Today I almost forgot to write my Twitter Friday column. Why? I was so preoccupied with the new relaunched StumbleUpon version. To make it short: SU attempts to compete directly with Twitter and Google. This might sound ridiculous but they really do. Theoretically it would be possible: SU exists for several years and has collected tens of millions of web pages in its “index” together with millions of reviews with new sites being added very quickly. Isn’t this the ideal social search engine? Isn’t this the perfect way to determine which websites really do matter in real time? Sadly, no.

Now this is the Twitter column so I won’t compare the new StumbleUpon to Google. Let me explain though why

StumbleUpon is not Twitter and can’t compete with Twitter.

StumbleUpon does not allow business usage of its site. Yes, you can get banned solely for submitting your SEO company website to SU.

StumbleUpon both prohibits self promotion and stumbling of commercial services. I’ve seen many legit and prolific SU users and bloggers outside of SEO getting banned for stumbling sites containing a small commercial aspect.

You must understand that before using SU. Many new users assume they can act like on Twitter and

• represent their brand
• submit their own postings
• promote their offers

You can’t do it unless they have changed the TOS with this new version and they haven’t as far as I know. The only allowed business features of SU are stumbling sites dealing with business topics or paid advertising (sponsored stumbles) on the site.

I repeat: You are not allowed to present your own services on StumbleUpon.

There are many reasons why you aren’t: First off SU is an old school social site, meant for private users and not businesses. It’s similar to all the social sites of the first generation like Digg, Reddit or even Delicious who consider business users trying to promote something spammers by definition. Also these sites are not opt in so indeed it wouldn’t work. On Twitter only people who actively decide to follow you get your updates so you won’t have anybody complaining about you tweeting about SEO.

Instead of complaining Twitter users can simply unfollow you and never again read your Twitter updates.

While StumbleUpon is not the stupid one size fits all social news site Digg and Reddit still are on SU people see your stumbles via the toolbar who haven’t subscribed to you. They have subscribed to a topic not a person. You can subscribe and befriend people too but the toolbar stumbles are send to strangers as well. They get sent to friends of friends of friends. It happens automatically behind the scenes.

Twitter on the contrary is “what you see is what you get”, no shady sending random stuff based on proprietary schemes. Don’t get me wrong: I love the way StumbleUpon sends me stuff I might like and I often do, nonetheless I also get some content theft “funny images” blogs served etc.

There are people on StumbleUpon who will really hate you just because you submitted something they don’t want to see.  Just read the angry reviews of many sponsored stumbles. Twitter in contrast is much more civilized because people choose to read about your business.

There are two more huge problems with StumbleUpon: It heavily relies on a flawed categorization and your friends don’t count.

On Twitter you tweet about a certain set of topics and corresponding people follow you: For instance people interested in SEO follow me. These people appreciate my SEO tweets plus they tolerate or sometimes even like my occasional off topic tweets. On SU it’s not that simple. The people who subscribe to the same categories as me (SEO, search, marketing e.g) might get my stumbles via the toolbar). When I stumble something about bicycling, Asia or cell phones the same people will not see it at all unless they subscribe to these categories as well. This would still work fine but it doesn’t as roughly 50% of all stumbles get miscategorized. I have seen the most bizarre miscategorizations.
Often the category is based on some word in the headline. Articles containing the word “improve” often end up in the “self improvement” category even when they describe how to improve your wireless network. So

many stumbles don’t get attention at all

because the wrong people see them who either don’t care for the issue or even hate the topic. You can’t really fix wrong categories. I send several requests each day to change them but most never get changed as the small SU team obviously has to deal with the reports manually. Even if it does change it takes ages and by then the initial stumble power has disappeared. The faster people stumble the more popular a submission gets usually.

Twitter is straightforward: You follow and befriend people and the more of them or the better your connection with them the more people you reach. On SU your friends votes don’t count. Only if strangers vote for you as well you get real traffic. So in a way the more friends you have in a niche the smaller your chances to get popular are because the less people who care about the topic get their vote counted.

So all in all StumbleUpon is the opposite of Twitter and not suited for business usage.

From the business perspective it can’t compete with Twitter at all. From the SEO perspective Twitter already sends more traffic in many cases than SU, especially if you submit stuff dealing with SEO a topic only a tiny group of users on SU has subscribed to.

In the new SU design you can see the number of “views” any submission has. This just reinforces my impression that most of them don’t get any views at all. Just look at screenshot above showing my discoveries. Please note that I’m a SU power user for more than 2 years and having 800+ subscribers. The SEOptimise post on the screenshot is an exception, I shared it with my friends via the toolbar so they had to see it.

In 2009 you can’t ignore or ban business users, the most succesful social sites allow both business and private usage.

© SEOptimise – Thinking of attending SMX London in May 2010? get a 15% discount code!

30 Twitter Tools for Business

1. Twitter Monopoly for Stream Ads: What Does it Mean for Business?
2. 30 Twitter Search Alternatives & Tools
3. Twitter Friday: StumbleUpon is not Twitter

How do you use Twitter for business? This question has been answered manifold times. What tools do you use for business though? There aren’t that many business tools for Twitter it seems. You rather should ask:

Which tools enable professionals best to use Twitter for business?

This way you may find more useful tools and apps. Nonetheless there are some valuable specialized Twitter tools for business you should try. I compiled a list of both, Twitter tools for business and professional Twitter tools. Most of them are free but some advanced ones, especially in the CRM arena are not.

Desktop Twitter Clients
Many people use the Twitter homepage for tweeting. Indeed I do often as well but for many tasks, especially in a business context an advanced client indispensable. I have tried a dozen of them and these three are among the best for professional users.

