"Twitter: Tips, Tricks, and Tweets"

Happy 2010 everyone! I hope you all are off to a great new year.

A couple of weeks ago while I was attending SES Chicago, I did a little shopping at the conference book store and had picked up a few quick reads. In addition to purchasing some of the more popular titles written by our industry's leaders, I also bought a few books pertaining to social media marketing - specifically ones on marketing with Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook. With my recent surge in downtime due to vacation and holiday hours away from work, I decided that now was a great time to dive in.

I just wrapped up a quick little read titled "Twitter: Tips, Tricks, and Tweets" by author Paul McFedries, and thought I'd share my thoughts on it. First off, I'd like start by saying that I am an avid Twitter user and have been Twittering since June 2008. I am very familiar with the Twitter platform and the countless number of applications that are available and can assist with improving one's experience. I purchased this guide not because I needed a crash course on the subject, but rather for two other reasons - I value learning other points of views on such topics and I'm a firm believer that no matter how experienced a marketer is one can always find a "gold nugget" if they mine in the right places.

One excerpt from the book highlights what we marketers believe to be true:

"If Twitter can influence our political opinions, could it also determine what we buy? Some of the world's biggest brands hope so, and many have jumped into Twitterland with both feet. Some use the service for product announcements, while others post responses to questions and complaints from customers; some even hosts contests to win free products and services."

So, did I find a gold nugget? Yeah... I found value in this read. Among other things I learned that Twitter accounts can be downloaded via a hidden XML feed and imported into excel for evaluation. I also read about all the exciting things that twitter bots are capable of, that there is an entire directory of twitter text commands for mobile use, and that apps such as TweetBeep and TweetVolume can be leveraged for competitive analysis and brand management.

This book was an easy read and written in away that made learning the many social quirks of using Twitter easy to understand. Without a doubt, I am recommending this book as a beginners guide to using Twitter for those individuals and companies looking to start using twitter. However, at the same time, I certainly wouldn't discourage veteran twitter users from picking up a copy either.

Labels: book-reviews