The study also revealed that 75 percent of Twitter username and password samples collected online were identical to those used for email accounts.

The sensitive user data was gathered from blogs, torrents, online collaboration services and other sources. It was found that 43 percent of the data was leaked from online collaboration tools while 21 percent of data was leaked from blog postings. Meanwhile, torrents and users of other social hubs were responsible for leaking 10 percent and 18 percent of user data respectively.

BitDefender warned social media users to be careful when setting up passwords for Twitter platforms and email. The researchers managed to verify the leaked email accounts and found that 75 percent of users had one common password for Twitter and accessing their email. Additionally, the study revealed that 87 percent of email IDs, user names, and passwords gathered from various sources were still active.

Cybercriminals could easily use this sensitive user data to hijack email accounts and Twitter profiles and can further be used to spread spam and malware across those platforms.

BitDefender has advised users to be extra careful while creating passwords for Twitter and email accounts and avoid using the same password just for the sake of convenience. Considering the fact that online collaboration tools are not that adept in protecting sensitive user information, users have been told to be more careful the next time they decided to share their emails, user names and passwords with a third party website.

The study conducted by BitDefender follows the release of a torrent containing a list of 171 million Facebook users, complete with their names and Facebook URLs. The security researcher who released the list for download explained that he was able to extract the names and URLs of Facebook users from a directory offered by the website itself. Facebook has maintained that the directory only contains the information users have themselves chosen to make public and can also be found via search engines.

© 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips.



75% Use Same Password for Twitter and Email, Study Finds

“Everything has beauty, but not everyone sees it.”
- Confucius

I admit that when I first signed up for Twitter in the spring of 2008, I didn’t really “get it”. It took months for me to “see the beauty”, even though the awesomeness of Twitter had been there all along.

Twitter really came alive for me when I began to see it as a mirror for life. I realized that Twitter teaches us everything we’ll ever need to know in 5 simple tips:

1. We Are Interconnected

Twitter is an interconnected web of life. What I tweet has an effect on you, and what you tweet has an effect on me. Twitter thrives on interconnectivity.

Just like Twitter, our lives depend on interconnection. We’re connected to each other, and we’re connected to the planet. When we’re aware that our existence depends on this interconnectivity, we live more compassionately.

2. What We Give Out, We Get Back

Most people have realized by now that selfishness doesn’t get you very far on Twitter. If all your tweets are promotional in nature or if you don’t bother responding to mentions, be prepared to lose followers fast.

Similarly in life, if all you care about is yourself and have no regard for others, you’re destined to an empty, lonely existence. The way to become successful in life (and on Twitter) is to lose yourself in giving. What can I do for you? How can I serve? Using your unique gifts and talents in service to others brings immeasurable meaning to life and returns to you multiplied.

3. We Choose Our Thoughts

On Twitter, we choose our tweets (a.k.a. thoughts). These choices affect our relationships, reputation, and influence on Twitter. Our tweets affect our future experience online.

In life, we also choose each thought we think. These thoughts affect our relationships, reputation, and influence. Every thought we think affects our future experience of life.

When we become aware that we have the power to choose our thoughts, we choose more carefully. We choose thoughts that sustain rather than destroy us.

4. Our Power is in the Present Moment

Tweets have a very short shelf life. What you tweeted yesterday and what you’re going to tweet tomorrow is of no value. It’s what you’re tweeting NOW that is going to have an impact.

Likewise in life, all we really have is now. Yesterday and tomorrow are irrelevant – they only exist in our minds. This “now” moment is all you’ll ever have, so what are you doing with it? What are you thinking and feeling now? Now is where your power is. Now is all that matters.

5. Life is Simple

On twitter, we only have 140 characters to express ourselves. Simple. Straightforward. Easy.

Life can also be simple and easy. We can lose the drama. We can get to the point. We can decide what we want and go for it. Life is only complicated when you think it is.

