The Power of Twitter and Beyond!
I'm going to give you some really good inside tips on how to customise Twitter for your play and fun! Just to let you know that by using some of the techniques listed below, I now have almost 800 followers on Twitter.
In the last 7 days I've had approx 250, which is pretty steady just by using some of the tips in this blog.
Twitter in some way levels the playing field as everyone has just about the same options to follow when it comes to getting a popularity status.
The trick is how to adapt and use these techniques to raise your profile and win the game.
I'm currently on the same journey as many of you and while writing this am learning the ins and outs of the Social Networking Platform that is fast becoming the most popular social networking tool Hot Tips for the Tweeple Generation Tweetdeck Easy, download Tweetdeck from tweetdeck.
com.
The first thing you will probably notice is that you will need to change the settings as the default is white text on a black screen.
Makes it hard to read I've found, but each to their own.
Tweetdeck is brilliant in that it displays the Tweetstream, your replies and your direct messages all on the one screen.
The message columns allow for 500 tweets as a default, so scrolling down allows you to go back a fair way or search for tweets you may want to refer back to.
The screen has a continuous right hand scroll, so you can set up different groups and their tweets will appear in that column.
You might have a group called best friends and another for gardeners for instance.
That way you don't miss important tweets from people who are more important to you than others.
At the time of writing, Tweetdeck is probably the most widely used application for Twitter and I would highly recommend it to you.
Twellow Twellow, at twellow.
com is another great way of finding people to interact with.
People here are categorized into all different areas and you can search for those with similar interests to your own.
The main page shows you all the categories, which then have sub categories as well.
You just click on a category and the list of people in that area are displayed.
You don't have to be registered with Twellow to be displayed, but at the time of writing there were nearly two million people showing on the site, so you will have plenty to choose from.
By all means though, register yourself and set up a profile so others can find you.
When you click on a category, Twellow displays a list of people in that category and they are ordered by the number of followers they have.
If you are already logged into Twitter via the web, (not Tweetdeck), you will be able to follow people directly from the screens where the profiles are displayed.
Mr Tweet Mr Tweet at mrtweet.
net is another way of gaining new followers.
All you have to do is follow Mr Tweet on Twitter and your tweets will be monitored for content and then you will get a Direct Message from him.
You then go to the site and login and you will get a list of suggested people.
You will also get a list of people who are following you that you aren't following so you can then follow them if you choose.
It's a really nifty little site and worth registering at.
Grader Grader is on Twitter as @grader, but also online at twitter.
grader.
com/ and is a site of some interest.
As you get going on Twitter, you can get ranked by Grader on a score out of 100.
It is based on some secret algorithm apparently so people can't game the system.
Apart from that aspect of Grader, you can have a look at who the top Tweeple are in a particular area or even by topic using the search function.
When you use the search function, it will list the Tweeple by their score in descending order.
For example, if you search for 'gardening' on Grader, you will get a list of all the top 100 people interested in gardening on Twitter.
You can see their bio from their Twitter account and if you click on their Grader score, it will take you to their Twitter account from where you can follow them.
Naturally, you must already be logged in to Twitter yourself to follow anyone.
Twitter Backgrounds Now if you're a bit of a Photoshop whiz, then you can do your own background, full of bells and whistles and load it up to your Twitter profile.
But if you're not, or you just want to save time, then there are some sites out there that will do them for you automatically.
To find these sites, the best thing to do is to simply Google 'twitter backgrounds and you will find quite a few sites offering this service for free.
My personal favourite is Twitbacs at twitbacks.
com where you can get some great backgrounds.
However, that said, if you want to do your own fiddling in Photoshop, you can get some great layouts in PSD format from twitterbacks.
com SocialToo SocialToo at socialtoo.
com is a useful automated tool for Twitter.
At Social Too, you can set your account up to do some autopilot things for you.
First of all, you can set SocialToo up to automatically follow everyone who follows you.
This can take the drudgery out of checking all your new followers and then going and adding them to your own list in order to reciprocate.
You can also set up SocialToo to send an automatic Direct Message to people who follow you.
Be careful about this as there is a little bit of a backlash which largely been caused because many newbies and some old hands too, are setting up an auto Direct Message that basically said, Hello, and thanks for following me.
Now go and visit my sales page at [http://..
...
].
I'm sure you get the picture.
I can't think of any worse way to start a relationship with a new follower on Twitter.
In any sort of business, you build relationships before you try and sell someone something and this is even more relevant in the social media space.
