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

Today’s post comes from Jenni Izzo, a Drexel University graduate turned PR Account Coordinator with a social media obsession. You can follow Jenni at @jenniizzo.

Whether large or small, Twitter can enhance your event in a number of ways. Take a hint from MTV, who recently used a live Twitter Tracker for their 2010 Movie Awards. They encouraged those in the audience, as well as those at home, to get in on the action by tweeting their thoughts, reactions and questions. Throughout the night, tweets containing “MTV” hit over 400 per minute. But, even if you aren’t planning a star-studded event, you can still use the following tips to create a tweet-worthy event.

Establish an event hashtag.
Long before you start promoting the event, create a hashtag. It should be easy to remember, short and relevant. This will be key in incorporating Twitter into your event. Include the hashtag on everything from the Evite to the Facebook page to signage at the event. Other creative ideas include: event t-shirts, business cards and centerpieces.

Create buzz before the event.
Now that you’ve established the event hashtag, get out and there use it. Tweet about sponsors, ticket sales, guest appearances and topics. Get people excited before the event and it will ensure that the enthusiasm carries over to the day-of.

Encourage attendees to tweet during the event.
Using the previously mentioned tips, make sure the hashtag is visible at the event. If you have a PowerPoint or Keynote presentation, make sure it is included on the title slide. If you will be taking planned breaks, display slide encouraging attendees to tweet — or better yet…

Host a live stream.
During scheduled downtime, replace your presentation with a live stream. A live stream should also be incorporated at all times on a projection screen. If you are announcing winners or honorees, use Twitter to share the big news. Also keep your audience actively engaged by tweeting trivia questions and giving an award to the first to tweet the correct answer.

Take advantage of post-event insight.
Twitter gives event coordinators a valuable opportunity to look back attendees’ candid thoughts. Review tweets marked with your hashtag to see what worked and what didn’t. Use this as an opportunity to improve your next event or connect with people who had further questions.

When it comes to using Twitter to enhance your event, the possibilities are endless. Feel free to add to this list and share some of your favorites in the comments.

© 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips.



How To Incorporate Twitter Into Your Event

Hashtags as Keywords

One simple way of thinking of hashtags is as keyword tags that help label your tweets. If you use a blogging platform like WordPress or social media sites like Flickr, you’re probably already familiar with the idea of using keywords to help tag your blog posts or photos. Keyword tags allow people to more easily find related content of interest. This is EXACTLY why you want to use hashtags — more people are likely to find your Twitter account as a result.

How Hashtags Help People Find You on Twitter

There at least a couple ways that hashtags help people find you on Twitter. The most basic is that in the Twitter interface, hashtags are hyperlinks. When people click a hashtag that interests them, say #twitter, they receive real-time search results of other tweets that have utilized that hashtag. Hashtags are also accessible via various Twitter APIs — there are a plethora of web apps that utilize the Twitter API like foller.me and the Twitter data visualization tool Mentionmap.

Hashtags Will Improve Your Twitter Experience

Utilizing hashtags not only allows other people to find you on Twitter, but also allows you to find other Twitter users who you many benefit from following. Given that many developers love playing around with the Twitter API, by using hashtags you’re also providing them with raw material to help build the next super-cool Twitter API-based app. These apps also provide yet another avenue for people to find you on Twitter.

Twitip has many other neat articles on hashtags that are worth reading. For new Twitter users who may still be a little puzzled by hashtags, my hope is that re-conceptualizing them as keyword tags will help you benefit more from the one of the most interesting and useful social media tools available on the Web today.

© 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips.



Why You Should Consider Using Hashtags

Have you seen the Hangover? If not, you may want to grab the eight other people out there who haven’t and go give it a peek. Without ruining it for all eight of you, here is a quick rundown.

A group of four friends go to Vegas to celebrate an upcoming wedding. After a long night of bachelor party fun, they lose the groom. The remaining three spend the bulk of the movie trying to remember what happened, find their friend and make it back to the wedding in LA.

