I’ve had a Twitter account for a while now, but didn’t actively start using it until this summer. I was coming out with a new website for photographers and thought Twitter would be a good way to spread the word, get feedback and generally interact with the photography community.

WHO I WANTED

Before I started, I had a very clear idea of who my ideal follower was. Generally it was one of two people:

Photography types – fans of photography, professional or amateur photographers, people who make photography gear or software – that crowd
Anyone interesting – the type person you would be happy to sit next to during a 2 hour flight. Maybe someone really funny or an expert in an interesting field.

At that point, I went through the same paces most new folks do – trying to build up a nice group of followers.

MY PLAN

After reading tons of blog posts and articles on the subject, I set out to try the “I’ll follow you, you follow me” strategy. Sure enough, after a few days I had gone from 20 followers to 100. The problem was, I really only knew about 4 of the followers. I could ask a question and nobody would ever reply. I started noticing that most of my new followers were just sending out ads or links to their websites or services. I don’t mind that in small doses, but I’m not interested in sitting down and reading the online classifieds.

PLAN B
My plan was clearly not working, so it was back to the blogs for more research. Somewhere along the way, I discovered this phenomenon of fiverr.com where you can basically pay someone $5 to do anything from design a logo to calling your girlfriend and breaking up for you. One of the very popular services was the people who would tweet your message to their 100k followers for a month for $5. Curious to try something new, I figured I’d throw five bucks at the problem and see what happened. It might also send some traffic to my new website.

After a few days, I was seeing the tweets, but didn’t notice any increase in my followers or website traffic – strange. These tweets were going out from dozens of accounts – each with 5-10K followers- so why wasn’t I getting flooded with traffic? Out of curiosity, I decided to change the outgoing tweet to “Is anyone actually reading this? If so, DM me and let me know” – kind of a digital message in a bottle. After a week, not a single response. Clearly, these followers were not actual humans looking to interact-just other broadcasters looking for one-way conversations.
SO WHAT NOW?

Although the last idea was clearly a failure, it was a pretty good learning experience for 5 bucks! What became clear is that numbers are not everything. I was under the impression that having 10,000 followers was better than having 100 followers. What I eventually discovered was that 100 engaged, active followers was actually better than 100,000 inactive followers. Unfortunately, the only tried and true way of finding those people is by letting it happen naturally – make friends, then make friends with their friends, and so on. Save your five bucks for when you need someone to break up with your girlfriend. By the way, if you happen to be a photographer, interesting or just willing to interact – we are still accepting new follower applications: @larryphoto

Best of luck!

© 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips.



Now Accepting Applications for Human Followers

I’m talking about mutual/reciprocal following.
When I started using Twunfollow to see who was unfollowing me, I was shocked by one single thing. Not the number of people unfollowing me, not a load of people who I thought of as great contacts, not anything negative at all.

The one thing that surprised me was the number of users who would follow me and unfollow me within a day or two. If I didn’t instantly follow back, I was swept aside. The user didn’t want genuine engagement, they simply wanted me to follow back. The initial follow was simply so another user would reciprocate and add to their following tally.

Most users using an aggressive follow/unfollow technique consist of:

• spam accounts;
• promotional accounts;
• people/brands trying to push their ’social media expertise’;
• users boasting how many followers they can get.

I don’t understand why anyone still sees value in obtaining so many pointless follows like this. Thousands of untargeted and unengaged followers don’t automatically bring you greater coverage or retweets.

Boasting the number of followers you have is no longer a big deal. A successful account is one that provides value and engagement. If you’re not making a genuine play, even your followers won’t help you out.

Yet people still pay for services that offer loads of followers when you cough up the cash. What’s the point?

If you must improve your follower numbers in an artificial way, here’s one method. Next time you’re followed by an account that’s chasing only the people who automatically follow back, check that user’s list of followers. All you need to do is try following all those users in the hope that they’ll follow you back too! That method costs nothing other than your time…good value, huh?

But it’s not good value, because most of those users won’t actually care about what you’ve got to say. It’s much better to have interested, relevant followers. Isn’t it?

© 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips.



The Pointless Chase of Follow/Unfollow

To add to that my twitter account eventually got banned and I had to start all over again. Before I get into the rest of the concepts in this post, I want to recommend that you read Malcom Gladwell’s book, The Tipping Point.

