I have been using Twitter since it launched a few years ago, but have participated more actively within the past 12 months. For much of that time I have tweeted at the username @printedproof. This user name was a mirror to my printing resources website at the time. Originally, the only reason I joined Twitter was to promote my articles and make some money from affiliate programs. This all changed as soon as I begun to witness the true power of this popular social networking tool.

As many of you know, Twitter is much more than simply a place to plug your posts, market for money, or blog for business. Twitter is a networking, connecting, and interacting online powerhouse. Don’t get me wrong, it’s OK to promote your projects on Twitter, I would say it’s even required for online success. However, if you truly plan on sharing everything about your personal life as well as run your blog or business on Twitter, I recommend having multiple Twitter accounts.

Let’s go back to my personal example: @printedproof has transformed from a targeted business execution to a place for me to just, well… be me. Since taking twitter flight years ago I have built hundreds if not thousands of mini-relationships. Some of these new connections I am proud to call dear friends and have chatted with on a very personal level. Many of these relationships share interests with me but do not necessarily share interest in my business.

My printing resources website has since taken a back seat to new projects. These new projects have taken new lives of their own with individual twitter profiles. In order to dedicate and target all updates and messages to the loyal followers of those new projects, I keep these profiles separate. Sure, I share some tweets on my personal account, as do I share great things from many of my friends on twitter. But bottom line, when a new user follows my profile on twitter, they bring with them a predetermined expectation of what they will read from my tweets. These expectations are built from important facts found in my bio, link, background, and updates. It’s important to use these things I have created to give my followers the correct impression of this particular twitter account and then deliver it.

One thing to remember on twitter is that people follow profiles because they share interest with that particular person, business, brand, or website. Followers want updates that are of interest to them. As a business owner, my goal is to provide the content that my viewers and customers require.

So relax, it’s OK to run multiple twitter profiles to meet those expectations. Do not lack the “personable” with your professional accounts; just be sure to deliver the updates that you promised.

© 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips.



It’s OK to Have Multiple Twitter Accounts

This is precisely what myTwittshirt is intended to: with this web service you can create custom t-shirts that embed a QR-code (similar to a bar code, used by smartphones and the like) pointing to your Twitter home page. Scanning the QR-code will redirect to the wearer’s Twitter account!

Will you wear your Twitter too?

© 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips.



Never Go Out Without Your Twitter: Wear It!

• Keep your tweets short and leave at least 25 characters with free space. ¿Why? In order to get RTs your tweet will need that free space to contain the RT and @username. Besides, short tweets get more RTs because they look nicer and cleaner than long ones and, above all, because lazy people don’t like to read too much, and the Internet and Twitter is plenty of lazy people .

• The content of your tweet must be interesting and eye-catching.

• Just ask on your tweet for a RT. I don’t use it but I know many people who apply this technique and works quite well for them. For example: “Looking Into the Mirror of Life – http://su.pr/193M7S – Please RT!”

• Place strategically some call-to-action buttons on your blog to make easier for your followers to share your content. If you use wordpress I recommend you to download and use the smart sharing plugin just as Mashable.com does.

• Make some RTs to your followers. Some of them will want to return you the favour. If they don’t do you can’t get upset with them. Well you can but you shouldn’t because they don’t force you to RT their tweets; it was your choice.

• You can create a group of 5 to 10 twitter buddies and share your own tweets. I don’t apply this tip because it has two potential negative effects: (1) I don’t think that your followers will be happy to see the same people’s tweets time and again; and (2), it’s quite probable that your buddies don’t have the same or similar amount of followers as you have.

• Use hashtags in an effective way. I suggest you to add just one hashtag or even two but not more. ¿Why? Because they make your tweet look dirty and, at the same time, you would seem a spammer.

• Find some twitter users in your niche. Create a new column using TweetDeck with their @username. Check the RTs they receive and follow those people who made the retweet. If you’re lucky they will follow you back. If they don’t you can try replying some of their tweets or Retweeting them. You can identify who don’t follow you back and unfollow them manually with who.unfollowed.me.

• Make sure your blog posts have great and eye-catching titles.

• Send your tweet several times over the day. You can schedule your tweets with su.pr.

• Be grateful to people for retweeting your tweets. Don’t thank all at the same time. Each follower who RT your content deserve your complete attention and your sincere gratitude.

