I’m thiiiisss close to 3,000 followers on Twitter so, to make crossing that barrier that much more fun, I’m going to have a little contest.

If you are willing to recommend me to your Twitter followers, I’m going to reward you by buying you a Twitter FAIL Whale t-Shirt from Yiying
Lu’s (@yiyinglu on twitter) official store. You’re supporting me, I’m supporting the designer of something we all love, you get a cool free shirt. Everyone wins!

Well, not everyone. Obviously, I can’t buy a shirt for every single person who enters, I will go totally broke. So I’m going to pick one lucky person to buy the shirt for now and, depending on how well this goes, I may decide to pick additional winners after the fact. So entering now still puts you in the running for future contests. Your chances of winning are very good!

I’m going to try to make this as easy as possible but please feel free to ask any questions below.

Hillary’s Twitter Contest Official Details

Prize:
Unisex White Twitter Fail Whale T-shirt (pictured above)
Sizes Available:
Adult S, M, L or XL
(Winner can let me know the size they want when I notify them that they won.)

How to Enter:

Before September 1st, tweet the following message exactly (though you can add text after it, if you wish*).

You should follow @HillaryDePiano

*= I will be searching for that exact phrase when picking a winner (this means no “u” for “you” or other changes) but I would greatly appreciate if you were to customize the message by adding text after the required message. For instance:

You should follow @HillaryDePiano for e-commerce news

You should follow @HillaryDePiano because she’s nice

You should follow @HillaryDePiano so I can win a T-shirt

You should follow @HillaryDePiano because it’s #followfriday

You get the idea. As long as the beginning is intact, you can customize the message however you want. If there is a specific reason you’d recommend me to your followers, I’d appreciate your adding it on at the end to make it more personalized. But if you don’t want to customize, you don’t have to, the first bit is all that is really required.

The winner will be picked randomly by Tweetaways on September 1st, 2010 so there is no human element. I’m going to read every one but a computer will do the final selection. Since I’m not actually picking the winner, this means the contest is open to EVERYONE, family and friends included, so go nuts, guys.

Some tips and FAQs:

1. Can I enter from more than one account? If you have more than one Twitter account, enter from each one. The more accounts you enter from, the better your chances of winning.
2. Do retweets count? Traditional retweets definitely do. If someone else enters and you like what they say, just go ahead and retweet their message and that enters you as well.
3. Can I enter if my tweets are set to private? Sadly, no. Tweetaways can only pick a winner from public tweets.
4. I’m not a member of Twitter. I feel left out! *sob* I’m going to have contests for just blog readers and Facebook fans as well in the future, I promise.

In addition to the whole prize element, if anyone is willing to recommend me on Twitter on any given day, I am very, very appreciative.

Any questions?

I’ve been looking for an easy way to do this for ages so I’m really excited to have found an option that actually works how I need it to.

There are plenty of applications that let you automatically update your Facebook profile status with your Twitter updates but updating the status of your Facebook page was a bigger challenge… until now. The biggest problem was the most apps out there that had the capacity to update your page status would also update your profile status at the same time which I did not want. I wanted it to update my Page status and ONLY my page status.

On top of that, I’m the admin for 6 different Facebook Pages and 8 different Twitter accounts. I needed a way to have the correct Twitter accounts update the right Facebook Pages all while leaving my profile the heck alone. A tall order, right?

Check out the slick Facebook app called, appropriately Smart Twitter for Pages. It lets you easily import multiple Twitter accounts to multiple different Facebook pages. Set-up is simple and just works perfectly which is really all I ask.

Take a look at how it works on my Facebook Page below. Look at the gray text beneath each update. The ones that say, “via Smart Twitter for Pages” are coming directly from my Twitter account.

Advantages of Smart Twitter for Pages:

• It works!
• Free and easy!
• It works independent of your Facebook profile.
  
• Lets you match multiple Twitter accounts with multiple Facebook pages.
  
• Only imports relevant statuses. Meaning, it filters out all the messages that don’t really translate on Facebook. Which means retweets, any post with a hashtag or any post that mentions an @name automatically doesn’t post. I really like this feature. It takes out all the clutter that doesn’t make sense to Facebook only users and only posts the normal statuses. No Follow Friday or Facebook chats clogging up your Facebook page.

Limitations:

• Only allows one Twitter account per Facebook page. (I don’t personally have a need for this but, if you do, this cannot do it so I wanted to mention.)
• Only imports relevant statuses. Didn’t I just list this as a plus? Well, to me, it is a plus but I noticed a lot of people complaining about it as a minus. If you want it to import retweets and hashtagged posts, you are out of luck with this plugin. In the future, it would be great if the ability to filter was opt-in but, of now, the app filters whether you like it or not.

Back in March, I got a private BETA preview of YHIW or YouHaveIWant.com. You can read my initial assessment here.

According to the email they sent out, “From our initial concept, the product has really changed. You”ll be seeing even more development take shape over the coming weeks. Our goal is to help people find what they want through a mobile, social, and hyper-local experience.”

Here is the official press release.

