Just found some very fascinating statistics about Twitter from a report by Sysomos [via Influential Marketing Blog]. Some of the numbers are not suprising to me, some are. For example, it’s pretty much a law of nature that behavioral/ usage patterns for natural and man-made phenomenon follow an exponetial curve. So the stat that a very small number of Twitter users make up the bulk of activity isn’t such a surprise.

What is a surprise is how few followers the majority of people have (see graph below). Of course, that might explain why Twitter supposedly has such a high bounce of rate people who signup, try it for awhile, then abandon it.

I initially tried Twitter for a few months starting early 2007 and gave up on it shortly afterwards, However, between then and early 2008, I had researched Twitter’s effective uses more thoroughly. People were finding it valuable, and I needed to understand how. In late 2008, I really got into Twitter and have since built up my following. Twitter’s follow limit rules are a bit of a roadblock, but building a truly valuable network does take time.

Here are some tips to follow to learn to use Twitter effectively.

1. Take your time to understand how other people are using Twitter.
2. Decide how you will use Twitter for yourself or your business or organization.
3. Sketch out a Twitter strategy.
4. Determine the daily and weekly tasks necessary for your tasks to be effective.
5. Write up a schedule.

Now get to it!

Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, is, in a nutshell, a collection of techniques that improve your website or blog’s chances of ranking highly in search engines for specific search terms. It’s not a dark art, despite what some people would have you believe, but it does take having a multi-faceted strategy and adjusting it as necessary. If you’re a business owner trying to build your business or brand online, you might not have the time to do your own SEO. However, SEO’s are costly. If you are planning to hire an SEO, check out DailySEOblog’s list of 9 questions you should ask yourself beforehand.

Here are the questions. Read the DailySEOblog article for the detailed answer:

1. Does your site have a target audience?
2. Would people search for your product/ service/ brand online?
3. Do you have the budget?
4. Do you have the resources?
5. Can you do it yourself?
6. Do you need a redesign?
7. Will your users/ readers accept change?
8. Can you develop new content?
9. Do you expect quick results?

This is a good starting point, though there are other questions you can ask, which I’ll try to cover in the future here at UnpluggedMarketing.