Twitter is a microblogging platform of 140 characters that is deceptively simple. People who do not understand how to correctly use Twitter run the risk of getting the reputation of a spammer – something you definitely don’t want.
The three main keys to an effective Twitter strategy are transparency, engaging conversation, and sharing information. If you do all these three, you will be in a great position for people to know, like, and trust you. And people buy from people they trust.
Before you start using Twitter for promoting your business or your book, you need to do several things as a newbie on Twitter.
Transparency – setting up your Twitter profile correctly
To be taken seriously rather than as a spammer on Twitter you have to correctly fill out your profile. Your real name goes in the NAME line in your Profile settings. For example, if your name is Claudia Windward and your username is cwindward – Claudia Windward goes in the name line. This is the transparency – you are on Twitter as a person even if you are representing a company. If this person’s username was AjaxCompany, her name in her profile should still be Claudia Windward. Your Twitter profile name answers the question of who’s behind the veil.
In the profile URL field, put your website. If you do not have a website, put the link to your Facebook or LinkedIn profile.
Include a brief bio (less than 160 characters). Because you have so few characters available, you have to carefully decide how you want to portray yourself. And a little piece of information might be the one thing that causes someone to connect with you. Dog lover? And the good news is that it’s very easy to change your bio whenever you want.
Do include a location. Perhaps because Twitter is global, people like to know where you are. Someone might start a connection with you because of where you are.
And choose a clear headshot for your profile photo. People want to see what you look like – see your face clearly – in order to have a more personal connection. And, yes, some people use little icons for their profile photos. In some cases these icons make sense; in others they don’t. Yet if you really want to effectively use Twitter, choose a clear headshot photo that you use in other social media so that people can quickly recognize you.
Engaging in conversation – whom do you want to “meet” on Twitter
Let’s say you’re interested in promoting a fiction or nonfiction book. What’s the book’s title and subject area? You should use tweetbeep.com (like Google alerts for Twitter) to track conversations related to book marketing and to the topic of your nonfiction book or something about your fiction book.
When you get a TweetBeep Alert, make sure you’re signed in to Twitter. Then click on the names of the people provided by the alert. If the people sound interesting, follow them. If appropriate, engage in conversation with them BUT don’t push your book. You can mention your book but don’t push it.
Sharing information – provide valuable content and learn from other people’s valuable content
Share information (not necessarily your own) in your tweets. If you read a terrific blog post about book marketing, share the link in a tweet. Of course, share info that’s connected to the “spine” of your Twitter story along with info that makes you interesting as a person. For example, if you’re a publisher, share publishing news. And also tweet about a great movie you just saw.
If someone else shares a link to a blog article or website that you find valuable, send a public reply thanking the person who shared the link and include in this thank-you tweet the original link.
Transparency, engaging conversation and sharing information go a long way towards connecting you to other people on Twitter. And Twitter at only 140 characters a tweet can be a very effective marketing strategy.
Phyllis Zimbler Miller
http://www.articlesbase.com/internet-marketing-articles/how-to-effectively-use-twitter-transparency-engaging-conversation-and-sharing-information-708064.html
The world is saturated with twits, tweets, and tweeps. Everyone, from Oprah to NPR has decided that this is the most brilliant application ever devised by man. They constantly cite it, talk about it, and overhype it to the Nth degree.
The one thing they never explain about twitter is how it is intended to be used. They don’t explain the reTweet, or spambot followers. They just tell random people to get online, and drop their thoughts, in 140 characters or less, of course.
It’s not their fault, really, as twitter doesn’t really have a defined purpose. The idea is that it is supposed to enable real-time communication, sort of a text message broadcast to the entire world. The actual purpose of tweets are left up to the users’ imaginations.
It was too much for me to get my mind wrapped around when I started, that is for sure. With this in mind, I’d like to tell you a couple uses that will make twitter a valuable investment of your time.
This article will serve a very practical purpose, both for the novice user of twitter, and for those who have lost interest: It’ll tell you how, what, and why to follow certain users, along with giving you the ability to find and organize that data in a meaningful manner.
With that in mind, let’s begin. There are around 7 major types of twitter users. Your interests will determine which of these folks it would be in your best interest to follow:
1. Newsies: The New York Times, Tribune Media, Huffington Post, Drudge Report, and various other news agencies use twitter as a point of distribution for their articles. Updates commonly carry newly published content, or respond to readers of their content, which will naturally drive new readers to their site.
2. Gurus: These people, like Tony Robbin or Robert Kiyosaki(of Rich Dad, Poor Dad fame) use their accounts to push out mini-seminars. Their updates range from the inspirational to motivational, deliver news updates, and of course, push product in-between.
3. Gossip Gals: They don’t miss a single controversy. It doesn’t matter how small, these girls(and guys—think Perez Hilton) won’t let it rest. While TMZ and the Smoking Gun throw out some really interesting stuff, I wouldn’t put it in the category of “news”.
4. Info-Marketers: Pushing everything from get-rich-schemes, to plugging their latest eBook, these folks peddle all things downloadable. They are always mentioning some resource that seems designed to help you make money, but will make them money instead.
5. Regular Marketers: Generally, tweeps of this ilk are pushing a physical product, or building up that brand. You’ll see everyone from tire companies to toilet paper purveyors interacting with their customers and fans. To spice things up, fun facts and interesting news are served with soft-sell promotional tactics.
6. Power Tweeters: This is an odd group. They generally tweet about anything and everything. Most of the time, they are female in gender, and are a mixture of Gossip Gals and Newsie fare, with a spatter of hometown chatter. They never sell anything. Many times, they will live-tweet their thoughts on concerts, television shows, and fashion.
7. Everyone Else: This encompasses roughly 97% of the twitterverse. They followed a few people, didn’t learn how to link, reTweet, or even reply inside of twitter. Eventually, they get tired of the whole thing, and move back to playing “Mafia Wars” on facebook.
While there are sub-groups within every group, these are where the lines are generally drawn. The most important takeaway from this breakdown is the following: Most people on twitter are trying to sell you something. Now that you know who’s online, how can you get the most out of twitter?
Glad you asked. The first thing to get is a twitter client. For the purpose of this article, we’re going with TweetDeck, a leader in the twitter client arena. It’s easy to use. Download it, open it up, enter your username and password…and magically, you have a bird’s eye view of everything happening in twitter(or at least who you are following, and their activity).
You’ll see your live twitter feed on the far left, in-between you’ll find any replies that have been made to your messages(if you’ve just opened an account, there won’t be any messages here), and on the far right, your direct messages(private messages between you and another user that are not broadcast to other users).
The first thing you should do is find twitterers who meet your basic informational needs. For that, I actually prefer to use google, as it generally does a better job of finding who, or what you are looking for than twitter’s native search service. Google your local station’s call sign and add twitter to the end.(e.g. WKPY twitter). Let’s say we were searching for a our local station in New Mexico. We’d follow @KOBTV. That will be useful for weather alerts, local news, and community events.
Next, get a national news feed you trust. CNN, MSNBC, and Fox all have twitter feeds kicking out news at the speed of type. You can now see what is making waves at the national level, along with any upcoming special reports.
Now comes the fun part…your interests. Love tech…grab @TechCrunch. Need your daily fix of stats and scores: Follow @ESPN. Pick 2-3 twittering entities that don’t overlap. For instance, unless you just love too much information, don’t follow ABC, NBC, and CBS news.
From there, it’s time to find interesting people to follow. See if your favorite celebrities, nobel laureates, or trashmen are online. Check out their profile online, either by searching google with their name, followed by twitter, or by going to their website, and finding out what it is. This is probably the greatest chance at interaction with the rich and infamous that you will get. Rainn Wilson(Dwight Schrute of “The Office”) is one celebrity with particularly interest thoughts, links, and conversation.
You have a base of good, solid tweets that you are now following. Here comes the fun part. There are people around the world having conversations about the latest news, movies, restaurants, whatever. Now, you just have to find them. Pull up the search feature in TweetDeck. There are two ways to search: hashtag, or plain text. Hashtags denote a post in a certain category. For instance, if you were looking for all the updates that include the President, but don’t actually mention him in the body, this is the easiest way to search. If you are just looking for all mentions of Barack Obama, you would enter his name in plain text.
Searching in TweetDeck will open a column that automatically updates each time the search term is mentioned. For instance, you could keep a column opened for any topics you are interested in, and monitor them in real-time. I like to keep an eye on precious metals, mining, and tire news(boring, I know). When I am monitoring twitter, I keep a #gold, #silver, #mining, and #tires tab open, so that I can keep abreast of what is happening. It’s like a stock ticker. Glance, see something you like, and read any article links that come through. If I see someone who is tweeting regularly about a topic I am interested in, I follow them, so I can see any of their general tweets as well. Rinse and repeat for each topic you have an interest in, and the list of people you follow will be over 100 in no time.
Now, for the bad part: Taking out the trash. Twitter is full of people who will spam you, by doing the most flattering thing of all: following your account. Since twitter sends you an email notification that someone is a follower, your curiosity makes you want to check them out. Many times, they will masquerade as a female in a bathing suit(or less). Their names will often be followed by a dash with a 4-digit number. You should immediately go to your follower page, and hit “report as spam”. This helps twitter eliminate them from the roster, and keeps any of your followers from checking their garbage out.
On a lesser note, I try to clean out people I follow from time-to-time. Some of them have reverted to inane chatter, instead of providing important news. Even worse, they are tweeting more often, and saying even less. If you are spending time in twitter, make sure that dump a few people to keep things uncluttered.
Some of you might be wondering how to get legitimate followers. It’s simple advice: Be you. If you are chatty, be chatty. Talk about your interests. ReTweet things from others that you find interesting. Be consistent. Spend time on twitter. The more you are engaged with others, the more likely it is that people will like, and follow what you have to say.
Now, let’s recap how to get the most out of twitter:
1. Know the major categories of Twitterers. Filter them out based upon your interests.
2. Get a twitter client, like TweetDeck, to help you manage the vast streams of information coming through.
3. Make sure you are following a local news station, national news station, and sources that cover any informational gaps that you might have.
4. Follow celebrities that are active and intelligent.
5. Use search and hashtags to sort out topics and people to follow that are of interest to you.
6. Take out the trash regularly to make sure your feed isn’t overloaded with garbage. Block or report bots as spam.
7. Gain more followers by contributing to the conversation, and being yourself.
That’s all for now. There are far more advanced methods of tweeting, following, and being heard. Most of those methods are custom rules, developed by each user. You wouldn’t think publishing a message would need rules. After all, how complex should sending out 140 characters be?
Evidently, as complex as we can possibly make something that has no definable purpose.
Kurt Hartman
Twitter Traffic Machine is a new program that boasts its ability to not only boost your total number of followers on twitter a micro blogging network that is very popular these days, but it also claims to be able to do all that automatically. Of course this raises the obvious question. Does it really work?
To answer that question let’s take a brief overlook into the twitter traffic machine system and how it is designed.
This entire traffic system is broken down into 5 step by step video tutorials that teaches you not only the crucial ins and outs to twitter but also how to generate the maximum amount of targeted traffic from this network. Right from the get go, you learn how to set up your twitter account properly, how to manage your profile and even set things up so that you are connected via your mobile phone. All critical aspects if you are serious about really maximising the traffic potential behind this “micro blogging” network.
But the real meat and potatoes behind this program is learning how to make money from the traffic generated by the Twitter Traffic Machine.
How does this work? Well for one thing twitter there is a reason why I refer to Twitter as a “micro blogging platform” and that is because all your posts are limited to 140 characters, not words, characters. So to be effective you need to learn how to get the most bang for your buck in your “tweets”. The best way to do that is by using keywords. Now it’s not the goal of this article to go over the power of keywords, and how to use them, that’s a subject for another day but what Twitter Traffic Machine does is show you how to create all that keyword rich content on the fly, which in the end attracts visitors to your profile and you build up followers.
Tony Bolton
http://www.articlesbase.com/internet-marketing-articles/twitter-traffic-machine-review-does-it-really-work-871458.html
Oh Twitter how I love thee! Although you might not hear those exact words said very often online, you know it’s true when you login to your Twitter account or visit someone’s blog. With the emergence of WordPress plug-ins like “TwitThis” and the various twitter badges found on numerous blogs throughout the Internet, it is obvious people adore Twitter. Just what is it that makes this social networking site so lovable? Let’s find out.
The question posed by Twitter, “What are you doing?” has become almost as popular as AOL’s “You’ve got mail.” So much so that it has even caught the eye of offline news mediums such as USA Today, CNN, and ABC. This helps to make the application popular all on its own. Those who think Twitter is just a place for computer or Internet geeks can rest assured it’s nothing of the sort.
For many, Twitter is a way to interact with like-minded individuals. Whether one is a stay at home mom who craves adult conversation, an at home worker who misses the water cooler chit-chat from past jobs, or the business owner who wants to reach more of their target market, this form of social media fills a need. It makes it easier for people to connect with others in a way they might not have previously been able to.
The fact Twitter is easily accessible and even simpler to navigate makes it a favorite as well. Anyone can create a twitter account of their own with nothing more than a user name and a password. Once that’s done, it’s easy to customize your profile and begin following other tweeps, as those who use Twitter affectionately call one another. To follow what another person is doing, just visit their page and click the follow button. You’ve now been added as a follower and when you login to your account you will see their messages on your screen.
Want to use Twitter even when you’re not at home or don’t have access to your computer? No problem. Inside your account you can choose whether to have messages sent via cell phone or instant messenger programs as well. Just browse to your settings and choose the devices tab and in a few steps you’re good to go. This feature makes it possible to tweet on the go. This is perfect for those who travel frequently or while out and about come across something interesting or amusing that they’d like to share with their followers.
Twitter’s arrival has also lead to the creation of different platforms and applications to make it appealing to just about everyone. Popular applications include, Twitter Fox, Twhirl, TweetDeck, and TweetMyBlog. Twitter Fox and Twhirl give users who are prefer the instant messaging look and feel a way to use Twitter in somewhat the same manner. Twitter Fox is an extension for the Firefox browser and Twhirl is a desktop application.
TweetMyBlog is a way to automatically post updates from a user’s blog to Twitter. In order to use it all one needs is a Twitter account and an RSS feed from their blog. It will automatically posts a tweet using your account when your blog is updated.
Tweet Deck is another desktop application that allows for more organization of updates. Instead of posting all a users tweets one right after another, it allows the user to organize tweets into separate columns within the application. For those who have customers and friends on Twitter this is a great feature.
Walt Vieira
What is Twitter? Well, on the Twitter login page it is introduced as: a service for friends, family, and co-workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?
The concept of Twitter at first glance appears to offer a very unique method of communicating with people for casual banter. However, if you are marketing in any way on the Internet, this can be a powerful platform for providing information and for generating traffic.
When entering a message (known as a Tweet), the user is forced to communicate effectively, because the content is limited to 140 characters. It does not take long to figure out how to concisely get your Tweet across.
If Twitter is new to you, perhaps you have not yet grasped its true potential. It definitely has to be one of the best free traffic generators on the Internet. Its simplicity and accessibility has made this tool extremely attractive to over two million users, and that figure seems to be growing exponentially.
Once you register to participate on Twitter (http://twitter.com), you will begin to follow other Twitterers. But, the real key for you as a marketer is to generate your own followers. Thus, giving you the opportunity to get your message out quickly and easily.
As with any marketing headline, the goal of the Tweet is to capture the readers attention and lead them to where your moneymaker content is located (sales page, opt-in, article, etc). Within your 140 characters you hopefully entice the reader and provide a short hyperlink.
Beyond the linked message area, the perks of this site are multifaceted. The page begins with an automatic welcome that introduces you to the reader and invites them to become a follower. Next, in a personal information area in the upper right corner of the page you can embed a link to a web page and provide a brief bio.
Of course, if you are going to encourage folks to follow you (or to retain followers), your Tweets need to offer value. For the Internet marketer there can sometimes be a fine line between responsibly leading someone to more information or using a platform to blatantly spam an unwanted message.
Take the opportunity to promote your Twitter page whenever possible. Place your Twitter link on your website, blog, ezine, article signature box, and so on. For example, this is my link: http://twitter.com/davidschaefer, and I encourage you to become a follower.
Twitter.com includes a few more features not mentioned here – just visit the help section. And, everyday creative entrepreneurs are offering new products and services to independently support and expand the use of Twitter. The most important point is to take advantage of Twitters simplicity, effectiveness, and potential marketing reach.
David Schaefer
What is Twitter? Well, on the Twitter login page it is introduced as: a service for friends, family, and co-workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?
The concept of Twitter at first glance appears to offer a very unique method of communicating with people for casual banter. However, if you are marketing in any way on the Internet, this can be a powerful platform for providing information and for generating traffic.
When entering a message (known as a Tweet), the user is forced to communicate effectively, because the content is limited to 140 characters. It does not take long to figure out how to concisely get your Tweet across.
If Twitter is new to you, perhaps you have not yet grasped its true potential. It definitely has to be one of the best free traffic generators on the Internet. Its simplicity and accessibility has made this tool extremely attractive to over two million users, and that figure seems to be growing exponentially.
Once you register to participate on Twitter (http://twitter.com), you will begin to follow other Twitterers. But, the real key for you as a marketer is to generate your own followers. Thus, giving you the opportunity to get your message out quickly and easily.
As with any marketing headline, the goal of the Tweet is to capture the readers attention and lead them to where your moneymaker content is located (sales page, opt-in, article, etc). Within your 140 characters you hopefully entice the reader and provide a short hyperlink.
Beyond the linked message area, the perks of this site are multifaceted. The page begins with an automatic welcome that introduces you to the reader and invites them to become a follower. Next, in a personal information area in the upper right corner of the page you can embed a link to a web page and provide a brief bio.
Of course, if you are going to encourage folks to follow you (or to retain followers), your Tweets need to offer value. For the Internet marketer there can sometimes be a fine line between responsibly leading someone to more information or using a platform to blatantly spam an unwanted message.
Take the opportunity to promote your Twitter page whenever possible. Place your Twitter link on your website, blog, ezine, article signature box, and so on. For example, this is my link: http://twitter.com/davidschaefer, and I encourage you to become a follower.
Twitter.com includes a few more features not mentioned here – just visit the help section. And, everyday creative entrepreneurs are offering new products and services to independently support and expand the use of Twitter. The most important point is to take advantage of Twitters simplicity, effectiveness, and potential marketing reach.
David Schaefer
The world is saturated with twits, tweets, and tweeps. Everyone, from Oprah to NPR has decided that this is the most brilliant application ever devised by man. They constantly cite it, talk about it, and overhype it to the Nth degree.
The one thing they never explain about twitter is how it is intended to be used. They don’t explain the reTweet, or spambot followers. They just tell random people to get online, and drop their thoughts, in 140 characters or less, of course.
It’s not their fault, really, as twitter doesn’t really have a defined purpose. The idea is that it is supposed to enable real-time communication, sort of a text message broadcast to the entire world. The actual purpose of tweets are left up to the users’ imaginations.
It was too much for me to get my mind wrapped around when I started, that is for sure. With this in mind, I’d like to tell you a couple uses that will make twitter a valuable investment of your time.
This article will serve a very practical purpose, both for the novice user of twitter, and for those who have lost interest: It’ll tell you how, what, and why to follow certain users, along with giving you the ability to find and organize that data in a meaningful manner.
With that in mind, let’s begin. There are around 7 major types of twitter users. Your interests will determine which of these folks it would be in your best interest to follow:
1. Newsies: The New York Times, Tribune Media, Huffington Post, Drudge Report, and various other news agencies use twitter as a point of distribution for their articles. Updates commonly carry newly published content, or respond to readers of their content, which will naturally drive new readers to their site.
2. Gurus: These people, like Tony Robbin or Robert Kiyosaki(of Rich Dad, Poor Dad fame) use their accounts to push out mini-seminars. Their updates range from the inspirational to motivational, deliver news updates, and of course, push product in-between.
3. Gossip Gals: They don’t miss a single controversy. It doesn’t matter how small, these girls(and guys—think Perez Hilton) won’t let it rest. While TMZ and the Smoking Gun throw out some really interesting stuff, I wouldn’t put it in the category of “news”.
4. Info-Marketers: Pushing everything from get-rich-schemes, to plugging their latest eBook, these folks peddle all things downloadable. They are always mentioning some resource that seems designed to help you make money, but will make them money instead.
5. Regular Marketers: Generally, tweeps of this ilk are pushing a physical product, or building up that brand. You’ll see everyone from tire companies to toilet paper purveyors interacting with their customers and fans. To spice things up, fun facts and interesting news are served with soft-sell promotional tactics.
6. Power Tweeters: This is an odd group. They generally tweet about anything and everything. Most of the time, they are female in gender, and are a mixture of Gossip Gals and Newsie fare, with a spatter of hometown chatter. They never sell anything. Many times, they will live-tweet their thoughts on concerts, television shows, and fashion.
7. Everyone Else: This encompasses roughly 97% of the twitterverse. They followed a few people, didn’t learn how to link, reTweet, or even reply inside of twitter. Eventually, they get tired of the whole thing, and move back to playing “Mafia Wars” on facebook.
While there are sub-groups within every group, these are where the lines are generally drawn. The most important takeaway from this breakdown is the following: Most people on twitter are trying to sell you something. Now that you know who’s online, how can you get the most out of twitter?
Glad you asked. The first thing to get is a twitter client. For the purpose of this article, we’re going with TweetDeck, a leader in the twitter client arena. It’s easy to use. Download it, open it up, enter your username and password…and magically, you have a bird’s eye view of everything happening in twitter(or at least who you are following, and their activity).
You’ll see your live twitter feed on the far left, in-between you’ll find any replies that have been made to your messages(if you’ve just opened an account, there won’t be any messages here), and on the far right, your direct messages(private messages between you and another user that are not broadcast to other users).
The first thing you should do is find twitterers who meet your basic informational needs. For that, I actually prefer to use google, as it generally does a better job of finding who, or what you are looking for than twitter’s native search service. Google your local station’s call sign and add twitter to the end.(e.g. WKPY twitter). Let’s say we were searching for a our local station in New Mexico. We’d follow @KOBTV. That will be useful for weather alerts, local news, and community events.
Next, get a national news feed you trust. CNN, MSNBC, and Fox all have twitter feeds kicking out news at the speed of type. You can now see what is making waves at the national level, along with any upcoming special reports.
Now comes the fun part…your interests. Love tech…grab @TechCrunch. Need your daily fix of stats and scores: Follow @ESPN. Pick 2-3 twittering entities that don’t overlap. For instance, unless you just love too much information, don’t follow ABC, NBC, and CBS news.
From there, it’s time to find interesting people to follow. See if your favorite celebrities, nobel laureates, or trashmen are online. Check out their profile online, either by searching google with their name, followed by twitter, or by going to their website, and finding out what it is. This is probably the greatest chance at interaction with the rich and infamous that you will get. Rainn Wilson(Dwight Schrute of “The Office”) is one celebrity with particularly interest thoughts, links, and conversation.
You have a base of good, solid tweets that you are now following. Here comes the fun part. There are people around the world having conversations about the latest news, movies, restaurants, whatever. Now, you just have to find them. Pull up the search feature in TweetDeck. There are two ways to search: hashtag, or plain text. Hashtags denote a post in a certain category. For instance, if you were looking for all the updates that include the President, but don’t actually mention him in the body, this is the easiest way to search. If you are just looking for all mentions of Barack Obama, you would enter his name in plain text.
