As the second part of the Twitter series here on Holistic, I thought I would suggest some of the people I am, and would recommend following on Twitter, and being a SEO in the UK, obviously all these are UK based.

Dave Naylor (DaveN)

Company: Bronco

WHO?: One of the ‘big dogs’ of UK search marketing, Dave started working in the SEO industry over 10 years ago.

WHY: Hugely popular, highly respected and well worth following

WHERE: http://twitter.com/DaveNaylor

Company: MediaVest/MVi

WHO?: Head of Search at MediaVest. Industry veteran (sorry Jon)

WHY: Widely respected and a regular speaker on both the SMX and SES speaking circuits. Amongst other things - he’s my boss.

WHERE: http://twitter.com/JonDMyers

Company: BigmouthMedia

WHO?: Head of Search at Bigmouthmedia.

WHY: Hardcore Search Marketeer - and ‘face’ of Bigmouthmedia (erm :)). Passionate about all things search, and if that bores you, theres always his gaming.

WHERE: http://twitter.com/AndrewGirdwood

Company: Blogstorm/Branded3

WHO?: Director of Search at Branded3.

WHY: Been a magic year for Patrick and the Blogstorm blog.

WHERE: http://twitter.com/patrickaltoft

Company:

WHO?: Marketing Expert @ jimsmarketingblog.com

WHY: Hugely experienced marketeer and VERY well connected (Over 16000 followers on Twitter)

WHERE: http://twitter.com/Jimconnolly

Company: Altogether Digital

WHO?: SEO and Social Media Director at Altogether Digital

WHY: Entertaining blogger, and if that fails theres always the music commentary.

WHERE: http://twitter.com/ciaranj

Company: SEOptimise

WHO?: Director of Search at SEOptimise

WHY: Some great posts coming out of SEOptimise at the moment. Worth following for that alone.

WHERE: http://twitter.com/kevgibbo

Company: Microsoft/MSN

WHO?: Microsoft Adcentre’s Community Manager

WHY: Works for Microsoft apart from anything else (Who would turn down the chance of winning an ‘I’m a PC tshirt). Apart from that his regular commentary is hugely entertaining

WHERE: http://twitter.com/MelCarson

Company: Distilled

WHO?: Founder of Distilled with Duncan Morris

WHY: His involvement with SEOMoz is well known, however the site itself is a wealth of information.

WHERE: http://twitter.com/willcritchlow

Company: Ayima Search Marketing

WHO?: One of the Ayima Gang

WHY: Entertaining Blogger, and hugely entertaining twitter read not just in terms of latest on hangovers….

WHERE: http://twitter.com/evilgreenmonkey

Matt Sawyer - DataDial -Online Marketeer, SEO and Social Media Junkie - http://twitter.com/mattuk

Rob Watts - Latitude - SEO - Stephen Pavlovich - Bonytoad - http://twitter.com/bonytoad

Jane Copland - SEOMoz/Ayima - Only here as she isn’t 100% in the UK yet- http://twitter.com/coplandmj

Judith Lewis - I-Level - Search Director at I-Level - http://twitter.com/JudithLewis

Lisa Ditlefsen - Base One - Head of Search at BaseOne - http://twitter.com/LisaDitlefsen

George Hopkin - Johnston Press - SEO Evangelist - http://twitter.com/GeorgeHopkin

Paul Walsh - Various - http://twitter.com/PaulWalsh

Nikki Pilkington - http://twitter.com/nikkipilkington

Dave Davis - RedFly Marketing - http://twitter.com/daveredfly

Dan Alderson - Amaze PLC - http://twitter.com/pinje

and the final one

Peter Young

Company: MediaVest / Holistic Search

WHO?: SEO Manager at MediaVest.

WHY: Why not?

WHERE: http://twitter.com/peteyoung

Thats just some of my recommendations, Please feel free to add yours…

Twitter has been one of the tools I have been most into during 2008, something which has given me the opportunity to interact with some people I have only had a fleeting chance to meet during speaking engagements, industry events or attendance of conferences. This has included the likes of Kevin Ryan, Dave Naylor and various people from agencies such as Latitude  and BigMouthmedia.

For people not familiar with Twitter, Twitter is a microblogging service which allows a maximum of 140 characters, something which allows for a service which in my opinion ends up midway between an instant messsenger and a blog.

Twitter

There are a number of reasons however I may choose or not choose to connect with someone on Twitter - for example:

• No Introduction - Always nice to know a little about you before I choose to follow (or not as the case may be)
• No link to website - If your description doesn’t suffice, then a link is always good, so I can find out more about you.
• What you say - Probably one of the more important factors here. There are an awful lot of people who have over 18000 comments. No offence you either have
  1) Too much time
  2) Write a lot of rubbish. I am one of those that would rather have 500 interesting posts than 18000 telling me that you are in Puerto Banus or the like
  3) Swearing and the like. On personal level I am not one of those that wants to read a load of cussing when looking at Twitter. That combined with 2 is a definite nono.
• Kan jy Engels praat - In english - do you speak English. Unless your Dutch or Afrikaans there is not a good chance of me understanding you so in practical terms there is little or no point me following you.
• Have you written anything. I often receive a number of ‘follows’ from people with no comments. What is the point of me following you - if you don’t say anything?
• Are you a brand - Not a keen follower of brands unless I really like you (@starbucks for example)
• Frequency of tweets - One tweet every four months is not that interesting - unless its worth waiting for (and lets face it 140 characters really is difficult to write something knockout in - although I will stop short of impossible)
• Self Promotion - Shameless self promotion is a definite turn-off. People don’t use twitter for pure business purposes (if you want that LinkedIn or Ecademy is great for you. I tend to find people like to get to know you more ‘personally’ rather than your corporate persona.
• Are you in an industry I am interested in. For obvious reasons, SEO, Paid Search and other online marketing professionals are always an easy win - although Andy Murray (Tennis Player) and MCHammer (Remember him) have somehow made their way onto the list

If you are on Twitter, feel free to drop us a line - twitter.com/peteyoung, if you aren’t give it a try (and forget about your social life - at least without Twitter)

Twitter has become the new bloggers playground, with Andy Murray (Tennis Player) and even Obama twittering on a fairly regular basis (although I would suggest the Obama postings may become slightly less frequent ;)). However it has also become a commercial tool recently with brands like ComScore, Dell and even the likes of Oracle and IBM getting to grips with the Twitter phenomenon.

However, why do so many brands suck at Twitter?

Size

As many of us know, large organisations often have more defined rules and regulations than smaller organisations and individuals. This lack of flexibility often restricts brands from either

• Responding quickly to potential issues
• Corporate guidelines can sometimmes restrict the level/tone of response particularly in larger organisations
• Senior decision makes sometimes don’t have the familiarity with new technologies and can sometimes be wary of new technologies, and thus slow to adopt

Late to the show

As highlighted on the above point, larger organisations in particular are often slow to react to new technologies, and thus often can be beaten to the punch by competitors or just keen admirers. For example @disney is owned by Cherie Thomas from Los Gatos, California - https://twitter.com/Disney

Those that do adopt, come in two guises

1. Those that embrace, brands such as Dell and Comscore are perfect examples of this and…
2. Those that merely sit and do nothing, reserved with little or nothing to say, unsure on how to deal with the new guest to the party - such as Microsoft - twitter.com/microsoft

Intention

Lets face it, nearly all of us hate being preached to. Thats one of the beauties of the web. We invite who we want in, in particular search. Twitter is a very personal channel, if people don’t like you they will just stop following you - and thus your Twitter activity will go unnoticed. This lack of direct business return, can often restrict just what activity occurs - and for those that do go down the direct sales channel, can often end in disappointment unless done correctly (The Dell outlet example being a reasonably good example of this.

The Big Brother aspect

There are a number of brands out there following individuals, some as a direct response to previous follows (Starbucks for example returned in kind a follow for me), however others go out directly and follow indivuals in the hope of getting a follow recipricated. However there are a lot of Twitterers who do not like bing followed by corporate followers, and thus such tactics can fall on deaf ears.

Lack of familiarity with brands

With some brands such as IBM and Oracle, individuals have created so called hybrid profiles, such as RichardATDell. Whilst Dell do actually have a brand persona, there are a number of brands out there where hybrid accounts operate, and where these operate without brand compliment, can potentially mean a disassociation with the brand.

The other potential issue can be job migration. People don’t stay in jobs forever and these hybrid accounts can often become obselete very quickly - OracleJulio being one such example.

If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound

With big brands it is likely that people will naturally search for that brand, however this isn’t often the case with smaller brands. For this reason, active commercial use of Twitter in these instances can merely result in lots of effort with little or no return.

Lack of buy-in

Whilst brand monitoring is become more popular by the day, there is still a long way to go. Many brands do not follow what is being said about them online, even by simple devices such as Google Alerts. Without knowing what is being said, it is unlikely some brands will have a justifiable reason to operate in the Blogosphere, let alone Twitter.

There is no doubt the effect Twitter has had within search circles, one only has to look at the people using it (most of the UK and US search welebrity circuit (term coined from Ciaran Norris) are on there including Matt Cutts, Jill Whalen, Jason Calacanis, Danny Sullivan, Lee Odden, Will Critchlow and Richard Scoble,

As an individual, are you on Twitter - if not, why not?

If you are a brand - what are you doing on Twitter. Its not for everyone, however if you are going to enter the brave new world, take your time, do your homework and enter it with your eyes wide open