I have a very simple formula for a happy life, which I tweet in only 32 characters:

What do you love to do? Do that.

© 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips.



Everything I Needed to Know I Learned from Twitter

The Problem

I participate in a number of weekly TwitChats. These TwitChats are often very educational and can be a lot of fun; that is, for the participants. For everyone else, they can be a real hassle.

The problem is that while you’re having a heated debate about the merits of origami (no offense to origami fans), you’re going to have followers who couldn’t care less. Moreover, if you fire off fifty or sixty tweets during an hour long TwiChat, you can really flood some of your follower’s streams. I’ve had plenty of people unfollow me because of this and if you participate in TwitChats, I’m sure you have too.

The Solution

Now, you might say that Hash Tags (#) are the solution, but they’re not. The Hash Tag evolved as a way for Twitter users to more easily find tweets on a specific topic. TwitChats are dependent upon them (just add a #Topic to any tweet and set up a search to find them).

Unfortunately (as mentioned above), when people whom you follow are participating in TwitChats, if you don’t filter out those tweets, you’re going to see every single tweet they send. Also, while Twitter does nothing to help you filter out unwanted Hash Tags, TweetDeck does have a filter feature, but I’ve never bothered to use it. Have you?

Finally, while I find setting up searches in Twitter and TweetDeck easy, many people simply do not. However, even if they do set up searches, it still does nothing about a user’s stream being flooded with unwanted tweets. Fortunately, there is a solution that Twitter could implement, and that solution is creating Channels.

How Channels Can Benefit the User

A Channel would simply be a Twitter stream that is parallel to the main Twitter stream, but isolated from that stream just as one TV channel is isolated from other TV channels. A user would only see that Channel if they intentionally visited that Channel’s page or followed it.

When in a Channel, the user could dispense with adding a Hash Tag to each tweet as everything being tweeted in that Channel should be on topic. Alternately, the user could use a Hash Tag if they’re discussing a related subtopic, or they could create a new channel (a SubChannel) under a main topic Channel, and it could extend from there.

For example, a Directory of Channels might look like this:

• Main Channel: Medicine, or Healthcare (whatever)
  • SubChannel: Diabetes
    • Sub(Sub)Channel: Type 1 Diabetes
    • Sub(Sub)Channel: Type 2 Diabetes
      • Sub(Sub, Sub)Channel: Type 2 Diabetes Research

We can figure out the nomenclature for SubChannels later, but I think the above structure is clear and simple enough.

A Few More Notes on Channels

• Channels would differ from Lists because while you can follow individual Lists, you still see every tweet of everyone on that list regardless of topic. Channels would create topic specific conversations.
• Users could set up Channels as being either Public or Private and invite participants.

How Channels can Benefit Twitter

While Channels could be setup by any Twitter user for any topic, they can also drive revenue for Twitter in two ways.

• Branded Channels: Companies and/or brands could setup their own channels and SubChannels and pay Twitter for the privilege. Perhaps Twitter could even charge different rates depending on Channel size. For example, $X for a Channel with 100 users following it and $XXX for a Channel with 100,000 users following it.
• Targeted Advertising: Since, by definition, Channels are topic specific, Twitter could charge much higher ad rates for Sponsored Tweets in those channels. Why? Because tweets in those Channels would be noticed by the target audience at much higher rates than on the main Twitter stream. Additionally, the Channel audience would be much more likely to respond to a Call to Action.

Btw, I know there are a lot of third-party services that enable groups in one fashion or another. In my experience, they don’t work all that well. Also, they tie you a specific third-party service and given Twitter’s recent history with their third-party developers, I would expect most of those services to disappear in the near future.

What do you think? Let me know in the comments.

Neal Wiser is Vice President of Digital Strategy and Operations at The ODM Group where he leads teams in the creation and execution of digital marketing campaigns. You can follow Neal on Twitter (his handle is @NealWiser). Neal is also the Cofounder and Co-host of the Addicted to Social Media podcast. You can also read is blog at NealWiser.com.