• And finally, my best piece of advice: be a good twitter user, be social, actively engage your followers, build meaningful relationships and your retweets will skyrocket for sure.

Follow these tips and your tweets will receive more retweets than ever before.

¿Did you like this post? Please, share it with your followers. Thanks, my friends.

© 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips.



How to Get More Retweet Action on Twitter

Connecting Twitter to TVs or projecting it on a screen at your events will add a whole new level of audience participation. Plus, you can grow your list of followers at every event. Creating a live Twitter feed to aggregate tweets sent to users, from users, or including keywords or hashtags can be quite a task.

You can run a real-time search using TweetDeck but it isn’t really optimized for screen and your audience will be squinting.

You can try to build your own Twitter feed widget but it’s a pretty daunting task involving JQuery, JavaScripting, CSS and HTML knowledge.

There’s an easier way. StreamTwitter is a little script designed for streaming tweets in real-time to any video source. Just open the script, change your search term, switch the graphics to be your own (optional) and connect your laptop to your video source. It’s optimized for TV screen resolution and looks amazing. It updates automatically with beautiful jQuery sliding effects. It can filter out bad words if desired. It is the easiest and best way to have a live Twitter feed streaming tweets including your desired search term at your events. It also comes with easy-to-follow instructions and 3 months of support if you have any questions.

If you’ve got experience with StreamTwitter, or any questions, please feel free to share in the comments!

© 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips.



Stream Twitter on TVs in real-time at events, concerts, presentations and more.

Twitter’s launched this with the idea that you can get Twitter updates from your favorite companies, as many tend to tweet out offers that are only available to the Twitterati. However now you can utilize “Fast Follow” by texting “follow USERNAME” to 40404. You’ll then start receiving all of updates from that user via texts on your phone.

Personally, I do use the mobile interface for Twitter, but really only for DMs (direct messages). It’s kind of like text messaging to me that way. Not sure I’ll ever use “Fast Follow” but it’s nice that it’s so much more easily available to those of us without super computers for phones!

PS – Currently, “Fast Follow” is only available in the US, but they say they’re working on implementing it for other countries.

© 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips.



Twitter Stalking via SMS

Twitter #hashtag in Hebrew

It as occurred to me that Twitter has no support for non-Latin hashtags. However some people use them anyway, so I wrote this Greasemonkey script that adds that support. It should work with any language, highlighting them and adding a search link.

I hope in the upcoming days also to add support for the ‘more’ button, making it an integral part of twitter usage. Download it here.

© 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips.



Twitter Unicode Hashtags

I am co-creator of upprdwnr, a tool that measures public sentiment on twitter. Think of us as the first iteration of a Twitter “like” button. All users have to do is simply add an #uppr or #dwnr hastag to their tweets, and our site measures that with the rest of the world.

As others try to find the pixie dust to accurately measure what people are saying, we ask users to use the hashtags that makes their voice louder than ever.

© 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips.



Measuring Twitter Sentiment – UpprDwnr

It appears that MTV’s attempt at reviving itself with a Twitter Jockey (an updated version of a VJ) has fallen short. After a month of Twitter-focused challenges to find the most appropriate individual for the job (measured by MTV’s own TweetLevel), the network announced the top five contestants in their “Follow Me: The Search for MTV’s First TJ” competition – and people are angry.

See, for the duration of the competition, MTV kept an up-to-the-minute contestant ranking by measuring influence, popularity, engagement and trust. In addition to these metrics, anyone could vote for their favorite via MTV and American Express’ MTVTJ Facebook page. When voting closed, the top five were listed publicly – as they had been throughout the competition – but when the announcement was made on Friday, several of the original top five were noticeably absent.

A quick search of “@MTVTJ” shows that people aren’t just voicing their complaints – they want answers. With more than ten Twitter accounts, MTV is notoriously chatty, but they’ve remained completely silent on the topic.

The way the situation is currently being handled is only making things worse – MTV and American Express are deleting the negative Facebook comments.

It’s been almost a week now, and the competition’s blog, Facebook and Twitter have not been used to confront the complaints. In a world where we are all still navigating the slippery slope that is social media, what will MTV and American Express’ (lack of) reaction mean for their image? Social media is a two-sided conversation, and you can’t expect to talk, talk, talk, then stay silent when people ask for answers.

