Then January 1st, 2009 I made a deal with myself; live on Twitter for 30 days and see what would happen. Since I didn’t want to be another one of those marketing experts that dismissed something just because I didn’t use it, I was going to give it my all.

Fast forward to today. Over 40,000 tweets, almost 50,000 followers and a new addiction later, I realized what Twitter brought me. I was thinking today “What if I didn’t jump in?” since a lot of the talk nowadays is about “ROI” and the business case for social media I came up with a list of stuff I wouldn’t have today if I didn’t make the jump just over a year ago.

If I didn’t jump in, I wouldn’t have:

• The most incredible support system I’ve ever known in my life. When UnJr’s mom passed away in the fall, hundreds, if not thousands of you opened your arms, even if it was just for a virtual hug. I’ll never forget that
• One of the best friends I’ve ever had.
• A book deal with Wiley
• A platform that allowed my blog to have instant readership once launched, averaging 10k readers per post, brand new (key here: launching the blog after building a following)
• Learned to learn again. Seriously. I had stopped learning. Figured I knew everything about business/marketing. And that’s the worst place to be. I now learn all the time, especially from blogs like Convince & Convert, The Brand Builder, Chris Brogan, McKain ViewPoint, Blue Sky Factory Blog, Awake @ The Wheel, Altitude
• A water cooler: being the head of a company is very isolating, especially when you run it from home. Twitter allows me to have that water cooler banter which allows people to feel included
• Six figures in revenue. The reason why I don’t write about this often is people get the wrong idea. They think “if he can make $, then so will I!”. I get a lot out of Twitter because I give a lot. Social media doesn’t change the fact that relationships take time. I just believe that business is built on relationships, so I make building them my business.
• My Mastermind Group: Ok, I don’t have one, since I have Twitter. I have met some incredible business minds that I can float ideas to, and they can do likewise, all under the belief that we can better each other. I’m surrounded by awesome every time I fire up Tweetdeck
• Writing about my passion: Not only did I get to meet, and consider an awesome friend, Erica Ehm, I get to write the UnDaddy blog, which has given me a writing outlet I never thought I’d do, and love it
• A free trip to DisneyWorld for me and my son. As well as a Tassimo coffee maker, RockPort shoes, 35 books and counting
• The ability to go to events and already know people. Twitter allows me to meet people online, then when I see them at an event, I feel I already know them, because I do
• Allowed me to do my greatest passion in business, speaking at events. A lot of those gigs were generated from a single tweets. Caught someone’s eye, then they went to my site.

And finally, Twitter has renewed my faith in humanity. I’ve never “met” more kind, caring, genuine, funny, smart people, anywhere than I have on Twitter.

And for that, I thank all of you. Don’t forget, none of the above happens without giving on Twitter first. Jump in.

What has Twitter brought to your life/business? Comment below!

**Turns out my man DJ Waldow wrote about this exact thing today too**

**And now Lisa Barone wrote a perfect reply to our posts. I wanted to argue with her, but couldn’t. She’s right**

1. It allows you to reach people in other time zones

2. It allows you to make Twitter scalable

3. You get to build relationships when you’re not around!

*Sorry, give me a minute*

Ok, I’m back, I had to go throw-up in a garbage can. Automating tweets means you want people to listen to you, but you’re not listening to them.

There is no such thing as automated engagement.

There is no such thing as programmed authenticity.

Absent tweeting is dictation, not engagement. Lecturing, not listening.

Automating tweets is like sending a mannequin to a networking event. Stick a post-it note on it, and roll it in, to multiple events around the world! Think of all the Chamber of Commerce mixers you could cover! Different time zones! Let the relationships winfall begin!!! Boooyaa!!!

Obviously you realize why that’s not a good idea. The initial tweet doesn’t create the relationship, it’s the conversation after. That’s the best part! I’m not saying don’t send out “marketing” tweets, or pitch a product. I do it. But when I do, why in the name of Sly and the Family Stone would I not want to be around for questions or comments immediately after? Tweets have such a short shelf-life, it’s the conversation immediately following the tweet that’s so crucial, and if it’s a marketing tweet, may help close the sale.

It’s a different story if your account is a feed of events/news and that’s what people follow for. The problem is when people “think” it’s you tweeting to them, but you’re not even there. Once they find that out, it could hurt your relationship and your brand. That tweet tells people “I want the benefit of a relationship, but don’t want to put the time in to nurture it.”

