Me and MJW immortalised in cartoon form

SEO your Twitter profile

March 1, 2010 By Matthew Gain 4 Comments

As you will see from the above, Twitter is the number two result when you search my name in Google, so is an incredibly important channel for my personal brand.

For those who are interested in growing their results in Google, I believe Twitter is one of the easiest ways along with Facebook and LinkedIn that you can start owning the front page of Google.

Why? Because, Google indexes Twitter highly, it is the easiest way to start creating content and even if you do not Tweet regularly your profile and URL inclusion provides another means to direct people to your LinkedIn or Facebook profile.

For those that already have a Twitter account the good people at Twittip have created a list of tips on more advanced techniques on how to increase the SEO of your Twitter profile.

Some are obvious:

Ensure you Twitter handle includes relevant keywords (I have gone for my name)
Ensure your bio also includes relevant keywords – mine has PR and my company name Weber Shandwick
List your profile in relevant directories such as WeFollow
Follow relevant people in the hope they find your feed of relevance and link back to you

But two were less obvious (at least to me, but I am no SEO expert) and are currently on my to do list:

You can even SEO your Twitter pic (avatar)…

Yes, you can even SEO your profile picture! You can’t add tags but, you can rename the photo before you upload it that way when it shows up in the URL it will have the keywords that you named. Be careful not to add spaces. Doing that will not translate the link very well. I don’t recommend changing your profile picture but, I would recommend changing the name of the profile picture and re-uploading it. You can do this by clicking on “Settings” and then “Picture”.

Burn Baby Burn…

Burn Your Twitter feed: Why would you want to use an RSS feed for Twitter? Well, by using RSS, people can subscribe to your posts (and in this case Tweets) and get instant feeds sent to them. Just like a blogger would use RSS feeds to increase their popularity with search engines and help draw traffic to their blogs, you can use RSS feeds to do the same for your Twitter account. So, how do you go about doing this you say? I will show you how to set this up in Google FeedBurner.

First you go to FeedBurner. If you have a gmail account you can sign in with this. Otherwise, sign up for a new account.

Next, in a different window open up your Twitter account and scroll down to the middle of your Twitter page and click on the RSS feed icon. Next go to the top of the page and copy the URL. (It should look similar to this: http://twitter.com/statuses/friends_timeline/104933666)

Next, paste it into FeedBurner. Then make sure that you add your user name and password so that it won’t be locked when people try and look at the feeds (Use the same format as the highlighted text: http://username:password@twitter.com/statuses/user_timeline/15473972.rss). Click next and you have just RSS’d your twitter profile!

Last, go through the dashboard and choose important options for your chosen use of your feed. You can share widgets, add pictures, set up a title for the feed and make sure that it pings (connects) with search engines.

Some interesting stuff hey? Do you have any other tips? I would love to hear them in the comment box.

This post of a series of posts I am making on SEO tips to improve your personal search brands. Other posts you can view are:

If you enjoyed this post why don’t you subscribe to my blog via RSS or email by following this link. Or alternatively follow me on Twitter.

Filed Under: Personal Brand SEO, Professional Posts, SEO Tagged With: Google, SEO, Tips, Twitter, TwitTip

Australia’s ABC ranks high in Twitter ranks

January 15, 2010 By Matthew Gain 4 Comments

Teqnolog has prepared a whole heap of charts tracking the number of Tweets individuals and organisations are making across the globe. Within the charts it was interesting to see the ABC right up there in the top Twitter organisations globally.

Of course numbers of Tweets don’t mean much and don’t suggest conversation or engagement, but interesting in my mind none the less.
I doubt very much that the ABC is the world’s most productive news organisation – i.e. only four other news organisations create more stories than the ABC. As such this suggests they are pushing heavy into this territory more so than other organisations.

But on the other hand this stat tells us nothing about the value of the messages being tweeted or the way the ABC is using the medium to engage with its audience.

The ABC has a handy list of its Twitter accounts, but reviewing the majority of these the follwing counts are much lower than the follower counts and most push rather than converse. There are of course exceptions and ones that do provide conversation, but these appear to be in the minority.

Personally I have not really engaged with the ABC Tweets (but that may be my failure?) unlike I have with othe rmedia people like Renai LeMay (ZDNet Australia) and Jack Schofield (Guardian) who mix their tweets that drive to stories with conversation, opinion and true engagement.

