Twitter has received a lot of criticism for their inability to retain the majority of their users on a long-term basis.  A few months ago, Marketing Pilgrim featured a research study done by The Nelson Company proving that roughly 60% of users who sign up for Twitter fail to return to the service after about a month.  Those who actually use Twitter on a regular basis blew a gasket.  They couldn’t believe it.  However, after working with hundreds of people and businesses in the past few months, evangelizing the worth of Twitter with a fury and passion, I can honestly say I’ve seen the same trend.  People just get discouraged with Twitter. They sign up full of excitement from the hype, but quickly lose momentum and interest when they don’t understand the lingo, or how to get people to follow them.  They hit what I like to call “The Twitter Road Block.”

Overcoming the road block really only requires persistence.  There are also a few tools that will definitely make the transition through the Twitter Road Block much easier:

Twitter Search

Twitter has a service called Twitter Search which allows you to search for Tweets with specific words in them.  The coolest thing about Twitter Search is that you can subscribe to specific search queries using RSS.  Or rather, you can track multiple specific keywords at the same time via your Feed Reader.  Think about it this way. Lets say you’re the president of McDonalds and you want to work on client retention and customer service.  You could search for negative words associated with your product or company name, like “Hate McDonalds” or “:( McDonalds”.  You could then subscribe to the feed, and you will be notified every time someone sends out a negative Tweet about your company.  You can then fix it.

Little do you know, whether you like it or not, people are talking about you, your company and your products on Twitter right now.  Time to start watching who, and talking back.

Don’t stop there though! Search for things you’re interested in and start talking to people who are interested in the same thing!  Twitter is a forum for discussion.  Most people leave because they have nobody to talk to.  The best way to build a great reputation for yourself on Social Media is to be social! Be the person who talks to everyone.  That is how you will gain the most value from Twitter, and how you will brake through that frustrating initial Twitter Road Block!

RSS Feeds are probably one of the most useful tools in the business industry.  Ironically, they are probably the most underused tool in the business industry.  Most people don’t even know what an RSS Feed is.  Now is the time to be enlightened. Are you excited? You should be.

If you’ve ever seen this image () on a blog, website, or even your Outlook dashboard, you have seen an RSS Feed subscription button.  RSS Feeds are basically electronic magazine subscriptions.  They allow you to keep tabs on the most current information whether it be your mom’s craft blog or the leading website in your industry.

You can subscribe to RSS Feeds using an RSS Feed Reader (which is free and requires little to no registration). Every time the website you’re subscribed to publishes something new, you will be notified of the new stuff in your Feed Reader. The perks?  You don’t have to memorize your favorite 100 website URL’s and manually bounce to them throughout the day wondering if they have published anything new in an attempt to stay current.  Just keep an eye on your feed!

The two most popular RSS Feed Readers are probably Outlook and Google Reader. (I prefer Google Reader because it contains some really cool features that most other Feed Readers don’t… but use what’s most convenient and easy for you. This is all about making things simple!)

Outlook's RSS Feed Reader

All you need to do to subscribe to a feed is watch for that little orange icon shown above (there’s one in the upper right hand corner of this site), and click on it.  That will take you a page that looks much like this:

RSS Feed Subscription Page

Select the reader that you would like to receive the RSS feed, and hit the “Subscribe Now” button.  Easy as that.  Now, what are you waiting for! Jump on that! Start subscribing. Just don’t get addicted.