It’s a great feeling when someone goes out of their way to recognize you as a resource for great insight and connection on Twitter. Recognition for being someone worth following is great for those trying to figure out the point of Twitter.

However, the common practice for a typical #followfriday tweet is to pack as many of your favorite followers into 140 as possible. While this strategy is great for pinging people in your network to let them know you’re thinking of them, it also can appear cheap and potentially a little off putting if the group of folks you include don’t have much in common.

Now, it’s rare that folks are actually offended by being included in a #followfriday. Most do in fact love to be included and recognized in some way by their followers. Some may even get a few new followers because of the referral.

As with most situations in life, however, #followfriday offers people the opportunity to cut through the noise with valuable tweets that create signal and meaning for folks.

The #1 Secret to Follow Friday Success
Something folks love even more than simply having their Twitter handle included in a mass #ff tweet is when someone devotes an entire tweet to something they specifically peg as a reason to follow somebody.

By taking an extra five minutes to break apart your #ff tweets and doing individual #ff tweets instead, you’re showing your followers that you value something specific about what they’re doing. It’s another level of respect you’re paying forward to the folks you value in your Twitter stream.

Rules
1) Use the entire 120 or so characters (How to Get Retweeted – The Formula) to describe something specific and amazing about the people whose tweets you value the most. For my handle (@dayneshuda) I can get away with leaving 15 characters available.

2) Include #ff

3) Include a Website (preferably the actual URL vs. a shortened version…for branding)

4) Give a specific reason for people to follow

Examples

Benefits of Going the Extra Mile
I’ve been trying to do this each Friday (although I do miss some) for some of my favorite folks on Twitter and the response has been wonderful and more than I could have imagined.

The folks that I highlight in detailed #followfridays are generally very thankful to be highlighted in a specific way. They seem to appreciate that someone takes the time to recognize their hard work in a field or for being a great friend and someone worth following because of their personality.

Sometimes in response (but never expected) folks have responded with similar, detailed tweets about me. It’s a nice little bonus for making the gesture.

What about your #ff experiences?

Do you leave detailed #ff tweets or the more popular styled #ff tweets?

What are some pros and cons of each?

Related articles on Twitip

#followfriday Revolution

Did @PhilBaumann Just Save Follow Friday?

Follow Friday; Too Much of a Good Thing?

© 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips.

The #1 Secret to Follow Friday Success

YOU vs. ME
Consider this. Are you using “I” or “we” more than “you” and “your”? Likewise, how much to do you enjoy sitting with someone, a stranger perhaps, and listening to them talk all about themselves and how wonderful they or their business are? Not very much. That’s the way sales via Twitter come across. If you’re constantly talking about yourself, not sharing information or news, etc. people will start to tune you out and your following will dwindle.

Presentation is Everything
This is not to say that you can’t participate in business and foster relationships on Twitter and beyond. You can, but presentation is everything.

As with most communication in life, the way we say/present comments has the power to drastically change the conversation.

Consider this… if a parent told their child they were an accident, the child could bear feelings of sadness or feel like they weren’t/aren’t wanted. Instead, if the parent said they were a surprise, the child could feel special or just accept it and move on. It’s a simple change, but words (and phrases) have power.

Power to Stir Emotion
As mentioned above, words have the power to stir emotion. Written correctly, a tweet can lead to a positive, emotionally-based response. Perhaps you’re filling a void, fixing a problem or offering a solution. These could all lead to thanks, follows and RTs. Emotion is involved in everything we do, use it carefully.

Power to Elicit a Bond
Similarly, words and communication have the power to elicit a bond. This is the hope of all Twitter users – to be connected to someone else. It could be as simple as attending or being a fan of the college or sharing similar interests. In terms of using this for business, Fiskers and their Fiskateers are a great example. See our blog post about Spike Jones’ presentation or visit their site. People unite around common interests.

Power for Good and Power for Evil (aka uselessness in this case)
Twitter has the power to be good and be used well or the power to be useless blips of non-information. Consider what you tweet and when you share it. Does it relate to things you usually talk about? That’s what you’re followers are interested in. Is it timely and provide information or resources or is it like those horrible forwarded emails from Aunt Gert that you delete before reading?