Quality trumps Quantity: The idea that 150 followers is all you need probably sounds crazy to people, especially if you are just starting out. In an interview I conducted with Scott Stratten (this year’s keynote speaker for Blogworld), he mentioned that he tweeted over 10,000 times before he shared any of his own content. 75% of those were not even retweets, but @replies. He was engaged in real conversations with real people. So I decided to experiment with the concept for a month. The byproduct was incredible. The traffic I got from twitter increased exponentially. To top it off I met a bunch of new, really interesting people. Before long I found them on my blog commenting and sharing my posts with their followers.

The Rule of 150: In The Tipping Point, Malcom Gladwell talks about a concept called Dunbar’s number, named for anthropologist Robin Dunbar. After studying numerous groups the number 150 kept coming up over and over again. The conclusion that Robin Dunbar came to was that the maximum number of social relationships a person can effectively manage is 150. Gladwell went on to say that 150 people is what you need to make an idea spread. What’s even more interesting to is that after you get past 150 something happens that makes it harder for an idea to spread. Hopefully you see where I’m going with this concept. I want to share one concrete example from my own twitter presence. On my @skooloflife account I have 2000 followers. I get an average of 10 tweets per post. On my @blogcastfm account (the one for the podcast I host), I have about 500 followers and most interviews I get close to 20 tweets. There’s no way you are realistically going to engage with effectively with thousands of followers unless you absolutely have no life. Think about the power of 150 people who love you and everything you do when compared to the thousands of people where you are just trying to stand out from the noise.

Creating Your 150
Creating your 150 is actually quite easy and if you follow the steps below you’ll have discovered your 150 in no time. I’ve written my process out below of how I do this using tweetdeck.

• Track Mentions: The major thing you should be tracking is mentions of your twitter name. Anytime somebody mentions your name, it’s an opportunity to start a conversation and acquire a new high quality follower.
• Track Retweets: You should also pay close attention to the people who are retweeting the posts you have written. It’s obvious that they like your content, otherwise they wouldn’t be sharing it.
• Create a List: I have a list called my inner circle. Anytime somebody mentions me or retweets me, I make a point to to add them to that list. If they are a spammer, they get blocked.
• Engage with the People on that List: Simply creating the list is not going to be enough. Once you have created your inner circle list, you need to start engaging with them.
  • Daily Conversations: I talk to the people on my inner circle list almost daily. I don’t talk to all 150 of them every single day. But I talk to at least a few of them and that’s all that you really need to do to start getting true value out of twitter.
  • Retweet their Stuff: I make a point to promote the stuff of the people in my inner circle, especially if they are newer than I am to the blogosphere. It’s much easier to form relationships with people who are at your same level or slightly below. People have a tendency to only try to form relationships with people who are more established. Don’t discredit the value of your peer group because they won’t be small forever.

Where to Start When You Are at Zero: If you are starting at zero, some of the above might seem more challenging, but it’s not. Just start with bloggers who you have been reading. This is why it’s important to read more than just the a-list blogs. Find people you think are interesting and just reach out to them. They’ll be happy to hear from you. That will be the start of creating your 150.

© 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips.



Why 150 Followers Is All You Really Need

TWITTER CHATS

Traffic: One of the most amazing things about twitter chats is the fact that they generate new visitors to your blog. Not only you do get traffic, you get very targeted visitors who are interested in the content on your blog. In one of the recent chats I participated in, I noticed that it actually provided a great opportunity to share relevant content with the people in the chat. To add to that, since the content was highly relevant to the discussion that was going on, the post I wrote about How to write 5 Blog Posts in 2 hours ended up getting a ton of additional retweets. 

Followers: Twitter chats actually result in you getting a ton of additional followers as well. Just like traffic, not only do you get followers, you get very targeted followers who are looking to connect with like minded people. One of the earliest mistakes I made with twitter was to use a mass follow tool and get thousands of followers. Ironically, 30 or so followers who I engage with on a fairly regular basis provide much more value than the thousands who were the byproduct of using mass follow tool.

3 Chats Worth Participating In

#Blogchat: This post was actually inspired by blogchat which is a weekly chat that his hosted by Mack Collier. Not only does Mack run #blogchat, but he provides an insane amount of value on his blog with immediately actionable tips in every post. I’ve noticed a significant jump in traffic just from following a few tips on his blog. It occurs every Sunday evening.

#JobHuntChat: While I’m not an active participant in this #jobhuntchat, many of my blogging friends are. This chat is run by a group HR/Career bloggers and can actually be a great resource for people looking for jobs. It runs every monday evening.