Had the guys took advantage of their Twitter account and used a few of these simple tips, many pitfalls and shenanigans from the day after could have been avoided. I am not a fan of using cliches, but hindsight is 20/20. (I’ll admit if they did use any or all of these tips, it would have made for a really boring movie.)

1. Mobile Updates

Everyone is talking, texting and taking pics and video from their phone when they are out for a night on the town. Using your mobile device to take pictures of your night is commonplace. For smartphone owners posting to Twitter is super easy with apps like Ubertwitter or Tweetie.

If you have a standard voice only phone you can MMS (picture message) your mobile photography to a web app such as Twitpic. Twitpic has a dedicated email address for you to send the MMS to.
Here are the steps to find out where to send the MMS to:

1. Log into Twitpic using your Twitter credentials

2. Go to settings and you’ll see the email address Twitpic has created for you.

3. Copy that email address and add it to your phone.

2. Use Hashtags

Using hashtags is a great way of tracking topics, events or even are sometimes used as part of an application. In the case of this party, the group could have used a hashtag like #dougsvegasparty.

This could have brought all of the random tweets, pics and videos posted over the couple day period together. This could have answered some questions early on like “Why is there a Tiger in the bathroom?”. If they glanced through the tweets with that hashtag, they might come across something like this: [Mike Tyson needs better security. Got the tiger in the back of the cop car without wakin' up the champ. Back to the hotel #dougsvegasparty]

3. Timestamp

If you haven’t noticed when browsing your timeline, every tweet has a time and date at the bottom. In the case of a bad memory (self-induced or not) this alone could have filled in many of the time gaps when things are a little hazy.

4. GPS Location

Many of the new devices and services can put a map tack on Google Maps showing where you were when you sent the tweet; kind of like a digital  bread crumb. If you go with a location based service option (Brightkite, Ubertwitter, etc), it is dually helpful. Your tweets will be time stamped and also give you a location of your tweet. This will come in very handy when mid-way through the night when things are a little fuzzy and your updates aren’t as easy to follow.

The problem with the first four solutions is they are very public. Anyone, including Stu’s girlfriend, could have followed the evening via Twitter. While this may be okay for some events, the happenings of these couple of days needed to be a little more discrete. Tips five and six will be a little more incognito yet offer some handy features.

5.  Reminders (@rtm)

This one could have been a huge timesaver for the gang. If they sent a DM something like this to @rtm (Remember the Milk): [d rtm tomorrow 9am get Doug from the roof], they would have received an SMS with a reminder at 9am. All four of the guys could have had a horribly hung over drive back to LA together.
If you can text your updates and DMs into Twitter, you should also receive incoming DMs. Alternatively, Blackberry and other smartphone users can get them with one of the numerous available applications.

6. Evernote (@myen)

With a slogan like “Remember Everything”, following Evernote on Twitter could have helped the guys out tremendously. Evernote can be updated by texting a DM to @myen. All of the DMs can be searched for by typing DM or Twitter into the search box. You can take a quick peek at this post from the Evernote blog for more explanation (and a video).

After the Vegas wedding DMs like these could have shed some light on their vehicle debacles: [d myen bought the high roller package. see Eddie before we head back.] or [d myen left the Mercedes parked on Las Vegas Blvd. Hope $4 was enough for parking].

This only scratches the surface of how Twitter can be used to remember things. Share your tips in the comments below.

[image: Kevin Lau]

© 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips.



6 Ways Twitter Can Help A Bad Memory

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… Let me back up to share what we’re up to.  The Vermont Video Resume Project is dedicated to helping every unemployed Vermonter who wants one get a free Web video resume.  We’re shooting our first round of resumes August 29th to help people find jobs using the social Web.

So how is Twitter such a critical piece of the equation?  Well, when I bought my first HD camcorder I was excited about shooting videos to share on YouTube.  Then I noticed by posting the URLs to Twitter my audience increased exponentially.  That got me to thinking what else is possible using Web video, and how the Twitter community could use it for a good cause.

My community of followers loved the idea of using Web video to help the unemployed, and our local independent newspaper/website offered to partner with me to spread the word.  The project gained critical mass and we eventually joined forces with the local community media station to record the videos at no cost to the participants.

