Twitter Power: How to Dominate Your Market One Tweet at a Time

Twitter Power: How to Dominate Your Market One Tweet at a Time

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Editorial Reviews

Get the business leader's guide to using Twitter to gain competitive advantage.

Since 2006, forward-thinking companies like Apple, JetBlue, Whole Foods, and GM have discovered the instant benefits of leveraging the social media phenomenon known as Twitter to reach consumers directly, build their brand, and increase sales. Twitter is at the leading edge of the social media movement, allowing members to connect with one another in real time via short text messages?called "tweets"?that can be received either via the Twitter site or by e-mail, instant messenger, or cell phone. Many companies have started building entire teams within their organization dedicated solely to responding to tweets from consumers about their brand. And this is just the beginning.

In Twitter Power, Internet marketing and Web innovation expert Joel Comm shows businesses and marketers how to integrate Twitter into their existing marketing strategies to build a loyal following among Twitter members, expand awareness for their product or service, and even handle negative publicity due to angry or disappointed consumers. The book also presents case studies of companies on the forefront of the Twitter movement, to help you develop your own social networking strategies. Twitter Power is the result of extensive testing and participation in the social networking community and is a must-have for any business that wants to keep up with the social media movement. Twitter Power features a foreword by Tony Robbins.

Customer Reviews

How to Harness the Real Power of Twitter

Reviewed by Danek S. Kaus, 2010-02-28

Best-selliing author Joel Comm has done for the social networking site Twitter what he did for Google's AdSense. He has created the definitive guide, titled Twitter Power.

According to Comm, "Twitter is the water cooler of the 21st Century, a gathering place for bite-sized pieces of information on the fly." You can build relationships very easily and use it to brand and grow a business."

For those not yet using Twitter, it is a site where people write messages that are no longer than 140 characters in length. These messages, or "tweets," can range from what somebody had for breakfast to their thoughts on a book they just read to advice on a variety of topics. Often these tweets contain links to blogs and websites with more in-depth information or interesting videos.

Although Twitter flew out of the nest as a place for people to socialize, it has become a powerful tool for branding and building businesses.

Many large companies such as Comcast and Zappos use Twitter to keep in touch with customers.

This book covers everything you need to know from setting up your account, how to write your bio for maximum effectiveness, how to build a following, the most popular kinds of tweets, Twitter applications, how to use Twitter for customer service, and much more.

I highly recommend this book.

Danek S. Kaus, author of You Can Be Famous: Insider Secrets to Getting Free Publicity and co-author of Power Persuasion: Using Hypnotic Influence to Win In Life, Love And Business

Was Skeptical at First

Reviewed by Joseph L. Giacalone, 2010-02-15

Was skeptical at first when I bought this book for the consulting group I belong to, [...] . We had a twitter page [...] with 3 people following - I was one of the 3! I read the book and by the time I was finished we had 43 followers. It was worth the money.

Full of Joel Self-Promotions

Reviewed by Lisa Shea, 2010-02-09

Pretty much everyone has heard of Twitter. Commercials and web sites all talk about Twitter. Just what is this Twitter website - and how can you use it to develop your brand?

Joel's book "Twitter Power" is aimed at the very novice user. Not only that, but this is really a "Joel Promotion Book" which mentions Joel's business brands at least 8,000 times. I am probably not exaggerating. But let's start from the beginning.

Joel says that 2 years is a "lifetime" in internet terms, to show how powerful Twitter is - and then promptly quotes stats about Twitter from back in August 2008. Isn't that a "lifetime" ago? He promotes his blog, his mom's blog, his photos ... aren't we supposed to be discussing Twitter here? When he's digressing about Flickr, he's showing images of StumbleUpon nonsense.

His stats are often meant to be encouraging but are highly questionable. He says half of Twitter's users only follow 10 people or are followed by 10 people. That to be in the top 10 of all of Twitter you only need 80 followers. He's trying to make you think, "Hey, I could do that!" But as usual, these stats are rather silly. Surely this is including INACTIVE accounts. I am sure most ACTIVE Twitter users have more than 10 followers. It's twisting information to suit his purposes.

Twitter isn't a "teen" thing. A full quarter of users are 35-44 years old. This is primarily a way for adults to stay in touch with topics they are interested in. It's a free press release engine that directly reaches people fascinated by your topic.

He then moves into a few useful tidbits. Choose a meaningful username (like "TrekBikes" rather than "xyzzyforfun"). Post a good quality photo to brand yourself as high quality, and use your background to continue that promotion. Make valuable posts, not spam. Many people get their tweets on their cell phones, where they pay per message, and they will delete you quickly if you make them pay for garbage. Don't just mass join other people in the vain hopes of getting friends. Search on your topic and join matching people. Web users are very savvy about the quality vs quantity issue.

Don't just blast your message. Engage in conversations and provide value. Don't create multi-tweet messages where you have to read each one in order. Twitter isn't built like that. Consolidate your message into short posts, and link to an external blog if you need more info. Speak in full English whenever you can. Yes, it's a challenge to get it to fit in the space required - but it means you have to post quality content.

When you post something generic, like "going to the library", always have a personal touch on it, to connect with users. Add in fun tweets to bring a smile, and discount ideas, to save money. Use the feed for news, support, feedback, and offers.

Put your Twitter info in your email signatures, on your business cards. Have it a normal part of your branding.

A pet peeve of mine - Joel encourages people to run contests but makes NO mention of the serious legalities involved. What if you run a contest and are eliciting addresses from under-13 users, and get sued for the dangerous privacy issues that involves? Contest are gambling, and many countries have VERY serious laws against gambling.

There's a thirty day plan in here, but really it's very simple. Create an account. Follow people. Make posts. Make more posts.

I read through the book, gave it a month to ponder, and then read the entire book again. I had almost the exact same notes both times. He is WAY too heavy on his personal promotion in here. This is almost a "support Joel and his projects" book. He is VERY light on details and examples.

Yes, if you've never used Twitter at all, you'll find this useful - but you'd find many other competing books FAR more useful without all the self promotion in it.

The best book out there on twitter

Reviewed by Annalaura Brown, 2010-02-09

Watch Video Here: http://www.amazon.com/review/R2YDOF4WTN5WCE

Is #1 in Twitter Reference Materials

Reviewed by Shirley Fine Lee, 2010-01-18

The helpful book "Twitter Power" provides practical advice and technical assistance. It offers: hints on creating a custom twitter profile background, how to write tweets people will read, and information on setting up auto-responses to new followers. It saves the new user time by listing several other on-line tools that integrate with Twitter to track data or interests; respond easily on-line or by cell phone; and find people to follow. For those who like to plan their start-up for tweeting, Joel Comm even offers a 30-day timeline on how to do it. This book is an excellent reference for increasing Twitter traffic and should be read again and again to continue knowledge growth on this tool.