I heard Guy Kawasaki talking about this at a recent event. He said to ignore the “Twitter Nazi’s” that tell you what to do, and you should automate a bunch of tweets. Besides the fact I have a huge issue with people using the term “Nazi”, the biggest problem is this: people at that event looked up to Guy for guidance and thought “this is how you become successful at Twitter!” and I actually read some tweets after saying they were looking forward to automating Twitter! Guy can say and do whatever he wants. What I find wrong is for people just starting out, this won’t work. You can’t replicate someone who has hundreds of thousands of followers and a celebrity name to your Twitter account for your home biz. You actually have the advantage of authenticity and one-to-one on Twitter. Why try to be a WalMart when you’re a small biz? You have the competitive advantage of being you. Automation hurts authenticty.

Relationships take time. If you try to shortcut social media, you’re shortcutting relationship building.

Agree? Disagree? Comment below!

PS – Finalizing the UnBook Tour in the fall. Ideas for places to stop, organizations/conference I should speak at? Lemme know in the comments or contact me! Speaker Demo video is here

************************************************

Part 1: My Transparency on Twitter

When I started getting some momentum on Twitter, gaining up to 500 new followers a day during the craziest of my tweeting addiction, I turned off notifications of new followers. I couldn’t keep up with them all. I then had a choice, become a Twitter Diva (or “Twiva” if you want to annoy the eggnog out of people) and not follow anyone back, or auto-follow everyone back who followed me. I picked the latter, since I figured it was a nice way to say thanks for following me, and hey, if they followed me they at least have that going for them

This was a mistake for three reasons:

A pic of me in a cow costume seemed suitable for #1

1. I followed back spammers/porn accounts and other undesirables. I got nothing against porn stars. I’m sure they wake up and put on their latex pants like the rest of us, but I had no desire to hear about the sequel to Long Dong Silver in my tweet stream. Also, on your profile page, it shows a collection of people you’ve recently began to follow. Some of those profile pics don’t reflect fondly on your brand, and why are you following @WhipsAndChainsForMen anyways?

2. I ended up following 30,000 people. I barely look at my “All Tweets” screen. I’ve removed it from Tweetdeck. There is so much noise, that I’ve had to make custom groups called “rockstars” and “awesomesauce” to read the tweets of people are learn from/know. I should’ve stayed selective in those I followed back and now only follow those I learn from/laugh from or that engage with me and I find them interesting (a great tool for that is ReFollow.com I check off “Not Following” and down below check off “Users who have @ mentioned me” to see whose been engaging with me but I haven’t followed.) And don’t get me started on all the auto-dm’s it opened me up to. Even after using socialtoo.com to block most of them, if I get one more “it lets your Facebook friends find you on Twitter” DM’s I’m gonna start getting all stabby.

3. It was not being transparent. I was trading authenticity for automation. Efficiency for transparency. People would tweet or DM me that they were flattered I followed them back, and I winced every time. I couldn’t tell them that it was automated.

Twitter is different than a newsletter. There is a much more personal connection on it. Just like auto-tweeting, which I’ll go over in the next post in the series, as soon as you throw automation into your relationships, they stop being that. Is it worth deceiving people, if that’s how they might see it, for the sake of automation? I realized a little too late, my answer is “no”.

What’s yours? Does it make you feel all warm and fuzzy if someone follows you and you get that notification? How do you feel about people auto-following back? Or any automation? Comment below! And sign-up for updates to get notified when the next post is up! I’ll cover what other people are doing with automation, and why it can kill your image.

PLEASE NOTE: I am refraining from naming each sin with a “TW” like “Tweed” or the “Twust” because legally you should be able to pour motor oil over someones Cheerios if they do that.

Ladies and gents, with a headache, bags under my eyes and a lighter wallet, I present you with: The 7 Deadly Twitter Sins:

Greed is quite a popular sin. Twitter by default is a self-centered tool. It’s about us. But it’s 100x better if used as a conversational tool versus a dictation. I see people use it as a glorified RSS feed for their blog or an ad-puker. So absent of personality, I wonder why they even try. Yes you are in business, but if you believe that business is built on relationships, you need to make building them your business.

This sin holds a special place for the people who only retweet compliments about themselves. I was talking to a colleague of mine, she was asking how I have built a large amount of followers and I mentioned that I get retweeted a lot and I retweet others. Her reply was “I retweet others all the time!” When I checked out her page, the only time she EVER retweeted anyone was if it was a compliment about her or a #FollowFriday mention with her in it. You may as well tweet while looking in a mirror telling yourself you’re good enough, you’re smart enough, and gosh darnit, people like you.