Here’s how you can replicate this project in your own community:

- Crowdsource: Spread your idea like a virus by asking your community of Twitter followers to participate.  You’ll be surprised how the idea can be improved and distributed dramatically with the help of others.

- Establish a Hashtag: This is important.  Using a hashtag enables you to form a community around your cause, and creates a central point of reference using Twitter Search.

- Partner and Promote: Ask for help, because the media loves a worthy cause.  I recommend pinging your local media to participate using their own Twitter feeds, because distribution of your message is critical for awareness and success.  By asking people to become ‘Founding Members’ of your project they will be empowered to spread the word for you.

Finally, have fun!  Be open to new ideas and don’t be afraid if the project changes form.  Twitter is an incredible distribution medium and will help you spearhead a cause that promotes a common good.

© 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips.



3 Ways To Create Social Change Using Twitter

This past week or so has been pretty traumatic for some, what with the losses of Farrah Fawcett, Ed McMahon, Billy Mays, and of course, Michael Jackson.

Up until the #moonfruit promotion had started (Tweeters would use the hashtag for a chance to win a free Macbook Pro), Michael Jackson or some version thereof was the top trending topic on Twitter after his untimely death.

So I give you, dear readers, this poll:

The reason I ask is because I happened to notice that many people truly did not send out even one single tweet about Michael Jackson. Sure, there were plenty of people being what I consider to be rude or disrespectful with their tasteless jokes and such… but I am honestly curious as to the percentages of people who did and did not tweet about “MJ” (as that was also in the trending topics, aside from his full name) after his passing.

Even if you only tweeted ONCE about it, please check the “Yes” box. I realize some people (like myself) tweeted about it several times. Also, even if your tweet was what I referred to above as rude or disrespectful, again, please choose “Yes” as your answer.

Happy Independence Day, America!

© 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips.



Did You Tweet About Michael Jackson’s Death?

My son J-Son was involved in motorcycle accident last October. He is doing well if you call confined to a wheelchair doing well.

He is determined to walk within the year. He has put his application into the organization Project Walk in Carlsbad, CA. The expense is about $1000.00 a week with a minimum of 4/6 months.

Elaine and I own a skincare company and we will contribute 50% of our sales from Twitter followers to J-son’s ability to walk again. He is an Antioch Policemen and bound and determined to report back to work within the year.

What is the best way to use Twitter to post a fundraiser?

Personally, I think developing a #hashtag and asking your followers to use and promote a specific link that Twitter users could click on to make purchases to help their effort would be a great start. What ideas do you TwiTip readers have for Paris and her cause?

© 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips.



Answer A Reader Question: Twitter For Fundraising?

Leo Dirr is a freelance writer. Follow him @UtahNewsGuy.

When I began using Twitter a short time ago, I had no idea how much strategy could be involved in a simple tweet. You only get 140 characters, for crying out loud. How much thought could go into that, honestly?

A lot. And once I started to figure that out, my tweets got a lot more traction. I’d like to tell you about my most successful tweet to date and the strategy behind it.

Let’s begin with the tweet itself:

Will newspapers survive? Interviews with @typeamom, @pgillin, @standardex, @atompkins, @pottsmark http://tinyurl.com/ctxufw #journchat

Pretty sweet, huh? Now, let’s break it down:

Headline: Will newspapers survive?

That’s a decent headline because it conveys the story’s meaning in a small amount of space. It leaves me enough characters to accomplish my other goals.

Retweet bait: Interviews with @typeamom, @pgillin, @standardex, @atompkins, @pottsmark

In this story about the newspaper industry, I interviewed several industry experts. Many of them have Twitter accounts. How convenient! So, I included their Twitter handles in the tweet.

This improves the odds of three things:

1. The people named in the tweet will read the tweet.
2. The people named in the tweet will retweet it to their followers.
3. Their followers will read the tweet and possibly retweet it.

Linkyloo: http://tinyurl.com/ctxufw

The link is essential if you want anybody to read the content on your blog or web site. But it’s also worth noting that I used a tiny url. Tastes great, less filling.

