Twitip

The last post here on TwiTip certainly got people talking (or debating) and it’s given me an idea for a challenge.

Construct your own ‘Top 10 Must Follow’ list as it relates to your own niche.

As some commented on the last post – the list does have a bit of a ’social media’ focus – so why don’t we come up with a series of lists of people to follow in different industries.

For example:

• If you’re interested in entrepreneurship – ‘Ten People all Entrepreneurs Should Follow on Twitter’.
• If you’re a designer ‘Ten People all Designers Should Follow on Twitter’.
• If you’re a dad – ‘Ten People all Dads Should Follow on Twitter’.
• If you’re into politics – ‘Ten People all Political Buffs Should Follow on Twitter’.
• If you’re a blogger – ‘Ten People all Bloggers Should Follow on Twitter’.
• If you’re a rocket scientist – ‘Ten People all Rocket Scientists Should Follow on Twitter’.

You get the picture. I’m sure there are hundreds, if not thousands, of these types of lists that we could construct and hopefully in doing so we’ll highlight some great Twitter users who add value on different topics.

So write up your list (it doesn’t have to be a list of 10 – any number is fine – and do one of two things with it so we can all share in it:

1. leave it as a comment below
2. write it up on your blog or website and then leave a link to your list in comments below

Looking forward to seeing the lists people come up with.

Update: Thanks to everyone for your lists so far. There are some fantastic ones below and I’m planning on using some of them in weeks ahead here on Twitter as posts. I’ll of course give those who author the lists credit for them.

In this post Mark Hayward (follow @mark_hayward) provides a list of ten people that all twitter beginners should be following. If you have other “must follow” recommendations for beginners, please feel free to put them in the comments.

Did you just take the big leap and open your first Twitter account? Is it for work, business, or pleasure?

A few months ago I joined Twitter, primarily as a way to network, but also to help people, and as a way to promote Train for Humanity and my small business.

When you start using Twitter for the first time it can feel a bit overwhelming, almost like entering a really crowded train station during rush hour on a Friday afternoon. There are lots of conversations and commotion going on everywhere, but you are in the station by yourself, an outsider, and certainly not a participant.
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If there’s one question I’ve been asked more than any other since starting TwiTip it has been

‘what do you think of ((insert one of numerous Twitter Money Making Programs here))?’

We’ve seen a number of services launched in the last few months that attempt to help Twitter users to make money from their Tweets. Two of the most popular (or at least most talked about) models are:

• Magpie – which inserts automatic tweets from advertisers into your Twittering
• Twittad – which inserts sponsors messages into your Twitter background

Of course others are working on other ways to monetize Twitter (affiliate marketing, promoting their own services and products etc) – but today I’m interested to hear what people think about services like Magpie and Twittad?

Would you use them? Do they impact whether you’ll follow (or how you interact with) other Twitter users? I’m looking forward to hearing your comments below.

Sara Rosso, digital strategist (@rosso) and Ms. Adventures in Italy shares some tips for optimizing your Twitter profile to increase your followers.

Since Twitter’s focus is on saying a lot with very little, it makes sense that the Twitter profile space is very brief and the default settings leave little room to present yourself in detail. It’s also the first and last thing potential followers will see before deciding to click “Follow” or to click away from your profile. Here’s a few tips to customize your profile so that potential followers will be convinced they can’t miss your Tweets!

1. Create a Custom Profile Page Background

Since the visual impact of your Twitter background is the strongest tool you have available, customize it to give people an eyeful of who you are.

You can make your own image on your computer and upload it under Settings – Design – Change Background Image. The first 200-250 pixels width on the left hand side is a great place to put additional profile information and list websites.

For a quick solution, you can create just the sidebar (250×700) as your background image with “no tile” selected. Then, modify the rest of the Twitter color scheme to complement it. You can use the first 200 pixels from the top for your picture or “header” for a possible logo and tagline.

The rest of the 400-500 vertical pixels should be used to tell others what you’re about and most importantly, what you’re looking for. Are you using Twitter to get business? To gather ideas for a project? To get feedback from customers? This is the best place to reflect your interests and other facets of your professional life if necessary, so that others can see it immediately.

Alternatively, you can use it to tell people how best to contact you like @garyvee who encourages people to email him instead of sending a Direct Message on Twitter.

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A lot of readers of this blog have only discovered us in the last few days – so here’s a quick recap of our hottest posts for the month of November (rated simply by the number of times they were viewed).