A good examples of using the power of Twitter for good are the mass amounts of money raised for Haiti after the earthquake. Thousands of quick RTs will lead to the aid of many more.

Conversely, a bad example is that of the tweet by the first person Conan O’Brien followed – recently amassing +18,000 followers – “yumm… Twizzlers”. I bet all her followers were happy to receive that.

Be mindful and consider your tweets and posts before sending them out to the web. If you’re representing a business or product/service, don’t push, push, push until you push everyone away. Engage with them. Talk to people and determine their interests and perhaps some you share. Fostering a relationship leads to communication – the real kind.

© 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips.

HOW you are Communicating is Almost as Important as WHAT you are Communicating.

Since I also VLOG for the beauty industry, I get pampered like no other male Mexican alive. I review spas, beauty treatments and sometimes get to try new beauty advances like eye-lash extensions–yes, they exist. Well, there I was staring into the looking glass – not recognizing myself when I tweeted a before-and-after photo of myself with and without the extensions provided by Wink Eyelash. Several of my followers wanted details, “Where do I get mine?” “Give us the address!” and “Did it hurt?” But in the mixture of all the happy tweets came one lonely tweet that left me confused, dazed and bewildered, “I’m a married woman with children you PERVERT! Stop sending me this trash!” Did she confused me with someone else? See for yourself – click here for the photo I’d posted. I tweeted back, “I’m not sure why you think I’m flirting with you but I’m not.” And in a flash, several of my followers joined in and tweeted in my defense. The exchanges were flying higher than Amy Winehouse after a crackfest. I asked everyone to stop tweeting the woman and just blocked her. Well, in the morning, I had 10 evil tweets from her husband threatening to hurt me and my new eyelashes.

Three weeks ago, I received a call from a Literary Agent asking me for a meeting, as it turns out, she found me through twitter and had been reading my blog and now wanted to work on a “blog-to-book” deal. We met the following week, exchanged ideas and are moving forward with the project. After the meeting, and after keeping my followers in suspense, I let the cat out of the bag and tweeted about the book deal. I received so many congratulating tweets and since I follow my own advice on engaging with my followers, I tweeted people back saying thank you. But since there were so many, I did it in clumps. And if you follow me, you know me and my off-beat sense of humor; one group got, “Thanks for the support! This Mexican hearts YOU!” another received “Yay! You all ROCK now get back to work!” and the last group got, “Yay, Skanks! We did it!” Wouldn’t you know, I immediately got tweets that said, “Yay! I’m a Nando skank!” and “Nando skank for life!” but in the mixture was, “Don’t you ever call me a skank, you will speak to me with respect!” I didn’t recognize the name, but I replied, “Child, if you follow me, you gotta get used to the Mexican, I ain’t changing for no one.” And she replied, “I’m not a child, I am a grown woman and will be treated as such.” I clicked on her page, she wasn’t following me nor I her. What was she doing retweeting my happy-book-deal-tweet in the first place? (But that’s another article) I saw she had 30 followers and was following 150. I hate to be a twitter snob, but I had a feeling she didn’t know how to use twitter and mistook this forum as a Jerry Springer message board; I blocked her. Later in the day, I went back to her page–cause I’m a nosy Mexican–and discovered it was full of tweets to her 30 followers on how she “had to put a punk in his place.” I also noticed that she had a few negative tweets about other twitter-ers as well. I believe her bio said she was a motivational speaker and author.

I’m sure you’re thinking, is twitter really a place to call your followers skanks? Well, it is over in NANDOISM world – because I have the best followers ever… but just for the record, I haven’t used the word skanks since then – but the point is, even if you didn’t like what I tweeted, send me a DM, ask for an e-mail address, or even request a phone call, but to start using twitter to infect the information super highway with your negative thoughts and then to rally others in your cause is just bad. Twitter fights are wrong for three reasons.

1. Negative tweets discredit your  status. No one will really take you serious if your a dating blogger ranting and raving or complaining about your day. I don’t have time to read your negative tweets. I was casted as the main character of my own telenovella 34 years ago and don’t need your constant negativity. And in her case, an author? I don’t want to read her stuff.

