As we head into 2011 Social Media becomes more important than ever.

Facebook becomes one of the most powerful forms to advertise on and build a community with.  Even recently it was announced by Matt Cutts – a software engineer with Google – says that Social Media sites will even help effect website rankings.  See what he has to say about that in this video.

Those words you never want to hear on any social media site – but especially not on your precious Twitter account.   After all the time you have spent acquiring Followers and all the people you have been networking with – gone at the swipe of a tail feather by Twitter!

What do you do now?

Don’t give up!

In the email from Twitter which has informed you of the suspension there is a link to their Support Desk. Put in a support ticket immediately. The good thing is that usually the “time out” lasts 7 days – but who ever owns the account needs to request that Twitter lift the suspension or they will close the account down permanently if they get no response.

There is a bit of a witch hunt going on. Twitter is shutting down first and not even asking questions later. It’s up to you to contact them and plead your case. Your account could have been comprised and hacked into or you might have inadvertently done something that violated their ever changing Terms of Service.

Above all, if you want to get your account back, take action now

Submit a support ticket at Twitter Support.

Request that Twitter lift the suspension.

Ask why your account was suspended, how you violated the TOS and assure them that anything you have done was unintentially creating the violation and that you will abide by their directive.

Twitter has been clamping down on a couple of things – automated postings that are being abused by Internet Marketers and “churning”. Typically you can follow 1000 new people a day and unfollow as many as want but if you do it too fast or too often then you are in Twitter’s eyes churning. Churn in Twitter language is when you follow/unfollow faster than what they deem acceptable but if you look at their policies they don’t have an acceptable range of how many new followers you can have in a day or unfollow, that isn’t considered churning.

A colleague of mine who has grown his Twitter account naturally over about a one year timeframe to over 53,000 followers was suspended for a few days while Twitter checked things out. His account was reinstated in about a week without much explanation as to the violation.

Personally I think Twitter is setting the stage for paid accounts and will eventually lift how many folks you can follow/unfollow in a 24 hour period if you are will to pay for the service to do so.

Twitter is getting really, really serious about TOS violations.

My guess is they are doing a couple of things:

* Weeding out the spammers that post the same or similar postings over and over either with links to their website or similar capability (blogs – affiliate sites etc)
* Prepping the world for paid accounts – where folks that want to use Twitter as a leg of their marketing capabilities – will have to pay for the right to do so – this has been kicked around and I watched EV (CEO of Twitter) discuss this on TV a few weeks ago.

It appears now that there have been some accounts that were deleted permanently after Twitter determined that they were seriously violating their vague Terms of Service. One had nearly 100,000 followers after a year and wasn’t a happy camper to say the least.
I would also suggest the obvious:

* Mix it up ( do not use the same text – links etc ) over 20 or 30 tweets and never repeat them in a week’s time – even more would be ideal. No real logic for this but more of a common sense approach. The Twitter servers must be using some type of search/sort/comparison routines and the more data you give them (tweets/links) the least likely they will recognize a pattern. The decision to suspend an account has to be an automatic trigger, as Twitter only has 40 some odd folks working for them (total) and there is no way they can keep track of all the activity that folks are Tweeting and making a decision to shut an account down.

* Be careful with follow/unfollow churn – do not follow/unfollow a large number of folks in a short period of time. There is software that will do this but you can’t regulate how fast it does the follows/unfollows in a given period. Again mix it up – start/stop automated routines, use the Twitter web page to follow/unfollow – or stay under the Twitter radar of “no no’s” listed in their Terms of Service:

https://twitter.com/tos

http://help.twitter.com/forums/26257/entries/18311

* And never ever never give out your account id/password to a free site using an API which connects to your account. Should it be hacked, resold etc – your account could be shut down from activities totally out of your control.

I had someone send this to me on Saturday after doing some Twitter work, and I laughed till I cried.

“Shake that Tail Feather!”

The Internet is a massive information network with millions of sources from multitudes of websites.  How can you get the best focus in all of this when it seems daunting as far as how “little” you are in the scheme of things?

With a little investment in time and effort you can multiply your efforts exponentially, making a few “tie ins” here and there. What it takes is a little planning and some good old fashioned marketing.

For example, whenever you add a blog entry or write an article, make sure it’s automatically submitted to Twitter.  There are built in functions to do this.  It saves you time going to Twitter separately, and you get the benefit of being Tweeted each time you write on your site.

Don’t forget to publish articles in your line of work or product specialty, too, with article directories like ezinearticles.com.  Article marketing, as it’s called, is a way for you to inform the public on your business and then add a bit about yourself at the end in the resource box.  Here, you can send readers to your site or blog to learn more about what you offer.