© 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips.



Why Twitter Needs Channels

Twitter introduced the concept of lists about 16 months ago to enable the manual grouping of people into categories.

If you visit Formulists or Listorious you can type a keyword and see the different lists that people maintain. Searching for the keyword apples, for instance, you can read Twitter biographies of the 491 people who someone added to a list about honeycrisp apples. You can either follow the list or follow its members individually.

Any Twitter user can create his or her own list, or follow an existing list — such as the above one about apples.

I used to love creating lists. I embraced lists with passion and for the better part of two years I followed few people by way of the “follow” button and followed everyone else by lists instead. Because I kept changing the names of my lists and the people in each list, I also kept following and unfollowing different people.

But the passion is gone. I still like the concept and continue to follow some lists around government and public relations, but I’m tired of having my own lists. And, in fact, short of a local community list and a humor list, I deleted the other dozen lists I’d managed.

Because I use twitter.com as my primary view (and not third-party tools like Tweetdeck or Seesmic), it was time-consuming and unproductive to click a different list’s link every time I wanted to view its members’ recent tweets.

Which leads me to announce a new tactic in my ongoing quest for internet enrichment and resource productivity: I am once again following people outside of lists. It’s a tactic I once employed. I count 700+ people today (up from a mere 12 only two weeks ago). I don’t care about Klout scores and I don’t care if anyone I follow chooses to follow me back.

Do I look at twitter all day long? No.

Am I more productive since following people outside of lists? Yes.

Am I seeing more people’s names flow by quickly? Yes.

Will I see everyone’s tweet? No.

My purpose to tweet today has not changed since creating an account on day one. I tweet to enrich myself, to learn, and to share. Twitter lists, as helpful as they are to showcase people around categories, are less effective (to me) as a means of following and conversing with people.

But these are my thoughts about lists. How do you use lists?

© 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips.



Why Twitter Lists are Less Effective

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

A note from the Editor: After a too-long haitus, Twitip is back. We’ve got some great posts lined up, and we’re always looking for more. This post by Neal Wiser is the kickoff post to our return to a regular posting schedule. Thank you to all who have stayed with us! – Lara

A few weeks ago, Iain Dodsworth, founder and CEO of TweetDeck, introduced Deck.ly, a new component to TweetDeck that allows users to send tweets greater than 140 characters in length. While exceeding the 140 character limit is controversial to some Twitter purists, other services, such as TwitLonger, do the same. But what makes the Deck.ly move different is that it gives Dodsworth, whose TweetDeck has millions of users, the potential to free TweetDeck from its dependence on Twitter.

Or does it?

On the heels of the Deck.ly announcement, TweetDeck was acquired by UberMedia who already owns several other Twitter apps. Yet almost as soon as UberMedia announced the TweetDeck acquisition, Twitter fired a warning shot across UberMedia’s bow by cutting off access to UberMedia’s Echofon, UberTwitter, Twidroyd and UberCurrent apps for alleged policy violations.

TweetDeck, which is highly, but not wholly dependent upon Twitter (it also allows users to connect to other social networks such as Facebook and Linkedin), continued to operate normally during the shutdown. Perhaps it’s because with the TweetDeck acquisition UberMedia now controls an estimated 20% of the world’s daily tweets and TweetDeck represents the vast majority of that traffic. Any wholesale shutdown of UberMedia that includes TweetDeck would be extremely damaging to Twitter. Conversely, the vast majority of TweetDeck’s traffic goes to Twitter. Clearly, ending the Twitter/TweetDeck relationship, at least for now, would be something close to Mutual Assured Destruction.

The Shot Heard Around the World

Schoolhouse Rock

As I stated in my post Twitter Commits Suicide (or Twipocalypse Now: Redux), third party developers who don’t expand their services beyond Twitter are at serious risk. If Twitter’s move to cut off access to UberMedia’s apps isn’t convincing enough, the previous week Twitter announced that it’s no longer going to “white label” access to its API effectively choking off other app’s access. It’s sad to say, but it looks like the Twitter ecosystem’s days, in its present form, may be numbered.