Just be sensible in your dealings with people and treat them how you like to be treated! SocialToo will also provide you with an email every day of all your new followers and those that have unfollowed you as well.
Another function of SocialToo is that it will automatically unfollow anyone who unfollows you.
Personally I don't think this is a bad thing.
If people aren't interested in you any longer, then are you really interested in them? If you really want to keep the updates from someone, just go and follow them back when you see their name on your unfollows email each day.
TweetLater Tweetlater at tweetlater.
com is a fantastic tool to use with Twitter.
It allows you to schedule tweets for various times of the day.
So how can this be of use to you? Well you need to remember that the Twitter audience is constantly changing and the tweetstream occurs quite fast.
The more people someone follows, the greater the number of tweets appearing and they won't read them all, I promise you.
It just isn't possible.
By using Tweetlater, you have a much greater chance of catching people's attention throughout the day and in different time zones.
Let's say you have written a post on your blog and you want to drive some traffic there.
Rather than tweeting the link and subject once, you can do it every hour for 24 hours if you like using Tweetlater.
I'm sure you can see the power of this in terms of driving traffic or getting noticed.
There is a free and a professional version of Tweetlater.
Start out with the free version and then if you need it, upgrade to the professional version when you are ready.
Twitterfeed Twitterfeed at twitterfeed.
com is also a very handy tool.
It is far more secure to log into than the other sites I have mentioned as it uses Open ID which is a bit of a pain.
However, it is worth persisting with in the absence of an alternative tool.
What Twitterfeed does is that you can set up your blog to feed directly via RSS to your Twitter account.
So every time you make a blog post, it gets tweeted automatically on your behalf.
You can use this in conjunction with Tweetlater with the first post coming through Twitterfeed and then subsequent ones at times you specify via Tweetlater.
SplitTweet SplitTweet at splitweet.
com is a great tool if you have a number of accounts on Twitter.
Rather than switching between them from time to time in order to Tweet, you can set an account up here for free and bring all of your accounts under the one roof.
Splitweet will display the Twitter feed from all your accounts at once, or you can turn individual accounts off and on.
When actually tweeting, you can pick an account to tweet to, or you can do a broadcast message across all your accounts at once.
Some very flash technology this and very useful for handling multiple accounts.
Twitdom Twitdom at twitdom.
com would have to be the greatest site relating to Twitter.
It is a repository for all Twitter related applications and it is just absolutely amazing what there is in there.
At the time of writing, Twitdom had nearly 500 Twitter related applications in its database.
Quite amazing when you think about it that there has been so many third party applications written and is a pretty powerful indication as to the value of Twitter.
It also indicates the confidence of the market in that Twitter will become very much the mainstream.
Friendfeed Friendfeed at friendfeed.
com is an automating tool you can use in conjunction with Twitter.
Friendfeed is a bit of a hub if you like where you can set up links to all your other accounts.
Friendfeed collects information from those accounts and publishes it in your Friendfeed feed.
Although Friendfeed is a topic almost in itself, I mention it here particularly because of its ability to link your Twitter and Facebook accounts among others.
If you have a Facebook account and you link it and your Twitter accounts in Friendfeed, then what will happen is that all your posts in Twitter will be posted on your wall at Facebook.
It means you are running two social media accounts via one and saves you time.
You're Twitter Karma Your Twitter Karma at dossy.
org/twitter/karma/ is a really useful site for having a look at your followers and who you are following.
It's great for managing your account from a followers/following perspective.
Unfortunately it doesn't seem to load a fair few times and can be unreliable, but when it is working it's great.
It shows you all you all the people you are following and all those that are following you.
Underneath each avatar it tells you if you are following them and if they are following you.
You can also sort by people that you are following who aren't following you back.
This is great for management as you can decide whether or not to unfollow them.
By checking the boxes, you can actually do a bulk unfollow of a heap of people at once as opposed to going to every individual Twitter account and clicking on unfollowÂ.
You can also list those that might only be following you and decide if you want to follow them back.
Again, this can be done in a bulk manner.
Social Media is a very fun and intoxicating adventure for me, and I'm going to be diverting my attention to my next project, which will be Internet Marketing / Social Entrepreneurism! Say that in one breathe! Well, what I'm planning to do is to launch my website, with some freebies and a paid product - that's the Internet Marketing bit.