GET FOLLOWERS FAST!!!! Most people on Twitter have seen tweets like this or thought of using a site that helps kickstart things for you. Seems innocent right? Let’s just have a look-see at this logic. Imagine the guy in the tweet below just followed you. Makes you feel all warm and fuzzy that a new person is along for the Twitter journey with you, makes up for your lack of popularity in high school and the day is getting better! Then you see his next tweet:

I've blurred his eyes to hide his identification

How does that make you feel now? Still warm and fuzzy? Still getting tinglies? Didn’t think so. When you tweet out “follower system” tweets it says one thing: You’re in it for the numbers. I’ll bet the 3 cents I still have after Vegas that one of the next tweets will be about an amazing bizz opp or dick cream to add that precious extra inch or seven. Everything you tweet is an extension of your biz and your brand. If you want to scream about “GETTING THOUSANDS OF FOLLOWERS” be my guest, but the funniest part about the above tweet? He has 149 followers. Seriously. If you don’t see the irony in that, just shut down the computer and go see New Moon or something.

Twitter is a conversation, it’s truly what I love about it. But imagine having a conversation with someone where they take an hour to reply to you, face-to-face. How awkward would that be: “How, how’s business?” and they blankly stare off for an hour, then reply “Good thanks!”. That’s how it feels if someone takes a week to reply to a tweet. I once had someone that took 79 days to reply to a retweet. 79 FREAKIN DAYS! If it takes you longer to reply than it would to walk over a hand-written reply to my home, you’re doing it wrong. I know, not everyone is a tweetaholic like me, and not everyone can devote a good chunk of their day to Twitter. So if you have a limited amount of resources/time, let’s say 5 hours a week, it’s better to spend 45 minutes a day, for the entire week, than 5 hours once a week. Consistency breeds familiarity which creates relationships.

Ya, I’m kind of a big deal on Twitter in my own mind, which at the end of the day means fark-all to the majority of the world, but everyday I get DM’s asking me to change my pic to add a “cause” or tweet about this or that. I’m all for causes, I’m a big charity guy, but mostly I’m a fan of choice. Meaning it’s your choice to support anything you want but every once in a while people try to guilt others into changing their avatar etc. When everyone changed their Twitter profile pics to a shade of green to support some cause I got asked daily why I hadn’t changed mine yet. My answer to them? It’s none of your damn business why. My lack of participation in your cause does not infer lack of support, just like changing my avatar does not make me a better person by default. Same goes for people who think you should be obligated to follow them back if they follow you. Things on Twitter, just like most things in life, is a choice.

One of the worst things about Twitter is the reactionary nature of it. Most of us don’t think before tweeting and for the most part it’s ok since most tweets are harmless/boring/innocent by nature. But once in a while we react/lash out above our better judgement. It takes 1000 tweets to build a reputation and 1 to change it all. There are many examples of this here or here. Twitter feels very intimate sometimes, like you’re on an episode of Friends, having a conversation with a few, except there are thousands “lurking” around. It’s like having a harem of stalkers, without the creepiness.

Being the object of someones wrath is also very common. For a full explanation on how to deal with these trolls, read the previous blog post about it, but in a nutshell: don’t feed them. They aren’t owed a reply, your time or your emotions. You’re better than that.

Twitter is filled with humans. And when you throw a bunch of humans into an environment, a few things are sure to be present: 20% of people will have bad breath, 30% will wonder how their hair looks, 60% like peanut butter and cheese sandwiches but are scared to say something (or maybe I’m the only one), and 100% will have hormones. It happens, we can pretend they don’t exist, but they’re always there. It’s one of the reasons to have a flattering picture as your Twitter profile, it catches the eye. The problem is when people turn creepy or obnoxious (and by people I mean guys). I’m truly blessed to know a lot of incredible women on Twitter who are not only brilliant in business but are attractive as well. The stories they tell me about direct messages or replies they get from some men make me shake my head. Seriously folks, I’m not sure what book told you the line “Your lips look tasty” works, but it makes me picture Silence of The Lambs, and not for the cool stuff. Every tweet, every DM represents your company and more specifically it’s you as a person. So if you want to be known as “that guy” who drinks hard liquor at the networking event straight-up and gets that smarmy smile on, be my guest.