Whenever you do anything online, whether it’s in Twitter, Facebook or wherever, you will increase your exposure to your business offerings if you link to them.  Never create a site and not promote your business using every social networking sites available. Multiply your efforts online by adding to and expanding your business profile on a variety of Web 2.0 social sites – not just your favorite one.

Once you’ve stuck your toe in the water with one or more of the many social networking sites, you’ll be ready to take it up a notch and use instant video conversations you’re your target audience via Seesmic.

Where Twitter gives you that fairly instant connection to others through microblogging and FriendFeed enables you to tie all of your social networking feeds into one, Seesmic takes it one step to the right by making a nearly instant video connection available between you and your prospects.

The creators of Seesmic wanted to make the online social scene more personal by adding the visual element.  With the video capability, the possibilities of networking with others in your niche are massive.

Once you have established an account with Seesmic, you can begin to network with hundreds of others, sharing questions and answering them on specific problems or tasks your target audience is dealing with.  It enhances your expertise.

Seesmic is like a video forum or discussion board where you can start a thread much like any run of the mill “text style” forum – only you have the benefit of seeing and hearing real people complete with body language.

Do you need instant input on a product you’ve developed that you want consumers to see in action? Flash it up on Seesmic to get great feedback almost instantaneously.  Do you have an idea that needs massaging in a virtual “think tank?”

Throw it out there on Seesmic and “see” other people’s reactions.  Do you have a favorite topic that has to do with your line of work?  Let others get in on the chat and benefit from their insight while they get to see what your slant is, too.

Seesmic won’t replace Twitter or YouTube, but it has and will continue to establish its own corner on the ‘net for entrepreneurs and business owners to network and share information with instant video conversations.

Once you get rolling with a whole bunch of social networking sites, you’ll quickly realize it becomes a noisy environment. Not only is there your own chatter to organize, but you now have the chatter of dozens, hundreds or possibly thousands of online friends to sort through.

Before you start closing accounts on your social networking sites, try signing up for one more instead. This one’s sole purpose is to help you channel the chaos you’re engaged in but it does more than that – it gives you yet one more opportunity to showcase your expertise to the demographic you’re targeting.

On FriendFeed, you’re going to streamline the conversations into one place – and let others grab the streamlined mass of information you’re developing on all of the social networks you’re involved in.

So instead of going to Twitter, Facebook, MySpace and other places to find out what you’re teaching, your audience can go to FriendFeed and get all of your information in one convenient place.

Instead of hopping onto Twitter to see a conversation unfold, you go to FriendFeed and participate right there. And the conversation on FriendFeed isn’t limited by character count, either.

And you can organize your online chatter of friends, customers and business associates at FriendFeed, too. It won’t all be lumped together. You can create lists for separate purposes. And you can create groups and play host or hostess of these sessions as well.

FriendFeed lightens your load, so while it may seem like just another web 2.0 place you have to learn about – it’s really one that’s going to make your online socialization efforts much easier.

You might get overwhelmed with all of the social media opportunities that you have, so you latch onto Twitter or another microblogging platform that won’t ask as much of you. After all, 140 characters can’t be draining, can it?

Don’t slack off just because it’s a shorter form of communication. That only means you’ll be making more posts with a higher frequency to get your message across. There’s not a lot you can say in 140 characters, and it gets worse when some of that space is gobbled up by the length of a URL you’re posting.

There are solutions for you to get a better return on your investment of time you spend microblogging on Twitter. First, utilize the many free tools that are out there to help you save space.

One good example is twitpwr.com On this site, you simply enter your Twitter username and the URL that you want to post and it shortens it for you. This is especially helpful if you’re posting the URL of a forum where the title of the thread is lengthy (or a blog post with a long URL).

Keep your Twitter communication whittled down like bullet points. Don’t use unnecessary words. For example: Instead of breaking up a verbose Tweet like, “Do you ever get fed up with high priced freelancers and want to create your own website graphics but you don’t know how? Use this tool to help you out http://www.url.com,” into two separate posts just so you can fit it all on Twitter, try something simple like this: http://www.URL.com create your own graphics the easy way and save money!

Make sure your form of communication includes a delicate balance of sales pitches and inspiring, motivational, humorous, or otherwise non sales-speak Tweets. You don’t want to come off as a spammer.

And whenever possible, try to follow back the people who follow you. You can use a tool like Tweetdeck to filter out certain people you really want to hear, but by following others, it allows them to send you a Direct message they may not want shown to the entire Twitter community, especially if they feel it’s a stupid question.