#U30Pro: This chat is one that I discovered just the other day and it seems to be extremely popular among the Gen Y crowd, who also conveniently make a big chunk of the blogosphere. One of my blogging friends told me this chat has been a goldmine of networking opportunities for him and from monitoring a recent #U3-Pro chat I can see why.

2 Steps to Participate in a Twitter Chat

Following the Chat: Following the twitter chat that you want to join is pretty simple. Using a tool like tweetdeck just setup a column with the hashtag for the chat you want to participate in.

Replying: Once you are in the chat, if people ask questions, you can reply to them and just include the hashtag for the chat at the end of your reply.

I would imagine that there is some sort of twitter chat for almost any industry. If there is not a chat for your industry or niche, then it’s a great opportunity for you to make yourself the hub of a chat, just as Mack Collier has done with #blogchat.

© 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips.



Twitter Chats: A Goldmine of Traffic, Followers and Knowledge

So recently I’ve resolved get better. I’ve RT’d my followers tweets, focused less of my tweets on my blog, and started building relationships. But I’ve discovered something crazy: guest posting rocks for twitter. To start the month of February, after over six months of twittering, I had 347 followers. As of today I have 680. In that time, I had two guest posts go up on Daily Blog Tips and Write to Done. After we published the guest post on Daily Blog Tips, we went from 400 followers to about 575 in one week. We gained nearly 20 followers a day. The next week, when we had a guest post on Write to Done, we added about 75 more.

Guest posts won’t just help your blog, they help you get followers. In the last month, I’ve doubled my number of followers, and guest posting is the reason why. I’ve gotten more followers from guest posts then finding people in my niche on wefollow, or through random searches. Most importantly, I’ve found better followers who actually want to read what I have to write.

The bottom line: guest posting works. It will get you more followers on Twitter. Here’s how:

1. You Need a Catchy Title – To get an article to spread on twitter, you need a good twitter title. The catchier your title, the better. But it also has to be clear. Helpful titles (like “9 More Ways to promote Your Blog Offline”, or “10 Writing Rules You Can’t break…And How To Break Them”) will spread like twitter wildfire. Check out these tips for better titles on your tweets.

2. Write Great Content – Write a good guest post. If what you write is awesome, tweeters–particularly honest, genuine tweeters–will want to RT what you have to say. The best way to get people talking (or tweeting) is to give them something to talk (or tweet) about.

3. Be a Good Guest Poster - Make sure you follow good guest poster etiquette. Check out these links over at Problogger for tips on how to be an exceptional guest poster. If one guest post gets you 125 new followers, a second may bring in 100 more.

4. Aim for Popular Blogs – Popular blogs–like Problogger, CopyBlogger, etc–automatically get tons of RTs. A lot of these RTs aren’t honest, they come from twitter aggregates, but still you’ll get a lot more exposure than you would have on your small twitter account or blog. Leverage their size.

5. Give Your Best Stuff Away – At least in the beginning. Platforms–again, like Problogger, CopyBlogger, etc–will get you more eye balls, which means more RTs, which means more followers. Use that opportunity to get your unique, fresh perspective out there.

6. Follow your Re-tweeters – Most blogs have a Tweetmeme button. Click on it, and follow the people who liked your post. You can also do this by searching for your post’s title on Twitter. If someone liked your insights once, chances are they’ll like your insights in the future.

7. Thank your Re-tweeters – If you have the time, this lets people know you appreciate what they have done for you.

8. Promote Your Guest Post - Re-tweet your post and see if it strikes a chord with your followers. You should already be doing this.

© 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips.



8 Tips on Guest Posting Your Way to Twitter Dominance

Of these X number of people you follow, how many of them provide valuable content on a consistent basis? Are there people you follow so memorable and entertaining that you hit retweet before you even read their newest tweet? I know I have.

The point is, these are the people that can help you discover better people to follow on Twitter. Let’s take for example @JoethePlumber. At first mention, you chuckle to yourself after recalling his hilarious tweet from last night:

“What an awful day. At every house I visited today, I had to constantly remind people that my real name is Samuel “Joe” Wurzelbacher. FML”

Twitter is about following people who share the same interests and tastes as you do. If @JoethePlumber likes to tweet about Nascar, politics, and his name all day, then it’s likely you’ll find that the people he follows also enjoy tweeting about Nascar, politics, and their name.