2. Twitter Fights make you look petty. A friend of mine, @TheUngayGuy got celebrity twitter-er @KirstieAlley all wound up and fuming when he snarkly remarked about scientologists traveling to Haiti with e-meters rather than medicine. That twitter fight got ugly because Kirstie went mad crazy, used profanity and extremely vulgar language to get her point across – but in the end, it cost her thousands of twitter followers.

3. Just leaves a bad digital footprint. With everything being indexed and easily linked to your name, accounts, online persona, why leave a digital footprint the size of big foot associated with online fights? It may seem like a worthy cause at the moment, but in the long run, the very long run, it will leave a damaging effect that’ll haunt you possibly making you lose clients, followers and friends.

So the next time you feel the heat of a twitter fight coming on – take a deep breath, eat a donut, or just take a break from the internet because the cost is just too high. Have you seen twitter fights in your stream? How do you react to them?

© 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips.

How to Fight on Twitter

Monitor and Listen First
Perform searches to find out which of your audience members and readers are on Twitter. Follow them and “listen” for places where technical documentation solves something they’re working on. I wouldn’t suggest that you interrupt conversations as they happen just yet, though. Don’t be the automatic tweeter who says “You were just talking about my company’s software? Check out my company’s help site!” Try to monitor just to get a sense of your readers and who might potentially follow you. After you set up notifications for keywords on search.twitter.com, read through what is being said about either your company, your products, or the subject matter related to your business. Listen, understand the overall sentiment, and then form an idea of who your audience could be. You can’t formulate what you want to say on Twitter until you can hear others first, and understand the flow of information and conversation there.

Play your Part
As a technical communication pro, are you a conversationalist or a guide? On Inc.com you can read about the 8 types of people who belong on Twitter. These types are: personality, guide, brand watchdog, customer support rep, publisher, promotion channel, conversationalist, and finally, the curious.

Only a subset of those types match the job description for most technical communicators. I would suggest customer support representative, guide, conversationalist, the curious and the publisher make sense for technical writers. The brand watchdog and personality considerations may belong in other areas for your company. Your company may already be monitoring and responding to customer support or service requests that come in through Twitter, and you don’t want to over step your bounds into the harshtag area (such as #fail)!

Give More than You Get
Use Twitter posts to link to documentation with longer explanations for a new feature. Basically tweet out the release notes, one feature at a time. Use hash tags to indicate the product name and version. Refer to “Twitter as a medium for release notes“, an experiment by Sarah Maddox, a technical writer with Atlassian. She walks through their process and the results.
Timing and the correct amount of “pause” between posts are relevant decisions here. Do not “flood” a hashtag with tweets about your release notes – readers don’t necessarily want to be overwhelmed with messages.

Be a guide to the overall architecture of your help system by tweeting not just links, but how to find the information they need. Don’t just feed followers, teach them to fish.
Tweet about tutorials on the site and also offer to answer questions about a tutorial.
Be a point of contact for answering questions. If you get stuck, refer to a customer support rep who knows how to properly deflect conflict and answer questions.

Measure
How will you know if your Twitter techniques are working? You should see a steady growth of followers. You want to also monitor the amount of direct messages, @ messages, and general updates you send to gage the right mix of content for the Twitter account. You can measure your responsiveness if you’re in an area like customer support or troubleshooting. You could measure the number of thank yous or appreciative tweets if your goal is to instruct or teach. You can measure the number of retweets or mentions if your role is like a publisher and you want to increase the amount of hits that your content gets. Twitter measurements should tie directly to the goals you have for technical communication.

Try It
Experiment with Twitter for a while and see if there’s a match for your technical communication goals. We’d love to hear how it turns out!

© 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips.

Focus on Twitter for Technical Documentation

I was sitting in a coffee shop near work as I often do between sessions when one of the baristas sheepishly approached me. I go in there all the time, so most of them know me by face, if not by name. She said, “Are you Jeff?” I answered in the affirmative and she goes, “There’s someone on the phone for you.”