May Data is Live: Twitter’s Growth Shows Signs of Fatigue

May’s data is here and it’s hot! It was a big month and the data shows some tell-tale signs that Twitter’s days of monster growth are waning, Microsoft’s $100 million marketing budget for Bing may be paying off, and the sour economy is not negatively impacting summer vacation plans.

Twitter Visitors Put on the Brakes

It had to happen eventually, and May was the month that traffic to Twitter.com started to show signs of fatigue (up 1% to 19.7 Million Unique Visitors). While this is not the whole story behind the emerging Social site, it is a sign that new user growth in the U.S. may be flattening. Stay tuned for more on this one going forward.

Domestic Travel Heats Up

Budgets may be tighter this year, but all signs point to consumers still making vacation plans for the summer. Visitor traffic increased to the National Parks and Services site, nps.gov (up 14% to 3.2 Million UVs), and local theme park sites, like hersheypark.com (up 47% to 416,000 UVs). As a result, major hotel sites like holidayinn.com (up 18% to 979,000 UVs), bestwestern.com (up 11% to 1.9 Million UVs), and daysinn.com (up 14% to 1 Million UVs) all saw a lift alongside rental car sites, which were also positively impacted – budget.com (up 25% to 1.7 Million UVs), hertz.com (up 1.7 Million UVs), and avis.com (up 10% to 1.4 Million UVs).

Follow Compete.com on  Twitter for breaking stories, real-time data updates, and to participate in their cool new datanugget Fridays!

You may start to get a firm grasp on what social networking sites have to offer in terms of letting you easily set up a professional looking web page with your business information on it, but you could start to stumble once people begin tossing around words like “friends,” “fans,” “followers,” and even “Tweeps.”

Basically, whenever you get set up on a web 2 .0 site like Twitter, Facebook, Squidoo, etc., you have the ability to create a loyal legion of followers. These people are either peers, mentors, students or consumers of yours. They admire your products and services or they want to learn more from you.  You become a leader.  A tribe leader.

Depending on what your purpose is for being there, your demographic may be varied from someone else using these social networking sites. You will see people clamoring t use tools that bulk up friends and follower lists, but don’t worry about the quantity you have – concern yourself with the quality.

You want your “tweeps” (people who follow you on Twitter) and fans elsewhere to be prospects. If you’re online to promote your counseling for women in abusive relationships course, then you probably aren’t targeting both genders in your demographic.

First, determine who you’re there to reach out to and whenever you post a message, make sure it speaks to that profile you’ve created in your mind. Next, go out and find people for you to befriend on the same wavelength.

Many times, friends and follower lists are reciprocal in nature, so if you find someone into gardening, and your product is for gardeners, it makes sense that you would want someone like that on your list.

Always post good information (this is a recurring theme you’ll see time and time again). If you’re delivering insightful posts, then people are going to hit that “follow” button so they don’t miss a word you have to say. Follows will occur naturally or with the help of a tool meant to beef up status, but your primary concern should be making concrete connections with people who when you help them, can help you reach a higher level of success.

If you’re feeling a little intimidated at the sheer number of options you have when it comes to social networking sites, then you might be pleased to discover micro blogging. All of your commentary is done in 140 characters or less.

It’s a blessing in that you can build a loyal following of like minded people who want to hear what you have to say, but you don’t have to be too verbose in how you convey your message because you’re being limited!

Micro blogging sites are sites that you’ve been hearing about in the news – primarily Twitter. Who doesn’t have a Twitter account now? Celebrities, news personas, teachers, baby boomers – everyone has a Twitter account to keep others updated on what they’re up to.

You don’t have to worry about blogging about every detail like when you head to the bathroom (as some people do). You can post a few times a day to share interesting links (yes, even links back to your own website), to share a quick tip or motivational message, or to respond to one of your followers who presented a question to you.

The great thing about micro blogging sites like Twitter is the built in viral element to it. When you get on the site and register for your free account, you’ll notice a lot of messages begin with the letter “RT.”

This stands for retweet and it means someone is passing along the tweet (message) of another person. This can result in a wonderful chain reaction that gets your links and Twitter account more exposure by the minute.

Make sure you don’t spam the community on Twitter with endless selling phrases. People like to get to know you on social networking sites. Upload a friendly avatar that depicts you or your niche topic and begin making posts. There are countless Twitter tools online that can help you follow and get followed by people who share your interests.

We will cover many of these tools in our upcoming Social Media Tribe Marketing Membership.

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