Introducing YouHaveIWant, The Real-Time Matching, Short Message Marketplace

New York, NY (May 27, 2010) – YouHaveIWant (www.YouHaveIWant.com), the real-time, intelligent matching marketplace, officially announces its beta to the public on May 27th, 2010.

Designed to connect people instantly to help them efficiently get what they want, YouHaveIWant is changing the traditional way people use classifieds. According to Co-founder and CEO Naresh Shetty, “YouHaveIWant’s goal is to simplify the process and we have made it much easier to post what you want or have and find a match in real-time. While the typical classifieds experience is seller driven and involves a lot of cumbersome searching and posting, YouHaveIWant allows users to simply say what they want or have in a single sentence. We then alert them as soon as we find their match, and allow them to communicate over IM or email, while maintaining their privacy.”

Simplicity is a major focus of the YouHaveIWant platform. Users have a dashboard where they submit their ‘haves’ and ‘wants’ in 140 characters or less, and manage their postings and matches. They can also email in posts from their smartphones while they are on the go, so they never even need to log on to the web-based app. Other key attributes that set it apart from online listing services are location awareness, real-time intelligent matching, and persistent search. YHIW also maintains the privacy of its users, masking the identity of both sides of any given match. People only reveal their contact information when they choose to.

“While there are hundreds of classifieds sites out there, none really permit users to connect to find matches, instantly, within a few block radius as easily as we do,” explains Co-founder Vik Panda. “An example of this is the great activity we’ve recently seen outside of concert venues, where music fans desperate for tickets post messages from their mobiles and get matched with people who are selling their extras.”

Soon, the company plans to launch features for SMS and Voice communication, giving more options for people to connect via their mobiles. Mobile apps for the iPhone and Android platforms are also currently under development.

YouHaveIWant has been open in limited beta in New York since April. To coincide with the official beta launch, YHIW has just opened up the platform to support multiple locations and sharing via Facebook. “Ultimately, we are providing a service that creates a simple, real-time, mobile, social and hyper-local way to get what you want,” says Shetty.

Launched in late 2009, the YouHaveIWant is a 5 person team based out of the NYU/Poly Incubator in Soho, New York.

www.YouHaveIWant.com

Contact:
Vik Panda
Co-Founder
vik@youhaveiwant.com
160 Varick St., 12th Floor
New York, NY 10013
(917) 687-5920

I wanted to take an opportunity to do some quickies and address a few issues out there that I don’t feel warrant a full blog post each. Since all of this news is about Twitter, it seemed appropriate to keep it short.

Let’s Talk About:
Twitter Kicks Justin Bieber Off Its Trending Topics
What’s the deal? Twitter changed their algorithm for trending topics, meaning that things that get a lot of tweets every day (like Justin Bieber) won’t show unless they are experiencing an unusual spike.
My take? While it meant that Bustin Jieber, Jick Nonas and the like were tending topics for a few days, it really makes it more possible for the common user to have one of their topics trend. From a marketing standpoint, I love this. Get people really excited about your brand name or hashtag, even for a day, and your growth could be exponential if it hits the trending topics. I like knowing that it is possible, even if its only possible in theory.

Let’s Talk About:
Has @Twitter Declared War on Traditional Retweets? #TR
What’s the deal? Twitter blocks retweets from search. The same changes that kept Bieber fever in check also changed the way Twitter search works, excluding anything with “rt” and then an “@” symbol out of search. Considering the fact that Twitter’s own retweet has mixed popularity, people were upset. But then Twitter undid it anyway so it was much to do over nothing.
My take? Since they undid it, it’s kind of a moot point but, as someone who watches a few Twitter keywords and hastags via RSS, this would actually be a very good thing, in my humble opinion. When you are trying to watch a hashtag or keyword or even a chat, retweets really clog up the works and make the results near useless. So if they brought it back, I’d actually appreciate it.

Let’s Talk About:
Links and Twitter: Length Shouldn’t Matter
What’s the deal? People keep reporting this as “Links no longer count towards your 140 characters on Twitter” but that isn’t true, at least from what that post says. All this means is that Twitter is finally developing their own, in house, URL shortener.
My take? About time! Seriously, the fact that you had to go off site to get a URL shortener for all this time is dumb. Only thing I don’t like? They say their plan is to shorten every link on Twitter but I hope they still let us opt out. Saying, “You can visit my blog at http://thewhineseller.com” is a lot more useful than “You can visit my blog at http://bit.ly/aLnU2Q“. Even if they go the same place, sometimes you just want to put the actual URL in someone’s mind.

Let’s Talk About:
The Top Tweets (@toptweets) Twitter account.
What’s the deal? Twitter created an account that highlights the best tweets of the day.
My take? I love this. You can just follow this one account and it lets you catch whatever is trending, popular or hot that day without actually having to follow anyone they highlight. You can retweet or choose to follow the individual users as needed. They also highlight these top tweets in search, making it more likely you’ll get a useful result.

You can follow me on Twitter here.

I am long overdue on a post about DISQUS, the comment system that I use on all of my blogs and absolutely LOVE. I owe you a more thorough review and overview on that service soon.