What do you think? Have you engaged with the ABC online? Is the organisation using it effectively?

HT to Trevor Young who directed me to the Teqnoblog post.

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Filed Under: Media, Professional Posts Tagged With: ABC, Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Teqnolog, Twitter

Most Fortune 100 don't get Twitter

November 18, 2009 By Matthew Gain Leave a Comment

Today Weber Shandwick (my employer) released a study highlighting the fact that most of the Fortune 100 companies don’t get how to use Twitter effectively. Though I don’t suspect that was a huge surprise to a lot of people – especially those in the social media space.

The report found that 73 percent of Fortune 100 companies registered a total of 540 Twitter accounts. However, about three-quarters (76 percent) of those accounts did not post tweets very often, and more than half (52 percent) were not actively engaged. (This was measured by engagement metrics such as numbers of links, hashtags, references and retweets.)

In addition, 50 percent of the Fortune 100 accounts had fewer than 500 followers, a small number in relation to the size and reach of a major corporation. Another 15 percent were inactive; 4 percent having been abandoned after being used for a specific event.

Other findings included:

41 accounts appeared to be not controlled by the organisation
76 percent of accounts had made less than 500 tweets
24 percent of the Twitter accounts were primarily used for brand awareness and only 11 percent for customer service

As my colleague Chris Perry, who co-leads our global digital efforts said on Ad Age today:

Most companies fail to realize Twitter’s full potential as a market engagement platform. While 73% of Fortune 100 companies registered a total of 540 Twitter accounts, effectiveness based on level of activity, interaction and engagement were off the mark.

The report makes five recommendations for companies looking to create true engagement and market interaction on Twitter:

1. Listen to conversations
2. Participate in conversations
3. Update frequently with valuable information
4. Reply to people who talk about issues that are important to your company
5. Retweet relevant conversations

I’d be interested to know your thoughts on the study and its conclusions. What has been your experience with big brands on Twitter? How different would the report look if we were analysing companies in Australia and Asia?

Embeddable version of the report here.

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Filed Under: Advertising/Marketing, PR, Professional Posts Tagged With: Fortune 100, PR, Public Relations, social media, Twitter, Weber Shandwick

Italy earthquake

April 7, 2009 By Matthew Gain 4 Comments

I posted the tweet above a couple of minutes after this week’s Italian earthquake. The quake measured 6.3 on the Richter scale and mainly hit L’Aquila, a town roughly 60 miles north of Rome. Little did I know at that time that time that tragically up to 207 people would die.

The quake brought back memories of the last quake I experienced in Newcastle Australia in 1989 – that was a 5.5 quake and 12 people were killed then.

Pretty scary stuff and hugely thankful that I was affected only in the fact that I was woken up. The next day life in Rome was completely normal by my reckoning except for the news in the media.

Plenty of examples already, but it was amazing to experience first hand how quickly and effectively Twitter spread the news of the quake. Minutes after tweeting the above I was receiving replies with links to Reuters detailing news on the scale. Within ten minutes I was being retweeted by people as a live quake Tweeter. The BBC had contacted me within 20 minutes to conduct an interview. Nothing came of the interview. Not necessarily surprising given the fact, my thankfully calm post quake experience went something like this – ‘I emerged onto the streets to hear no sirens and only see a few people calmly standing around before they returned to bed.’

My thoughts go out to the people that have suffered as a result of this quake. Should you be interested you can donate to The Red Cross at this address.

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Filed Under: Personal Posts, Technology, Travel in Europe, Travelling Tagged With: Italy Earthquake, Twitter

Me and MJW immortalised in cartoon form

March 17, 2009 By Matthew Gain 2 Comments

Me and MJW immortalised in cartoon form
- Watch more Tech Videos at Vodpod.

Me and MJW immortalised in cartoon form”, posted with vodpod

My friend Charlie sent me the Current TV cartoon embedded above this afternoon.

Whilst I found this quite funny it is a little eerie due to the likeness of the two characters to myself and good friend Matthew White. Adding to the eeriness is the fact that these characters exactly replicate our positions on Twitter – I am an enormous fan and Matthew, well there aren’t many people that are more against the micro blogging service.

Coincidence or has someone been monitoring our conversations?

Check out the pics and decide for yourself.

Matthew White: