Twitip

The web is full of “naming gurus” selling names to big companies for thousands of dollars. They claim they’ve got the solution to every naming issue. The truth is that the only one who can really make up your name is… you. You can save time and money by simply understanding what is important in order to make your username effective. If you’re new in social media and want to create a Twitter account, a Facebook fan page or whatever, you can consider these very basic tips in order to create a good name, be you a personal user or a new brand. Your name should reflect your identity and your “tone”. (more…)

By Zoey Dowling. Follow her @zoeyspeak.

Twitter is a bright, shiny universe of new friends, new ideas, hilarious little snippets and occasionally even a spot of news. It’s a great way to promote your blog or your business. But if your primary purpose on twitter is promotion and not to connect with other people – abandon ship. Twitter is not for you. Ulterior motives don’t do well. They result in one action: UNFOLLOW. Mistakes are easy when you start out. After all, no-one is updating their status – they’re engaging with one another! And that’s confusing – is it private or can you join in? How do you make the most of it and have fun? Well for starters you could avoid the most irritating twitter behaviours. And before you start trawling through my twitter stream – yes I have committed most of them.

1. Gluttony (Over-Sharing)
Do not, I repeat do not over-share. Do you really want to know about someone else’s digestive problems? I didn’t think so. When you went into graphic detail about your gastric flu did you consider all the people reading your tweets while they were eating? Your followers should be wanting to know more about you, not less.
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David Wright is a direct response copywriter and marketing specialist at Ghostwriter Dad. Follow him @bloggerdad

Twitter is a lot like the wild west of social media. The venue is relatively new, many people are unfamiliar with the etiquette and an even larger number of people could care less about the few rules in place. Which is why I am quick to my trigger and hit the block or unfollow button the minute people’s poor Twitter manners cross my path.

Here are six ways to become a Twitter pariah with me (and I imagine a lot of other people): (more…)

by Robert Dwyer of The Wellesley Wine Press – Follow him @RobertDwyer

A subtly confusing aspect of Twitter, even for people who have been using the service for a while, is understanding the differences between replies, mentions and direct messages. These concepts are confusing because they’re different than E-mail and aren’t necessarily the same as on other social networks like Facebook. The goal of this piece is to help well-meaning people from inadvertently annoying others on Twitter, or worse, accidentally sharing private information publicly.

This is part 2 of a 2 part series about replies, mentions and direct messages in terms of how they’re used from the Twitter web interface (Read part one here). Today we’ll talk about mentions and direct messages. (more…)

by Robert Dwyer of The Wellesley Wine Press – Follow him @RobertDwyer

A subtly confusing aspect of Twitter, even for people who have been using the service for a while, is understanding the differences between replies, mentions and direct messages. These concepts are confusing because they’re different than E-mail and aren’t necessarily the same as on other social networks like Facebook. The goal of this piece is to help well-meaning people from inadvertently annoying others on Twitter, or worse, accidentally sharing private information publicly. (more…)

By James Mallinson – Follow him @jmallinson

As useful and fun as Twitter can be, it can also be both addictive and a major distraction. Many times in the past I’ve tried to write a blog post or work on some other big project and I’d lose my focus because I had Twitter open and kept getting drawn to it, wanting to tweet something, see what others were tweeting or just reply to somebody. Of course, this is a common and well documented problem with most social media sites, but I’ve found Twitter to be particularly bad, if for no other reason that it’s so simple and quick to use.

It’s now increasingly documented that multi-tasking, and just generally allowing distractions into your life is a poor way of getting things done. If you’re tweeting while trying to do your work, that work will take much longer and require more effort to do. If you don’t want to waste your time like that, try implementing these four tips when using Twitter:

Set limits

The first, and perhaps most effective measure is to set limits. That could involve having particular days on when to tweet, setting time limits or even tweet limits (how many tweets you will make per day). Rather than dipping in and out of Twitter when it calls to you, putting aside perhaps an hour a day or choosing Saturday to use it when you know you’re going to be least busy, means you can really give your tweeting the attention it deserves, and thus shut it out of your mind the rest of the time. (more…)

By Nick Parkin of Pimlico Flats. Follow him @pimlico_flats.

It’s a common expression that in life, timing is everything. On Twitter, nobody tells you that your effectiveness is more dependent on timing that any other online activity.

Time your reading.

Beginners always think that twitter involves reading everything. If you want to give up your life do that by all means, but sensible people will limit their reading to appropriate times and ways.

Rather than becoming a slave to other people’s tweets, read at a time of your choice. (more…)

Adrianos is an Internet Defamation attorney in Los Angeles and authors the California Defamation Law Blog. Follow him @adrianos.

Let me cut to the chase. You DO NOT want to be sued on Twitter.

Being sued already stinks enough. Trust me. I know all about this because I’m a lawyer and I sue people for a living (don’t hold it against me).

But being sued for a tweet is even worse.

First off, think of what your friends will say.  “Hi John, have you seen Bill lately?” “No, he was drunk-tweeting so he got sued.”  Imagine the harassment you’d experience at the hands of your buddies.  I shudder to even think about it!

Second, imagine what your customers will say when they read about it online and the headline reads, “Drunk Twit Gets Sued For Tweets.” Think they’re going to hire you again? Probably not.

Worst of all, you could lose your privilege to Tweet under Twitter’s Terms of Service. And that would mean the end of world undoubtedly.

So how do you avoid this?  I’m going to show you 10 basic ways to avoid being sued on Twitter. (more…)

By Nathan Hangen, follow him @nhangen.

I know, it sounds strange in theory. But think about it like this: you spend a lot of time building a network on Twitter, engaging with your followers, and creating powerful partnerships, but what would happen if this single asset went belly up? You don’t put all of your cash into a single stock, so why should you invest all of your social capital in a single service?

Don’t get me wrong, I like Twitter, but I want to be prepared in the event that something kills my favorite social tool. I’ve never invested this much time in any other platform, nor have I met so many great people all over the world. Twitter excels at connecting people and helping them share ideas, but it can’t be the only way to connect, especially if your business or personal brand depends on it. (more…)

Jason Preston (@jasonp107) is the Director New Media at the Parnassus Group, hosts of 140: The Twitter Conference (@140tc)

Let’s face it, Twitter is all about search. Real time search. Why else would they redesign their home page to show off their search functionality? The amount of real-time information pulsing through their service at any given minute is impressive, to say the least.

But for all that, Twitter’s built-in search is a frustratingly limited tool, providing access to a very limited amount of the data set available via the web site or their API.

Enter TweepSearch, a search application built by Damon Cortesi that allows you to search through the profile information of over 10 million unique accounts.

Here are three things you can do with TweepSearch that you can’t do with Twitter Search: (more…)