Searching in TweetDeck will open a column that automatically updates each time the search term is mentioned. For instance, you could keep a column opened for any topics you are interested in, and monitor them in real-time. I like to keep an eye on precious metals, mining, and tire news(boring, I know). When I am monitoring twitter, I keep a #gold, #silver, #mining, and #tires tab open, so that I can keep abreast of what is happening. It’s like a stock ticker. Glance, see something you like, and read any article links that come through. If I see someone who is tweeting regularly about a topic I am interested in, I follow them, so I can see any of their general tweets as well. Rinse and repeat for each topic you have an interest in, and the list of people you follow will be over 100 in no time.
Now, for the bad part: Taking out the trash. Twitter is full of people who will spam you, by doing the most flattering thing of all: following your account. Since twitter sends you an email notification that someone is a follower, your curiosity makes you want to check them out. Many times, they will masquerade as a female in a bathing suit(or less). Their names will often be followed by a dash with a 4-digit number. You should immediately go to your follower page, and hit “report as spam”. This helps twitter eliminate them from the roster, and keeps any of your followers from checking their garbage out.
On a lesser note, I try to clean out people I follow from time-to-time. Some of them have reverted to inane chatter, instead of providing important news. Even worse, they are tweeting more often, and saying even less. If you are spending time in twitter, make sure that dump a few people to keep things uncluttered.
Some of you might be wondering how to get legitimate followers. It’s simple advice: Be you. If you are chatty, be chatty. Talk about your interests. ReTweet things from others that you find interesting. Be consistent. Spend time on twitter. The more you are engaged with others, the more likely it is that people will like, and follow what you have to say.
Now, let’s recap how to get the most out of twitter:
1. Know the major categories of Twitterers. Filter them out based upon your interests.
2. Get a twitter client, like TweetDeck, to help you manage the vast streams of information coming through.
3. Make sure you are following a local news station, national news station, and sources that cover any informational gaps that you might have.
4. Follow celebrities that are active and intelligent.
5. Use search and hashtags to sort out topics and people to follow that are of interest to you.
6. Take out the trash regularly to make sure your feed isn’t overloaded with garbage. Block or report bots as spam.
7. Gain more followers by contributing to the conversation, and being yourself.
That’s all for now. There are far more advanced methods of tweeting, following, and being heard. Most of those methods are custom rules, developed by each user. You wouldn’t think publishing a message would need rules. After all, how complex should sending out 140 characters be?
Evidently, as complex as we can possibly make something that has no definable purpose.
Kurt Hartman
The world is saturated with twits, tweets, and tweeps. Everyone, from Oprah to NPR has decided that this is the most brilliant application ever devised by man. They constantly cite it, talk about it, and overhype it to the Nth degree.
The one thing they never explain about twitter is how it is intended to be used. They don’t explain the reTweet, or spambot followers. They just tell random people to get online, and drop their thoughts, in 140 characters or less, of course.
It’s not their fault, really, as twitter doesn’t really have a defined purpose. The idea is that it is supposed to enable real-time communication, sort of a text message broadcast to the entire world. The actual purpose of tweets are left up to the users’ imaginations.
It was too much for me to get my mind wrapped around when I started, that is for sure. With this in mind, I’d like to tell you a couple uses that will make twitter a valuable investment of your time.
This article will serve a very practical purpose, both for the novice user of twitter, and for those who have lost interest: It’ll tell you how, what, and why to follow certain users, along with giving you the ability to find and organize that data in a meaningful manner.
With that in mind, let’s begin. There are around 7 major types of twitter users. Your interests will determine which of these folks it would be in your best interest to follow:
1. Newsies: The New York Times, Tribune Media, Huffington Post, Drudge Report, and various other news agencies use twitter as a point of distribution for their articles. Updates commonly carry newly published content, or respond to readers of their content, which will naturally drive new readers to their site.
2. Gurus: These people, like Tony Robbin or Robert Kiyosaki(of Rich Dad, Poor Dad fame) use their accounts to push out mini-seminars. Their updates range from the inspirational to motivational, deliver news updates, and of course, push product in-between.
3. Gossip Gals: They don’t miss a single controversy. It doesn’t matter how small, these girls(and guys—think Perez Hilton) won’t let it rest. While TMZ and the Smoking Gun throw out some really interesting stuff, I wouldn’t put it in the category of “news”.
4. Info-Marketers: Pushing everything from get-rich-schemes, to plugging their latest eBook, these folks peddle all things downloadable. They are always mentioning some resource that seems designed to help you make money, but will make them money instead.
