The results were encouraging – we’d acquired 500 followers in a short period of time and found they were actually visiting our site and engaging with us as a result. The initial results were promising enough that we kept with it, kept learning, kept testing – and we’re very glad we did.

We went on building our brand via being an “online help desk” of sorts for BlackBerry issues, much like we did in the previous case study:

1. One of the BBGeeks.com staff was the voice of @bbgeeks on Twitter.
2. We continued in our belief that our goal should be for him to become a BlackBerry trouble shooter (.i.e. help people) first, promotional evangelist (i.e. drop links) for BBGeeks.com second.
3. None of our tweets were automated, not even links to our blog posts – if we didn’t feel it was worth dropping by hand, we didn’t drop it.
4. We continued to seek out BlackBerry users via various search methods.

We had built our following up to about 5000 people by February of 09. Our traffic from Twitter continued to grow from the time we’d last graphed it and we were starting to get excited about the possibilities even larger follower counts might bring:

In March of this year, we really “geared up” our efforts. We began to be more aggressive in seeking out followers:

1. We began to seek out the Twitter accounts of our major competitors and follow their followers… if they were interested in the competition enough to follow them, chances were, they’d be interested in us too.
2. We ran contests to get people to retweet about us to their followers.
3. We sought out top twitterers we knew had an interest in BlackBerries.
4. We continued to be extremely helpful to anyone would could, and in turn, those folks often told other folks about us when their friends had BlackBerry issues arise.

Within a month, our follower count had gone to five figures and over the next few months, it continued to rise steadily:

Our traffic from Twitter also severely increased over those next few months:

Now, if we go by Danny Sullivan’s theory that analytics under-counts Twitter traffic by as much as 500%, our actual traffic numbers from Twitter, in theory, may have more resembled the below during that timeframe:

At the time this post was written, BBGeeks has over 19,000 followers on Twitter. Based on internal data that I’m not willing to share (hey, you can’t expect the entire farm for free), I can tell you that Twitter traffic converts higher than any other social network we track to date, by leaps and bounds. Twitter traffic actually clicks on our affiliate links, on our contextual ads and uses our coupon codes (we run Twitter only coupon codes sometimes).

In addition to the direct revenue Twitter brings us, it also helps increase our brand, gives Google signals of our authority and trust and it has been directly responsible for many links we’ve acquired.

Twitter also helps us develop content that contributes heavily to our long tail search volume on the site from various search engines. As I mentioned in my last case study:

We get tons of content ideas from the various questions and problems we see our followers and the people we are following experiencing.

My theory is that if folks were looking for answers to specific questions and/or problems on Twitter, non Twitter folks were likely typing those same queries into search engines as well. So we started a dedicated section of our site we refer to as the Twitter help files.

In it, we round up the various questions we receive each month, the answers we’ve given and develop and entire post of “long tail” information that is helpful to search users. Additionally, the folks who help us out by asking us these questions get some promotion to our large readership as well.

Win, win.

This post originated at the Sugarrae online marketing blog, home to online marketing consultant Rae Hoffman.

Commercial Twitter Case Study Revisited

This post originated at the Sugarrae online marketing blog, home to online marketing consultant Rae Hoffman.

Commercial Twitter Case Study Revisited

He thought it would make a cool WordPress plugin. Then Barry got wind of it and thought the idea would make a fun site (and offered to actually program it). Add a dash of Design by Reese and today we’ve launched Tweetwasters.

In addition to launching the site (which will calculate the actual time you’ve spent twittering as well as tell you your rank compared to other Twitterers in the system) we’ve also created the Tweetwasters WordPress plugin so that you can display your Tweetwasters stats right on your blog (assuming the amount of time you spend on Twitter is something you *want* to bring to light). For an example, check out my sidebar on Sugarrae.

The plugin is simple and free. The site is the same. We made it to have some fun. We hope you enjoy Tweetwasters and please, feel free to tweet about it.

This post originated at the Sugarrae online marketing blog, home to online marketing consultant Rae Hoffman.

Announcing Tweetwasters

This post originated at the Sugarrae online marketing blog, home to online marketing consultant Rae Hoffman.

Announcing Tweetwasters

The “web” link has long been a nofollow link, but the bio links passed popularity until Dave Naylor exposed it, which alerted Matt Cutts (a Google engineer) who sent a tweet to @ev (a twitter founder) about Dave’s forementioned post and *poof* bio links were nofollowed.