But I’ve been experiencing some strange spam through their comment system I wanted to point out today. Here is a screenshot that I took earlier from my Twitter account.

All four of those posts came through Disqus and all four are from the same post from this blog (this one). At first glance, those look like intelligent comments on the article, right? Except that they are just copy and paste excerpts from my post. The link in the post takes you back to The Whine Seller, no funny business there.

Now I was able to delete the comments from the post using Disqus’ comment moderation system. But these four tweets are still public for the world of Twitter to see.

This spam strikes me as odd. After all, aren’t I weirdly getting more benefit from this spam than the spammer? Curiosity may cause you (or me for that matter) to click on the account that tweeted the link but the retweeted username AND the link given are mine. So they are basically spamming my link for me. That’s… weird.

Now I usually follow anyone who retweets me so that may be their game but even so, it seems like a lot of work to just get me to follow a spam account. What do the spammers gain from this?

Anyway, I wanted to share this with you because it was, frankly, odd. Have you been experiencing anything like this? What do you think the spammers are gaining from this strategy?

That sentence above was the top search term bringing people to this website a few days ago. Now, apparently it was taking them to this article about Twitter limits, which is fine, but it worries me that people are searching for this exact phrase. So I want to have a little talk with this searcher, if you don’t mind.

Dear anonymous hoards of searchers looking for the phrase “How to force a person to follow you on Twitter”:

I couldn’t help but notice that you were looking for this. There are quite a few of you looking for this, apparently, based on the number of times these words got you here. But since you are here, let me explain something to you.

You don’t want what you think you want.

No matter the reasons why you may think you want to be able to force people to follow you on Twitter, you don’t really want that. No, I’m serious, you don’t.

Because let’s think about it. How could you “force” someone to follow you on Twitter? The very phrase implies you are making them do it against their will. So are you trying to trick them? Fool them? Scam them somehow into following you?

And then what? As soon as they realize they are following someone that they didn’t want to follow, they are going to get annoyed. They are going to, at the least, unfollow you, at the most, block you and report you to Twitter. Why would you possibly want that?

Is it a celebrity? Ex-girlfriend? Someone you are a little obsessed with and you want to follow back for your own reasons?

Instead of working on figuring out how to force them into a follow that will lead nowhere, why not work on how you use Twitter. After all, if you are charming/funny/useful on Twitter, chances are good that most people will want to follow you anyway of their own free will instead of being forced into it. You’re going to get higher quality followers that way who will actually stay around and be engaged and interested in what you have to say.

And if all you are trying to do is build your follow count, you’re missing the whole point of Twitter. Meaningless hordes of followers are nothing compared to a small but useful, targeted number of followers. Follow people that you are interested in and, if they like you, they will follow you back. Those are the followers that matter.

To anyone reading this, what would you say to someone who typed in this search? If you are someone who searched for this sentence, maybe you can explain to us what you are trying to find so we can steer you in the right direction.

In the meantime, you have to follow me on Twitter. I’m FORCING you to.

I recently got an email from a staff memeber of YHIW or YouHaveIWant.com, a new classified service. I get a lot of similar emails and sometimes I just plain don’t have time to look at the site and sometimes I think the site is dumb so it becomes a case of “If you can’t say anything nice…” but I do check them all out and I thought that YHIW warranted a closer look.

It is a classified site, determined by location where every post is no longer than 140 characters long. They try to keep it anonymous by giving you as many options to let buyers contact you as possible including Twitter and Facebook.

You can post “Haves” which are items you are looking to sell or give away or “Wants” which are items that you are looking to buy. The system will let you know when they find matches for either post and then buyers can contact you via Facebook, Twitter, SMS or email.

In their own words:

Tell us what you ‘Want’ or ‘Have’ in a sentence. The YHIW matching system will continuously analyze other messages as they come in and present you with the ones that match your requirement.

If you are online, you will be able to chat directly & anonymously with the other matching user through the YHIW Chat system (or telephone). else we can relay their message to you via Email/SMS/Facebook/Twitter/RSS.

You dont have to search every day, we will search for you. You connect directly and instantly with the other person, and your Identity is revealed to the other party only when you decide.

No Spam. No Scams. Connect, Communicate and Decide, How you want to take it forward

I logged in to the Beta version of the site. Now I understand how the site is supposed to work and also that they are in Beta so I want to give them the benefit of the doubt that everything is not yet up in working condition. Right now, there isn’t a whole lot of point to the site other than really short classifieds but I can see some potential.

For instance, if I listed a Have and the site could automatically tweet out that item on my Facebook and Twitter accounts (which I would have linked in this scenario, something you can’t do with the site now), they they provide a fee free platform where a user could see my tweet and Facebook post, click through to the YHIW post and then contact me anonymously through the method of their choice.

But even as I say that, I can’t see how this site offers me anything more than simply posting my “Have” on Twitter and Facebook directly would give me. I like the idea of posting wants, especially as a collector, I have a long list of wants I’d love to post somewhere but I’m still not sure what edge this free site gives me over just posting it myself somewhere random.