For example, I have an interest in web design. I start by scanning my list of people whom I currently follow, searching for someone who tweets a lot about web design. Let’s use @smashingmag.

Important note of advice before proceeding! Take a look at the person’s total number of followers. If the ratio between followers and followed persons is close to one, then it’s likely that the person has an automatic follow feature set up. In other words, this person probably is not “keeping up” with the same 20,000 people who follows him/her.

Alright, let’s continue. Taking a look at @smashingmag’s statistics, we see that he follows 376 people and has 103,542 followers. Not too shabby. Best of all, these 376 people he follows is likely people he intends on staying updated on.

So, let’s check out the list of people @smashingmag follows.

Looking at the first results, @usabilityblog catches my eye immediately. First, I own a blog. Second, I care about usability, which is a part of web design. Perfect fit, so far. Let’s see @usabilityblog’s bio:

Huh? Göttingen? Sorry, man. I speak English only. Sometimes Chinese. Spanish if I’m having a really good day.

So @usabilityblog was a swing and a miss. Don’t lose hope yet though. Let’s try it again.

Scrolling further down the list again, I notice @designshack. The username contains the word design. Bingo! Let’s check this one out!

According to @designshack’s bio, he/she/they enjoy providing “Daily news and inspiration for designers.” Another very good signal.

The next step is to actually read the timeline (the “tweets”) Man! I think I just wet my pants cause that’s what you call valuable content! Now, if I correctly follow the tutorials provided, I might just be able to produce a breath-taking Contact page.

Without further hesitation, I click on the follow button. Time will tell, whether this decision proves beneficial or regrettable.

Image by Geek and Poke

How do you decide on who you want to follow on Twitter? Let me know in the comments section below.

© 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips.



The Best Way to Find Better People to Follow on Twitter

I currently only have about 170 followers and so gaining 1,000 new followers may seem a little ambitious.

But I am up to the challenge!

Here’s my 10 point plan to get 1,000 new followers this year. (This works out to about 85 new followers per month.)

1. Tweet about new blog posts

Whenever I post something new on my blog I will also tweet about it. This may sound obvious but it’s worth mentioning. If you have great content you need to make sure that it gets tweeted.

2. Tweet More Often
In 2009 I didn’t tweet every day. There were some weeks where I didn’t tweet at all.

I need to change this and make 3 tweets every day.

If every tweet garners me 1 new follower then tweeting 3 times a day should give me 3 new followers each day or over 1,000 followers by the end of the year.

I could tweet more often than 3 times a day but I fear that it will irritate some of my followers.

Since I seldom add new stuff to my blog more than once a day I have made a list of old but valuable blog posts. It is from this list I will pull from to tweet about.

3. Develop a schedule and Tweet at the best times
I have found that some times of the day are far better for tweeting than others. It seems that 9 AM to 5 PM Pacific Time are the best times to tweet.

I don’t really have any strong empirical evidence and I haven’t run numerous controlled experiments. It’s just what I have observed with my own tweets.

So I have developed a schedule to ensure that I tweet about a couple things around 9 AM and again at noon.

Hopefully tweeting at the right times will result in more retweets and more followers for me.

4. Make it easy for visitors to tweet about my site
If you use WordPress there is a simple plug-in that puts a “ReTweet This” button on every blog post. It allows visitors to retweet your post with a click of button. It also displays how many people have tweeted about it.

It’s called Tweetcount and is a free download.

5. Invite people to follow me at the end of each post
When people finish reading a post on my blog they ask themselves, “What should I do now?”

It’s at this point that you should have a link inviting them to follow you on twitter and get more fabulous updates about the topic at hand.

6. Put a link to my twitter account in my e-mail signature
I receive e-mails every day from different people asking me how to get traffic to their website. And I respond to everyone of them

By putting a link to my twitter profile at the bottom of these e-mail responses I can get more followers. I have no idea why I didn’t do this before.

7. Have a contest with the winners being picked for my twitter followers
I’m not sure exactly how I plan to do this but I hope to have it figured out in a few weeks.

The first thing is to find a prize that people actually care about. It has to be something that they would be willing to follow me for the chance to win.

I run a blog about how to get traffic to your website (My blog is called Nick’s Traffic Tricks) and I tweet about things related to traffic generation. So I want to gain followers that are interested in this topic. As a result I want to select a prize that will attract these kind of people.

