Twitip

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 Nathan Hangen, follow him @nhangen.

As I’ve been following people on Twitter, I’ve noticed an interesting trend. More and more people are starting to use a validation service to create a gateway between themselves and new followers. On the surface, this looks like a great idea, but I’ve come to realize that it might not be – here’s why: (more…)

by Neal Wiser. Follow him @nealwiser

Could a solution to the FollowFriday conundrum finally be at hand? I’m not sure, but @PhilBaumann has a great idea.

If you’re a regular reader of this blog, you may have read my April post, Follow Friday, too Much of a Good Thing? In that post, I discussed some of the many Pros and Cons of #FollowFriday, especially why so many people are becoming disenchanted with the meme, and offered some recommendations that I feel would improve the FollowFriday experience. Unfortunately, while many people do seem to be making better recommendations recently, my personal FollowFriday experience still leaves me frustrated. (more…)

I know we’ve seen this topic covered in the past (How To Handle Multiple Users Within Your Company and When One Twitter Account Is Not Enough), but I just received another email from a reader asking about using Twitter in a business setting:

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By Rebecca Maxwell of My Adventures in History – Follow her @rmaxwell142.

Call me old fashioned, but I am one of those people that value community and relationships with people. As a child of the 90’s, I’ve learned to adapt to our technological age where we can keep up-to-date with people without ever seeing them in person. While this is not my preferred method of contact, the last couple of years I have seen myself rely more and more on online interaction than face-to-face. Recently though, I’ve been frustrated with the alienation of social networking sites to the point of taking some extreme measures, especially regarding Twitter.

I originally signed up for Twitter as a way to keep in touch with those interested in my history blog and network with those who have blogs similar to mine. As more and more of my friends on Twitter found me, I found myself following and being followed by people I knew in real life. While this wasn’t bad at first, I soon found myself “unfollowed” by those I was following. People I knew in real life wouldn’t follow me. Then, of course, people who knew nothing about me or my blog began to follow me out of the blue. (more…)

A while back we posted 181 Free Twitter Buttons, Badges, Widget and Counters to Help You Find Followers and now I just received notice of another great site to help you find even more free icons, badges, and graphic snippets to help you advertise your Twitter account on your website or social networking profile.

TwitterLogos boasts “the largest collection” but also allows graphic designers to submit their work to be featured on the site and get free advertising. There are many that I’ve seen before elsewhere, but many more that I haven’t. Check out this one, which would be great for anyone in the medical field.

Just a note: There are some in there that I noticed, especially those from Flickr, that are marked “All rights reserved.” So be careful… but most of them seem to be alright for use.

By Joe Mescher of Social Media Commando. Follow him @JoeMescher.

How would you like to end the debate that ‘Twitter is just for sharing what you had for lunch’ once and for all?  This post is about how to use Twitter for a common good, much like I’m doing with the help of my Tweeps in Burlington, VT.

The whole project started with a simple idea, my Twitter handle, and a few hundred interested followers… (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 Chris Johnson of Guerrilla.me – Follow him @genuinechris

One reason alone is why I’m on twitter. To make money. I don’t mean to give Lara the willies. But it’s true. I also post stuff about my kids. I also have made great friends from twitter. I’ve also learned a ton about the world. Still, at the end of the day, twitter is about earning customers for me. Or, should I say, helping people. It’s working. I’m doing enough business to support my family of 4, just from Twitter.

[Honesty Box: We live in the Midwest and are radically cheap.]

This is the ethos you need to have starting out:

1.) Value And Honor Every Relationship Possible. Twitter is about relationships. It’s about small communities, ideas bouncing around. You’re there to help everyone possible. You’re there to be of service. Get it? You have to help people. Let’s get specific: be of maximum service to 100 people at and around your level. Get to know them. Go out of your way to help. For free. If you need to, put a spreadsheet down to remind yourself to interact with them and encourage them. (more…)

As usual, it’s Sunday here in The States and with the notion of taking things easy, I’ve drawn up a list of some of the things that have found their way into my inbox.

Let me know what you think if you’ve tried any of these tools, and if you have any you’d like to share (or any posts you’ve written on your own blog related to Twitter) please don’t hesitate to let me know about them!

• Twitoria – Many people seem to have re-discovered this one recently, as it’s been mentioned here on TwiTip before. You simply enter in your Twitter username, and select a time frame from the dropdown. You then see the number of people you’re following who haven’t updated their Twitter stream in that time. Fortunately most of the people I follow are regular updaters, but this tool is helpful in trimming down your list if you’re so inclined.
• Tweet4Blood – An interesting concept, for sure. “Using tweet 4 blood you can tweet your blood requests to followers @tweet4blood who are donors. Tweets are also hashtagged city wise for easy finding. You don’t have to login to tweet it from here. But make sure not to spam the community.” Currently seems like it’s mostly used in India, but I can see how it would be easily spread around the world.
• Print Your Twitter – Since Twitter’s archive only goes back so far, using Print Your Twitter allows you to save the history of your Twitter account, favorite hashtags (#topic), and so on, right down to your computer. What were you doing a year ago on Twitter? Find out by checking your own personal archive.
• Followformation – Helps users quickly follow dozens of categorized Twitter users. This tool is meant for Twitter users that would like to make sense out of following. For new Twitter users, this can be especially intimidating. Followformation helps the social media newcomer simplify the first few steps by dividing the top people on Twitter by categories, and automating the entire following process.