And how anonymous is their contact if they are contacting me through Facebook or Twitter? Aren’t they seeing my username in either case?

In summation, I do think that the idea is very cool. People have long been trying to come up with a reliable way to buy and sell over sites like Twitter and Facebook and this is definitely a step in the right direction. But as the site is right now in Beta, it seems kinda, well, pointless. But I’m hoping that will change as the site moves out of Beta.

I am going to ask the staff member who contacted me to give us a little more info on how they plan for the site to work in the future in the comments but, in the meantime, the site is free to try so please feel free to play around with it. Maybe I am just missing the potential so please feel free to enlighten me below.

Of all the new platforms and marketplaces out there, the one that caught my fancy the most recently was eCrater. The biggest selling point is that they are 100% free with no fees. Think of them as a craigslist style posting board that looks and feels more like an e-commerce site like eBay.

Unlike a lot of new marketplaces, they actually had a lot of people buying and selling the exact kinds of items I usually sell (collectibles) so that was a big selling point for me as a buyer and seller both. Then I got really ticked at the platform because of a security flaw so I deleted my account entirely before I really got to give it an honest try. (In the interest of clarity, this was about a year ago so they have likely fixed this security flaw by now, I haven’t checked. It also may be something that normal people would have considered a minor thing and I may be a diva. No one can say for sure. )

But I still thought the marketplace had a lot of potential and I wanted to find out more about whether it was worth starting up a presence on eCrater. So I have enlisted Stacy Anderson (on Twitter as @itsmestacy) who has found success selling online on both eBay and eCrater to give us a review from the perspective of someone who has used eCrater extensively. Selling clothing out of Fort Worth, Texas, Stacy has been selling on eBay since July 2000 and on her own eCrater websites TheCheapSkirt.com and TheUglySweaterShop.com for a few months now.

I’d really like to thank you for joining us on the blog today to share your experiences. First thing, can you tell you a little about yourself and how you got started selling online.

I started selling just things I had but no longer needed around my house 10 years ago. I was amazed because back then you could put a pair of used Levis on eBay and get $20 for them, without even having a picture. This was about $19.50 more than you’d get for them at a garage sale. Back then, auctions were the only way to buy on eBay and it was exciting starting something out at a penny and seeing the price go up. (That doesn’t happen very often on eBay in the clothing categories anymore, I’d say not for the past 5 years or so.)

I was living in Wisconsin at the time and had access to a lot of Green Bay Packers related items, and breweriana (everyone had beer signs in their basements up there), so I did sell a little of both in addition to clothing, but after I moved to Texas 3 years ago I began to focus primarily on clothing, shoes and accessories.

Was the move to eCrater motivated out of anything specific that happened on eBay or were you just trying out other things?

EBay’s price changes were a bit like the story of the frog and the boiling pot of water for me. A little increase here, a little increase there, I thought I could take them in stride.

But as the fees went up for me, search visibility went down as did sales. I found myself doing more and more advertising and legwork to bring in customers. Auctions would end with only one bidder, if that. Store items were difficult for buyers to find in search. Once Google stopped accepting individual feeds to Google Base (which was my main source of eBay store traffic), my sales were nearly at a standstill.

I decided that if I were going to to do the legwork to bring buyers to my items, it wasn’t worth it for me to pay eBay. I’d looked at their “job” as my advertising, and when it came to store items, they weren’t doing their job.

So I moved my store items to TheCheapSkirt.com at eCrater. And on that particular store, I can safely say that I haven’t sold any more or less there than I had been selling out of my store at eBay. So I wouldn’t call it a success, other than the fact I’ve saved on fees for those items that have sold.

However…

Sort of on a lark, around Halloween I opened TheUglySweaterShop.com, another eCrater store, primarily as a resource for people who needed something truly awful for an Ugly Sweater Party.

I’d blogged an “ugly sweater of the week” for a while and got a bit of a response, so when I’d see one when I was out on an inventory run, I’d pick it up. Pretty soon I had quite a “collection”, and I started listing them.

I realized that with a relatively new web presence, I wouldn’t rank high in Google searches, so I turned to social media instead. I started Tweeting about these ugly sweaters. I started a Facebook Fan page. I listened to my customers: they would lament that the sweaters on eBay were always too expensive, and I listed mine for less. I posted links to Ugly Sweater Party charity events. I retweeted pictures people had posted on Twitter of themselves modeling their own ugly sweaters. I became involved in the “ugly sweater community”, as it were.

Within 2 weeks my page views had skyrocketed. In the 6-week peak “ugly sweater” selling season, I had over 30,000 page views and had sold more than 75% of what I had listed, with emails and tweets asking for more. I couldn’t keep up! I was so unprepared for the success! And 75% of those page views came via Google (eCrater uploads a listing feed to Google Base 2x a week automatically for all of their stores–they became a Product Search Marketplace Partner with Google in November of 2009).

In comparison, I had one tacky Christmas sweater listed on eBay as a fixed price listing for a month. Only 40 page views. In an entire month. AND I was a Top Rated Seller at the time.

I moved it to TheUglySweaterShop.com and it sold within 24 hours and I had emails asking about it from others who also wanted it and missed out.

I know I brought you in to talk about eCrator but you just gave us some fantastic examples of using social networking to build a business that really should be highlighted. I want to go back to your great ideas there in another post for sure but for now, let’s move on to … What sets eCrater apart from the other selling platforms out there?

Well, it is free. Free is good. And it is simple–there is no HTML in the listings (some may see that as a drawback, but I’ve seen so many poorly-formatted eBay listings that I find a text description to be very easy on the eyes).

They are a Google Product Search Marketplace Provider which, as I stated before, had a great bearing on the amount of traffic my eCrater stores have been getting. They have a fully integrated Google Checkout, so there is no fiddling with buttons/waiting for Google to approve your site, etc.

They are responsive to user requests. In the past I’ve asked them to add categories in their store structure, and they were added within days. They were very responsive. I’ve also requested an erroneous feedback be removed from my account, and they were quick to address that as well. Worlds apart from eBay in that regard!

I think eCrater is a great place to get a feel for how it would feel to sell somewhere other than eBay if you’ve only sold there. I learned all about Google Checkout via eCrater, including coupon codes, promotions, etc.

Some people I think confuse eCrater with eBay in that they think they can list things there and just “sit” on them, and the traffic will come in. It doesn’t work that way. Yes, people can shop all eCrater stores from the main eCrater.com page (think of that as an online mall of sorts), but the majority of traffic comes from people finding you from somewhere else. I’d say less than 1% of my traffic comes directly from eCrater, and those most likely are from postings on their message boards.

What do you feel like eCrater could improve on?

I’ve asked them to look into issues I’ve run across: I can’t seem to get some of the calculated international shipping options to work properly, their USPS Express Mail service states it is 1 day shipping time, which can be misleading to customers who are in areas where it takes 2 days for Express Mail (I asked them to switch it to 1-2 days after I refunded a disappointed customer who lived in a 2-day area who needed an item for a party and it arrived a day late).

Also if two people buy the exact same thing within minutes of each other, it can show as “double ordered”–had that happen a few times during the peak of “ugly sweater season” because traffic in my store was *that* brisk!

Although I’d like to see some more “customizability” (is that a word?)[Ed note: It is now! ] in my store (layouts, the look of the landing page, etc), I realize it is a free site and the more bells and whistles they add, the more support they need and that costs money. I’m glad to see they put the focus on supporting the functionality of the site, rather than on making it prettier. If your core functions don’t work (like we’ve seen with eBay’s search), then it doesn’t matter how pretty something is if nobody will see it.

Where else have you sold? How do those other marketplaces compare to eCrater or even eBay?

I was a very early member of Bonanzle, but stopped selling there once they implemented a fee structure. Initially I was drawn to them the same reason I was drawn to ecrater: the KISS (keep it simple, stupid) approach they had to the site with no HTML in listings, ease of use, etc. Then with the fees they also started to move away from that, and since I hadn’t gotten any traffic in a few months, I didn’t feel it was right for me.

I have and still sell books on Amazon.com, but from my own personal stash. I love to read!

I used to sell on Half.com but since they merged their feedback in with eBay’s, I became concerned, as people are more likely to leave neutrals there and just one or two bad ratings can put my selling status on eBay at risk now that I’ve gone from a Powerseller to a small volume seller.

I used Auctiva to list on eBay and prior to eCrater, had considered getting one of their off-eBay store packages, but then they had that nasty situation with a virus that I didn’t feel was handled well, along with the way they implemented their fee increase (fee schedules changing almost daily, pressure to “lock in” a rate before it changed–total hard sell) and I no longer felt comfortable entrusting my business to them.

Putting your loyalties as a seller aside, which is your favorite online store to shop at and why?

Amazon.com, hands down. Mostly because I’ve talked my family members into making wish lists, so Christmas shopping is a breeze! They all live across the country so I just click, pay and have it shipped out!

With a depressed economy and all the changes in retail happening all the time, where do you see your business in 5 years? How are you adapting?

I don’t see myself as an online clothing magnate in 5 years, or anything so grand. I just feel fortunate to be able to do this as my primary source of income for the past two years. Despite our current economic crunch, I truly believe that by working for myself, the only thing that could be holding me back from more success is myself. That is why I’ve continually reassessed my business model and make changes, rather than pine for “the lost days of eBay”, a rut I see some of my fellow sellers get stuck in.

I’ve been recently starting on yet ANOTHER business model, this one ironically going back to using eBay as it will be auction-based, rather than fixed price. I don’t see it supplanting my other two stores, rather it will supplement them. I’m finding diversification makes me feel safest–not keeping all my eggs in one basket, so to speak.

Before next fall, I may move TheUglySweaterShop.com to its own space with its own shopping cart, as I feel it may have outgrown eCrater. I’d like to be able to better integrate my Ugly Sweater blog at uglysweaters.wordpress.com with the sales portion of the site, as well as make it more visually appealing and fun to shop. Another former eBay clothing seller, ShopNastyGal.com, is a great inspiration for me, she seems to have transitioned VERY successfully from eBay to a stand-alone site and has a great social media following. I think social media is a very inexpensive way to market and to keep in touch with what people really want.

