There’s a federal election brewing in Canada, with Canadians set to go to the polls on May 2nd. And, as with nearly every election in the past few years, social media is playing its part: politicians and political parties are jumping on Twitter to interact with voters, and all parties are claiming to be running a “social media” campaign.
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Adam Bain spoke at the Ad Age Digital Conference this week about his experiences in the past 6 months on the job as Twitter’s president of revenue. He touted some impressive stats about Twitter’s advertising potential – it’s high engagement rate, repeat business, and a look at what consumers are doing on Twitter versus Facebook.
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Twitter apparently doesn’t make the cut when it comes to brand loyalty. A new study from Brand Keys paints a picture of social media being dominated by, of course, Facebook, but also MySpace and Flickr. And Twitter is left on the sidelines. We take a close look at their measurements, and exactly why Twitter ranked so low, below.

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You’re doing everything right: you’ve got a killer bio, a ton of followers, you tweet insightful comments and you’re engaging with fellow tweeps. But when it comes down to it, are you really seeing the benefits of these followers? Even with thousands – or millions – of followers, it can be hard to pinpoint just how useful it is to keep cultivating them.

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Once in a while, celebrity news reminds us just how gossip-y Twitter can be. This week, Hugh Hefner got engaged to one of his Playmates, Crystal Harris, and the news came out on Twitter. Of course, gossip web sites have been spreading news like this for ages, but when tweets are involved, there’s a kind of universality that can make things messy.

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Twitter is one of the fastest growing social networks out there, and businesses have begun to embrace it in droves. In the last year alone, for instance, Fortune 500 companies have doubled their presence on Twitter.

It’s easy to set up a Twitter account for your business, and it could be one of the smartest moves you make this year. It only takes a few simple steps before you can start engaging customers, building a brand presence, and networking.
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Robert Gibbs is using Twitter to connect to regular Americans in a rather innovative way, soliciting short questions on the micro-blogging site and then answering them via video a few hours later. This type of engagement is exactly what politicians should be using Twitter for – a two-way exchange of ideas between the electorate and the individual.
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The new Twitter offers a variety of ways that you can engage your followers that the old Twitter did not. While the design changes might not have seemed like much to talk about in the beginning, it’s clear now that they were implemented to give you more control over your profile, and they offer unique ways that you can increase engagement on your Twitter profile.

Engagement is key to really building a relationship with your followers. You want them to get to know you, interact with you, and share what you share. But you want this to stem from an honest representation of yourself or your business too – otherwise, you’ll alienate your followers quickly.

Let’s take a look at the ways that the new Twitter allows you to engage your followers, and how to best use these features to represent yourself in an honest manner.

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