• TweetDeck, perhaps the most popular professional Adobe Air client for Twitter. Supports, searches, groups, multiple accounts
• SeesMic is like Tweetdeck but less buggy and with a more polished interface. TweetDeck never really worked on my system.
• Statuzer is similar to the above but with added multimedia support

Web Based Twitter Clients and CMS
Even with a desktop client like one of the above working in teams is difficult. Web based tools offer even more features for teams and companies

• HootSuite, a web based Twitter CMS for companies
• coTweet (Twitter CRM?) – coTweet has been hailed as a Twitter CRM app but it’s basically a Twitter CMS with very basic CRM features
• Twaitter allows team accounts, scheduled tweets, RSS integration etc.
• Tweetvisor is a horribly cluttered but very powerful Twitter interface or web based Twitter client

CRM/Social CRM/TRM (Twitter Relationship Management)
In case you are serious about business you most probably use some kind of CRM tools for customer relationship management. Both CRM software makers and new kids on the block attempt to harness Twitter conversations to get more leads and organize a better customer service. CRM solutions supporting Twitter are still rare though. At least one, Axopt already disappeared.

• CureCRM – Twitter and Email bases CRM
• Salesforce Service Cloud supports Twitter
• IGOpeople Twitter CRM business suite
• Microsoft Dynamics CRM offers a Twitter “accelerator” integration

Twitter Directories
One of the most common questions people new to Twitter ask is: Who to follow on Twitter? In order to some quick overview of who might be the right person to follow in your industry or niche you should check out Twitter directories like Twellow.

• Twellow – Twitter “Yellow Pages”, one of the oldest and most reputable Twitter user directories
• JustTweetIt is a clean and web directory with many users, some of which I recognize. The top result for SEO, Dev Basu is a well known local SEO expert.
• Geofollow – Location based Twitter directory covering the whole planet
• Twibes is not really a directory it’s rather a collection of Twitter groups based on interests

Twitter Enhancements
Twitter has only ver basic features, even Twitter clients offer only a few more. there are literally thousands of tools that enhance Twitter in one way or another. here I can mention only some notable among them that are ideyll suited for busines people.

• TwitterLocal allows you to address local audiences via Twitter, ideal for small businesses
• Social Oomph (formerly Tweet Later) is a tool with multiple features, some of clients some of extra tools, scheduling and automating tweets are just two of them
• Twaitter is like Social Oomph but with less features which doesn’t mean it’s less useful
• PingFM allows to submit links to Twitter, Facebook and numerous other services at once
• PeopleBrowsr is a very powerful suite of tools for creating and addressing groups and beyond

Twitter Search and Monitoring Tools
Twitter users produce huge amounts of data you impossibly can be digest or overview as a human being. Even your followers tweets are too much in most cases. search and monitoring tools make sure that you don’t miss something important.

• Topsy finds and sorts most of your brand’s mentions, tweets and links
• Yahoo Sideline is a Adobe Air based desktop search tool for Twitter. It also displays current trends
• Twilert – Like Google Alerts for Twitter mentions, catches most of them
• TweetBeep – Similar to Twilert but less reliable. Good to find additional mentions Twilert overlooks but not enough on it’s own
• Radian6 – This is an advanced social media analytics suite with some Twitter tools also useful for CRM
• Twitturly – shows the most popular Twitter links in a social news like interface
• Tweetreach – Find out who really is your friend, or at least who spread your message the most

Blog Tools
Being on Twitter is good for business but integrating it into your website or rather blog is even better. Many tools attempt to do that but only a few of them are good enough for business users.

• Twittercounter – A Feedburner like counter showing you the number of Twitter followers, SEOptimise uses one
• BackType Plugins allow you a seamless Twitter integration into your blog
• Twitter Tools by Alex King allows almost complete Twitter integration into your WordPress blog

You may also want to check out some of these resources for more Twitter business tools:

1. http://www.copyblogger.com/grow-business-twitter/
2. http://mashable.com/2009/08/17/enterprise-twitter-tools/
3. http://webworkerdaily.com/2009/08/03/62-ways-to-use-twitter-for-business/
4. http://www.businesspundit.com/10-essential-twitter-tools-for-business/
5. http://www.examiner.com/x-3984-Atlanta-Business-Technology-Examiner~y2009m9d28-10-Twitter-business-tools
6. http://www.dailyseoblog.com/2009/03/10-twitter-tools-to-effectively-manage-your-followers/

© SEOptimise – Thinking of attending SMX London in May 2010? get a 15% discount code!

Cervical cancer, vaccines and social SEO

Related posts:

1. Twitter Crowdsourcing Da Capo: Best of SEO FAQ Thievery
2. What do you want from your online efforts?

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The press coverage of the cervical cancer jab has been unpleasant to watch and brought back memories of the MMR vaccine hysteria.

Although the press may regret the damage they have (once again) done, the Google results could remain filled with flawed information for a long time because of this.

Some of the dangerous articles have been exceptionally popular and, of course, those people who believe in a big pharma conspiracy have been linking to them and driving them up in the search engine results pages.

Well, one SEO professional has had a pretty good idea. Writing for Econsultancy (an industry source Kevin often writes for), Malcolm Coles suggests we try to boost the NHS’s ranking by linking to it within posts like this.

I don’t know if a few SEO bloggers can make enough of a difference and I urge the NHS to review its optimisation efforts. However, if linking to official pages using phrases like cervical cancer immunisation has a chance of helping, then I’m happy to try.

Do take Malcom’s suggestions on board and link to these pages using relevant phrases, as I have done here.

Let’s not see another wave of youngsters missing out on an important preventative treatment.

© SEOptimise – Thinking of attending SMX London in May 2010? get a 15% discount code!