What are your thoughts? Has MTV put the nail in its own coffin? Will this case join Southwest in the Twitter history books – or is it merely a one hit wonder?

© 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips.



Did Twitter Kill the Video Star?

I queried some other successful Twitter-ites to learn about their favorite Twitter Tips. Here’s some ideas to take your Twitter Page from Topsy-Turvy to Titillating!

• Tweeter, Push Thyself! Don’t have a personal trainer or an agent pushing you to meet those personal deadlines? That can make reaching a goal even more difficult. Annabel Candy wrote recently about using Twitter as a source for motivation. She tweets her goals to help hold herself accountable for daily goals. Talk about baking two loaves in one oven (my alternative phrase to the more gruesome bird and stone saying). Not only does this make her more accountable to her own goals, it also piques the interest of her Twitter followers. For example, she might tweet about her goal to write another chapter today to which her followers might lift an eyebrow and say, “Is Annabel writing a book?” Curiosity can kill more than a cat, it can also drive traffic to your site.
• Know Your Niche. Twitterista Jaden of the fabulous blog Steamy Kitchen, suggests this Twitter rule: be entertaining, useful or both! People on Twitter are busy and in order to get their attention, you have to fill a niche. Think of your Twitter account as a blog…in 140 characters. Then next ask, why would someone want to follow your Twitter “blog.” Are you like Neil deGrasse Tyson and provide useful scientific tidbits? Or are you more like Ellen DeGeneres providing folks with funny, entertaining quips throughout the day. Go for one or the other, or find your own middle ground in between.
• Sir Link-a-Lot. Grace Langlois of La Mia Vita Dolce doesn’t just post on lovely sweets, she also connects with others on Twitter. Her suggestion? Link to interesting stories. If you find something noteworthy, chances are there might be others who will too. Your blog may have a theme but you can share some of your other passions via links to other articles from aha moments, inspiring to informative articles.
• Reduce. JJ of the blog, Blah Blah Blahger shares some great advice on using tools to help manage your Twitter Account. JJ says that by using a bit.ly or ow.ly, url reducer, you can push followers to your site. With a condensed, clean web link, your message won’t get lost AND you’ll be able to track the number of click-throughs that you get!
• Be a Connector. Have you ever been at a party and been cornered by someone who does nothing but talk about themselves? Well, think of Twitter like one big party. You can be one of the dull people at the party only talking about yourself or you can be a connector. Suzanne Broughton of the OC Family Blog says “help others first on Twitter before linking to yourself.” She recommends this technique on your Twitter page: “Give twice. Take once.” For every tweet linking back to your site, retweet something of someone else’s and find some other way to spread the Twitter love.
• Clean up the Clutter. My personal Twitter tip is to be sure to clear out the clutter from time-to-time. Once or twice a year, I go through my “follow” list from beginning to end and “unfollow” those people that are not following me back. Of course, there are some people I’ll follow no matter what. You know, like Steven Colbert. I don’t really expect him to follow me back (but it sure would be cool!). And there are some organizations I follow with expecting a follow back. You have to make these decisions for yourself, but if you use my advice, be ruthless. Keeping your Twitter follow list clean is important. It helps your Twitter experience to be more of a community rather than a sycophantic one-way dialog with someone who really isn’t that into you (another party metaphor, but it’s relevant).

Following these tips can help you reach your Twitter Targets, but it can also just make Twitter a lot more fun too.

© 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips.



Top Tips for Your Twitter Targets

Most companies have joined Twitter by now but there are a few that have lagged behind. If you’re a part of this group (as my company was), it can be really intimidating to jump into the social media scene when your competitors already have established accounts with hundreds (or thousands) of followers. I used these techniques to jump my new account from 0 to 350 followers in one month, bypassing the awkward infancy period of a new Twitter account almost entirely.

Why should you care? Getting an established account is the best way to attract new followers, and even more importantly, more interaction with your followers and a quick intro into your local Twitter community, driving communication and clicks through to your company’s website.

Set up the account

As soon as possible, grab your business’s name on Twitter if it’s still available. Mine wasn’t, but luckily the account was inactive and we were able to file a copyright request, releasing the account over to our name. If this isn’t possible, grab an available username as close to your business’s name as possible. Avoid underscores and dashes as much as possible.