Hashtag: #journchat

I added that hashtag mostly for fun. It accomplishes two things, really.

1. It might help the tweet get found by somebody who does a search specifically for that hashtag.

2. It helps define the Twitter community the tweet belongs to. People interested in journalism-related discussions might be more inclined to pay attention to a tweet marked #journchat.

Or they might not.

But again, this was my most successful tweet yet.

Strategery! That’s just fun to say.

© 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips.



Anatomy Of A Successful Tweet

Twitter is a great place to find and follow people with the same hobbies and interests as you have. Unfortunately, once you have as many followers as Darren does, it starts to get overwhelming to stay in touch with them all, and make sure the right information goes to the right people.

Making an appearance at a marketing seminar and love to cook? You’ve got a situation then. How do you make sure you’re tweeting details about marketing events to the seminar group while tweeting your favorite recipes to the cooking group?

Enter Hashtags. A hashtag is a symbol – # – followed by a name that can be used to broadcast to a specific group of people. For example, there’s a group for #googlenews, #love and even #kmart. None is probably more popular right now and relevant than the group created for the Mumbai attacks – #mumbai.

Hashtags.org shows the most recent group tweets on Twitter

To see which groups have already been created, visit www.hashtags.org – the official site that creates, organizes and displays these groups. Use the search box in the upper right corner to see if your group name is already available.

If it isn’t, you can create it simply by tweeting and including the hashtag (#) within your post.

The first step though, is to make sure hashtags can index and display your group tweets. Just follow @hashtags and the service will follow you back automatically. Then it’s time to help spread the word about your new Twitter group.

For example – Got a great Twitter tip? Just send it to #TwiTip and you could see it on our blog!

The second step is to get familiar with hashtag commands, so that you only broadcast a message out to the people you want to receive it, those being the members of your hashtag group. Here’s a quick rundown of the more useful ones:

• Follow #tag – (example: follow #twitip) – lets you follow all updates tagged with #twitip. 

• Follow username#tag – subscribe to all updates from a certain person that are sent to a group. (Example: Follow problogger#twitip will give you every post by Darren sent to the #twitip group)

• #tag message – Send a message or question to the group. (Example: #twitip Anyone know a great software program to organize tweets?)

• #tag !message – Send a message only to people who are subscribed to updates from #tag. (Example: #twitip !How many twitip users post to twitter daily?) 

• Leave #tag – Unsubscribe from the group. If your friends are subscribed to this group as well, you’ll still get messages from them that include updates for the group. (Example: leave #food will unsubscribe you from the Food group, but you’ll still get messages from your best friend and fabulous cook Jenny whenever she sends a message to #food).

• Remove #tag Unsubscribe from the group and from friend messages that include this tag. So if Jenny posts a recipe to #food and you’ve typed Remove #food in your Twitter status bar, you won’t see that recipe even if Jenny is on your followers list.

You’ll probably want to print out this set of hashtag commands for future reference. If and until Twitter creates its own built-in service for groups, hashtags is the most up-to-date (albeit unattractive) way to stay in touch and create powerful, profitable groups for expanding your Twitter empire and connecting with people who share your interests.

© 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips.



Tweet Your Message to a Larger Audience with Hashtags

We have all been there. After I registered with Twitter in 2007, I sat down looking at the screen, didn’t know what to do next.

“What the heck am I going to do with 140 characters?”

I didn’t understand why people want to know when or why I just took a can of Coke. (After all, the question on the Twitter page is “What are you doing?”)

I still don’t claim to know everything about Twitter until today, even though I learn hard to understand it. Well, perhaps that is the awesomeness of Twitter. Right now, if you go to TechCrunch, starting from their home page and browsing through the archives, almost in every page you will see a mention of Twitter or one of the myriad number of Twitter-related services / tools.

It seems like every day there are new ways to use Twitter. Some of those tools stay, but a few of them are no longer with us.

There really is something in the 140 characters.

Out of those fun things to do with Twitter, one thing that I personally think most useful is using Twitter as a research tool.

Even if you just heard of Twitter right now, you can start using the data if you know where and how to get them.

