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…)
Do you own a small business? Are you having a hard time understanding Twitter?
As a small business owner and social media user going on two years now, I can honestly say that initially I did not really see the point or power of Twitter at all.
However, after sticking it out passed the learning curve, picking up a couple of followers, and following reallyintelligentpeople, thanks to Twitter, I get to make connections and learn something new every day. In fact, at this point I feel like Twitter is a tool that all small business owners should use as part of their overall efforts to build a distributed social media footprint.
Nevertheless, if you are like many in the small business community who have tried Twitter without success, then you might be fond of saying, “I just don’t get it.” (more…)
Making money online is not only one of the most frequent topics in blogging, it’s also one of the hottest searches on any search engine, and it’s becoming ever more popular on twitter too.
I’ve left this topic until now because most of the people who start out with the sole objective of creating money making blogs, and more recently twitter accounts, do tend to be a bit obvious. If they succeed, they also tend to get short-lived success, mostly along the lines of niche blogs – they build one tiny area up to be profitable, then move on to another area. We’re seeing something similar on twitter where people are setting up multiple accounts. (more…)
As blogging went mainstream, and more newcomers started flooding the market, the earliest bloggers were given a bit of momentum forward into the online equivalent of celebrity status – they were the trend-setters.
Not all of them took advantage of this push, though, while some of the newcomers rapidly adapted to blogging and took it by storm, getting their own place high up in the heirarchy with amazing speed.
The difference between these thought leaders and the majority of bloggers is the same difference we see affecting who gets promotions at work, makes it as a ’star’ in Hollywood, or even gets nominated to run the local Rotary Club. It’s simply this: in order to lead others, you have to be willing to get out the front and lead others. (more…)
The Blogging community grew bigger as more blogs were started, and existing blogs shared the love by linking to them. Of course if you know SEO, you’d know that this meant the search engines started paying attention to these, and more people started discovering blogs. The community stopped being small, but started to distinguish between the well known and established bloggers, and the newcomers who were still learning the ropes.
This is where conversations come in. Bloggers would read a new post by someone, with their editorial comments on it, and write an answering post on their own blogs. Naturally, this added fuel to the SEO fire, as cross linking gave blog sites some serious weight. As the art took off and gained momentum, and more people wanted to start blogging themselves, software started making it easier to create and update your blogs, and eventually the ability to comment was born.
Enter the era of interactivity. (Don’t try saying that after a few drinks, ok?) (more…)
Since my last post, I hope you’ve had fun playing around with your storyline. This time, we’re going to look at how blogs shifted away from journaling, and started becoming lists of links.
Initially blogs were few and far between so, having shared themselves by journaling in this new medium, there was a sense of being part of a small community. Bloggers weren’t all that common still, so when a new blog was found other bloggers would link back to it, providing a way to follow other blogs for people who’d discovered (and liked) reading blogs.
These list posts over time evolved to include linking to other sites the blogger found interesting – creating a kind of filter for all the information on the web, through the lens of someone’s interests. If you shared those interests, you had a quick way to find things you’d probably like, without having to hunt them all down yourself. That meant people that weren’t bloggers, friends or family, started coming to visit these blogs, and their popularity grew. (more…)
In this post Mark Hayward (follow @mark_hayward) provides some habits of effective Twitter users that beginners can use to help expand their network. If you have other “effective Twitter user traits” for beginners, please feel free to put them in the comments.
Do you think that people who are able to successfully expand their network using Twitter share any habits or common traits?
If you had asked me six or seven months ago, “What is the value of Twitter?” I probably would have responded with something to the effect of, “Itís a great way to let people know when you are making coffee or sitting in traffic.”
However, after quite a few months of participating, networking, and most importantly, learning, I am now a firm believer that when used properly Twitter can be an extremely powerful addition to a comprehensive social media strategy.
For the newbie Twitter user it can be difficult to know where to begin or how to constructively increase the number of followers, and as such, I drafted this post with the beginner in mind. People like you and me who are somewhere between ëjust creating a profileí and a couple hundred followers.
Also, if you are like me, I am assuming that you want to be an active participant and wish to grow your network for collaborative or creative opportunities. Specifically, you would like to use Twitter as an online tool to connect with people all over the world.
With the above in mind, and until someone (Google, Chris Brogan, YOU?) creates an algorithm that will quantify “effective Twitter users,” my analysis is based on watching the Tweeting habits of regular users and not only the elite “Twitterati.”
10 Traits of Highly Effective Twitter Users
So, subjective as it may be, my observations over the past couple of months show that there are some common characteristics amongst those who seem to be effective users of this service and they are as follows: (more…)
As the parent of a toddler (that’s my boy @xrowse in the pic) and as a lover of Twitter I couldn’t resist this guest post by Nicole Nicolay “NikNik” from MyTechOpinion.com.
For some, it’s hard enough finding your voice in a 500 word blog post. So when it comes to expressing your thoughts and opinions on Twitter in 140 characters or less, you’d think it would be even harder. Right?!
Well actually, finding your voice on Twitter can be a pretty painless process if you employ the right strategies. For those of us with kids, we “get it” right away. Twitter can be a lot like your 2 year old. It screams and whines and will bark orders at you all day (ex: give me….get me….follow me, etc). Parents know that getting your child to communicate with them is truly an art that requires patience and creativity. And Twitter is no different. So when it comes to finding your voice on Twitter, I suggest you start thinking like a toddler or how you would communicate with one!
The following list includes my top 10 tips for developing better communication with toddlers on Twitter:
In this guest post Dan Hollings (@dhollings) takes a look at 6 Questions that are often asked about Twitter and gives a comprehensive introduction to how to use Twitter effectively. Grab a coffee, sit back and enjoy.
How to light a candle under your Twitterings for both Newbies and those that think they are Pros…
How silly! I’m preparing to share some powerfully useful and advanced Twitter tips, yet I start with a warped variant of a well known children’s nursery rhyme. What’s up with that? It’s simple…
At the core of Twitter is a concept so simple, even a child can do it. Yet almost every newbie who arrives at the Twitter site is overwhelmed with a variation of the following thought:
“What the…?”
My interpretation of this flummoxing phenomena suggests that most folks (newbies or not) are really asking:
In this post 
As the parent of a toddler (that’s my boy 