My first thought was that it must be work calling to tell me that there’s been a schedule change. AT&T has spectacularly terrible coverage and this cafe could be a dead zone. One look at my phone confirmed that I was five-bars strong and I had no missed calls. She looked as quizzical as I felt. I took the cordless phone from her and the conversation went something like this:

Me: Hello?

Stranger: Is this Jeff?

The voice sounded hesitant and I definitely did not recognize it. I was slightly discombobulated that someone was calling me at this location, but curious and attentive.

Me: Yeah, who is this?

Stranger: This is your neighbor. Did you just check in on Foursquare?

Now before I go any further, let me just explain what Foursquare is in case you don’t know. It’s a GPS-enabled Web application that allows users to “check in” wherever they have cell phone coverage. It’s an extension of social networking media and really the only point to it seems to be showing other users the lame places you go. Depending on how you have your account set up, the app will post your global position on Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare or all three. My check-ins typically show up in the latter two.

I once explained Foursquare to someone, her response was: “Why would you want do this?” I thought for a second and said, “Because all my other friends are doing it?” We both laughed, but I realized that I didn’t have a real answer to that question. Why would I want to enable my smart phone as a tracking device? Like so many other of my online activities, there really is no point to it.

So back to the story, already in progress:

Me: Yeah, I did [check into Foursquare] …who is this?

Stranger: My name’s Roy, your neighbor. I just saw four black guys try to break into your apartment.

The first tip-off here, other than the fact that some stranger from is contacting me, is that he’s identifying himself as my neighbor. Like any true city dweller, I don’t know any of my neighbors. Sure, I might have names from lobby mailboxes filed away somewhere in my subconscious, but I’m pretty sure Roy isn’t one of them. I never met a Roy in my life.

Me: Uh, who is this?

The incredulity was rising in my voice and I kept expecting at any minute “Roy” would identify himself as someone I knew and that this was all a prank.

Stranger: I’m just a concerned citizen.

It was more than evident something wasn’t right here. Who the hell says things like “concerned citizen” outside of an episode of Dragnet? The hesitation in his voice seemed to grow with every question I asked and there was a faint, subtle bit of reverb, as if the conversation was being recorded.

Me: Okay, who is this?

Stranger: Aren’t you worried about the break-in?

Me: If you’re my neighbor, then where do I live?

There was a pause, more stuttering and finally he says something like:

Stranger: Let me look, I’m sure you were stupid enough to check in there too.

Me: Actually, I never check in with my real home address. Man, you sure are going through a lot of effort to be a dick.

And then he hung up. So much for being a “concerned citizen”.

It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that “Roy” wasn’t who he claimed to be. If he thought he was being a clever thief, he failed completely. A smarter criminal would have done more research and better rehearsed his spiel.

Immediately after he hung up, I recalled a Twitter exchange I had not too long ago with a user calling himself @pleaserobme. This Twitter account (which has since been suspended “due to strange activity”) was connected to a Web site of the same name.

The folks at Please Rob Me (PRM) claim to be privacy advocates, saying that their goal is to raise awareness on the dangers associated with using sites like Foursquare, Loopt and Brightkite. By telling everyone on the World Wild Web where you are, you’re also telling them where you’re not — namely, home. You might think that PRM is well-intentioned in its quest to keep people safe, but the means by which they do it are highly questionable.

Before Twitter disabled their account, PRM would re-tweet Foursquare check-ins, seemingly at random. The tweets would look something like this:

@pleaserobme: @KirstieAlley just checked in at Krispy Kreme, 1111 Wilshire Blvd, Hollywood, CA.

With the Twitter account gone, they now have a live feed of Foursquare user tweets streaming directly on their homepage. It’s a smorgasbord for the would-be criminals PRM claims it wants to protect you from. In fact, they have a disclaimer which says “our intention is not, and never has been, to have people burgled”. But they sure have a funny way of showing it.

Their tactics aren’t the way to prevent victimization, but quite the opposite. It’s like causing a car collision to prove a point about auto safety or running a third-party candidacy for President. These all have unintentionally calamitous outcomes causing harm rather than good. I’m not really sure what the true motivations of PRM are, but whatever it is, it stinks.