I honestly see Google as the key to getting buyers in the future, as long as eBay is more and more cumbersome to weed through. I think it will matter less where your items are, and more than they are found by buyers. I actually searched for something on eBay today, and got a message that “Your search could not be performed at this time. Please try again later.” I tried it again later, and got the same message. I found what I was looking for on Google instead.

—

I really want to thank Stacy for taking the time to answer my questions. I wanted to be able to give the platform a thorough review and evaluation and am very glad she was able to stop in and give us the in-depth perspective of someone doing some selling “in the trenches” as it were.

But what about you? Have you sold on eCrater? What were your experiences with the marketplace? Has Stacy convinced you to give it another try?

There is a big push for big companies to offer more customer support options like Twitter, Facebook and chat. But what about us small businesses? Is email still good enough for us or should we be reaching out to our customers in more ways?

For many years, we used the little HTML section on the header of our eBay store to put the java chats for AOL IM (AIM, to the hip kids), Skype and Yahoo chat. The icons would change based on whether a chat operator was active, idle or offline but you could send a questions along instantly at any time and we usually answered in less than an hour, usually in seconds. Someone from Priced Nostalgia was online just about every hour of the day on Trillian which let them be logged into all of those services at once ready to answer questions the second anyone asked them. (On a side note, if anyone would like to know how to do this with their eBay store, let me know and I will write a tutorial post).

Bonanzle has a chat feature built into the basic store that serves a similar purpose since you can set this to forward to the IM client of your choice.

We recently took that section down from our eBay store. The reasons were mostly because we were short staffed and 99% of the questions we got over there were general eBay support questions from people who found it easier to find our support than eBay’s. Also, as Facebook, Twitter and Gmail chat overtook traditional IM clients, we were going to have to start including chat support for every single client which was a daunting process. But as a customer, I love being able to connect with a company instantly and I prefer chatting with a CS operator to even phone because it allows me to do other things while I’m waiting and is usually far faster. In fact, the main reason our company offered this service for so many years was that I know that, as a customer, I would have appreciated it.

Which brings us to today’s topic. Let’s talk about moving beyond email in connecting with our customers.

Priced Nostalgia has a Facebook page, a Twitter account, a phone number and we still get the overwhelming bulk of our questions via email. This was true even when we maintained an account on every major chat client nearly 24/7.

But is this indicative of the fact that people would prefer to use email or simply the way we present our support options. Is it enough to simply make these other support options available or is there something more we need to do?

I have always seen these Web 2.0 methods of communication as a way to acquire new customers while thinking of connecting with existing customers as secondary. Perhaps its time for smaller sellers like us to broaden that perspective. But where to begin?

What percentage of your customer support queries do you get via email versus less traditional means?

What have you done that worked for you and what hasn’t?

Someone you follow on Twitter sends out a tweet that says only, “This annoys me” and then a link. You like this person so and are bored at the moment so you click the link. It turns out to be a really helpful, informative blog post. Let’s say it’s about PayPal charge backs and how they affect eBay sales for the simple reason that this will be easier to talk about if we have an example. But there was nothing in the tweet that preceded the link that would have given you any idea it was such a helpful article.

Very few people are going to click on your friend’s link. The message he or she tweeted was so generic, the clicker would have no idea if the link is going to be a link to a YouTube video of a song the tweeter hates or a horrible picture of dog abuse or something. Whereas quite a few people might have been interested if they had realized the article was about eBay and PayPal charge backs.

Firstly, if you are the person tweeting things with generic introductions, you need to rethink that practice. You are cheating yourself out of clicks in a few big ways. Not only are even your existing followers unlikely to click a generic message that gives no indication if the link is worth clicking, by not using any of the keywords from your post, you cut yourself off from new followers which may find you from the keywords alone.

Secondly, if you are the re-tweeter, you want to provide value for your followers. Your followers wouldn’t be served by that generic headline anymore than the original poster’s followers were.

So whether it is a post of your own or a link you are retweeting, don’t feel like you have to keep the original article title when you send the link out on Twitter. Rewriting a tweet can help you not only provide more value for your Twitter followers but also bring you new followers with the keywords you use.

So if I want to retweet this:

JaneDoe: This annoys me [LINK]

If I just hit the retweet button and change nothing, I get this:

RT @JaneDoe This annoys me [LINK] 

This still doesn’t do anyone any good. OK, yes, my followers know that I thought it was worth retweeting which gives it a little more street cred but it’s still something the majority of people are unlikely to click.

Instead of a straight retweet, why not do something like this?

Are PayPal chargebacks are ruining eBay? [LINK] (via @JaneDoe)

I took the idea of her article, the keywords, and rewrote her headline for her. If you follow me on Twitter, you may have noticed I even do this with my own headlines. You may get “Rewrite that retweet! Fixing generic tweets with keywords & a better headline to provide more follower value” from me in the morning and then “I’m not going to click your Twitter link unless you tell me what it’s about first!” later in the day. Both will be links to the exact same article. But by taking a different angle each time, I’m going to get a different set of eyes on the second tweet than I did on the first. I reuse a lot of rejected headlines as rewteets because it works.