If I simply give away an iPod I will probably get lots of followers and most will not be interested in what I tweet about. The results will be that I will gain lots of followers in the short run but most of them will eventually drop off.

So the prize I select has to be something that entices the type of followers that I want.

(If you have any suggestions on how to successfully run a contest on twitter please leave a comment below!)

8. Write for TwiTip
I wrote a guest post for TwiTip a month or so ago. That was probably the single best thing I ever did to get more followers on twitter. Within a few days I had 40 new followers.

I’m going to try to write for TwiTip twice a month. This should result in 80 new followers each month.

9. Leverage my email list
I have an e-mail list of over 1,000 people that receive my traffic tips on regular basis. And I plan to leverage this list to get more followers on twitter.

I will add link to my twitter account at the bottom of each e-mail that I send to my list. I just need to think of a way to really entice them to click the link and follow me.

I will also e-mail my list every time I post something new on my blog. At the bottom of each blog post is an invitation to follow me on twitter and that will result in a few more followers.

10. Submit each new blog post to StumbleUpon and OnlyWire
Submitting your website to StumbleUpon and OnlyWire will result in more traffic to your website.

And more traffic means more people are reading your blog posts and seeing your invitation to follow you on twitter.

I’ve personally seen a viral effect with StumbleUpon that increased my twitter following. A couple months ago I posted a fantastic way to get backlinks to your website quickly with little effort. (This was something that my readers loved!)

Without my knowing, many of my readers stumbled the post sending a ton of traffic to my blog. A side effect of this was that there was a jump in the number of people following me on twitter.

If you do nothing else make sure you stumble your content. I believe this is so important that I will actually stumble your content as well. Just go to: http://nickstraffictricks.com/can-i-stumble-your-site/

© 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips.



How I Will Add 1,000 Twitter Followers This Year

#followfriday is a great idea, at least on paper. You recommend your favorite tweeps for others to follow. It’s all about sharing, right?

In practice, it doesn’t really work like that. Most people just mindlessly flood long lists of Twitter usernames every Friday, forgetting that Twitter is a social media, not a broadcast media.

Twitter users have started skipping the recommendations just like they skip blatant marketing tweets. One Friday I received seven #followfriday mentions – and not a single new follower.

So how could we make #followfriday more social and thus more useful?

I propose using a personalized approach to #followfriday. You ask others for recommendations (such as “female sports bloggers” or “witty dads from Arizona”), either as a normal tweet or by posing a question to someone. They reply with names of Twitter users – preceding the initial @ with a period or something else, if they want others to see their recommendations. All tweets should be tagged with #ff or #followfriday, of course.

This would decrease the annoying flooding and increase the odds of the recommendations actually getting read – and make it much more sensible to track #followfriday recommendations from strangers.

Obviously you could also send your followers a recommendation even without any prompt. Have several followers who love reality shows? Introduce them to each other! By doing this you not only help others, but boost the chances of them a) introducing good folks to you b) recommending you to someone else. And of course, you come off as a nice, helpful person, which doesn’t hurt whether you tweet for a company or just for fun.

Feel free to post your own recommendation in the comments – but keep it to a certain niche, whether that’s female sports bloggers, witty Arizonian dads or people posting great silent movies on YouTube.

[image: sxc.hu]

© 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips.



#followfriday Revolution

Could a solution to the FollowFriday conundrum finally be at hand? I’m not sure, but @PhilBaumann has a great idea.

If you’re a regular reader of this blog, you may have read my April post, Follow Friday, too Much of a Good Thing? In that post, I discussed some of the many Pros and Cons of #FollowFriday, especially why so many people are becoming disenchanted with the meme, and offered some recommendations that I feel would improve the FollowFriday experience. Unfortunately, while many people do seem to be making better recommendations recently, my personal FollowFriday experience still leaves me frustrated.

Dude, what’s your Problem?

Just to be clear, as I stated in my previous post, I love the concept of FollowFriday; a day set aside for Twitter users to recommend to their followers other people whom they enjoy following. It’s a great idea that helps users find new and (hopefully) fun and interesting people. And while it’s certainly the quality of followers, not quantity that counts, I’ve met many great tweeters through FollowFriday and, if you participate, I’m sure you have too.

Just Names. Endless names.

Unfortunately, as with all things “internet,” there were no rules about how to participate and regardless of whatever etiquette may have emerged, it’s far from universally accepted. As a result, people made up their own rules and, subsequently, made recommendations in ways that suited them and not necessarily their followers at large. Consequently, their resulting tweets are often filled with endless lists of names. No explanations. No qualifications. Just names.