Be that as it may, and I’m loathe to admit this, I think they may have driven their point home with me. I have no way of proving that “Roy The Concerned Citizen” is affiliated with PRM, but he was an effective messenger. This whole has actually made me re-think using these kinds of applications. Maybe it isn’t such a good idea to let the entire world know where I am at any given second. Other than it being used as an alibi in a criminal trial, I can’t see much real advantage to being a walking GPS unit.

Before my interaction with “Roy”, I think I had a healthy amount of cautious paranoia. I have an unlisted telephone number, I don’t make my home address available online or in print. I thought I was as private as the next guy. But the truth is, I don’t usually shred all my papers before throwing them away. The only secrets someone rooting through my trash is likely to discover is that I eat way too many Hot Pockets.

I refuse to let this situation turn me into some black helicopter-fearing, tin foil hat-wearing, irrational kook who thinks everyone is out to steal his stuff or identity. Honestly, I don’t really have much stuff worth stealing. And as far as my identity goes, I think I’d actually feel sorry for someone trying to use my Social Security Number. I doubt they’ve have any more luck with it than I have.

Like I said, I think there was something more than a poorly planned caper going on with “Roy”. There was definitely some recording taking place and I suspect I was not the first person to get a phone call like this. I wonder how many people actually fell for this bit. How many overly excitable victims, in a moment of panic, blurted out their home address to a stranger on the telephone? I suspect these are the same sorts of people who get caught up in those Nigerian email scams.

Facebook founder, Mark Zuckerberg, recently remarked that “the age of privacy is over”. It’s an infuriating statement but it’s essentially true. In all fairness, privacy is a two-way street. No one made us join Facebook or Twitter or anything else. We willingly became the coal for these data miners.

For those of us who came of age, technologically speaking, in the Web 2.0 Era, it may be too late to cancel, delete or otherwise redact what’s out there. Basically we have to deal with cards we’ve dealt ourselves. One could argue that if you choose to live your life in public you don’t get to control what other people do with this public information. You can, however, choose how much of it to put out there.

© 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips.

Private Eyes Are Watching You: Twitter Oversharing and Its Bizarre Real-World Consequences

Look at some of the biggest, most successful brands: Coca-Cola, Starbucks, Borders, CVS or even some smaller ones with uber loyal fans like Moe’s Southwestern Grill. People love their products/services so much they talk about them, write about them, wear clothes with their logo on them and even put bumper stickers on their car. They didn’t just ask consumers if they would promote their brands for them, they established a relationship and foster loyalty through rewards programs and customer service – and communication.

Now, more than EVER before, we have the tools to see and hear what people are saying, join in the conversation and fuel their passion and brand loyalty. You can’t just create a Facebook business page, set up a Twitter account and join Digg or Flickr and think the work is done though. The relationship has just begun – you just met, essentially.

When you meet someone knew there’s always a time where both parties are a little awkward and you have learn about each other, fostering trust. As communicators we have to go back to the basics sometimes – listen.

1. What do they (your customer) want, ideally from you, or that product/service category?
2. How can you help them?
3. How are you better than the competition?
4. What would make them come back?
5. How can you communicate with them better? Social media, perhaps?

Make them feel welcome, wanted and appreciated. Customer service that goes the distance is one easy step that will set you apart. Too often it’s the teenage store clerk with a bad attitude at the counter that sends the wrong message to your consumers. You can’t be there all the time, so train them well.

Twitter is an ideal way to create a new relationship, foster it and reward your consumer’s loyalty – and top-of-mind awareness. Use it to share news not only about your company, but the industry, national events, etc. Remember: we’re not selling, we’re communicating in a relationship!

Go back to the beginning. Think about your connection to your customers as a relationship and how you can make it better. Share the love!

© 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips.

Start Dating your Twitter Followers – Back to the Basics of Consumer Relationships

What the hash?!

But Twitter is a big mess isn’t it? With thousands of tweets going off every hour, about hundreds of different topics, how do you build a cohesive group of fans?

The answer is hashtags.

