Twitip

By Matt Wilson. Follow him @MattWilsonTV.

We all have them—”social media friends”—people who we talk to online but most likely have never met in person. We connected with them because of a common interest via Twitter, engaged in interesting conversation with them and shared a bond, but we don’t really consider them a true friend.

Truly using Twitter to its fullest potential means networking not just for casual online interaction but actually creating long lasting relationships. Real friends will shout from the rooftops to promote your brand, real friends collaborate, work together and would do anything for each other. Let’s start making these Twitter friends into your own global network of people who have a vested interest in each other’s success. Besides, what good are your friends if you don’t really know them?

But don’t be a creep! (more…)

By Nathan Hangen of Making It Social. Follow him @nhangen.

If you don’t know what you are doing, measuring your brand online is like sticking a finger in the air and trying to gauge the direction of the wind. It just isn’t as easy as it looks. However, once you understand the tools required to make it happen, brand monitoring becomes 2nd nature. The trick then, is knowing what to monitor and how to do it.

In the past, people relied on Google alerts to send notifications of brand mentions, which usually came in the form of links. Although this is a great way to measure trackbacks and general sentiment, I don’t feel that it offers a complete picture. Not only that, but the results are delayed, meaning that if you get trashed on a forum or in a blog post, then you won’t be able to react until it’s too late. This is why Twitter is changing the way the game is played.

With Twitter, you can track your brand mentions in real time, using a variety of excellent tools. You can track via keyword or hashtag along with the standard mention/RT tracking on the homepage. If you have Twitter integrated onto your blog, then you can add even more firepower to your arsenal by using Tweetbacks and RT’s as comments, which might flesh out an otherwise empty post footer.

The beauty of Twitter tracking tools is that they tell a much greater story than Google does.
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By Kalvin “Dr. Kal” Chinyere, M.D. of Dr. Kal’s Weight Loss Tips. Follow him @DrKal.

TwitPic is an excellent application that further boosts Twitter’s usefulness. However, so many people use TwitPic incorrectly. Tweeters use TwitPic to tweet pictures of their children at Disney World or pictures of their grandmother at her 100th Birthday Party. C’mon! Your kids are not that cute, and your grandmother??? I don’t even want to see a picture of Halle Berry when she’s 100 years old.

Using TwitPic as if it were Flickr is similar to using your iPhone as if it were an iPod. You are missing out on all of its capabilities.

Below are 10 ways to use TwitPic to improve the quality of your life and the lives of those around you. (more…)

Okay, so it’s been a few months in the making, but the shiny, new TwiTip is finally here! Thanks to the folks at Cre8d Design we’re more organized, colorful and easier to navigate.

Check out the Add A Tip page, too! Now you can submit your guest posts right through the site, which is (in my opinion) way cool. Even better, regular guest authors will have their own bios for even more exposure.

We’d love to hear what you think, so don’t hesitate to peek around and come back here with feedback. We’re still cleaning up a few things, so please be patient and let us know if you have any problems!

By Jade Craven – Follow her @jadecraven.

“Jack Dorsey and Biz Stone always said that the best way to get real value out of Twitter was to follow a small number of people; it was never their intention for people to aim to follow more than 150-200 people”

from Why Twitter Lists Change Everything by @davetroy

Twitter has once again changed the social economy. There has been a lot of buzz around the blogosphere regarding lists. People want to know how it can improve their use of twitter and how they can help others. I hunted through the plethora of posts to find the best content regarding lists. In this post, I will ‘list’ the best quotes regarding twitter lists and show how others believe it will change the dynamics.

Before I discuss the common thoughts, here are two resources:

• Listorious
• TLISTS

Ways to create an extremely useful list

A list is more useful, and compelling, than any one person. You should list compelling people and include yourself in a list when necessary. Beyond that, there were three main tips people gave to help you create an awesome list. (more…)

By Firas Steitiyeh – Follow him @steitiyeh

It’s known that a brand for a product is like reputation for a human being. There are so many articles, books and people that talk about branding and how it is done properly. A lot of bloggers out there, who are most probably new, just do not care about their Twitter page and how it looks. Considering that you have got a proper brand and theme for your blog (or product) now you need to have a Twitter branded page that matches your current brand. (more…)

By Nathan Hangen of Making It Social. Follow him @nhangen.

When I look at my Twitterfeed, I see that a lot of people are spending time talking about themselves. I get that…I really do, but let me ask you something. How many people on Twitter do you really pay attention to? Of those, how many of them talk about themselves more than they talk about others? If my guess is right, I’d say that the percentage is less than 25%. So why is it then, that people feel they have to talk about themselves in order to convert you into a reader or a customer? (more…)

By Laura Christianson – Follow her @BloggingBistro

As I skimmed my Twitter stream, only three tweets enticed me to click through to the blog post:

All three of these tweets are brief, unusual, punchy, and they feature strong nouns: vampire, bacon beer, Krazy Glue.

Entertaining teasers seem to be in short supply on Twitter. Normally, my Twitter stream brims with two main types of teasers:

Steroidal: Boost your sales 500% in 1 week! http://hyperlink.com

Put-you-to-sleep: Read my blog post about my book tour http://hyperlink.com

We can do better than that, people! (more…)

By Alok Saboo – Follow @truvoip

Twitter is a great platform bringing together millions of people for you to interact. The challenge, however, is to identify the subset of this twitterverse that is relevant for you. The value that you can derive from Twitter is a function of the quality of people that you interact with. Today, I will present a great tool – Tweepi – that makes the onerous task of finding and following quality people a cakewalk.

Tweepi presents a geekier, faster way to manage your Twitter experience. It currently has four tools and hopefully we will more in the future.

Geeky Follow: Before you can prune your friend list, you need to build your friend list. Geeky Follow enables you to follow active tweeples who share the same interests are you. Just identify popular tweeple in your domain and selectively add people that are following them. The underlying idea is simple, people following users that you idolize share similar interests as yours. For example, if you are interested in technology related tweeps, you may want to follow users following @mashable or @techcrunch. (more…)

By Mary Rose Maguire – Follow her @MRMaguire

When you first join Twitter, it’s a slightly crazy world filled with celebrities, “wannabe-celebrities,” multi-level marketing folks (”Make money from home today!”), major brands, regular folks, and every kind of spammer you can imagine. It’s easy to spot those who will not add anything of value to your stream. On Twitter, you have three choices when someone follows you:

1) Follow them back.
2) Don’t follow them back but allow them to continue to see your tweets.
3) Block them, in which case they won’t be able to see your tweets and will not show up in your “followers” list.

Usually, most people decide not to return-follow an account. Sometimes when you’re new, following back can make your follower list look more robust. Other times, you may not really care if a realtor from Alaska is following you but since you live in Hawaii and have no intention of ever moving to Alaska, you’re not following them back.
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