When you buy my product I will donate a percentage of the revenue to charity - that's the Social Enterprise bit! At the moment, I am looking around at which charity I should work with, preferably a small charity that needs a lot of help - so wish me luck!
In the last 7 days I've had approx 250, which is pretty steady just by using some of the tips in this blog.
Twitter in some way levels the playing field as everyone has just about the same options to follow when it comes to getting a popularity status.
The trick is how to adapt and use these techniques to raise your profile and win the game.
I'm currently on the same journey as many of you and while writing this am learning the ins and outs of the Social Networking Platform that is fast becoming the most popular social networking tool Hot Tips for the Tweeple Generation Tweetdeck Easy, download Tweetdeck from tweetdeck.
com.
The first thing you will probably notice is that you will need to change the settings as the default is white text on a black screen.
Makes it hard to read I've found, but each to their own.
Tweetdeck is brilliant in that it displays the Tweetstream, your replies and your direct messages all on the one screen.
The message columns allow for 500 tweets as a default, so scrolling down allows you to go back a fair way or search for tweets you may want to refer back to.
The screen has a continuous right hand scroll, so you can set up different groups and their tweets will appear in that column.
You might have a group called best friends and another for gardeners for instance.
That way you don't miss important tweets from people who are more important to you than others.
At the time of writing, Tweetdeck is probably the most widely used application for Twitter and I would highly recommend it to you.
Twellow Twellow, at twellow.
com is another great way of finding people to interact with.
People here are categorized into all different areas and you can search for those with similar interests to your own.
The main page shows you all the categories, which then have sub categories as well.
You just click on a category and the list of people in that area are displayed.
You don't have to be registered with Twellow to be displayed, but at the time of writing there were nearly two million people showing on the site, so you will have plenty to choose from.
By all means though, register yourself and set up a profile so others can find you.
When you click on a category, Twellow displays a list of people in that category and they are ordered by the number of followers they have.
If you are already logged into Twitter via the web, (not Tweetdeck), you will be able to follow people directly from the screens where the profiles are displayed.
Mr Tweet Mr Tweet at mrtweet.
net is another way of gaining new followers.
All you have to do is follow Mr Tweet on Twitter and your tweets will be monitored for content and then you will get a Direct Message from him.
You then go to the site and login and you will get a list of suggested people.
You will also get a list of people who are following you that you aren't following so you can then follow them if you choose.
It's a really nifty little site and worth registering at.
Grader Grader is on Twitter as @grader, but also online at twitter.
grader.
com/ and is a site of some interest.
As you get going on Twitter, you can get ranked by Grader on a score out of 100.
It is based on some secret algorithm apparently so people can't game the system.
Apart from that aspect of Grader, you can have a look at who the top Tweeple are in a particular area or even by topic using the search function.
When you use the search function, it will list the Tweeple by their score in descending order.
For example, if you search for 'gardening' on Grader, you will get a list of all the top 100 people interested in gardening on Twitter.
You can see their bio from their Twitter account and if you click on their Grader score, it will take you to their Twitter account from where you can follow them.
Naturally, you must already be logged in to Twitter yourself to follow anyone.
Twitter Backgrounds Now if you're a bit of a Photoshop whiz, then you can do your own background, full of bells and whistles and load it up to your Twitter profile.
But if you're not, or you just want to save time, then there are some sites out there that will do them for you automatically.
To find these sites, the best thing to do is to simply Google 'twitter backgrounds and you will find quite a few sites offering this service for free.
My personal favourite is Twitbacs at twitbacks.
com where you can get some great backgrounds.
However, that said, if you want to do your own fiddling in Photoshop, you can get some great layouts in PSD format from twitterbacks.
com SocialToo SocialToo at socialtoo.
com is a useful automated tool for Twitter.
At Social Too, you can set your account up to do some autopilot things for you.
First of all, you can set SocialToo up to automatically follow everyone who follows you.
This can take the drudgery out of checking all your new followers and then going and adding them to your own list in order to reciprocate.
You can also set up SocialToo to send an automatic Direct Message to people who follow you.
Be careful about this as there is a little bit of a backlash which largely been caused because many newbies and some old hands too, are setting up an auto Direct Message that basically said, Hello, and thanks for following me.
Now go and visit my sales page at [http://..
...
].
I'm sure you get the picture.
I can't think of any worse way to start a relationship with a new follower on Twitter.
In any sort of business, you build relationships before you try and sell someone something and this is even more relevant in the social media space.
