Twitip

More and more businesses are looking to get onto Twitter – in this post Michael Gray shares some tips on how to get set up effectively.

As the popularity of micro-blogging continues to grow, it’s going to become a tool used by advertisers and marketers. In the same way that running a corporate or business blog is different from running a personal blog, running a corporate or business twitter profile is different from running a personal twitter profile.

Secure Your Name

Your username on twitter is limited to 15 characters, if your company name is 15 characters or less, or can be reasonably abbreviated to 15 characters or less secure it as soon as possible. Avoid using hyphens or underscores if possible, they almost always cause complications down the road. Even if you aren’t planning on using it right away, secure the name, as many people have had reported twitter is less than expeditious when addressing trademark issues.

If you have a large company and are going to have multiple people representing you, decide if you will be using one account also called a role account, or using multiple accounts. If you are using multiple accounts use a naming convention like IBMJoe or DellKathy. If you are using one account for multiple people don’t hide that fact. If it makes sense sign the tweet “@marysmith thanks for the tip ~john” or “@johnsmith thanks for letting us know ~ms”.

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Today Dennis Goedegebuure from The Next Corner (follow him at @TheNextCorner) makes some predictions about Twitter in 2009.

2008 showed an unbelievable growth for Twitter as THE place for microblogging. With competitors like Pownce closing their doors, it seems that Twitter has the stronger cards to become the sole survivor in this field.

The Twitter ecosystem is expanding so fast, that the switching costs for users are becoming even higher the more they get connected in the network. Twitter has the network advantages. For Twitter I expect the break into mainstream will come in 2009, if their server park can handle the load!

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Hit the ‘Twitter Gym’ and keep your Twitter Muscles in Shape – In this post Snow (follow her @snowvandermore) from el vigilante shares a few tips on how to keep ‘Twitter Fit’.

Like anything in life, if you don’t use it, you lose it. The same holds true for your newly found Twitter muscles.

Now that you’ve got your Jack Johnson and your Tom O’Leary working in sweet, subtle harmony and the follower numbers to prove it — don’t pull a Jake LaMotta and let your fab turn to flab.

If you want your blog, your website, your business, your following to bust out in the days and weeks to come, you are in the driver’s seat, mi amigo — keep moving, learning, developing and growing. Put on your Richard Simmons shorty-shorts and start sweatin ‘ — there’s a million plus twitter users that might need what you have to sell — be it a product, a service, or just good old-fashioned camaraderie. All you have to do is do it — but do it right.

There are no redux’s in a twitterstream — more than a few lifeless bodies float along in the debris of what used to be. The ultimate price for not paying attention to relationships.

Image by Crocidillicus
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This post on TwellowHood, a tool to find local twitter users is by Billy Nab from South Platte Web Design (follow him at @southplatte.)

Have you ever wondered who is using Twitter that is close by? Looking to connect to people in your city? TwellowHood is a new service launched this month by the folks over at WebProNews, which allows Twitter users to do just that. Think of it as a way to find your neighbor on Twitter.

The initial page is very simple, consisting of a few ad links across the very top, the nifty Twellow and TwellowHood logos. Those are followed by a map of the United States and Canada. Sorry for users of other countries, at this time only the US and Canada based Twitter users are listed, though the site does note they are working to provide access for users in other countries. It should be noted the parent service Twellow does list international users.

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Time for another Poll – Do You Tweet from a Mobile Device?

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Looking forward to your answer!

This video has been around for a while but I wanted to include it for those new to Twitter who might need an introduction.

Thanks to the team at Common Craft for putting it together.

Just a short note to wish all TwiTip readers a very happy Christmas. I’m taking the day off today (although am sure I’ll update my followers on Twitter during the day ahead) but I did want to say thanks for your support this year and have a happy holiday period!

Normal posting will return tomorrow!

PS: I’ve written a few more Christmas reflections over at ProBlogger today.

A recent and much anticipated development at Twitter over the last 24 hours has been the addition of their new ‘name search‘.

Now you can search for people either by their username, first name or last name. Results are displayed in order of follower numbers.

Results seem a little buggy but it is better than nothing – although I’m still using Twellow if I need to find someone.

They are all the rage at the moment – Christmas Avatars with Santa hats, snowflakes or other Christmasy paraphernalia. Many Twitter users do it manually but if you’re Photoshop Challenged check out Twixenate – a Twitter Profile Picture Editor that even I can use!

It’s as simple as adding your Twitter Username, allowing Twixenate to grab your current Avatar and then adding the effect that you want to create.

Lets do one quickly for Mr Arrington (@techcrunch).

1. Type in his username

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There has been lots of good Twitter news, reports and ideas around this week:

The State of the Twittersphere [REPORT]

Hubspot has produced their State of the Twittersphere report. A few stats from it:

• 35% of Twitter users have 10 or fewer followers
• The average number of followers is 70
• The average number of people that Twitter users follow is 69
• Top locations on Twitter include London, San Francisco, New York and Chicago

Here it is in full:

State of the Twittersphere – Get more Information Technology

ReadWriteWeb takes the stats in the report projects forwards – concluding that Twitter would take 36 years to catch Facebook.

Facebook, Twitter and Traffic [STATS]

Also on the topic of Facebook and Twitter – Jacob Cass reports that he gets more traffic from Facebook than Twitter despite having fewer Facebook friends than Twitter followers and shows some stats from his metrics package.

I tweeted this link earlier today and had a heap of people tell me that their own results are quite the opposite. I decided to check my own and mine are completely different to Jacob. To my ProBlogger blog I had 11,500 visitors come from Twitter.com over the last 30 days and only 1500 come from Facebook. My links to new posts go up on both as Jacob describes.

Here on TwiTip the stats are even more one sided towards Twitter – although that’s skewed because this blog is about Twitter of course.

I don’t dispute Jacobs results – but would argue that it is always going to vary from site to site and topic to topic.

ReWeeting [ANALYSIS]

Pistachio Consulting has a good analytical post this week on the Phenomenon of Retweeting

Twitter for Business [VIDEO]

Laura from Pistachio also has a great presentation on the topic of Twitter for Business. It is well worth the look.

Check out her powerpoint deck here.

Twitter and Legal Ramifications [LAW]

Law.com has an article up talking about how tweets could get employers in legal trouble. Sounds like a whole lot of articles we saw a few years back on the dangers of blogging to companies.

Round Follow Buttons! [DESIGN]

And the news of the week – Twitterrati notes that follow buttons went from square to round!