5. Regular Marketers: Generally, tweeps of this ilk are pushing a physical product, or building up that brand. You’ll see everyone from tire companies to toilet paper purveyors interacting with their customers and fans. To spice things up, fun facts and interesting news are served with soft-sell promotional tactics.
6. Power Tweeters: This is an odd group. They generally tweet about anything and everything. Most of the time, they are female in gender, and are a mixture of Gossip Gals and Newsie fare, with a spatter of hometown chatter. They never sell anything. Many times, they will live-tweet their thoughts on concerts, television shows, and fashion.
7. Everyone Else: This encompasses roughly 97% of the twitterverse. They followed a few people, didn’t learn how to link, reTweet, or even reply inside of twitter. Eventually, they get tired of the whole thing, and move back to playing “Mafia Wars” on facebook.
While there are sub-groups within every group, these are where the lines are generally drawn. The most important takeaway from this breakdown is the following: Most people on twitter are trying to sell you something. Now that you know who’s online, how can you get the most out of twitter?
Glad you asked. The first thing to get is a twitter client. For the purpose of this article, we’re going with TweetDeck, a leader in the twitter client arena. It’s easy to use. Download it, open it up, enter your username and password…and magically, you have a bird’s eye view of everything happening in twitter(or at least who you are following, and their activity).
You’ll see your live twitter feed on the far left, in-between you’ll find any replies that have been made to your messages(if you’ve just opened an account, there won’t be any messages here), and on the far right, your direct messages(private messages between you and another user that are not broadcast to other users).
The first thing you should do is find twitterers who meet your basic informational needs. For that, I actually prefer to use google, as it generally does a better job of finding who, or what you are looking for than twitter’s native search service. Google your local station’s call sign and add twitter to the end.(e.g. WKPY twitter). Let’s say we were searching for a our local station in New Mexico. We’d follow @KOBTV. That will be useful for weather alerts, local news, and community events.
Next, get a national news feed you trust. CNN, MSNBC, and Fox all have twitter feeds kicking out news at the speed of type. You can now see what is making waves at the national level, along with any upcoming special reports.
Now comes the fun part…your interests. Love tech…grab @TechCrunch. Need your daily fix of stats and scores: Follow @ESPN. Pick 2-3 twittering entities that don’t overlap. For instance, unless you just love too much information, don’t follow ABC, NBC, and CBS news.
From there, it’s time to find interesting people to follow. See if your favorite celebrities, nobel laureates, or trashmen are online. Check out their profile online, either by searching google with their name, followed by twitter, or by going to their website, and finding out what it is. This is probably the greatest chance at interaction with the rich and infamous that you will get. Rainn Wilson(Dwight Schrute of “The Office”) is one celebrity with particularly interest thoughts, links, and conversation.
You have a base of good, solid tweets that you are now following. Here comes the fun part. There are people around the world having conversations about the latest news, movies, restaurants, whatever. Now, you just have to find them. Pull up the search feature in TweetDeck. There are two ways to search: hashtag, or plain text. Hashtags denote a post in a certain category. For instance, if you were looking for all the updates that include the President, but don’t actually mention him in the body, this is the easiest way to search. If you are just looking for all mentions of Barack Obama, you would enter his name in plain text.
Searching in TweetDeck will open a column that automatically updates each time the search term is mentioned. For instance, you could keep a column opened for any topics you are interested in, and monitor them in real-time. I like to keep an eye on precious metals, mining, and tire news(boring, I know). When I am monitoring twitter, I keep a #gold, #silver, #mining, and #tires tab open, so that I can keep abreast of what is happening. It’s like a stock ticker. Glance, see something you like, and read any article links that come through. If I see someone who is tweeting regularly about a topic I am interested in, I follow them, so I can see any of their general tweets as well. Rinse and repeat for each topic you have an interest in, and the list of people you follow will be over 100 in no time.
Now, for the bad part: Taking out the trash. Twitter is full of people who will spam you, by doing the most flattering thing of all: following your account. Since twitter sends you an email notification that someone is a follower, your curiosity makes you want to check them out. Many times, they will masquerade as a female in a bathing suit(or less). Their names will often be followed by a dash with a 4-digit number. You should immediately go to your follower page, and hit “report as spam”. This helps twitter eliminate them from the roster, and keeps any of your followers from checking their garbage out.
On a lesser note, I try to clean out people I follow from time-to-time. Some of them have reverted to inane chatter, instead of providing important news. Even worse, they are tweeting more often, and saying even less. If you are spending time in twitter, make sure that dump a few people to keep things uncluttered.
Some of you might be wondering how to get legitimate followers. It’s simple advice: Be you. If you are chatty, be chatty. Talk about your interests. ReTweet things from others that you find interesting. Be consistent. Spend time on twitter. The more you are engaged with others, the more likely it is that people will like, and follow what you have to say.
