Twitip

By CarolAnn Bailey-Lloyd. Follow her @CarolAnnB.

Now that you’ve joined the twitter bandwagon, you’re trying to figure out the best way to attract quality followers to your twittosphere. I don’t know too many folks who want a wave of spam bots following them, but sometimes that’s what we might end up with if we’re not careful with our twitter approach. What’s a twitter newbie to do when she’s new to the twitter-scene? Use the following twitter tips to create a presence that’s both clear and notable: (more…)

By Kathy Colaiacovo of My Twitter VA – Follow her @mytwitrva

Twitter is now a daily part of television, radio and online news reports.  News reporters or hosts on television can be heard saying statements such as “…and on Twitter today…” or “send us a message on Twitter”.  It is becoming common place and many are jumping in the fray for good reason… when used properly, social media can be a great boon to your business.  The key words in that statement being “used properly”.

Outsourcing tasks to specialists who have the needed skills is a solution for many when it comes to launching on the various social media channels. Outsourcing works well because you hire someone to do work more efficiently than you can, giving you more time to work on your area of expertise. After all, your time is better spent directly on the revenue generating tasks so you can grow and prosper your business. (more…)

By Chris Johnson of Guerrilla.me – Follow him @genuinechris

Like you, I get bombarded with followers telling people how to make money on Twitter.   And, maybe some of those systems work, I don’t care to learn. They aren’t who I want to be or who I represent.  I do make a ton of money from Twitter.  None of it’s automated.  Because Twitter… is about relationships.

Part 1: Your Own Followers

I started with my own followers. I went through, unscientifically, and looked at the websites that they had.  I keyed in on obvious and easy stuff I could help with–improving blogs, super basic SEO (i.e. getting rid of keyword stuffing), or doing some writing work for languishing blogs.  I’d look at the blog, and pitch a specific service with a price.  Again, only people with obvious low hanging fruit. (more…)

by Chris Allison of neboweb (@neboweb)

As Twitter continues to define its niche, many companies are hiring individuals for the sole purpose of being the brand’s face on Twitter. For companies with a bigger grasp of the online scene, these individuals often do much more than just Tweet, but being the brand’s bird is still a crucial part of the job. Since being a professional micro-blogger is a new experience for most people starting the position, I thought it would be helpful to offer some advice based off of my experiences. (more…)

I’ve decided to lump the last three parts of Lessons from the Evolution of Blogging series by Crystal N. Woods, from Conscious Evolution, Success and Self Esteem (@CrystalsQuest) here in one post. You can read the first five parts at the following:

Part 1 – Journaling
Part 2 – Link Lists
Part 3 – Conversations
Part 4 – Thought Leadership
Part 5 – Monetisation

Please share in the comments how you felt about this series! Would you like to see more series posts like this, or do you prefer the shorter, one-off posts?

Twitter Tips for Beginners: Lessons from the Evolution of Blogging Part 6 – Corporatisation

Corporate Blogs only started really emerging within the last few years.  Apple, in particular, used blogging effectively in the launch of the iPhone – and it put them in a unique position to deal with teething problems when it first came out.  After their notable success, I saw other corporations start following suit.

Corporations only tend to adopt a trend once they are convinced it’s gone mainstream, or unless it’s going to give them enough of a competitive advantage to offset the ‘risk’.  When corporate blogging started emerging, the conventional media changed how they portrayed blogs – from thinking that blogs were a fringe element, to almost an unspoken assumption that this was a solid trend.  More stories about blogging started hitting the papers and radio, especially of the “blogging is dead” kind (that usually only happens when a trend is alive and well, and just taking off, funnily enough).

You’d have seen the same thing recently with twitter. (more…)

The following is Part 5 of a series of posts by Crystal N. Woods, from
Conscious Evolution, Success and Self Esteem (Follow her @CrystalsQuest) You can also read Part 1 – Journaling, Part 2 – Link Lists,  Part 3 – Conversations, and Part 4 – Thought Leadership.

Making money online is not only one of the most frequent topics in blogging, it’s also one of the hottest searches on any search engine, and it’s becoming ever more popular on twitter too.

