Trade Pressed

Here’s some analysis of my first year of using Twitter.

- Been using since June 14, 2008, thru WhenDidYouJoinTwitter.com.

- 127 updates. I thought that number would be higher.

- 196 followers. I’m surprised it’s that many.

- We’ve had 392 visits to our magazine sites that originated from Twitter.

Just today I received a story lead through Twitter. I’ve followed public opinion on our industry through Twitter. So I’m going to keep it. I think we’ve only scratched the surface on what Twitter can do for us, and I predict I’ll have twice the followers by this time next year. And they’ll be quality followers.

And these are the tools that will help me do an even better job in my second year.

• Twibes.com. Great for following events and our industry in general.
• BackTweets. See who’s blogging about a URL, including yours.
• Bit.ly. URL shortener that also tracks how many people click.
• Twitter Feed. Send your blog posts directly to Twitter automatically.
• TwitPic. Send camera phone photos to your feed. I’d use yfrog if I had an iPhone.
• WhatTheTrend? Find out what’s trending and why.
• TweetDeck. Keep it up all the time and you’re on top of Twitter all the time.
• Help A Reporter Out. This guy links reporters with sources. I just found this, so we’ll see  how good it is.
• TweetStats. See how much work you’re doing on Twitter.

I’d also like to point out Angela Maiers’ 70-20-10 Twitter Engagement Forumula. I think this is a great guideline for us. Found at the Blog of Mr. Tweet.

70% of your tweets should share resources- sharing others’ voices, opinions, quotes, blog posts, articles, content and resources

20% of your tweets should engage in conversations with others, responding, connecting, collaborating and connecting with others.

10% of your tweets can be chirping, chitchat as Angela calls it, on trivial details or self-promotion.

Wow — this is a sign of a new day. From Poynter: FTC to Investigate Bloggers Receiving Pay for Posts.

I’ve always felt that it’s caveat emptor with blogs, but I can see the point. I like a nice separation of church and state, although the Internet has bent if not broken a lot of those rules.

If you set yourself up to look like a news source and you’re really just a PR service, the reader should be told what’s really going on. But are we not giving the reader enough credit? Can the average reader tell the difference between a paid blog and a legit one?

Poynter asks if this may amount to “rattling the saber at blogs and social media” by the FTC, but it’s definitely exciting to see web reporting legitimized by the investigation. The FTC is basically saying there’s good blogging going on out there, and it should be differentiated from unethical reporting.