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Here is a quick video I did in response to people asking about how to get started in social media marketing. More people are jumping on the bandwagon and wanted advice on how to get started.

My number one piece of advice is to find what you can do as far as participating in social media and then leverage the others to help promote the area you excel in. Not everyone can write well, tweet well, do video well and you shouldn’t try to be the best in everything. I would find what you are good at and weave in all of the others social media/network areas.

Good luck and drop your comments questions below. I will do my best to point you in the right direction.

*Update: If you’d like a $10 discount code for Bird Feeder send me an email josh(at)joshwhitford.com

As you probably have noticed, I have been on quite the Twitter kick lately. Twitter is a powerful tool that allows marketers to take a lot of guesswork out of building a brand. As such, I have been exploring many different programs to help and automate the tedious parts of Twitter and give more time to networking and relationship building. You may recall I talked about Twitter Hummingbird and its features just a little while ago. Now I’m going to explain Twitter Bird Feeder.

First Impressions of Twitter Bird Feeder

The people at PaceSys Software stopped by and left a comment on my Twitter Hummingbird Review post saying they believed their program mopped the floor with Hummingbird. So naturally I had to check out Twitter Bird Feeder. I was disappointed they didn’t offer me a free full version of the software, but life goes on.

The trial version allows you to follow and unfollow 250 people before it stops working. I’ll tell you first off that’s all you need. I was hooked instantly and bought it right away. These $175 programs really start to add up. Here are some of the best features Twitter Bird Feeder has:

Manage Accounts

You can add, manage and update unlimited accounts with Bird Feeder Pro ($175), the version I have. Bird Feeder offers a cheaper version of the program for $59.95. This version limits you to 5 Twitter accounts.

Twitter Bird Feeder Manage Window

Follow by Search

Unlike Hummingbird, Twitter Bird Feeder allows you to search and follow people with more precision. You can do the normal search and follow through Twitter’s search but can also select to follow by location.

Right away you’ll notice some neat features to the left on the program where you can select to skip people still rockin’ the default picture on their profile. Also, Bird Feeder has a built in time delay for following people, allowing you to have a more natural or delayed approach. Along with that, if you leave the program running, you can schedule Bird Feeder to automatically follow and unfollow people at a set time (handy while away from the office for a while).

Follow By Search

Follow by People

I follow people the most with Bird Feeder by selecting to follow the friends or followers of people I know on Twitter. If someone is a friend of one of my friends, chances are he or she would follow me back. You can choose to follow a person’s friends by newest or oldest. Again, using a time delay or set time and only following those without default images.

Another option is to follow by people’s usernames, first names or last names. This is really handy in the event you want to follow 1,000 Heathers or every Josh on Twitter to rub it in that you are the only real Josh . I actually use this feature a lot.

Unfollow People

Like Twitter Hummingbird, you can protect people you want to stay followed to even if they aren’t following you back. Then we see some improvements over Hummingbird with Bird Feeder such as unfollowing a specific number of people, time delay, scheduling and the ability to unfollow people after so many hours or days. For instance, @therealjosh is at a point where I can follow 1000’s more than are following back. This gives people more time to follow me back in return because I unfollow people every 3 days.

Having the ability to unfollow people by length of time and/or by newest/oldest is a huge improvement over Hummingbird. This feature alone would be enough to justify the switch from Hummingbird to Bird Feeder. Like most programs on Twitter, it remembers who you have followed and unfollowed as to not follow them again. But be very careful when switching from Hummingbird or another program to Bird Feeder. You might get your account suspended by re-following many of the same people again. Oops.

Account Tab

This is pretty straight forward. You can view your account stats and update your tweets.

Conclusion

I would recommend buying Twitter Bird Feeder over Hummingbird in a heartbeat. It is a little cheaper and has many more features. Plus, if you use less than 5 Twitter accounts you’ll save a ton of money. Twitter Bird Feeder also has an affiliate program that offers up to 25% of sales. Although this is not as good as Hummingbird, you can feel better about the program you are offering to others. I will be switching my endorsement to Bird Feeder over Hummingbird. I’ll continue to promote both and rank for those terms, hopefully persuading people to pick Bird Feeder.

I hope you saved some money and time by reading my reviews of these programs and making a more informed decision on what you want to use to help automate Twitter. Tell me your thoughts about Bird Feeder if you have used it before.

Quick Vid. Expanding on my brand as therealjosh both on twitter and now facebook. I look forward to all of the branding opportunities these platforms now afford anyone to willing to spend the time to use them. I hope you seize the chance to expand into new territories and capture what’s yours. Carpe diem.

Quick vid. I hope you all enjoyed your treasure hunt for Facebook vanity urls. I know I did. I was able to get a couple sweet urls including www.facebook.com/therealjosh to keep in branding with my twitter account www.twitter.com/therealjosh I look forward to continuing my brand in speaking events and online. I think from now on I will be focusing much more on being therealjosh everywhere I am. Cheers.

This is more or less just a few random thoughts I had on the future of vlogging or video blogging. Soon, technology will be to the point were you can watch these sorts of videos on cell phone and other mobile devices. As soon as people can take, upload and watch video all from their cell phones we’ll see a huge explosion of vlogging. Might as well get used to it and start preparing for it, vlogging is here to stay. Not to mention it is much harder to steal other people’s content when your face is the one distributing it. Cheers.