TwitterTown: How To Engage A Local Market

“Well Twitter is good for you Scott, your market can be anywhere in the world.”

And so it begins. Another reason why a business claims it doesn’t need to engage their marketplace. For geographic based businesses it’s always brought up that they have no need to connect with someone in Toronto if they run a pizza place in Dallas. Fair enough (although connecting on a large scale has many benefits, but that’s a rant post for another day.)

If your business is “local” there are a few things you can do to help focus your Twitter efforts:

Don’t Stick It In Their Mouth – How to ReTweet

ReTweeting (or a RT as you see on Twitter) is repeating what someone else tweeted on Twitter. It’s a great way to spread the word about someone and shows you liked what they tweeted.

But what about if you want to add your own few characters to the original tweet?

I’m about to show you why comments before the RT is the only way to go, but before you do, don’t get your Snuggie in a bunch. Spare me about how Twitter has “NO RULES” or “Who the hell are you to say what I should do??”. I’m Scott, nice to meet you. I’m not saying you have to do it this way, it’s just my opinion, and since this is my blog there is a rule, and that is: I rule here.

Trolls, Meatheads and My Mom

Back in my uber-geek days, I used to hang out in IRC chat rooms. These were places were fellow geeks could hang out in different topic based rooms, swap stories, MP3’s (when it used to be badass) and generally connect with others.

Everytime, bar none, he would appear. The troll:

In Internet slang, a troll is someone who posts controversial, inflammatory, irrelevant, or off-topic messages in an online community, such as an online discussion forum, chat room or blog, with the primary intent of provoking other users into an emotional response or of otherwise disrupting normal on-topic discussion. (wikipedia)

The Three Billion Dollar Cleaning Man

Wes is the three billion dollar man to me. But I’m getting ahead of myself…

It’s no secret I “enjoy” Las Vegas. After going there 14 times in the past four years I consider myself an unofficial tour guide and resident of Sin City.

A place you can’t miss on the strip is the Wynn. Very fancy, very pretty and very expensive. Since the place cost 2.7 billion dollars to build, I assume selling 99 cent hot dogs isn’t gonna make that money back.

7 Deadly Website Sins – Gluttony

Me chowing down on a burger and your website. What a combo.

How much do you ask for when people sign-up for something on your site? Seen any examples of insane requests? Do you want a burger now? Comment below!

Social Media Importance Explained

If you’ve ever had to justify the use of social media to someone, just show them this video:

Five People You Should Follow On Twitter #FollowFive

Instead of using #FollowFriday to recommend people, I’m starting my #FollowFive.

Your Captcha is Craptcha

Captcha’s were created to stop automated sign-ups, but when actual humans can’t decipher them, we have a problem

Testing out Twitcam Embedding

Here is the archived video of the live Twitcam show I did today

How to Raise Money on Twitter – Tweetathon 101

I love Twitter. Not just because it makes up for my lack of popularity in high school, but for all the incredible people I’ve met since joining it. It has restored my faith in humanity. No other event has proven this more to me than the day I decided to hold a Tweetathon.

Back in March I decided to lend a hand to the cause of child hunger in the United States on behalf of Strength.org, which was the charity of choice for the 12for12k Challenge, which is: