Twitter is a social network that allows users to share brief, 140 character messages. Each time another user shares your message it is considered a ReTweet. ReTweets expand you reach as an individual or company and can contribute additional website traffic, subscribers and customers.

However, when you make the mistakes outlined in this post it can cause your content to be ignored and not get ReTweeted.

The last few months have begun to confirm a conviction we've long held about Twitter--that, in its current form, it's not likely to become a huge mass-market phenomenon.

So I return from vacation to find the latest MailerMailer report citing average open rates for H2 2009 of 11.2%.

This number has declined every half-year since H1 2004, when it was 26.66%.

What are the two biggest challenges for artists working in this digital age?
The tools to produce films, music, books, and art have been democratized: they’re accessible and inexpensive.

And the channels to distribute all sorts of creative products have also been blown wide open: today, anyone can distribute a video or a song or an image to a global audience, for free.

The result is the noisiest, most chaotic marketplace that creative artists have ever known.

That noise and chaos creates the two biggest challenges facing artists today: how do you cultivate a big audience for your work, and how do you leverage that audience to support your career financially?

I wrote Fans, Friends & Followers to address those challenges with useful strategies, examples, explanations, and first-person success stories. It includes an overview of the tools, sites, and services that pioneering artists are using to create a new relationship with their audience. The heart of the book is a collection of thirty interviews with visual artists, comedians, animators, documentary filmmakers, musicians, writers, and others who’ve pioneered new ways to build a creative career online (and off.) It delves into the business models that can support leaving the day job behind. And all of the material in the book was collected in 2008 and 2009.

While I realise (abundantly so) that we can probably never create the perfect product or service, I’d like to argue in this post that the primary consideration we need to focus on as user experience designers, service designers, marketers or whatever, is the voice and view of the customer.

I don’t think it hap pens nearly enough, nor well enough. And, truth be told, I’m as guilty as any one of this.

Training and tips for do it yourself nonprofit marketers

So you have somehow begged, borrowed or stolen an email list of 1000 users who you believe are interested in your new service. Would it not be great if you could somehow convert that list into real people, with real photos, and perhaps even more concrete information like "My service has a higher than average gay consumer group" or "My dating service seems to be very popular among 9 year old girls"? Such information can help you correct course before you are too invested in a particular idea you have.

The WordPress Campaign Monitor Plugin is an email newsletter / SMS tool built for WordPress. Users can send campaigns, track the results and manage their subscribers.

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