You know what? Screw it. I have no problem with you being proud of something. I mean true pride. Something you accomplished, your kids, whatever. Scream it from the top of the mountains, good on you. Just do it in moderation. Don’t just talk about yourself, spread pride of others too. ReTweet their accomplishments. One sin out of seven ain’t so bad

What about you? What do you think? What bugs you about certain tweets? Maybe you disagree? Comment below!

Oh, and of course, here is a video of me riding a bull in Vegas. Explains the bruise on my thigh:

Thanks to my awesometastic friend Manya for filming and eiditing the train wreck!

]]> http://www.un-marketing.com/blog/2009/11/20/the-7-deadly-twitter-sins/feed/ 155 http://www.un-marketing.com/blog/2009/11/02/sorry-youve-been-phished-what/ http://www.un-marketing.com/blog/2009/11/02/sorry-youve-been-phished-what/#comments Mon, 02 Nov 2009 20:03:52 +0000 unmarketing http://www.un-marketing.com/blog/?p=241

I can haz ur passwerd?

Heeeere phishy phishy phishy! (to quote the great Ernie from Sesame Street)

Like anything that gets popular, there are unruly folk out there trying to fark up our fun. Lately its been attacks against the fine people in Twittertown.

Phishing is nothing new. It happened years ago with emails from Paypal, eBay, your bank etc that mentions you must go “RIGHT NOW” to this website to do something for your account or it would be terminated/explode/massive bum rash if you didn’t. (btw, phishing isn’t “hacking”. No one is sweating for hours, banging out code trying to get into your account)

Phishing is “the criminally fraudulent process of attempting to acquire sensitive information such as usernames, passwords and credit card details by masquerading as a trustworthy entity in an electronic communication.” (via Wikipedia.)

This is what happens on a Twitter phishing expedition:

1. You get a Direct Message from someone you follow:
2. Being the narcissistic ego-maniacs “self-interested” people that we are, we obviously want to see what great video we may be in (or not-so-great) so we click on the link
3. Up pops a login screen asking for your Twitter name and password
4. People thinking it’s something to do with Twitter, they login
5. SET THE HOOK!!! You’ve now been phished.
6. The people who now have your login info use it to send other people DM’s with the same trick
7. A little while later they start sending out spam notices like this:

Now it looks like you are raving about the $19 you made using Google, etc, and you are none the wiser until you start getting DM replies back from “friends” with gems like “WTF??” and “SPAMMER!!! BURN HER!!”

So this is where I ask you to go easy on your fellow Twits. I know people should be vigilant in checking URL’s and not giving away their private information but the kicker about phishing through DM’s on Twitter is that they leverage trust from people. The wording is so basic and innocent, I’ve even clicked on them (See kids, this is called being transparent in a blog). Now I haven’t given my info to any of them, but that’s because I spend more time online than a 15 year old who just hit puberty so I’ve dealt with this stuff all the time.

What to do if you have been phished

1. Change your password. No one got access to your account because you used your pet’s name as your password (you do don’t you??). It doesn’t matter how crafty you’ve made it, if you hand them your login info, it’s like they’re psychic like John Edward, except they actually know stuff
2. Check who has access to your account by going here. It shows who you have authorized to use your account. Now don’t crap the bed if there are companies listed there. I have 18 apps that have access to my account for various reasons. But if you don’t recognize one and want to yank them out, just click “revoke access”.
3. Stop giving your info out! You should never give your info to any site that asks for it unless you are wanting them to. It’s your reputation/business here. Giving out your login to anyone is like wearing your bank card PIN on your t shirt and wandering the back streets of Vegas at 3am. Not saying I’ve done that…. ummm…

So if someone sends you a DM that is out of character, be nice, reply back to them that they should change their password. It could happen to you, you’d already feel bad enough and could probably use a helpful reply

Thoughts? Comment below!

Like this post? Subscribe! It also makes you 45% awesomer.

UnBootCamp just launched! Wicked.

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.

I’m not telling you what to do, I’ve learned over 30,000+ tweets that some things work and some don’t. I’ve learned that best intentions can get mis-interpreted, and people can start sticking words in your mouth and you don’t want to know where their mouse has been.

So if you want to RT and add your comment, this is the way I suggest. Let’s say @UnMarketing (he rules) states something he has seen in a study about beef saying “Studies show that men like steak”. He has given no opinion, just passed along a statement he read somewhere and you, being @UnTesting, want to retweet it and add your opinion that you find that study to be “crap”. I use a harsh word like that to illustrate the point. Imagine if I used a real swear word!