Now, as I sat there thinking about all of this happening, I became increasingly annoyed by one question. Why? Why would Twitter, or Google (and I don’t care which) think that a profile link, be it in the “web” section or the “bio” section from my Twitter page should be nofollowed? So, I asked:

@mattcutts curious as to your reasoning that this link http://tinyurl.com/6hxmaj SHOULDN’T count? imo, profile link shouldn’t be nofollow about 1 hour ago from web in reply to mattcutts

@mattcutts curious as to why Google thinks a link from a page that only should have pop to pass if it is being linked to and read about 1 hour ago from web in reply to mattcutts

@mattcutts that I am providing the content for shouldn’t have a link back to my site that counts for me about 1 hour ago from web in reply to mattcutts

@mattcutts unless of course, Google can’t figure out which Twitter pages have true value and which are owned by bots… about 1 hour ago from web in reply to mattcutts

@mattcutts in which case, I might suggest turning down the dial on link buying hunts a bit and up on detecting basic link pop by page about 1 hour ago from web in reply to mattcutts

@mattcutts Y says my tweet page has 1700 links, all cause people like the content *I* am putting on it… now, I ask you… about 1 hour ago from web in reply to mattcutts

@mattcutts why on earth should a link from my profile back to my core site where people can find more from me be nofollow? about 1 hour ago from web in reply to mattcutts

@mattcutts *I* gave this twitter page content, *I* got this twitter page 1700 backlinks, why should *I* not benefit from it? about 1 hour ago from web in reply to mattcutts

And that last tweet is something everyone should really be looking at. My personal twitter page has 1700 links, 1500+ followers, contains over 7000 tweets and is a toolbar PR of 5. Last I checked, I got all those links. I wrote all that content. All those people were following me as a person. I developed that link popularity. Why on earth would I not deserve ALL the benefits (including that in the form of a profile link) from building up the value of that page?

If Google is the one who wants that web link nofollowed because some twitter profile pages may be automated bots or spammers, then it is time they realize that THEY are responsible for determining which of those individual pages is authoritative, trusted and legitimate enough to pass link popularity, by a method other than demanding that other websites and social networks change the ways they do business to help Google stop links being used as a form of currency and to manipulate their algorithm – an issue Google and Google alone created and profited from.

But then @oilman brought up the other side of the coin:

@sugarrae @ev is saying he doesn’t vouch for his users – why not a nofollow filter on spam accounts? they’ve identified most of them by now about 1 hour ago from TweetDeck in reply to sugarrae

And maybe @ev isn’t willing to vouch for his users. So, I asked @ev:

@ev question, why did you agree to nofollow the twitter profile link? do you not feel your users should benefit from their participation? about 1 hour ago from web in reply to ev

@ev I can’t see a logical reason you would feel the need to do that, except for fear of what happens to your own site if you refuse about 1 hour ago from web in reply to ev

If @ev truly feels he can’t trust his users, then why is he taking the link popularity I’ve built to my profile at Twitter and using it to help the core Twitter site in the search engines. Why aren’t all the links to @ev’s site (Twitter) nofollowed as well. He can trust my link popularity enough to use it for himself, but not enough to let me benefit from having developed it? That seems a little hypocritical to me.

Now other users went on to point out a few things, such as the fact that the majority of Twitter users wouldn’t even know what nofollow was or that getting a link isn’t the reason we use Twitter.

But here’s the deal. Just because someone doesn’t realize that you’re denying them a benefit of their work while taking the benefit for yourself doesn’t make it OK.

I could get a child to give me their twenty dollar bill in exchange for a “shiny quarter”… they would be none the wiser and not realize they were missing out on anything. Does that make it any less slimy for me to do?

If the reason I sing is because I love it and I reap many benefits, does it make it any more acceptable that my manager took way more than the normal cut because he knew I wouldn’t know any better?

I find it hard to believe that @biz (another twitter founder) and @ev would not feel their users deserved ALL the benefits of being active on Twitter and helping them build their own popularity and brand. I find it easier to believe that maybe Google wanted these links nofollowed in an effort to make up for their inadequacies and like the many others in Silicon Valley, Twitter has no interest to be made an example of. But who knows? Only they can answer.

An even bigger question for me is, if, IF, Google is really coercing companies like Twitter based on threats of dropping them from their index for non-compliance, at what point does someone decide that due to Google’s reach and power, that doing so is no longer a case of “guidelines” but rather one of blackmail?

This post originated at the Sugarrae online marketing blog, home to online marketing consultant Rae Hoffman.

Twitter Lays Down for Google

This post originated at the Sugarrae online marketing blog, home to online marketing consultant Rae Hoffman.