Just be sensible in your dealings with people and treat them how you like to be treated! SocialToo will also provide you with an email every day of all your new followers and those that have unfollowed you as well.
Another function of SocialToo is that it will automatically unfollow anyone who unfollows you.
Personally I don't think this is a bad thing.
If people aren't interested in you any longer, then are you really interested in them? If you really want to keep the updates from someone, just go and follow them back when you see their name on your unfollows email each day.
TweetLater Tweetlater at tweetlater.
com is a fantastic tool to use with Twitter.
It allows you to schedule tweets for various times of the day.
So how can this be of use to you? Well you need to remember that the Twitter audience is constantly changing and the tweetstream occurs quite fast.
The more people someone follows, the greater the number of tweets appearing and they won't read them all, I promise you.
It just isn't possible.
By using Tweetlater, you have a much greater chance of catching people's attention throughout the day and in different time zones.
Let's say you have written a post on your blog and you want to drive some traffic there.
Rather than tweeting the link and subject once, you can do it every hour for 24 hours if you like using Tweetlater.
I'm sure you can see the power of this in terms of driving traffic or getting noticed.
There is a free and a professional version of Tweetlater.
Start out with the free version and then if you need it, upgrade to the professional version when you are ready.
Twitterfeed Twitterfeed at twitterfeed.
com is also a very handy tool.
It is far more secure to log into than the other sites I have mentioned as it uses Open ID which is a bit of a pain.
However, it is worth persisting with in the absence of an alternative tool.
What Twitterfeed does is that you can set up your blog to feed directly via RSS to your Twitter account.
So every time you make a blog post, it gets tweeted automatically on your behalf.
You can use this in conjunction with Tweetlater with the first post coming through Twitterfeed and then subsequent ones at times you specify via Tweetlater.
SplitTweet SplitTweet at splitweet.
com is a great tool if you have a number of accounts on Twitter.
Rather than switching between them from time to time in order to Tweet, you can set an account up here for free and bring all of your accounts under the one roof.
Splitweet will display the Twitter feed from all your accounts at once, or you can turn individual accounts off and on.
When actually tweeting, you can pick an account to tweet to, or you can do a broadcast message across all your accounts at once.
Some very flash technology this and very useful for handling multiple accounts.
Twitdom Twitdom at twitdom.
com would have to be the greatest site relating to Twitter.
It is a repository for all Twitter related applications and it is just absolutely amazing what there is in there.
At the time of writing, Twitdom had nearly 500 Twitter related applications in its database.
Quite amazing when you think about it that there has been so many third party applications written and is a pretty powerful indication as to the value of Twitter.
It also indicates the confidence of the market in that Twitter will become very much the mainstream.
Friendfeed Friendfeed at friendfeed.
com is an automating tool you can use in conjunction with Twitter.
Friendfeed is a bit of a hub if you like where you can set up links to all your other accounts.
Friendfeed collects information from those accounts and publishes it in your Friendfeed feed.
Although Friendfeed is a topic almost in itself, I mention it here particularly because of its ability to link your Twitter and Facebook accounts among others.
If you have a Facebook account and you link it and your Twitter accounts in Friendfeed, then what will happen is that all your posts in Twitter will be posted on your wall at Facebook.
It means you are running two social media accounts via one and saves you time.
You're Twitter Karma Your Twitter Karma at dossy.
org/twitter/karma/ is a really useful site for having a look at your followers and who you are following.
It's great for managing your account from a followers/following perspective.
Unfortunately it doesn't seem to load a fair few times and can be unreliable, but when it is working it's great.
It shows you all you all the people you are following and all those that are following you.
Underneath each avatar it tells you if you are following them and if they are following you.
You can also sort by people that you are following who aren't following you back.
This is great for management as you can decide whether or not to unfollow them.
By checking the boxes, you can actually do a bulk unfollow of a heap of people at once as opposed to going to every individual Twitter account and clicking on unfollowÂ.
You can also list those that might only be following you and decide if you want to follow them back.
Again, this can be done in a bulk manner.
Social Media is a very fun and intoxicating adventure for me, and I'm going to be diverting my attention to my next project, which will be Internet Marketing / Social Entrepreneurism! Say that in one breathe! Well, what I'm planning to do is to launch my website, with some freebies and a paid product - that's the Internet Marketing bit.
When you buy my product I will donate a percentage of the revenue to charity - that's the Social Enterprise bit! At the moment, I am looking around at which charity I should work with, preferably a small charity that needs a lot of help - so wish me luck!
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