Here’s what the tweet would look like with the comment before the RT:

There is no debate here. UnMarketing’s tweet and content are all after the “RT” and @untesting added his thoughts to the start, yes?

Now, the worst thing to do is just add your comment directly to the end of the original, like so:

Now @untesting has added his comment to the end of the original tweet, making it look like the original tweeter (@unmarketing) says the study finding is crap. That’s huge. Imagine if one of his followers is a client that is in the beef industry (ask Oprah about how sensitive they are). Words were now put in his mouth, and everyone who retweets this RT now put words in his mouth.

So one solution is to put lines after the original tweet to “show” that it’s you commenting on the original tweet, like this:

That certainly isn’t clearly @untesting’s comment. It can be perceived as a comment from the original tweeter. At the very least, it’s subjective and that’s not a good thing when a strong opinion is stated.

Same goes for brackets:

And some people go the length of adding “me:” in the bracket:

Again, it’s up for debate who “me” is, especially if it gets retweeted by a third person. If one of the rules of Twitter is to keep things under 140 characters, why are you adding unnecessary ones, be it even brackets or an arrow (<–)

I’ve also heard a few times that people don’t want to read “backwards” meaning having the huge slaving task of reading after the RT and THEN HAVING TO GO BACK to read before the RT. It’s not War & Peace people, it’s 140 characters. You can do it, I believe in you.

Remember, do whatever you want on Twitter, or anywhere else for that matter. But if you start sticking things in tweeters mouths that they don’t want, they may bite ya.

Comments? Leave em below! Like this? Subscribe at the top-right!

(On another note: if you want something to be ReTweeted, make it under 120 characters, not 140. The RT plus your @ name take up space and the comment, written before the RT of course

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)

Usually this sorry excuse for a human being would type something like “Your mom is hot” or “That’s what your mom said”. (the irony of this is that the troll usually resides in his mom’s basement, and is horribly, horribly alone)

Nowadays, trolls have moved into the social media stream, leaving nasty blog comments, sending meathead tweets or insulting Facebook comments.

I had to look-up "self prophetic"

How do you deal with them? How do I deal with them? (and why am I asking myself questions?)

Here are some tips to get you out of the troll spiral:

1. DFTT: Don’t Feed The Trolls: This is by far the best piece of advice I ever received back in the day. I was getting pissy about a guy baiting me in a chat, and someone sent me a private message with that line. Trolls feel horrible about their lives, their haircut and are angry that a bowtie has not become acceptable attire in society. And they are hungry. If you don’t feed them, they eventually go look for food elsewhere.
2. Don’t Expose Them: I’ll admit, my first reaction to these jackasses is to reply back with my sharp wit, but never forget this: If they tweet something to you, only their followers will see it (and they usually have 20 followers, my mom not being one of them, contrary to their apparent liking of said mom). BUT if you reply, if you take the bait, you now have the tweet on your main profile page, feeding the troll exponentially! Not only do you give them the satisfaction of being fed, but you’ve also given them a platform to be exposed to all your followers. The pic above was a tweet sent to me yesterday, I didn’t reply, I just blocked and went on with my day. Sure, I don’t like seeing it, but found it kind of funny and it isn’t entirely false
3. Pick Who Gets Your Emotional Currency: For a detailed explanation of Emotional Currency, go here, but in a nutshell, you only have so much emotion to go around. It should be spent on people who value it, who value you, not some douchenozzle that just finished a 36-hour bender on World of Warcraft and is pissed his wizard lost an epic battle on the island of Corinthian. There are way too many incredible people in this world, and Twitter especially that are worth your time.
4. Realize Where They’re Aiming: It is their lack of self-esteem that brews the hate. It actually has nothing to do with you. Do they know you? Do they have tea and crumpets with you? No. So screw em.

This isn’t about living in a bubble and only listening to happy things. Constructive criticism is one thing, being an asshole is another.

You’re worth more than troll bait. Don’t listen, don’t acknowledge. Just be you, and do it at the highest level possible, because I think you rule.