To be sure, many developers are trying to expand their business models beyond Twitter, but only TweetDeck and Seesmic have any hope of success due to the sizes of their user bases (listen to my interview with Seesmic founder Loic Le Meur where we discussed Twitter dependency). Ironically, Deck.ly actually offers Twitter its biggest opportunity to make dramatic, and perhaps necessary, changes to its platform.

While the 140 character limit has been in place since Twitter’s launch, many users have felt constrained by that limit. Others hold the limits in near reverence and consider it an integral part of what makes Twitter Twitter. Yet this may be Twitter’s big opportunity to break free of that albatross. With its new funding and new leadership, this could be Twitter’s chance to innovate and do something truly bold.

Only Nixon Could go to China

For years, Twitter has depended upon its ecosystem of third-party developers for innovation. The results have been some fantastic tools and services that have added significant value to the overall Twitter experience. Creating an environment to allow this to happen was a brilliant move on behalf of Twitter’s creators. Unfortunately, Twitter’s behavior towards their developers over the past year has been less than encouraging (again, see Twitter Commits Suicide (or Twipocalypse Now: Redux).

The problem is that Twitter thinks it needs to drive traffic to twitter.com to make their advertising products pay off. But the reality is that, in its present form, Twitter is so feature poor and so much traffic access twitter through other means (via those third-party apps) that continuing to develop twitter.com, and alienating those third-party developers in the process, is both a distraction and foolish.

Where Nixon went to China, Twitter should focus on continuing to develop itself as a platform, not as a destination. As a platform, Twitter could finally stabilize itself and put an end to the notorious Fail Whale (who showed its blowhole again just this past week). Twitter could then figure out how to actually make money while simultaneously prompting continued innovation by its third-party developers and perhaps even invigorating them by allowing them to share in revenue that could come through those apps.

As Jeff Pester correctly stated, “Twitter is an information utility – it’s admitted as much on several occasions. It should start acting and pricing its product like one.”

What do you think? Let me know in the comments.

Neal Wiser is Vice President of Digital Strategy and Operations at The ODM Group where he leads teams in the creation and execution of digital marketing campaigns. You can follow Neal on Twitter (his handle is @NealWiser). Neal is also the Cofounder and Co-host of the Addicted to Social Media podcast.

© 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips.



The End of the 140 Character Tweet and its Repercussions

1. Tweet to help people that you wouldn’t otherwise reach.

Be intentional about sharing wisdom and lessons you’ve learned in life. You might do this in concert with a blog or not, but either way, you’ll feel better knowing that there is someone out there benefiting from something you’ve learned. They might be on the other side of the planet, but they’ll appreciate knowing someone else has gone through what they’re experiencing.

2. Tweet your goals and allow people to provide accountability.

I like to Tweet about things with which I need help or encouragement. Twitter can give you the powerful benefit of positive peer pressure. For example, when you have planned to workout or skip the buffet today, tell people about it. There will usually be a number of people who will reply with encouragements and even tips to help you with your challenge. It also helps you to know that people are going to be expecting results from you.

3. Tweet to direct people to your business and generate sales.

This is an easy one so I won’t dwell on it. However, after you begin building a following, you’ll discover that a number of people will simply want to know what you do for a living. Just tell them. They may have been looking for you all along. They already know and trust you now, so building trust to lead to a sale won’t be as necessary.

4. Tweet to wind down.

Tweeting when you’re pissed off, frustrated or otherwise needing to rant is a great thing – just watch some of your language – and it can be a lot less destructive than putting your fist through a wall or yelling at your spouse. Tweets live forever, so keep it clean. It’s well known that it’s better to let it out rather than keep it in, so use all caps if you need to do so!