1. 10 Easy Steps for Twitter Beginners
2. Make a Good Impression with a Custom Twitter Background
3. 181 Free Twitter Buttons, Badges, Widget and Counters to Help You Find Followers
4. Twhirl [Review]
5. What Twitter Tools and Services Do You Use?
6. Defining Twitter Goals: A Tip for Successful Use of Twitter
7. Make a Tweet Plan to Get the Most from Twitter
8. 11 Ways to Use Twitter to Help Your Site go Viral
9. How to Make Twitter Less Like Listening to One Side of a Phone Call
10. Do you Converse or Broadcast? How to Build or Kill Relationships on Twitter

While we’re looking back on the last month – here are the polls we’ve run in November – thanks to everyone for voting:
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The Twitaway: An Experiment In Social Media

It’s never too late to build a large, loyal Twitter following—if you think outside the box. In this guest post, Matthew Magain from SitePoint shares some tips on how you can grow your Twitter following to more than 10,000 in less than a week.

I admit it: we were a bit slow to recognize the potential of Twitter at SitePoint.

Sure, a few of us had dabbled with personal Twitter accounts, but we never really acknowledged Twitter as a viable medium for communicating with customers until, well, everyone else was doing it! By the time we decided to jump on board, our preferred username had already been snapped up by an enterprising squatter (we had to settle for @sitepointdotcom). Not the ideal beginnings for building a successful Twitter presence—and more than just a little ironic considering we pride ourselves with being at the cutting edge of the Web!

Despite beginning on the back foot, we were able to attract 13,000 followers in less than a week—an impressive following that surpasses CNN and the New York Times.

Here’s how we did it.

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I’ve just returned from a few days away and here’s a quick summary of the stories that broke around Twitter while I was gone:

• All the rage on Twitter in the last day or so has been MrTweet – a twitter ‘personal assistant’ who recommends people on Twitter that you should be following.
• Twitter have turned off outbound SMS for Canadian Twitter users due to increased costs.
• @pistachio is writing Twitter for Dummies and is inviting us all to help her do it.
• The Telegraph has a story on the team behind Twitter.
• There was also lots of talk over the last few days about how Facebook was looking to buy Twitter but Twitter didn’t go for it.
• SEOmoz comes up with 7 good ways to Monetize Twitter and 7 ways that suck.

Get a tour of TweetBeep – a useful service for monitoring what people are saying about you on Twitter – with Sherice Jacob (follow her at @sherice) from iElectrify.

Tweetbeep is a free web-based service that lets you get notified via e-mail whenever someone mentions a word, name or phrase on Twitter. Find out immediately when someone tweets (posts) your name, company, or website address on Twitter, even if they use a URL-shortening service like TinyURL.

Step 1: Signing Up for Tweetbeep

Getting started with Tweetbeep is as easy as filling out a simple form right on the first page of tweetbeep.com. Enter any username you want for the first field – the last one is for your Twitter username.

The first page of Tweetbeep.com lets you
create your account instantly.

Once you’ve pressed the Submit button, you’ll be taken to a page where you can customize just about anything regarding the notification(s) you want to receive.

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In this post G. Wayne Clayton from SocialMarketingExpert shares some strategies and steps for using Twitter to have an impact upon your niche using a tool called FutureTweets.

One of the most pressing questions my clients ask is: “How do I quickly make an impact in my chosen niche using Twitter with a tight budget and a tighter time schedule?”

I’ve discovered the answer to that burning set of questions. So in a just a few words, let me give you the high level overview. On a later post we will go into more detail.

I’ve seen many companies with unlimited amounts of money watch helplessly while smaller, nimbler and smarter competitors ran circles around them with their “smarter” efforts. You quickly find out that making a real impact on your market is very rarely about money…rather it’s always about brains… if you’ve got more “smarts,” you’ll beat the “big guy” every time.

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Today John Haydon (@johnhaydon) from Corporate Dollar looks at some tools to make you be a more useful Twitter user for your followers.

Image by me and the sysop

If you’ve been using Twitter for a while, you might notice that some of the most successful folks on Twitter make a concerted effort to help out their friends / followers. And they seem to ask for nothing in return!

Many folks believe, including me, that this practice of selfless giving is central to all success, personal and professional.

The problem is that no matter how helpful you want to be, no one’s invented a way to get 25 hours out of a day.

Until Now

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