For a few more great views on this, visit my pal ElizabethPW and Seth Godin

If you like this post, don’t forget to sign-up for email updates up in the top-right corner! RSS is there too for my IRC geek buddies

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

Fleurdeleigh
RochelleVeturis
SandyGrason
ManyaS
ElizabethPW

Yes, I am aware they are all women. I meant to say this week was 5 women. I’ll recommend five men when I can find that many good ones (Ha!) (High fives all the ladies in the room)

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:

The 12for12k Challenge is the combination of social media and fund-raising that aims to change the lives of millions worldwide.

The goal was to hit $12,000 for 12for12k for March (they were already at about $1600 for the month)

So I logged on at 10am on the Thursday of the Tweetathon and went at it.

The $12k goal was hit in 5.5 hours. And by the end we raised around $14,000, all through Twitter.

I was overcome with emotion. All these people, strangers in “real life” but friends on Twitter would rally together and give to a great cause.

After everything had calmed down, people started asking me how I did it. I also started to notice others trying to raise money doing a version of a Tweetathon, and people were having trouble replicating this success, so I decided to figure out why this one worked so well, and where others were faltering. (Unless you’re Trent Reznor)

I boiled it down to 9 key areas:

1. Organizer span of influence: I was around 16k in followers at that time and rarely ever ask for anything from anyone. I had built a lot of social currency with my network and wanted to cash some of it in for a great cause. This is especially important if a non-profit wants to be the one running the tweetathon. You can’t just open an account on Twitter and start asking for donations. Twitter is a community, a conversation, not a pitch platform.

2. The cause: Doesn’t take much convincing to get people to feel for the cause of child hunger. If I was raising money for an obscure illness, it may not have worked so well.

3. The raffle: I asked the Twitter world for donations first for the raffle. Out of 60 offers, I picked 11 of the best that would give the most bang for the buck. You can see the raffle items on the tweetathon page. To get these awesome donations, you have to go back to point #1. Almost everyone that donated an item for the raffle, I had a previous relationship with on Twitter. I didn’t get to know them for this purpose, but it’s incredible what happens when you ask for help from virtual friends, people step up to the plate.

4. The set donation suggestions: For every $12 donated, people got one entry into the raffle. If they donated $120, they got 10 raffle entries plus a website review from me ($300 value). That gave people a focus, instead of asking them to “donate what you can”. Overall about half the donations were in small amounts ($12 at a time) and the other half were the $120 donations and three $500 donations.

5. The short timeframe: One of the issues of getting people to donate over a month (12for12k is a month long for each charity) is they can put it off, there is no sense of urgency. This was a 12 hour window, nothing more. To be entered in the raffle, people had to donate in that small time window.

6. The amount of tweets: I tweeted more on that day than any other day in my history of Twitter. A single tweet lasts a minute or two on people’s radar, tops. I tweeted almost every minute about it and every tweet had a shortened link back to the donation page.

7. The social proof retweet: every time someone tweeted about donating, I retweeted it with my addition (I.e. “AWESOME!” or “THANKS!”) that kept the word going, helped the topic #12for12k trend and it showed others if they donated, they not only helped a cause, got a chance to win something cool, but also gained new followers.

Danny Brown - Founder of 12for12k.org

8. 12for12k soldiers: Most who had the 12for12k avatar stepped up and became a tweeting army. Momentum is everything in a charity drive like this. Danny Brown, the founder of 12for12k gave me all the support in the world, including the use of the blog page to host everything. It added credibility to what I was trying to do.

9. FOCUS: This is where I see the biggest mistake being made in online fundraising. When the tweetathon occured, there was only one action people could take – donate. If you look at the page, the video I recorded, the text, everything focused on donating. Recently I’ve seen live streaming video, interviews, musical acts that take away from the donation focus. Their heart is in the right place, but if people are busy listening to an interview subject talk about a topic outside of the fundraiser, they get distracted and eventually click away. If you still want to have virtual events during the fundraiser, at the very least have a banner across it always reminding people of what you’re there for. Make the donate button (or ChipIn widget) at the very top, or alongside the video that is being used.

I’ve also had a lot of questions on how we did the raffle, figured out number of entries etc… the great thing about using the ChipIn widget is it allowed us to get a spreadsheet of all donors and amounts but allowed all the donations to go straight to the charity without us having to deal with it. After getting the information and creating a custom Excel spreadsheet, giving a line for every $12 someone donated, I used a random number generator to choose the winners of the raffle.

For the sake of total transparency, I also partially ran the tweetathon out of spite. I wanted to show all the people out there that said social media is a waste of time. I wanted to show them that Twitter was filled with the most incredible people in the world. I was right