5. Make friends.

I believe that we are who we spend time with. I’ve been intentional to seek out and follow and interact with people who are going where I want to go in life. In your regular life, it might be difficult to find people who create barcode art. Twitter allows you to expand your reach. Surely there are other people around the globe with your interests – no matter how obscure.

I have done all of the above. I have found that using Twitter throughout my day and my week actually ENHANCES my week by increasing my focus on productivity. This is in contrast to other social networking sites that often require a lot more energy of me than I get back in benefits.

Get to Tweeting! Tweeting with purpose can benefit you a lot!

© 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips.



5 Ways to Use Twitter to Become a Happier Person

One benefit to using Twitter.com is the ability to send and receive Tweets more quickly. Apps can only retrieve messages in intervals so there is usually at least a short delay in receiving messages. Users of Twitter.com can send and receive instantly without having to wait.

Another perk to using the website is that there is no limit to the number of times you can Tweet. Apps have API limits which restrict how many times data can be retrieved per hour. That limit has been decreased recently which makes it more likely a user will see an “API limit reached” message when using a Twitter app.

A third perk to using the Twitter website is the ability to use the new Retweet functionality. This functionality allows users to directly send a Tweet with the click of one button. Many apps don’t contain this functionality and won’t allow users to see Tweets that have been sent with this method.

The ability to see special hashtag functionality is yet another benefit to using Twitter.com. On special occasions, Twitter will sometimes enable special functionality that will appear when a specific hashtag is used. For example, using the hashtag #WorldCup during the World Cup made a soccer ball icon appear in the Tweet. This was only visible to users of Twitter.com.

A fifth advantage for Twitter.com users is being able to view the customized backgrounds of other users. Many individuals and businesses customize the backgrounds for their Twitter account which can give you important contact information as well as other details about the user. Many users think carefully about their background image but app users are unable to see this image from within their app.

One last bonus for users of Twitter.com is being able to view information more easily. This has always been true but it is especially true now that Twitter.com has been updated. Users can now easily view trending topics, see which friends are recommended to them and have easy access to list functionality. Some app users will be able to see the same information but it may be located in a few different places within the app.

Although many Twitter apps contain functionality that Twitter.com doesn’t, there are many benefits to using the site that are often overlooked. These benefits should be considered when trying to decide which Twitter tools to use.

© 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips.



Six Benefits to Using Twitter.com Instead of an App

But it’s something comedians have been doing for years – writing short, pithy punch lines. Ask Comedian Michael Ian Black who recently decided to add advertisements to his tweets. Black wrote in his blog “As of today, I’ve written 2,655 tweets. That’s a lot of free material, all of it contributing to the entertainment of the 1.5 million people who follow me, as well as the multibillion dollar capitalization of Twitter itself.”

Yes, comedians have the art of writing short down. But so do poets. Talk about imbuing thought-provoking meaning with as few as characters as possible! I don’t know if anyone does it as well as E. E. Cummings.

Whether comedian or poet, writing short is a good skill to have, especially if you have a Twitter account (and who doesn’t?) which caps posts at 140 characters. I once had a mentor who told me the best writing uses the most effective language with the fewest words possible. A good goal whether character restricted or not.

The trick is getting your message across in 140 characters or less without sounding like a monkey with a computer. They say even a monkey with a keyboard can eventually spew out Shakespeare, but I think he might lose his audience first.

Michael Pollan provides a great example of writing meaningful but short content with this 7-word manifesto: eat food, mostly plants, not too much.

Those 7 words say a lot.

That’s what we’re looking to do with Twitter. Say what you need to say in as few as words as possible. The trick is to find ways to let people get to know who you are, what you have to offer, and have a little fun in the process. Writing with only 140 characters can be a limiting handicap.

Or not…getting rid of the necessary words and characters can also be freeing!