This article is written to help. Because there are so many things you could do with Twitter, I will only give a few examples of using various tools for research, and leave the rest for you as an exercise of imagination.

Twitter for Historical Research?

With millions of Twitterers who mostly are making their tweets public, we are actually building a database of information. Remember that once tweet, those tweets will be archived, probably in multiple places. FriendFeed is an example that immediately comes to my mind.

That could only mean one thing. Twitterers are writing history in real time. As more data become available, and as more people tweet in the future, anyone will be able to fetch historical data from any point of time about any topic.

For instance, forever the 2008 US President election is going to be recorded in Twitter. In the future people would be able to dig into the Twitter accounts of both Barack Obama and John McCain to see the schedules, summaries, opinions, etc. about the campaigns and debates.

A big difference between Twitter and a personal diary is that people are able to interact or witness the interaction live or anytime in the future. Another great thing is, everyone is now able to participate as part of the history and be read by interested people.

If that doesn’t impress you a bit, I don’t know what will…

Know How to Use Twitter

Fortunately, using Twitter is just easy. There is not much convention to remember. Basically you can just type in and send, just like instant messaging or short message service.

The difference is, to get the most out of Twitter, you need to know the following syntax:

• @username – Reply. Tweets that start with an @ and then a username is a reply to that user. If you follow someone and want to reply to her, using reply is the way to go. Of course, this presumes that you don’t mind the message is available publicly.
• #tag – Hashtag. Hash that is immediately followed by a tag (hashtag) in Twitter is a community-driven convention for adding additional context and metadata to your tweets. The contexts could be events, disasters, memes, or others.

As more Twitterers use the right syntax, they will add to the repository of data, which in turn return more useful results for future searchers. Right now, a lot of people forget to use hashtags for a particular event, and that increases the likelihood that their tweets will not be seen by others — or various Twitter tools that use hashtags.

Two Main Ways to Perform Research with Twitter

Twitterrers with a lot of followers certainly have an edge here. It happens everywhere. If you have a group of people who are willing to hear what you have to say, or if you have friends who you can call anytime, you can just do that and ask them for opinions or anything.

This leads us to the first way to perform research with Twitter, which is to…

1. Ask. If you follow Darren, you will occasionally find him asking questions. Not only does that encourage participation from his followers, but he also gets the information he needs to write the next blog post, or just as an insight to understand his audience better. What you could ask the followers is limited only by your imagination. Questions that can be answered quickly are winners. With the right engagement, results will pour in soon after you tweet. Directing the followers to a series of questions, such as a survey, on the Web may work but I haven’t tested this yet. To get more responses from your questions, you might be interested to learn how to ask effective questions on Twitter.
2. Search. By using publicly accessible data, you can also learn a lot. For instance, if I search for tweets from Darren and his followers, I’d be able to find out answers from his questions and use those for writing ideas or for other things.

With so many useful Twitter tools, searching is more complex than you might imagine. Using Twitter Search is useful to find event-related tweets, but if you want to get information about the trends, #hashtags is more useful though.

Knowing what is possible and which tools to use at the right time are two critical keys to save time and retrieve wanted results.

Essential Twitter Tools You Should Know About

This list is by no means complete. As of this writing, there are hundreds of Twitter tools out there but here are a few of them that I frequent. With these tools under your belt, you should be able to get started in using Twitter’s data effectively and expand your toolbox as you see fit.