Design your twitter account to look human, like the @zappos account does above. One of the best ways to do this is to add a custom background with someone’s real picture — preferably the person tweeting from the account but you can use the founders/CEOs of the company as well. Stock photos are worse than having nothing at all. Customize the colors and the rest of the background to reflect your company’s branding.

Before any promotion of the new account, write twenty tweets to fill out the first page, spacing them at least 15 minutes apart from each other. Thereafter, continue to tweet every day, 4-5 times at max for the first few weeks, and taper (if you wish) after. We want the account to look active and get that tweet count up as fast as possible without spamming. A great tool to use is CoTweet, so you can spend 10 minutes in the morning setting up your tweets for the day, spacing them 2-3 hours between each other.

Very important: Make sure your tweets are high quality and useful to your audience. At the end of the day, your account is to promote your business, but will be more follow-worthy if you interact with the community and post about other items of interest in your field. I usually try to have three or so posts per day promoting our website, one retweet (varying between native retweets as well as non-native which can add commentary), and one link out to something interesting elsewhere. You want to emphasize that you’re a real person, not a robot.

Acquire followers

Now that you have a follow-worthy account, it’s time to get followers. It would be easy to just let this happen naturally, but I’ve found that accounts with high follower counts are more desirable, and therefore attract more people. So while the goal is to get a high number of interactive followers, we’ll start out with finding twitter accounts (ideally in the same field) that auto-follow back.

The best way to do this is to use an online application called Tweepsect, built by my friend @shazow, that analyzes a twitter account’s “stalkers” (those that follow but the account doesn’t follow), “stalking” (those that the account follows without following back), and “mutual” (mutually following).

Find other businesses in your field on Twitter and inspect them using Tweepsect. What we’re looking for here is the “mutual” list, and then we can scroll through those mutually following accounts and find those that have nearly identical following/follower counts — sure sign of an auto-follower. Follow every one of these accounts you find for a very quick boost to your following count; if it’s over a hundred accounts, follow only about 50-100 per day to allow for your own following count to rise.

You can start promoting the account once you’ve reached about 100 followers: for example, write a post on your company’s blog, add links from your website and Facebook pages, tell your employees to promote it via their twitter accounts, etc. Why didn’t we do this first? People are more likely to follow an established account.

Bonus: Lists are another great metric, and still a fairly new feature. Use this to your advantage — inspect the lists that your competitors appear on and follow those that create those lists. Usually these creators will add your account to their lists as well. You can also go to Twibes.com and add your business’s account to lists in as many terms in your field as possible.

Find the community

Once you’ve completed these steps, it’s now time to find people in your field to follow and interact with. As large as Twitter is, I often have trouble finding where the good communities of people are. Tweepsect again comes in handy here — we used it before to find auto-follows but now we can use it more generally. Take a look at the “stalking” list in addition to the mutual list to find who other businesses in your field are following. Watch out for inactive accounts, designated on Tweepsect with a face next to account — these accounts haven’t been updated in 90 days.

Another great way to find those in your field is to use Twitter Search. Search for relevant hashtags of topics: #education, #gardening, #marketing, as well as related topics: #onlineeducation, #organicgardening, #ppcmarking, etc. Search for these topics once daily to get a snapshot of others in your field that are promoting that conversation on Twitter. While general topics are hashtagged fairly rarely, conferences almost always have a hashtag for the attendees. Specifically in the education space, #educon occurred about two weeks after we created our Twitter account and it provided a great resource of people to follow in our space.

If you find some really great accounts to follow, I would recommend creating a private list to stick these people on. As your account grows larger, it’ll become impossible to watch the feeds of 300+ people per day. Stick the highest quality accounts into one list and read that instead every morning.

Continue growing and interacting

Hopefully at this point, your account will have the valuable combination of a high amount of followers that also interact, placing yourself directly within the Twitter community and on the same level as your competitors. It’ll be a lot easier to coast your Twitter account since people finding your account will be more likely to subscribe – give months later, the account has more than 800 followers.

Any other tips? I’d love to hear them in the comments!

© 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips.



Jump-Starting Your Company’s Twitter Account