Additionally, FollowFriday tweets can flood your tweet-stream. They clog the flow and make finding interesting or important tweets difficult, if not impossible. And of course, those names may not be real tweeters at all, but the addresses of fake accounts that are designed to lure unsuspecting tweeters for sinister purposes. Just take a look at your own tweet-stream on Friday and I’m sure you’ll see what I mean.

It’s all Academic

From a purely academic perspective, the wide variety of recommendation styles that have emerged is fascinating. In my previous post I identified the most prominent of these styles, and named them as follows:

• Blind Recommendations
• Packed Recommendations
• Clustered Recommendations
• Pretender Recommendations
• Automated Recommendations
• Recommendation Rings
• Recommendation Phishing (or Phriday Phishing, as I now like to call it)

While I am sure there are more permutations and that new ones have emerged since April, I have since stopped keeping track (leave a comment or tweet me @NealWiser if you know of new ones). However, one thing remains clear; for many people, FollowFriday just does not work as intended.

FollowFriday Today

Despite all this, FollowFriday is thriving. Micah Baldwin, the “father” of FollowFriday recently provided some interesting stats on his site Learn to Duck:

• #followfriday tweets hit a high of ~240,000
• #followfriday blog posts hit a high of 746
• #followfriday Flickr photos hit a high of 10 (really? photos?)

Clearly, FollowFriday remains a popular phenomenon and while I have noticed some improvements in how some people make their recommendations, there are still far too many who simply don’t exercise good FollowFriday etiquette. Proper etiquette could include (but is certainly not limited to) the following:

• Limit your recommendations to only the absolute best people.
• Explain why you recommend someone.
• Spread your tweets throughout the day via scheduling services like Tweetlater (currently rebranding themselves as SocialOomph, Futuretweet or Hootsuite.
• If making multiple recommendations, send them in small, logically organized groups.

Thank God, It’s FollowFriday (Not!)

Regrettably, I’ve come to dread FollowFridays. Not only for the above-mentioned reasons, but also because I feel that if someone recommends me (and I’m genuinely honored if you do), I feel an obligation to reciprocate, even if I don’t have to or want to. Additionally, and I’m sure many of you will agree, my schedule is so consistently packed that I have little time or energy to make yet another list, provide reasons for each recommendation, then tweet it.

I’ve tried developing systems to simplify the process. Two examples I used:

• I used TweetLater’s Keyword Alert email service to provide me with a record of everyone I’ve tweeted with that week as well as tweets where I am mentioned. Surely, if I’m tweeting with these people, they must be worthy. Unfortunately, this required me to scour each day’s emails and pick out candidates one at a time. Furthermore, the TweetLater email doesn’t list my DMs, and aren’t those with whom I DM, by virtue of having a deeper interaction with me, better candidates?
• I also modified the search process. By using the Mentions and Direct Messages columns in Tweetdeck, I didn’t have to sort through a week’s worth of daily emails. However, I still had to scour through long lists of tweets and record both the names and rationale for each recommendation. Still too much work.

I’ve tried other solutions as well, but they all suffered from the same problem; too many steps.

Then, On FollowFriday, August 21, my friend Phil Baumann gave me an epiphany. With a single tweet from Phil, the dark clouds of my FollowFriday despair parted and a golden ray of hope shown down upon me from on high. Could this really be a solution to FollowFriday?

Who is @PhilBaumann and What’s his Big Idea?

Phil Bauman is a friend, fellow blogger and Registered Nurse who blogs about the impact of social media on health care (check out his excellent blog, Phil Baumann Online). He’s also appeared on panels at several social media conferences and, to put it mildly, Phil really knows what he’s talking about.

Interestingly enough, Phil was motivated by Facebook’s recent acquisition of Friendfeed. According to Phil, “With FriendFeed’s future in doubt, I looked for ways to more creatively use Twitter. One of the things I experimented with was to… view my Favorites as a substitute for Follow Friday recommendations and as a way to share tweets that I find interesting without bombarding my followers with Retweets.”

As is appropriate for something involving Twitter, Phil introduced his solution by tweeting it.

Phil’s idea to mark tweets from people he would want to recommend on FollowFriday by favoriting them was not only elegant in its simplicity, but tweeting his recommendations was just as simple; he just tweeted the URL of his Favorites page.