Most people know that hashtags are ways to filter out the noise around specific discussions, like tuning into specific radio frequencies on Twitter. But not everyone knows how to create successful chat sessions.

In this video, I outline the basics of managing a hashtag chat on Twitter:

* How to use TweetGrid.com (one tool among many valuable tools)
* How to create a hashtag
* How to avoid missing replies to you within a chat
* How to find and invite others to your chat
* The importance of a landing page for your chat

Kudos to @ShareStrength for their excellent example!

How have you used hashtags successfully?

© 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips.

How To Create Successful Chats on Twitter with Hashtags (video)

If you’re using Twitter for business reasons, you should care. And here’s why:

1. Measure Engagement

Retweets are an indication of how engaged your followers are. If they aren’t retweeting any of your posts, chances are they don’t find them that interesting.

2. Follower Attrition

Some of the folks who are singing your praises now will be gone in six months. That’s because you can’t be all things to all people all the time (and you shouldn’t being trying to). People grow, they change and have different needs as time goes on. New people who follow you because of a retweet they saw will take their place. It’s not personal, it’s just business.

3. Measure Content

Getting retweeted is partially a function of good content. Or at least good headlines.

How To Get Retweeted

1. Be Relevant - A survey conducted by Dan Zarrella found that people share content because they thought it was relevant for someone they know. In other words, try and stay relevant to topics your followers want to hear about.
2. Write Pithy Headlines – On Twitter all we have is 140 characters. How would someone like Shel Silverstein tweet?
3. Include links – Dan also found that retweets tend to have more links. 56.69% of retweets contain a link versus 18.96% of normal tweets.
4. Add your own thoughts – One big limitation with Twitter’s retweets is that you can’t edit the tweet before retweeting. Tools like Seesmic and Tweetie give users a second option of “quoting” the tweet where you can edit it to your liking.
5. Break News – Be the first to share breaking news on a topic. Know beforehand what might be newsworthy before it trends by creating a Google or Tweetbeep alert.
6. Not About You - Dan also found that talking about the color of your underwear won’t get retweeted as much as talking about the color of Madonna’s underwear.
7. Nurture Community – People that create trust with their community tend to be retweeted more than those who lack any connection to their followers. Don’t forget the really simple mind map I showed you yesterday to frame community development.
8. DM a Retweet request – You can also send a private message asking for a retweet. This has to be used sparingly or you’ll quickly drain your social equity account. Also, make it easy and DM a link to the tweet you’d like retweeted.
9. Use your iPhone – The Retweet app lists the top retweets. Retweeting the valuable posts sparingly will increase your exposure to new users.
10. Embed Retweets – Put a “ClickToTweet” link in your email newsletters and particular blog pages. Read “How To Get More Email Subscribers With Embeded Retweets“ for more info.
11. Timing – Dan also found that 4:00PM is the when the most retweets happen. Especially on a Friday.
12. Say Please – Dan also found that saying please also increased the likelihood that someone would retweet your post.
13. Say Thank You – People like to be acknowledged when they retweet your post. Plus it’s just polite.

© 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips.

13 Ways To Get Your Blog Posts Retweeted

Cue the Love Boat theme song. Wait, I’m here to tell you why that’s the worst idea you’ve had since deciding to bring back the Billy Cyrus mullet. It’s no news flash that twitter has revolutionized the world; we’ve embarked on a social media network that swirls our ideas around the globe at fast rates–tweet something in New York City and in 30 seconds or less, South Africa is laughing at your joke about the Mexican, the banana and the squeegee. (Don’t worry, I’m Mexican, I can use my own ethnicity in this article) With all this power at your fingertips, why would you want to misuse twitter to find a luvah? You don’t, and here are the top three reasons why.

1. You’ll risk looking like a twitter sleeze. I can see it all now. Harry, the top executive at XYZ Marketing, is the top twitter dog at his firm with many followers and brilliant tweets on great marketing techniques–but every once in a while we’ll notice a tweet from Harry that includes the following phrases: “my place or yours, don’t worry I have a muzzler now, and the whipped cream will be waiting.”  Harry’s reputation as a great marketing guru will take second place to his twitter love affairs. Remember, in less than a minute, twitter can make the world change. With so many networks made for dating–why would you want to use twitter and risk it all?

