Twitip

When I start reviewing Twitter accounts it can quite often be the case that businesses who aren’t used to working in the social media environment are using Twitter as just another outreach to their marketing content. You can tell these accounts as generally all they contain are updates generated by the feed from their news page or if they have one, their blog. (more…)

by David Turnbull – Follow him @dturnbull

CoTweet.com is a powerful Twitter-centric web application designed to help brands connect with their audience and join the conversation. Although used by some large companies such as Ford, Pepsi and Whole Foods I’ve seen little mention of the tool in the blogosphere and thought it deserved some attention. (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 Mark Hayward – Follow him @mark_hayward.

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 really intelligent people, 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…)

By CarolAnn Bailey-Lloyd. Follow her @CarolAnnB.

Now that you’ve joined the twitter bandwagon, you’re trying to figure out the best way to attract quality followers to your twittosphere. I don’t know too many folks who want a wave of spam bots following them, but sometimes that’s what we might end up with if we’re not careful with our twitter approach. What’s a twitter newbie to do when she’s new to the twitter-scene? Use the following twitter tips to create a presence that’s both clear and notable: (more…)

by Chris Allison of neboweb (@neboweb)

As Twitter continues to define its niche, many companies are hiring individuals for the sole purpose of being the brand’s face on Twitter. For companies with a bigger grasp of the online scene, these individuals often do much more than just Tweet, but being the brand’s bird is still a crucial part of the job. Since being a professional micro-blogger is a new experience for most people starting the position, I thought it would be helpful to offer some advice based off of my experiences. (more…)

I’ve decided to lump the last three parts of Lessons from the Evolution of Blogging series by Crystal N. Woods, from Conscious Evolution, Success and Self Esteem (@CrystalsQuest) here in one post. You can read the first five parts at the following:

Part 1 – Journaling
Part 2 – Link Lists
Part 3 – Conversations
Part 4 – Thought Leadership
Part 5 – Monetisation

Please share in the comments how you felt about this series! Would you like to see more series posts like this, or do you prefer the shorter, one-off posts?

Twitter Tips for Beginners: Lessons from the Evolution of Blogging Part 6 – Corporatisation

Corporate Blogs only started really emerging within the last few years.  Apple, in particular, used blogging effectively in the launch of the iPhone – and it put them in a unique position to deal with teething problems when it first came out.  After their notable success, I saw other corporations start following suit.

Corporations only tend to adopt a trend once they are convinced it’s gone mainstream, or unless it’s going to give them enough of a competitive advantage to offset the ‘risk’.  When corporate blogging started emerging, the conventional media changed how they portrayed blogs – from thinking that blogs were a fringe element, to almost an unspoken assumption that this was a solid trend.  More stories about blogging started hitting the papers and radio, especially of the “blogging is dead” kind (that usually only happens when a trend is alive and well, and just taking off, funnily enough).

You’d have seen the same thing recently with twitter. (more…)

The following is Part 4 of a series of posts by Crystal N. Woods, from
Conscious Evolution, Success and Self Esteem (Follow her @CrystalsQuest) You can also read Part 1 – Journaling and Part 2 – Link Lists or Part 3 – Conversations.

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 following is Part 3 of a series of posts by Crystal N. Woods, from
Conscious Evolution, Success and Self Esteem (Follow Crystal @CrystalsQuest) You can read Part 1 of Lessons From The Evolution of Blogging – Journaling and Part 2 – Link Lists here.

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…)