To be sure, no solution is perfect. For me, Phil’s idea does suffer from a few drawbacks, such as:

• Not every tweet I Favorite comes from someone I necessarily want to recommend (don’t worry; I’m not referring to you).
• I Favorite a lot of tweets for a variety of reasons, but while publicly available, they are not necessarily tweets I planned on sharing.

Regardless of any potential limitations, Phil’s tweet is important because it doesn’t try to reinvent the wheel. Instead, it uses an existing Twitter feature in a new way. And while there are variations, such as pointing people to your Following page instead of your Favorites page, as mentioned above, you may not necessarily want to recommend everyone you follow either.

On the other hand, Twitter could easily resolve the issue by creating a FollowFriday feature similar to Favoriting where a user clicks a button on a tweet to place that tweeter on their FollowFriday list. Then a link to that page could be scheduled to automatically tweet every Friday. Or an entrepreneurial app developer, such as PowerTwitter (get their firefox add-on here) or Favstar could add a similar feature to their respective apps.

While Phil’s solution may not be the perfect solution to FollowFriday (and if you don’t use your Favorites often, I suggest you try it), it does help us tame the FollowFriday beast. But perhaps more importantly, it is both a testament to how incredibly flexible the Twitter platform can be and proof that innovation on Twitter never ends.

© 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips.



Did @PhilBaumann Just Save Follow Friday?

I regularly attend tweetupmellers. At first I assumed that all tweetups and get togethers have the same sense of community, but I soon learnt that there was something different. I quickly learnt that this was due to the organizers efforts to ensure people felt like they were part of a larger community.

10 Ways To Create A Community Around Your Tweetup

1. Have a twitterwall

One of the great features of the last few tweetups has been the twitter wall. It is simply a search on Twitterfall which is then projected onto a screen in the back corner of The Social. It is a huge talking point and really added to the fun of the evening.

There were some people who tweeted simply to bump someone else’s name from the top. There were also times when the whole room went silent as there was a mass update of tweets.

2. Have a game on the website

If you go to the attendance page and click attendance again, the page turns into an cute game, similar to pong, were you try and eliminate the attendance. Most people are unaware of this but it occasionally goes viral within our community.

3. Get a group photo

The group photo has quickly become a tradition. Usually, a member of the media team will bring a DSLR and get a group photo before people start to leave. This photo usually gets a lot of retweets the next day and really helps people to remember how much fun they had.

4. Create Name Tags

The name tags were a simple idea. At the last tweetup, we got name tags printed out with our name, avatar and the tweetup sponsor on it. We were able to then clip these to our outfits. They got a lot of comments.

5. The Unofficial media team

There are four of us that have unofficially become part of the media team. At first, I was confused as to how a tweetup could have a media team. I soon found out it was the term for those who brought their cameras and shared content from the night. I always bring my camera so was quickly inducted and found that people loved sharing the photos.

6. Have a flickr pool

The flickr pool is simply a group where members share their photos. There are usually just three or four people sharing their images, but between us we get a lot of photos. This gives the other attendees a central place to find the photos without hunting through individual twitpic and flickr accounts.

7. Hold a ustream sesion

For the last few tweetups, we have streamed the tweetup live. Now, this has had some technical problems, especially in terms of lighting. It is something we want to improve of. But it has been a huge success.

Those who weren’t able to come drop into the ustream session to say hi. Sometimes they talk to the others in the chatroom. They’ll tweet in comments about what they see and request that certain people sing or dance in front of the camera.

I think this is a really innovative and fun idea.

8. Ask attendees to write on the official blog

The tweetupmellers blog is updated after each Tweet Up, and usually by a different person. This allows people to show their skills and share their content. A really successful post was by Neil Creek, whose Meetheads idea was really embraced.

9. Have an interactive attendance page

The team has a created an attendance page where people can register whether they are coming or not. The app gets the data from twitter and allows people to change their status. This page is pretty popular on the day prior to the tweetup and gives people the chance to connect with those they don’t know prior to meeting in person.

10. Create groups on social networks

So far, Tweetupmellers has an group on Linked In and a facebook fan page. This is a way that the users can connect in whatever manner they choose afterward.

Your turn.

I’ve only gone a small number of local tweetups and Tweetupmellers has been my favourite. Do you have any tips for creating a community around your twitter event?

© 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips.



10 Ways To Create A Community Around Your Tweetup