Now, let’s recap how to get the most out of twitter:
1. Know the major categories of Twitterers. Filter them out based upon your interests.
2. Get a twitter client, like TweetDeck, to help you manage the vast streams of information coming through.
3. Make sure you are following a local news station, national news station, and sources that cover any informational gaps that you might have.
4. Follow celebrities that are active and intelligent.
5. Use search and hashtags to sort out topics and people to follow that are of interest to you.
6. Take out the trash regularly to make sure your feed isn’t overloaded with garbage. Block or report bots as spam.
7. Gain more followers by contributing to the conversation, and being yourself.
That’s all for now. There are far more advanced methods of tweeting, following, and being heard. Most of those methods are custom rules, developed by each user. You wouldn’t think publishing a message would need rules. After all, how complex should sending out 140 characters be?
Evidently, as complex as we can possibly make something that has no definable purpose.
Kurt Hartman
El portal de anuncios clasificados tablondeanuncios.com ha creado una cuenta en twitter en la que desde hace unos días se twittean los anuncios más interesantes y curiosos que se van publicando en el portal.
La inmediatez, brevedad en la comunicación y su configuración como red social convierten a Twitter en el medio ideal para comunicarse con los usuarios de una forma breve y espontánea.
Tablondeanuncios busca pues con su presencia en twitter transmitir la realidad social del momento a través de los anuncios que se publican y espera que los twitts publicados sirvan de fuente de inspiración a sus seguidores para elaborar algún que otro post. No nos consta que se haya realizado ningún estudio serio, pero nuestra experiencia personal, de llevar twitteando prácticamente desde la creación de twitter, nos dice que generalmente el 100% de los usuarios de twitter tienen blog.
Tablondeanuncios.com –> Twitter –> Bloggers
No se busca con esta acción, ni muchos menos, trasladar el contenido del portal a Twitter y por tanto no se van a twittear todos los anuncios que se publiquen. Así que para autoreprimir los impulsos twitteros (quien ya use twitter, sabe de lo que hablamos) hemos limitado a 30 el número máximo de twitts al día.
Tambien esperamos en el futuro generar conversación entorno al mundo de los anuncios clasificados y trasladar al portal las sugerencias y experiencias de los usuarios.
¿quieres seguirnos? Puedes hacerlo desde aquí: twitter/tablondanuncios Estaremos encantados de tenerte a bordo
Para los que queráis estar al tanto de todo lo que se publica en tablondeanuncios.com de segundamano, ocasión, ofertas de empleo, etc. hay otras herramientas más efectivas: Alertas, RSS, local o simplemente visitar el portal de vez en cuando.
The most Internet marketing fun you will ever have!
I have to admit there are many parts of Internet marketing which are downright boring for me. Rewriting articles into original content, submitting links to directories, the record keeping involved…these are all important, but they are not my most enjoyable tasks.
Therefore, I am very excited when something comes along which not only works well, but I can have fun with too! Twitter is my cool new Internet marketing tool I have been using lately. I can honestly say it is probably the most fun I have had with any marketing method!
I had my account for a while before I took Twitter serious. Sure it was fun. But was it really worth my time? When I kept seeing many of the top Internet marketing gurus using Twitter, I decided to take a closer look. After all, those top marketers probably weren’t spending their time with Twitter unless it was producing results for them.
I decided to give Twitter a closer look. I dug into it to find out exactly how marketers like John Reese and Willie Crawford were using it. It amazed me how much time they were devoting to this new marketing method! My methods were hit and miss at first, but thanks to a few Twitter mentors I was able to craft a system which is working very well for building a large following. At the time of this writing, I am consistently adding more than 50 new followers a day!
Imagine! 50 new leads a day which cost me virtually NOTHING but a small amount of “fun time” on Twitter. Also, the best part about my methods is that the new followers I get are targeted. It really does no good for me to get leads who are not interested in Internet marketing. For example, those tweeting about “gardening” or “coin collecting” really won’t do many any good as followers.
Although there are large amounts of Twitter users in the area of Internet marketing, Twitter is also used by followers in many other niches. Once you learn the process of “Twittering” and how to attract targeted followers for your niche, the sky really is the limit! Best of all, unlike many other marketing methods, Twittering is an absolute blast of fun!
Here are a few hints for Twittering success:
- Always have a descriptive bio of yourself and include a great landing page. You are allowed one active link in your bio. You can include other URL’s in your description, but they will not be active.
- Make sure you take advantage of the reply and direct message features. These two features are the real “meat and potatoes” of Twitter. Using them will result in strong (and profitable) relationships with other users.
- Use a link shortening tool like TinyURL to shorten links to deal with the 140 character limit for each tweet.
- There are some cool third part tools which I use to ramp up Twitter’s marketing potential. Be sure to see my Twitter bio for more information about this.
Give Twitter a try for a few weeks and watch the results!
Steve Weber