I gathered some of my favorite Writing Killer Twitter Content tips, added some of my own, and came up with this list. Here’s Tips on Writing Short in the Twitterverse:

• Choose Your Words Wisely. You want to pick the right words that evoke the right amount of meaning with as few as characters as possible. A thesaurus can help with this. For example, if you have a choice between two words, “lighthearted” and “fun,” go with the latter!
• Get Verbal. Select verbs that are more emotive to get your message across. An example would be to use a word like “leap” instead of “jump.” They’re both energetic verbs with equal characters, but “leap” implies more emotion.
• Lolly, lolly, lolly leave your adverbs here. Dustin Wax suggested on Lifehack that one way to shorten characters is to leave adverbs to a minimum. Adverbs use up important real estate and your content will be perfectly fine without it. Well, there’s an example of an adverb right there. I didn’t need to say “perfectly and fine” to get my point across. Don’t use two words when you can use one.
• KISS. Have you heard the saying, Keep it Simple, Stupid? That notion works here too. One way of doing that is to do what Dom Sagolla recommends in his book 140 Characters, keep your tweets focused on one thought. Hey puts it this way, we need to learn to “say more with less.”
• Writing is in the rewriting. The folks at ReadWriteWeb ask an interesting question. Maybe we should all learn to read and write in Mandarin where each character is actually a word. That’s a great idea, but in the meantime try this tip. Write exactly what you want to say, then begin the process of rewriting; paring it down while keeping an eye on that character count.
• Know the lingo. Twitterville has it’s own grammar. Use it. I promise there will be no school marms tapping your hands with rulers. And if there are, you can ignore them. Some examples of Twitterville Grammar is leaving out unnecessary words such as “that” and “which.” People understand what you’re trying to say without them.
• It’s not about you. Leave out personal pronouns. You can just say, “Going to BlogHer Food!”
• It’s all about you. Lisa Barone reminds us in her post How to Write Better Tweets to be sure to keep Twitter posts personal so people will want to read them.
• Don’t beat around the bush. Tweeting is not the time to be cryptic. Say what you want to say, but leave out the “I think” explanatory phrases. Of course you think it, otherwise you wouldn’t be tweeting it.
• The Link-anizer. If you’ve got more to say than 140 characters allows, write a provocative intro and then link to the rest of it. There are oodles of link shorteners out there – Tinyurl, Hootsuite, Bit.ly, etc. Pick your favorite and use it!
• Alternate Universe. Mark Fulton explained in a recent post on TwiTips that “Twitter accepts more than just normal characters.” Most keyboards allow you to create symbols with special “alt” characters. Fulton recommends the tool TwitterKeys to have all these symbols at your fingertips. Thanks, Mark! We ♥ you!
• Size Matters. Copyblogger suggests using small words. They say “…simple words work better than big ones. Write ‘get’ instead of ‘procure.’ Write ‘use’ rather than ‘utilize.’ Use the longer words only if your meaning is so precise there is no simpler word to use.”
• Be Creative. Mark Twain once said, “I don’t give a damn for a man that can only spell a word one way.” Twains words ring true today. English is a living language and Twitter is just the place to have some fun with your word choices.

I hope these tips help you be expansive in your Twitter thoughts while at the same time minimal in Twitter characters!

© 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips.



Writing Killer Content in 140 Characters or Less

• There’s no specific, agreed etiquette;
• One user’s potion is another user’s poison;
• Your tweeting technique WON’T be liked by everyone, no matter what you do.

This causes difficulty, since there’s no standard to work from. Do you send out hundreds of updates every day? Should you schedule your tweets and pump out content even as you sleep? Will it upset someone if you state an opinion? Will it bore someone if you don’t?

For all the difficult questions millions of users pose every day they use Twitter, the twitterverse is a relatively friendly place. If someone doesn’t like the way you tweet, you won’t find much more than an unfollow coming your way. People get followed and unfollowed all the time, so you won’t have time to take it personally. That’s if you notice at all.