I’ve left this topic until now because most of the people who start out with the sole objective of creating money making blogs, and more recently twitter accounts, do tend to be a bit obvious.  If they succeed, they also tend to get short-lived success, mostly along the lines of niche blogs – they build one tiny area up to be profitable, then move on to another area.  We’re seeing something similar on twitter where people are setting up multiple accounts. (more…)

The following is Part 4 of a series of posts by Crystal N. Woods, from
Conscious Evolution, Success and Self Esteem (Follow her @CrystalsQuest) You can also read Part 1 – Journaling and Part 2 – Link Lists or Part 3 – Conversations.

As blogging went mainstream, and more newcomers started flooding the market, the earliest bloggers were given a bit of momentum forward into the online equivalent of celebrity status – they were the trend-setters.

Not all of them took advantage of this push, though, while some of the newcomers rapidly adapted to blogging and took it by storm, getting their own place high up in the heirarchy with amazing speed.

The difference between these thought leaders and the majority of bloggers is the same difference we see affecting who gets promotions at work, makes it as a ’star’ in Hollywood, or even gets nominated to run the local Rotary Club.  It’s simply this: in order to lead others, you have to be willing to get out the front and lead others. (more…)

The following is Part 3 of a series of posts by Crystal N. Woods, from
Conscious Evolution, Success and Self Esteem (Follow Crystal @CrystalsQuest) You can read Part 1 of Lessons From The Evolution of Blogging – Journaling and Part 2 – Link Lists here.

The Blogging community grew bigger as more blogs were started, and existing blogs shared the love by linking to them.  Of course if you know SEO, you’d know that this meant the search engines started paying attention to these, and more people started discovering blogs. The community stopped being small, but started to distinguish between the well known and established bloggers, and the newcomers who were still learning the ropes.

This is where conversations come in.  Bloggers would read a new post by someone, with their editorial comments on it, and write an answering post on their own blogs. Naturally, this added fuel to the SEO fire, as cross linking gave blog sites some serious weight.  As the art took off and gained momentum, and more people wanted to start blogging themselves, software started making it easier to create and update your blogs, and eventually the ability to comment was born.

Enter the era of interactivity. (Don’t try saying that after a few drinks, ok?) (more…)

The following is Part 2 of a series of posts by Crystal N. Woods, from
Conscious Evolution, Success and Self Esteem (Follow Crystal @CrystalsQuest) You can read Part 1 of Lessons From The Evolution of Blogging here.

Since my last post, I hope you’ve had fun playing around with your storyline.  This time, we’re going to look at how blogs shifted away from journaling, and started becoming lists of links.

Initially blogs were few and far between so, having shared themselves by journaling in this new medium, there was a sense of being part of a small community.  Bloggers weren’t all that common still, so when a new blog was found other bloggers would link back to it, providing a way to follow other blogs for people who’d discovered (and liked) reading blogs.

These list posts over time evolved to include linking to other sites the blogger found interesting – creating a kind of filter for all the information on the web, through the lens of someone’s interests.  If you shared those interests, you had a quick way to find things you’d probably like, without having to hunt them all down yourself.  That meant people that weren’t bloggers, friends or family, started coming to visit these blogs, and their popularity grew. (more…)

Well, TwiTip readers… I’ve got one heckuva treat for you! Crystal N. Woods, from
Conscious Evolution, Success and Self Esteem has SO kindly taken the time to write a series of posts for TwiTip for beginners, that I’m honored to share with you over the next week or so. Take it not only as a series for Twitter newbies though… it’s something we should all read as a reminder of Twitiquette! (Follow Crystal @CrystalsQuest)

Lessons from the Evolution of Blogging Part 1: Journaling

Twitter is called “micro-blogging” because, even though it’s limited to only 140 characters, it’s evolved out of, and is still similar to, blogging.  That’s great, because while Twitter may be new, blogging has developed over time, transforming from early personal journals to where they are now, and every stage has grown it a bit closer to an art form, until it’s now recognised as a fully-fledged profession. (more…)