It's official. After yesterday's episode of Oprah hit the airwaves, millions of Americans more have now learned about the phenomenon that is Twitter (You can follow Oprah on Twitter here). On yesterday's show, Oprah had the creators of Twitter on including Evan Williams, as well as Mr. Twitter popularity himself, Ashton Kucher, aka @aplusk. As you may know Kucher was in a heated battle with CNN's Twitter to see which of them could amass 1 million followers first. The movie star won it, and was saying how great it is that he can defeat a media giant like CNN, because it shows just how powerful social media really is. On an interesting note, Kucher promotes the celebrity gossip humor site blahgirls.com with his Twitter profile. And by the way, CNN has also achieved 1 million followers. It's starting to look like the next battle may be Britney Spears versus Ellen Degeneres for 1 million. It's also amazing how now that the 2008 election has passed, Barack Obama's Twitter is falling down the Top 10 list.. View the top Twitterers here
Also, there's talk about Google possibly buying up Twitter. You can already feel the moneymaking wheels start to spin.
In Google's earnings call, CEO Eric Schmidt is quoted as saying:
"Without commenting specifically about Twitter ... you could imagine that ... it could be a channel for product information, marketing information, real-time information for which you can hang advertising products, whether it's a text ad or a video ad or so forth off of it ... It strikes me that's a logical strategy for them to pursue and something that we would be very happy to pursue with them and all other players in that space.” (via SIA)
As we all know Google is slowly taking over the web world, and if you're using Adsense you're probably aware there's Adsense for websites/blogs, mobile content, RSS feeds and domain names. So what's next, Adsense for Twitter?
If you're not on the bandwagon, now's as good a time as any to join, and Follow the Monetizer at Twitter. It's rare these days not to go to any company or superstar's website and not see icons or "join up" pictures for Facebook and Twitter. If the big folks are doing, the little folks can benefit just as much. I read an article discussing the concept of getting rid of the whole "follower count" on Twitter, because it makes those with less followers feel as if they're not being heard. That may be true, but there's plenty of ways to increase your followers, namely following others, holding contests and tweeting things that others will be interested in. Others have even mentioned that you should make it a habit to include hashtags "#" in front of key words when you send a Tweet. An example would be:
Learning a new strategy for testing #Adsense ads on my site.
In that Tweet, the word Adsense gets emphasis and picked up amongst searches for Adsense via Twitter. If you do this regularly, supposedly you can gain more and more followers. Also consider using search.twitter.com where you can type in specific searches across Twitter, then follow people who mentioned those keywords in their Tweets. These are just a few tips and tricks to get targeted Twitter followers based on your niche.
The Monetizer will be one of the first to admit I'm no Twitter expert, but have started learning ways it can be implemented into my various projects. You may hate technology but it's usually the businesses, brands and entrepreneurs who embrace it and find creative new ways to market who benefit the most from sites like Twitter.
Extra tip: Check out the Top Twitterers list and see what sorts of websites each are promoting. You may discover some new monetization ideas from their sites, blogs, etc for your niche!
Follow the Monetizer at Twitter!
