David Leonhardt’s SEO Marketing Express

My Christmas Tweet for you. 

Interesting observation.  I began posting on Twitter on October 9 (Has it really been that long?), and now my account is ranked at 60 out of 100.  “A grade of 60 means that the user scores higher than 60 percent of the other user profiles that have been graded. ”

This is good news.  It means I am doing some top-notch social networking.  No, wait, this is bad news.  I have lots of other things to do with my life.  It’s a hard call, isn’t it.

Here is my Twitter account: http://twitter.com/amabaie

Here is my grade, which will be updated over time: http://twitter.grader.com/amabaie

In fact, here is the badge they offer, which will (I assume) update over time right on this page.

Here is where you can get your Twitter grade and badge for your website: http://twitter.grader.com/

There is a really cool contest happening over at Bloggeries forum, and not just because you can win an Ipod Nano 8GB.  It seems that Rob is trying to brand his service in the same way the Kleenex has been branded.  No matter what grand of “facial tissue” you have on hand, let’s face it, you call it a Kleenex. 

Rob wants you to do the same thing with “bloggeries”.  Every time you publish a blog post…oops, I mean a “bloggery”, he wants you to use that term.  If enough people start referring to their posts as bloggeries, his Bloggeries.com forum, directory and other services will get a massive branding boost.  People on the Internet do not think enough about branding, so this is a superb contest — probably the freshest idea I have seen in a while, and one I am already thinking how I could apply to some of my own ventures.

By the way, although I am a member of Bloggeries and occasionally stop in on the forum, I am busy and I would have missed this if I was not following Rob on Twitter.  I am sold - Twitter is great.  You can follow me at  http://twitter.com/amabaie .

P.S.: I just ran this bloggery through a Microsoft spell-check and it seems they haven’t caught on yet.  Rob, better get in touch with the folks at Microsoft.

I actually opened my Twitter account several moons ago, but somehow Nancy, our news release distribution expert, convinced me to try using it.  So you can follow us at http://twitter.com/amabaie , where you will find a mix of business and personal news. 

Twitter is a humanizing tool.  It is not a place to make sales pitches.  It is a place to connect with people, sometimes one-on-one, sometimes making announcements for all, always letting people know you are a real person.  If you approach Twitter as networking-for-fun-and-profit, you will find it worthwhile.