Twitter Lays Down for Google

But, the “green brigade” has invaded Twitter (which means everyone tinted their photos green today) and I went to view the Google cache of Reese’s twitter page, hoping to find the non green picture of her to use for her profile picture here on Sugarrae. And I was beyond confused at what I saw (click images to see large versions):

Yep. It is what it looks like. When you view the Google cache of many individual status messages, the Twitter users picture and name are laid right on top of a Google AdSense ad. [sarcasm] Wow, the advertisers must be loving the quality of that traffic! [/sarcasm]

So I click back and check the actual page thinking, “maybe Twitter is trying to monetize!” but nope. No ad on the actual page.

Only on the cache. And again, not clearly displayed, but only under the photo/name of the person. I check a few more and find the same thing.

I checked to see if it was a Firefox bug, but nope, it is happening in IE too. You know, it is already against the Google guidelines in my interpretation to be feeding Google millions of one line status messages:

Use robots.txt to prevent crawling of search results pages or other auto-generated pages that don’t add much value for users coming from search engines.

But being a bigger company, they seem to get away with it. But I wonder how Google will feel about them doing what looks like them not only cloaking (which is against their organic search guidelines, at least for this purpose!), but cloaking to serve Adsense ads on a cache with something laid on top of it.

Maybe this is a glitch of some kind? I don’t know what kind of “glitch” could cause this though – any ideas? And if it turns out Twitter was indeed cloaking Adsense ads, do you think Google will actually punish a big brand instead of slapping them on the wrist per usual?

Edited to add: As has been discussed in the thread at Sphinn on this post, the ads appear to not be clickable due to the photo/username laying on top of them. But, as I commented in the Sphinn post:

Even if it isn’t clickable to the point of costing advertisers money, it adds to their impressions and drops their click through rates – which affects their bid prices.

Edited to add again: I finally found a clickable one thanks to a suggestion by bunltd to look for shorter user names. This cache of a status of streko is finally clickable all the way to the right side of the ad title since streko’s username is short and the ad I was shown at the time had a long title. I wonder how this company (where the ad took me) feels about the quality of my click. Since the ad I got was for “Liposuction in New Jersey” I am guessing it cost a pretty penny.

Edited to add a third time: Thanks to xDFuNK, we now know that Twitter has AdSense code on the page if you’re not logged into Twitter – which Googlebot wouldn’t be. Not just in the cache. But, the AdSense only shows visibly in the cache. If you view the page regularly while logged out, the Adsense ads are hidden. Googlebot can actually SEE the ads, but humans can’t, except for in the cache. Why only actually show the Adsense to Googlebot? Does anyone know if the code being on the page counts towards advertiser impressions and click thru rates even if only visible on the cache?

This post originated at the Sugarrae online marketing blog, home to online marketing consultant Rae Hoffman.

Twitter Cloaking to Show Adsense Ads

This post originated at the Sugarrae online marketing blog, home to online marketing consultant Rae Hoffman.

Twitter Cloaking to Show Adsense Ads

While both companies are definitely standout examples of how you can use Twitter for business, you probably aren’t marketing a household name and have a hard time seeing how your small merchant site or information site can use Twitter effectively. And by now, you’re probably sick of the “top ways” people guess or hypothesize that a commercial website could use Twitter to their advantage.

Luckily for us all, I’m not going to guess or suggest, but rather show you a specific example (a step by step guide and Twitter case study all rolled into one if you will) of a non “big brand”, commercial website utilizing Twitter to further its brand, get traffic and gain backlinks. I wouldn’t call it the “ultimate guide” because Twitter is too new a medium for anyone to be an “expert” at it. But, hopefully it helps people see the potential of Twitter as more than a time waster.

Anyone who follows me on Twitter has likely figured out by now that my company owns a BlackBerry related website. BBGeeks has had a Twitter account for around eight months now and has grown from zero to over 500 followers in that time. Not bad for a website targeting a very niche market in less than eight months. So how did we do it? And what has it gotten us?

The Fumbled Beginning:

We weren’t really sure what to do for a commercial account when we first signed up for Twitter in December 2007. We changed the background to match out site colors and put up our basic logo (which was a poor dimension to use as a twitter background we later found).

We followed a few of our personal friends and put a link in the sidebar of our website along with some other social profile links. We made a few tweets of conversation here and there. I also tweeted about the @bbgeeks account on my personal account since I have a four figure following. We added our Twitter account to the “first time visitor” plug-in we use on the site. We utilized the TwitterTools plug-in to “auto tweet” our posts on the site to Twitter as they published (and unfortunately, as we later found out, were edited).