There are many opinions on how to tweet effectively. Most sound sensible and work fine if you follow them. That doesn’t stop the opinions from being controversial. Here are 10 tweeting issues that are subject to the biggest arguments:

1. Update frequency

How often should you tweet? Do you wake from the dead only when you have big news or do you try to maintain a regular heart-tweet? Many people suggest regular (but not too regular) tweeting. However, I don’t tweet at specific times and I sometimes skip an entire day. Nobody has complained yet.

2. Linking to your own blog

Personal promotion is frowned upon in one corner and expected in another. Should you broadcast your own links? If so, how often? Is this self-promotion like spam or is it simply a way of letting followers know when you’ve posted something new that should be of interest to them? Not everybody will subscribe to your site via RSS feeds, so I happily link out to my new blog posts. I tend to promote no more than once or twice and have no specific method.

3. Thanking for retweets

Do people expect to be thanked? Would they rather you didn’t bother thanking them? At what point does your following get too much to send out personal thanks each time someone retweets you? I thank those who retweet my own posts and links. I try to thank in other ways too.

4. Expecting to be followed back

If they don’t follow you, what’s the point in following them? If you value their content, does it matter if they don’t follow you? Are you looking for great content, personal communication, or both? New followers boost the ego, but you have to realize that not everyone will want to follow back. Reasons for not following don’t have to be personal or concerning, but it easily plays on the mind.

5. Using retweets

Where you should put the ‘RT’ in a tweet? Should you edit the retweet? Is it awful to you the official Twitter ReTweet button? Should you use ‘RT’, ‘rt’, ‘r/t’, ‘via’, ‘HT’ or something else? As Twitter has evolved, users have developed their own ways of communicating content. Even the simple retweet doesn’t have a clear right and wrong.

6. Too much of a single thing in your feed

Perhaps you only provide links, only copy quotations, only promote your own content, talk to yourself and not to others, say the same thing over and over again, and so on. Some users enjoy the reliable flow of the single element you bring to the table. Other users would prefer some variation. Do what feels comfortable to you. By all means surprise or change your game occasionally; just don’t surprise too often!

7. Gaps in tweeting

Should you spread out your tweets, or send them all at once when you’re on? Are automated tweets impersonal? Do people get upset if you don’t tweet at the weekend, or you miss out particular days? As with update frequency, nobody is going to complain of inconsistency.

8. Injecting personality

Should you talk about your personal life or should you provide value (unless you’re a celeb and can do both at the same time)? Should your personal life stay personal? For some, Twitter is a mere communication tool, not a lifestyle decision. For others, anything lacking a ‘human’ feel is too distant.

9. Going off topic

Will people unfollow you in droves if you suddenly write about something outside your field? If you mention a cause that you feel strongly about, is it asking for trouble? For some professional users, some care is necessary. For most, a bit of off topic banter is unlikely to shake someone’s confidence in following you.

10. Tweeting at particular times in the day

Is it best to tweet at peak times, all day long, during working hours, or whenever you like? Are you missing out on the best times for your followers? I tweet mainly to students and academics in higher education. I try not to tweet a study tips link at 3am, because most students will either be sleeping or partying. The link is more likely to be missed at that time. For greatest exposure, understand what hours best suit you. 3am may be wasted for me, but it’s perfect for someone tweeting sleep tips to insomniacs.
What next?

The use of Twitter brings up more questions than answers. There is no single way of using the service effectively.

The one piece of advice I’d give is this: Don’t panic about each unfollow you get. For every user who doesn’t appreciate your content, there are loads of users who will be happy with your output. Focus on developing a unique presence, not a concoction of what one or two users demanded. Your job is to listen and respond, not to roll over and obey.

You’ll never know exactly what everyone wants. Enjoy creating tweets that work for you. Eventually, you should enthuse, engage and inform others in the process. Genuine output is not only accepted, but also the most likely way to get you loyal, engaging followers.

© 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips.



10 Controversial Twitter ‘How To’ Issues