• Twitter client. Your mileage may vary but I find it easier to use Twitter client such as Twhirl to post updates. Not only that but you will be able to perform search inside Twhirl because of its integration with Twitter Search and TweetScan.
• General search. Both Twitter Search and TweetScan provide reliable search for Twitter’s data, but the former allows you to drill down your search queries using the Advanced search feature.
• Tag search. Twitter Search is also able to search for tags, but #hashtags returns a graphical representation of the trend for a specific tag. The downside is currently #hashtags is a bit slow and incomplete.
• Conversation search. If you want to search for previous conversations, again Twitter Search is able to provide you with the information. If there is a conversation related to a tweet, you will see a link to Show Conversation.
• Location search. TwitterLocal is a useful tool if you want to perform a search for tweets within or around a specific geographical area.
• Keyword search. Monitter lets you monitor 3 keywords live at the same time with the ability to nail down geographic area. Use this to get a hint about current trends (how popular one keyword is).
• Topical research. If you know someone who is an established expert in an industry or niche, use TweetStats to see which keywords he uses most often. TweetStats represents the data in TweetCloud, which is much like tag cloud but for Twitter.
• Popular URL search. Twitt(url)y sorts URLs by how frequently they were mentioned in tweets. Think of a mention as a vote in Digg. The more people talk about a URL, the higher the rankings in Twitt(url)y will be. This tool is useful if you want to spot popular topics using aggregated Twitter’s data.
• Data aggregation. This is not specific to Twitter, but a lot of people syndicate their Twitter feeds to FriendFeed. With it, feeds from Twitter and other social media sites are aggregated in one central location for followers to consume. FriendFeed also has powerful filtering and search feature.
• Search result monitoring. Again, this is not directly related to Twitter, but often times conversations shift back and forth between blogs and Twitters. If you monitor the the Web and news, using Google Alerts or the blogosphere with Technorati, among others, you would be able to track the whole conversations.

Many of the tools above also publish feed related to the search queries. The only effective way to keep up with all of them, in my opinion, is through an RSS reader. While you can still receive Google Alerts via email, I find it more convenient to use an RSS reader because of the amount of information I track on a daily basis.

Use whichever you like most because there is no right or wrong way to do this.

Successful Twitter Stories

Of course, the following stories or case studies are related to using Twitter for research, basically anything from getting information to understanding a bit better about your target market.

1. @bbgeeks builds 500+ loyal followers in 8 months (as of this writing there are 1,114 followers). Those followers are people who are interested in Blackberry. Not only they able to get free brand exposure and traffic, but also tons of content ideas and direct feedback from informal polls. How do you like your audience to tell you what to write instead of you struggling to come up with ideas to write next? Click here to read more about bbkgeeks case study.
2. Just last week, offended moms took revenge over Motrin ads through Twitter by uniting and voicing their displeasure with the ad. The key is in the term “uniting” which in Twittersphere (Twitosphere?) can be as simple as using a uniform hashtag (#motrinmoms). Motrin’s web site was crashed by the rush of traffic. People were using Twitter Search to monitor conversations in real-time. Miss the entire story? The same tool tool also allows you keep up with the conversations. To be fair, after J&J apologized, Twitterers also twittered about it.
3. David Murray (@DaveMurr) reached out to his followers and publicly announced that he was looking for work. He did a research in Twitter Search and keep track of conversations with RSS feed. He landed a job that had not even been posted. (Read full story.)
4. If there is one company that aggressively — in a good way — uses Twitter, it is Zappos.com. Zappos jumped on the Twitter bandwagon early to engage with their prospects and customers. They currently have more than 20,000 followers. Zappos encourage their followers to participate by holding a contest, in which they asked their followers to help them rewrite confirmation email. CEO Tony believes connecting more deeply with customers is important, although Twitter takes up a lot of his time.
5. Businesses of different sizes are using Twitter for different purposes. Tapping into the minds of their customers through Twitter is a great way to research the market. But, what if you are a solopreneur who works from home? How could you use Twitter for research, with no followers? Just use those various tools mentioned above such as Twitter Search to find out what people are talking about in your niche. If you are a blogger, you could use it to get constant flow of ideas for blog posts or your next product.

I think you now agree Twitter is a powerful business tool that changes how people reach and respond to the market. Best of all is how average people are able to use the publicly available tweets to better understand their target audience.

If you have used Twitter in one way or another for research, or if you have thought about how it should be used, please share with us here!

Hendry Lee helps bloggers overcome strategic and technological challenges in starting and growing their blogs. He also writes about social media on his blog Blog Tips for a Better Blog – Blog Building University. While you are there, download your free eBook and subscribe to the blogging e-course!

Follow Hendry on Twitter (@hendrylee).

© 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips.



Twitter for Research: Why and How to Do It, Including Case Studies