz:
2:29:18 pm
Keri Morgret:
2:29:34 pm
Most of your links won't get retweeted -- only 1 in 318 URLs is retweeted.
Keri Morgret:
2:30:21 pm
Post at http://www.jeffbullas.com/2010/10/08/average-twitter-user-only-retweets-1-in-every-318-links/
Keri Morgret:
2:31:53 pm
Word crowd of their top 150 most tweeted stories from last year.
Barry Schwartz:
2:32:02 pm
Barry Schwartz:
2:32:18 pm
Q&A Time...
3:30pm-4:45pm (PST)
* Inner View: Google's Keyword Research Tools - Barry Schwartz
* Facebook Ad Tactics For Search Marketers - Keri Morgret
* New Tools & Techniques For YouTube Successs - Debra Mastaler
3:30pm-4:45pm (PST)
* Inner View: Google's Keyword Research Tools - Barry Schwartz
* Facebook Ad Tactics For Search Marketers - Keri Morgret
* New Tools & Techniques For YouTube Successs - Debra Mastaler
Keri Morgret:
2:32:40 pm
They're not exactly sure of where they're going. They don't think they've taken full advantage of social media yet.
Keri Morgret:
2:33:54 pm
Danny is talking about how he uses Social Flow.
Keri Morgret:
2:37:03 pm
He's mentioning if people don't see your tweet in the first half an hour, they're not likely to see it, there are good reasons to retweet.
Keri Morgret:
2:38:24 pm
Question about tweeting from personal name or tweeting for a company. Gabe starts off with an answer..it depends on the company. There can be benefits to letting employees tweet under their own name, if they do so responsibly.
Companies like Microsoft, Apple, etc. need controls in place because of their huge investment in brand image.
Companies like Microsoft, Apple, etc. need controls in place because of their huge investment in brand image.
Keri Morgret:
2:38:46 pm
He finds personal touch is more engaging and more human.
Keri Morgret:
2:40:15 pm
For Jen, @seomoz is pretty much her voice. She gives it a personal touch, but without it being specifically one of them. It's neat to be able to use the robot as a mascot, kinda like the mailchimp monkey. People like that.
Keri Morgret:
2:40:44 pm
Martin: most of their LA times accounts are in the institutional voice.
Keri Morgret:
2:42:50 pm
Gabe asks Martin about reporters. Many use latimes in their handle, some user their names and put the latimes info in their profile. Martin doesn't really have a preference.
Keri Morgret:
2:43:36 pm
Jen: they have about four accounts, but she only tweets from about two of them. She tries to have all interactions go through there.
Keri Morgret:
2:44:03 pm
She will on a rare occasion use the same tweet on all of the accounts, such as if there is a site issue.
Keri Morgret:
2:44:46 pm
They publish their posts at night, they get tweeted between 2-3 am pacific time, then 9-10 am, then possibly during the afternoon.
Keri Morgret:
2:45:27 pm
She'll tweet to the same post multiple times, but use different text for each.
Keri Morgret:
2:46:34 pm
Danny is mentioning how the SearchEngineLand twitter account and SEOmoz twitter account are totally different even though the two companies are in the same space.
Keri Morgret:
2:46:57 pm
He's noting that this does point to there's not one perfect way to do things.
Barry Schwartz:
2:47:05 pm
Okay, little break, back in 45 minutes....
3:30pm-4:45pm (PST)
* Inner View: Google's Keyword Research Tools - Barry Schwartz
* Facebook Ad Tactics For Search Marketers - Keri Morgret
* New Tools & Techniques For YouTube Successs - Debra Mastaler
3:30pm-4:45pm (PST)
* Inner View: Google's Keyword Research Tools - Barry Schwartz
* Facebook Ad Tactics For Search Marketers - Keri Morgret
* New Tools & Techniques For YouTube Successs - Debra Mastaler