We gained about 100 followers in the first month, with very little purpose, use or direction, and we sat there status quo for about four more months. Some may have dubbed Twitter a time waster for a small brand commercial site. But I decided to do a little research, talk to a few friends and try again.

The Second Coming:

Our second attempt was a bit more organized and began in April of 2008.

1. One of the BBGeeks.com staff was assigned to become the voice of @bbgeeks on Twitter.
2. We decided that our goal should be for him to become a BlackBerry trouble shooter (.i.e. help people) first, promotional evangelist (i.e. drop links) for BBGeeks.com second.
3. We pimped the background with a more Twitter friendly design.

4. We decided not to have our posts auto tweet and instead decided to take the same approach with dropping links into Twitter that we did years ago with link requests – make it obvious that we were taking the time to do it personally.
5. Thanks to a tip from @graywolf, we learned about Summize (which was later bought by Twitter) and used it to find BlackBerry users (we’d search for “BlackBerry”, “8330″ etc.). We’d follow those users and hope that they’d visit our Twitter homepage, see what a great resource we were, and follow us back. And even if they didn’t follow us back on first glance, we hoped we would catch their BlackBerry related questions by following them and earn their following if we could help solve it with an @reply.
6. The employee running @bbgeeks (to be clear, he is not dedicated to Twitter and spends about 30 minutes a day on it) was encouraged to also post off topic here and there and to join in the conversation with our followers and people we were following even if it wasn’t always BlackBerry related (i.e. we wanted him to get involved).
7. We participated in a group effort to post and cross promote guides on Twitter related tools and created a guide to TwitterBerry (the Twitter application for BlackBerry users).
8. Completely of his own idea, the employee running @bbgeeks started doing small giveaways here and there of branded T-shirts and stickers to followers (note: I recommend you get your boss’s permission BEFORE doing this). ;-)
9. We run occasional “twitter only” discounts at our software and accessories store

Our second attempt proved to be a bit more successful. Over the next three+ months, we were able to increase our following by 400 people and find some actual uses and benefits from our time Twittering.

What the Results Were:

When talking about the benefits of commercial Twittering, here is what we have seen in regards to the @bbgeeks account specifically:

1. We have 500+ people who want to hear what we have to say listening on Twitter – and they may not have found our site had it not been for that Twitter account and efforts.
2. We receive several hundred visits to our site each month from Twitter that adds to our traffic and page views in regards to CPM ads.

3. Those several hundred visits a month add to the toolbar data Google gobbles up that shows that people actually visit and spend time on our site.
4. We have 500+ people, who we know are interested in our site topic, that we can promote social media stories too (such as Digg attempts, Stumble attempts, etc) and get help in getting not only votes, but viral spread of great stories.
5. Our site receives free brand exposure on Twitter by our followers who pass around our links and tell friends with BlackBerry issues to hit up our site or Twitter account to find an answer.
6. We’re able to get instant feedback from our followers by using informal Twitter polls and keep our site going in the direction our readers want it to continue heading.
7. We get tons of content ideas from the various questions and problems we see our followers and the people we are following experiencing.
8. We have made friends via the @bbgeeks Twitter account that have resulted in things like us getting into exclusive press conferences during our CTIA conference coverage (Thanks @mobilediner) and have also received promotion of things like our podcast as a result of people responding to guest requests on Twitter (a thanks to @shoemoney). And these are simply two of many potential examples we have of content and links we’ve received as a direct result of our Twitter usage.

For the BBGeeks.com website, Twitter has been a valuable tool – both from a branding standpoint, a content development standpoint, a traffic standpoint (we hope to see it continue to increase), a revenue generation standpoint (people purchasing as a direct result special Twitter sales and/or discounts) and a backlink generation and promotional standpoint.

Twitter won’t be productive for every site, but for many sites, ignoring Twitter as a B2C or even a B2B tool, especially if a competitor isn’t, could make your website miss out on some of the benefits of branding with Twitter that we’ve experienced above.

This post originated at the Sugarrae online marketing blog, home to online marketing consultant Rae Hoffman.

Twitter Case Study of a Commercial Brand

This post originated at the Sugarrae online marketing blog, home to online marketing consultant Rae Hoffman.

Twitter Case Study of a Commercial Brand

Pretty funny shit. And because I’m as big of a Twitter whore… follow me.

This post originated at the Sugarrae online marketing blog, home to online marketing consultant Rae Hoffman.

Lisa Nova is an Absolute Twitter Whore

This post originated at the Sugarrae online marketing blog, home to online marketing consultant Rae Hoffman.

Lisa Nova is an Absolute Twitter Whore