Just be sure to still give credit to the original tweeter after you fix up their tweet (unless its yourself, obviously). Not only is it fair to give credit where credit is due, it helps the original poster to learn which improves the Twitterverse overall. Many a time a friend with just as many followers tweets a link and doesn’t get a nibble but after I rewrite and retweet, it gets passed around to several people.

Either way, your helping to contribute to the usefulness of Twitter as a whole.

While we are on this topic, you may want to review this popular article from the archives: How to be a better Twitter user: Tweet to be Retweeted

Want to experiment with this? Find an old blog post that didn’t get many comments when you first wrote it that is still timely. Rewrite the headline and retweet it out on Twitter. See if you can find a more effective way to get people to notice what you wrote by only changing the title.

If you are really stuck, post your link below and between the usual Whine Seller readers and myself, we’ll see if we can help you out.

Twitter rolled out a cool new service today that allows you to organize the people you follow into lists. However, they rolled it out for only a select number of users with this prominent message:

New! Lists. A great way to organize the people you follow and discover new and interesting accounts. (BETA)

Lists are timelines you build yourself, consisting of friends, family, co-workers, sports teams, you name it. You’re part of a small group receiving this feature, so don’t tweet about it yet!

What’s a bit funny about their asking people not to tweet about it is that, instantly, everyone started tweeting about it so much that it became a trending topic.

We are not good at following directions, clearly.

You can see what people are saying about Twitter Lists here. But what do you think?

What you may not realize while you chat with me on Twitter is that I am actually managing several accounts at once. My main one and then several others that correspond to other websites I write for. There are a lot of different services out there that let you manage multiple Twitter accounts at once but none of them are perfect.

I love Tweetdeck but it’s a system hog so I cannot run it all the time. I used to use TwitterFox until it started making Firefox crash. Third party Twitter services are OK but they require an additional login. I wanted to be able to tweet from any of these many accounts instantly without fuss and multiple logins. Thank you, Facebook.

A few weeks ago, I blogged about the new Facebook pages feature that lets you automatically post anything you post to your Facebook page to Twitter.

I am pretty much never logged out of Facebook. My family and friends are spread out all over the place and it is the main way I keep in touch with all of them. I never have to log into Facebook because I am on and off the site many MANY times a day.

Now, anytime I want to post something to any of my multiple Twitter accounts, I simply pop over to Facebook, go to the corresponding page that feeds the Twitter account in question and post it there. Not only does this automatically send the tweet out on Twitter without my having to do anything else, it makes my Facebook pages more active and higher ranked.

Example: I just had to share this picture of Hugh Jackman carrying around a handful of My Little Pony toys while pumpkin picking with his kids to the readers of www.MyLittlePonyCollecting.com. Instead of having to open up a program or log into a third party Twitter service, I simply pop over to Facebook where I am already logged in and post the link and my comment to the corresponding My Little Pony Collecting Facebook page which also posts it to the @mlpcollecting Twitter account. The resulting tweet looks like this.

Then I decide to post something to my @HillaryDePiano Twitter account. I don’t have to log in or out of anywhere to do that, I simply pop over to my Hillary DePiano Facebook page, post the message and that posts on both Facebook and Twitter. The only tricky part is remembering not to go over 140 characters, but even if you do, Facebook just links to the rest.

It is a great way to post something quickly after you have logged out of the website or your main client but also, the more active your Facebook page, the higher it ranks so rather than having to remember to keep your Facebook page AND Twitter active, posting to one location feeds the info to both places.

How are you using the Facebook to Twitter tool?

First, take a look at this article from Mashable talking about how many of the newer social networking sites (such as Twitter, Facebook, etc) have a population where women outnumber men. The article asks commentators why they think this is the case.

Then take a look at some of the comments. A few samples:

You are looking for a little marketing juice for your store or book or maybe just a few more Twitter followers. What better way to get some traffic or attention than a contest? People love to win stuff and if your prize is tempting enough, your contest can take on a life of it’s own.

Best of all, the only cost the running the contest is the cost of the prize.

Step 1: Pick a prize.

• The prize should be relevant to what you are trying to market but also tempting enough to bring it entrants outside of your usual readership. If you are just trying to get more followers, the prize should be relevant to what you usually tweet about. If you are trying to market your book, then then prize should be something like a signed copy of your book. If you are trying to market your store, a gift certificate or sought after item from your store might be the best prize.
• Keep in mind that the only cost of this contest is that prize so even if the prize is a big ticket item, the marketing may be well worth it in the end. The better the prize, the greater the reach of your contest and the more marketing benefit.

Step 2: Pick your phrase.

