I read an interesting blog post today from Senior writer at Fortune magazine Adam Lashinsky’s Go West Blog. His post, titled “Will Twitter Make It?” gave me a lot of food for thought. Adam is addressing the question many of us are curious about when it comes to Twitter’s business model. Adam is also asking the question why should he and other business people use Twitter.

I myself have had a Twitter account for almost a year now but never used it because I, like Adam couldn’t see why business people would frequent this micro blogging service. I also had to fight the misconception that Twitter was only for those with SMS mobile devices. I fought the urge to Tweet long and hard until my good friend and Social CRM Expert Brent Leary told me how blogs like Mahalo drove major traffic to their website using Twitter.

Driving traffic to my website and blog was something I was definitely interested in doing. I then renewed my Twitter account and have been Tweeting both from my computer using the Twitter application, TweetDeck and with my cell phone using Jott, the voice recognition service. Marketing my business, my blog and myself through Twitter, or “Twarketing” has now been added as a focal point to my current business strategy.

I now have my Tweets show up on my blog using Twitter Tools. I automatically respond to followers and schedule future Tweets with Tweetlater. I even track the links in my Tweets using Tweetburner. Last but not least I do market research on products and services using Summize, which was just purchased recently by Twitter.

I believe that Twarketing will eventually drive those of the more mainstream to become users of Twitter. Early adopters like Maggie Mason who was the 448th person to sign up for Twitter, according to Twitterholic, are already seeing the fruits of their labors. Maggie currently has 6,458 follows and has parlayed those followers into traffic to her MightyGoods blog. Mighty Goods is a shopping blog and one of Time Magazine’s Top 50 Cool Sites of the year.

Democratic Presidential candidate Barack Obama holds the number two position on Twitterholic with 56,183 followers. The Blog Barack20 credits Twitter as one of the many social media networks that helped Mr. Obama win the Democratic nomination for President.

I believe Twitter will make it. I believe Twitter will develop a profitable business model. I also believe I have an idea of how Twitter can use a current advertising model for one of their revenue streams.

I will look to share that in a future post.

Brent Leary, I think you may have created a Twonster..;-)

All the best

JB

There are a lot of great tools to keep you in touch with your social and professional network. Most of us use the computer, Jott gives us the power to do the same thing using voice recognition on your cell phone . Jott allows you to send emails to yourself, send email and text messages to your list of contacts, and send messages to different web services like Twitter, Blogger and Google Calendar. Jott will listen to your voice commands and turn you words into text to then be displayed as though you had typed the message yourself.

Most smart phones like the Apple iPhone and the Sprint Instinct have application that can give you some of the same kind of access. Jott uses voice recognition to let the rest of us who still use non-smart phones the same capability.

All I have to do is call the Jott toll-free number and my voice does the rest. The main reason I use Jott is to help me send reminders to myself when I am on the road and don’t have a pen handy, but it can do so much more.

Here is an example of a Jott I sent to my email address

Sent with my voice via Jott:

We, the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, ensure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare and secure the blessings of liberty to our selves and our posterity do ordain…

Listen to Jeffrey’s Message

As you can see Jott was able to pick up words that are not that easy to pronounce let alone catch by voice recognition software. If your message is a bit long Jott will generate a link to the audio recording of your message that you can retrieve from the Jott website.

I also use Jott to update my Google Calendar and have just started sending post to my Twitter account.
Jott can help you keep up to date with your favorite blog by allowing you to hear the written words instead of reading them.

Jott lets me hear up to date blog post from Tech Crunch, Mashable and Barack20 when I don’t have the time to get to a computer to read it. If your blog feed is not on the Jott Feed list you can add it and give it a name that will be easily identified when speaking it into your cell phone.

The Jott service is currently FREE to all their users. Their is a quick setup on the Jott website that you walk through in order to store your contacts, groups, feeds and web links. Once that is done you are ready to Jott.

Jott gives busy Solopreneurs and Small Business a voice controlled way to communicate with their social media, emails, groups, blogs and up date their calendar. All done with with a non-smart cell phone.

The Jott service is currently FREE to all their users. There is a quick setup on the Jott website that you walk through in order to store your contacts, groups, feeds and web links. Once that is done you are ready to Jott.

Who do YOU want to Jott?

All the best

JB