2. The revenge tweet. Let’s say you decide to use twitter after all and you’ve been dating more than Eminen after his Grammy win. You’re even doubled-booked on Wednesday! Sarah, Mindy, and Kiki–they all love you, but do they love each other? Don’t you realize that your tweets are indexed and can be googled by anyone? And when your Tiger Woods behavior is exposed, guess what’s next? Yes, the revenge tweet! Your name will be plastered all over the twittershpere and good luck trying to find a date then. People are mean in person, well throw in a jealous, jilted lover and twitter and it only spells out one thing–bad news for you. Excuse me as I pull a Chris Crocker, “LEAVE TWITTER ALONE!”

3.   Too Much PDT: Public Display of Twitter. Oh, so you liked dinning at Mr.Chow’s? And the Cyclone roller coaster in Coney Island was a romantic ride, hu? Well, you have to tell me if he liked the new pair of CK’s you bought him with the blue trim. What? How do I know all this, you ask? Because you’re tweeting it all out for the twittersphere to read and judge–might I add. I get it, you want to share your romance details; it’s fun, it’s cute, but it’s getting old–listen to me. Twitter is not your personal online bulletin board to share your entire life’s happenings–who are you, Ashton Kutcher?  When you use twitter to find dates, you’ll be saturating your followers with too much PDT. And it can backfire on you, so be careful.

I’m sure there are a few cases in the twitter love files that didn’t turn into a bad romance, but do you really want to take that chance? When you tweet your love life out to the word and start turning to twitter for dates, you’re risking a lot more than just rejection. Your reputation as a niche marketer, gone. The “go-to” person for new tech toys, vanished. Top dog in the beauty industry, no longer reputable, just like last year’s wrinkle cream–but don’t worry, we will all find love eventually, and in the meantime, there’s plenty of places to look for it–just not twitter.

© 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips.

Twitter Romance: Don’t Tweet Where You Eat!

Follow the Rules
As a child, you heard it from your parents, teachers, and coaches: “Follow the rules”. And as much as you may not have liked to hear it then, the mantra is just as important for this contest. The rules are simple:

• Follow the @AFI verified account
• Must incorporate AFI’s “Crash Love” album artwork (here)
• May also use other provided stock images (here)
• Must be an original, “family-friendly” design
• U.S. contest only

See? Simple.

Use Twitter Background Design “Best Practices”
Creating a custom Twitter background is a lot trickier than most people think. There are certain dimensions it needs to be, certain placement of graphic elements that work and don’t work, and certain mistakes that you’ll want to avoid. It’s a good thing, then, that TwiTip has covered these “best practices” here and here. There should be no excuse for creating a background that doesn’t work.

Make it “Wow” the Band and the Voters
Since great design is in the eye of the beholder, I won’t go into detail about what colors, style, or design elements to use. But remember, AFI themselves will be choosing the first place winner and placing that design on their official Twitter page. Think, “If I were AFI, what type of design would I want to represent the band on our official Twitter page?” Second and third place winners are chosen by popular vote, so your design has to impress voters too. If your design looks similar to all of the others (check out your competition), or if there’s nothing “wow” about it, then it will probably get lost in the sea of other backgrounds.

Promote It
This point should go without saying, but just to cover all the bases, I’m saying it anyway. If you want your entry to have a shot at winning, you’ve got to promote it! That means tweet it, Facebook it, blog it, bookmark it… basically, do whatever it takes to get the word out about your awesome design. Don’t be afraid to ask for 10-star votes from your social sphere!

Submit More Than One Background Design
The number of your entries is limited only by your own creativity. Since there is no limit to how many entries you can submit, why not up your chances of winning by submitting several design concepts?

So, now that you have the winning tips, get started on creating your prize-winning AFI Twitter background design. At the very least, you’ll brush up on your Twitter background design skills, and at best, you’ll have your design in front of over 30,000 people and win one of the top three AFI prize giveaways. Good luck!

© 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips.

How to Win the AFI Twitter Background Design Contest