• The easiest way to run a contest on Twitter is to have entrants tweet a specific phrase. Crafting this phrase is harder than it might seem. To start with, this link is what everyone will be tweeting out so it has to have the marketing juice for whatever you are promoting Secondly, it needs to be short enough that people can easily just retweet it to enter the contest. Also, you need to jam a twitter username in there because that is how they find winners so if you also want to include a link, that could be challenging. (PS, you only have to include a twitter name in your phrase if you use TweetAways, more on that in a minute)
• Be sure that the phrase has something before the twitter name in it otherwise the marketing benefit will be negated as only people following both you and the entrants will see the tweets. If there is text before the user name, then everyone following the entrants will see the message giving you more exposure.
• Examples:
  • via @mlpcollecting Do you or your kids collect My Little Pony? Win a copy of the newest guide book. RT to enter: http://tinyurl.com/cakrak (This was from an actual contest Priced Nostalgia did a few months ago)
  • Looking for info about eBay & e-commerce? Follow @hilarydepiano to win a $50 eBay gift card. (RT to enter) <– not a real contest, just an example, so feel free to rip it off if you wish

Step 3: Write up your contest terms.

• When does the contest start and end? Can people enter from multiple accounts? Are employees of your company eligible? Decide for yourself what the terms of this contest are.
• For me, I prefer to encourage people to enter as often as they like from as many different accounts as they like. After all, the more often they tweet your link, the more marketing power it gives you so I figure why cap it?

Step 4: Promote your contest.

• Promote your contest on your blog, on Twitter, in your email marketing, promote it everwhere you can! Send out a press release, do interviews about it, whatever! The marketing benefit of a contest is two fold. Firstly, everyone entering the contest is giving you publicity by tweeting what you ask them to and secondly, the contest itself is an event that you can publicize as a cheap excuse to get people to your site. Also, the contest rules will be posted on your website so that will bring in traffic as well of possible applicants.

Step 5: Pick a winner.

• There are two ways to do this. The first way is to simply use Twitter seach to search for the phrase you selected and then select a random winner from the results.
• The second way is to use TweetAways. The disadvantage to using this free service is that you must include a twitter username in your contest phrase (when you go to pick a winner on their site, you must use the same username you included in your contest phrase). The advantage, however, is that they will select a random winner for you so you don’t have to worry about people crying foul that you picked so and so over them. I like the hands off approach that TweetAways gives but you get a little more flexibility if you just use Twitter Search so it is up to you.

Once the contest is over, you can DM the winner for their address so that you can send them the prize. Be sure to post the username of the winner on your blog when the contest is over so that people know the results.

Any questions? Suggestions from people who have run a contest like this before? Please share below!

Twitter recently revamped their official widgets and while you may have already falling in love with an unofficial badge or widget, I want to give you a few reason to consider going official because these are really slick.

There are two new goodies available for display on your website: Profile Widget and Search Widget

Profile Widget Improvements

Twitter made a few huge improvements to their standard profile widget.

• Infinite customization when it comes to size. The old widgets only had a few sizes but now you can fit your profile widget into any space you wish by inputting the exact sizes you want in pixels.
• Greater color flexibility. While the old widgets had a few pre-made themes, this widget lets you pick your own color the background and text for both the tweet and shell border individually making for even more customization. So now it’s really easy to match your Twitter badge to your site colors. 
• Ability to loop old results. Instead of simply displaying your last tweet, this widget scrolls through all of your recent tweets, using older tweets to flesh out the list if you don’t have many posts. This can be very handy if you either aren’t very active on Twitter or if you are active only sporadically. The badge continually scrolls through everything recent making sure you always look like an appealing follow.

While a fantastic way to advertise your own Twitter feed on your site, you may also consider a profile badge for your favorite celebrity on your fansite or a badge for the official Bonanzle Twitter profile for your Bonanzle blog. Think outside the box for great uses for this slick little widget.

If you are looking at The Whine Seller right now (as opposed to reading it through an RSS reader) you can see an example of this profile widget in my sidebar.

The New Search Widget

There is a lot to love about the new search widget though you may need to think a little about how best to fit it to the needs of your blog or website. At its most basic, the Search Widget looks like the Profile Widget and has the same ability to loop old posts, the same customization options when it comes to size and appearance as the Profile Widget. The difference comes in the results.

Instead of displaying all of the tweets of a particular user, it shows a list of search results, with the added bonus that the results can be tweaked with several advanced parameters. For instance, as a quick example, here is a badge showing the search results for “nanowrimo OR #nanowrimo OR national novel writing month OR nano” for a great little widget of everyone currently talking about National Novel Writing Month.

This widget is very powerful. You can have results show by date, location (down to the miles), only links, and more when you use Twitter’s Search Operators in conjunction with the widget.

Not sure how to use the Search Widget on your website? Let me give you a few ideas. Set up a Search Widget to display. . .

• . . . only people chatting about your book from within 15 miles of your latest booksigning
• . . . a running scroll of people currently talking about your brand name, book, website, or product
• . . . a list of topics of interest to your readers, such as products your typically sell or news items you often blog about 
• . . . a popular hash tag (such as #followfriday or #iceism )
• . . . instead of every tweet you send out, use it to only display your retweets or links

Once you start to play with it, it’s easy to find a ton of powerful uses for this cool new badge.

Have any other great ideas for using these new badges? Have a badge that you prefer over these? Let us know below!